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Click Brené Brown
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"How can I improve."
Perfectionism is other-focused:
"What will they think."
Click Brené Brown
to strive: to make strenuous efforts toward any goal: to strive for success
(the added word definitions are meant for the visitors English as their 2nd language)
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What is a
Santa Claus rally
The rise in stock prices that sometimes occurs in the week after Christmas, often in anticipation of the January effect.
Usage Example
End-of-the-year market optimism was high and many investors believed that corporate profits would rise in January, creating a Santa Claus rally.
DEFINITION OF 'SANTA CLAUS RALLY' By Investopedia
A surge in the price of stocks that often occurs in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. There are numerous explanations for the Santa Claus Rally phenomenon, including tax considerations, happiness around Wall Street, people investing their Christmas bonuses and the fact that the pessimists are usually on vacation this week.
Many consider the Santa Claus rally to be a result of people buying stocks in anticipation of the rise in stock prices during the month of January, otherwise known as the January effect.
Definition for
CAPITALISM
Economic system characterized by the following: private property ownership exists; individuals and companies are allowed to compete for their own economic gain; and free market forces determine the prices of goods and services. Such a system is based on the premise of separating the state and business activities. Capitalists believe that markets are efficient and should thus function without interference, and the role of the state is to regulate and protect.
_____________________
What is a
Santa Claus rally
The rise in stock prices that sometimes occurs in the week after Christmas, often in anticipation of the January effect.
Usage Example
End-of-the-year market optimism was high and many investors believed that corporate profits would rise in January, creating a Santa Claus rally.
DEFINITION OF 'SANTA CLAUS RALLY' By Investopedia
A surge in the price of stocks that often occurs in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day. There are numerous explanations for the Santa Claus Rally phenomenon, including tax considerations, happiness around Wall Street, people investing their Christmas bonuses and the fact that the pessimists are usually on vacation this week.
Many consider the Santa Claus rally to be a result of people buying stocks in anticipation of the rise in stock prices during the month of January, otherwise known as the January effect.
Definition for
CAPITALISM
Economic system characterized by the following: private property ownership exists; individuals and companies are allowed to compete for their own economic gain; and free market forces determine the prices of goods and services. Such a system is based on the premise of separating the state and business activities. Capitalists believe that markets are efficient and should thus function without interference, and the role of the state is to regulate and protect.
_____________________
Vulnerability is the birthplace
of innovation, creativity and change
Brené Brown Click
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of innovation, creativity and change
Brené Brown Click
______________
Program Benefiting Some Immigrants
Extends Visa Wait for Others
Article date: February 8, 2014
Click green for further info
Many thousands of Americans seeking green cards for foreign spouses or other immediate relatives have been separated from them for a year or more because of swelling bureaucratic delays at a federal immigration agency in recent months.
The long waits came when the agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, shifted attention and resources to a program President Obama started in 2012 to give deportation deferrals to young undocumented immigrants, according to administration officials and official data.
The trouble that American citizens have faced gaining permanent resident visas for their families raises questions about the agency’s priorities and its readiness to handle what could become a far bigger task. After Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio said on Thursday that the House was not likely to act on an immigration overhaul this year, immigrant advocates are turning up their pressure on Mr. Obama to expand the deferral program to include many more of the 11.7 million immigrants in the country illegally.
Andrew Bachert is one citizen caught in the slowdown. After he moved back to this country in August for work, he thought he and his wife, who is Australian, would be settled by now in a new home in New York State, shoveling snow and adjusting to the winter chill. Instead his wife, Debra Bachert, is stranded, along with the couple’s two teenagers and two dogs, in a hastily rented house in Adelaide, where the temperature rose in January to 115 degrees.
At loose ends, Mr. Bachert, 48, spent Halloween and Thanksgiving without his wife and children, and he opened his Christmas presents for them himself — on a Skype call so at least they could see what he had gotten for them.
“I’m sitting over here on my own, and it’s unbearably hard,” Mr. Bachert said. At the current pace, Mrs. Bachert will probably not travel to the United States before August.
Until recently, an American could obtain a green card for a spouse, child or parent — probably the easiest document in the immigration system — in five months or less. But over the past year, waits for approvals of those resident visas stretched to 15 months, and more than 500,000 applications became stuck in the pipeline, playing havoc with international moves and children’s schools and keeping families apart.
“U.S. citizens petitioning for green cards for immediate relatives are a high, if not the highest, priority in the way Congress set up the immigration system,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the national bar association. “This is a problem that needs to be fixed quickly.”
Many Americans are awaiting visas for spouses they recently wed, including Mukul Varma, 31, a naturalized citizen who works as a software consultant near Chicago. On a trip to India to visit relatives, he fell in love with Neetika Gupta, 26, also a software engineer. They married in India in May.
“To be honest with you,” Mr. Varma said, “because I was a U.S. citizen I thought it would not be an issue to get a visa for my wife. I didn’t put any thought into it.”
In mid-January Mr. Varma flew back to India to see his bride for the first time in nine months. He applied for her green card soon after the wedding, and since then it has not advanced. Their plans to start their life together in this country are in disarray.
“First it was surprise,” Mr. Varma said. “Then dismay. Then it just becomes very discouraging. You feel helpless. You feel as if you did things the right way and you are penalized for it.”
Christopher S. Bentley, a Citizenship and Immigration Services spokesman, said the agency had seen “a temporary increase in processing times” for the citizens’ green card applications because of the deferrals program and “the standard ebb and flow” of visas.
Last year, officials said, the agency detected the problem and tried to speed up the green cards by spreading them out to three processing centers. In November, the agency reported it had reduced waits to 10 months, calling that a “significant step forward.” Officials said they hoped to reduce waits to five months, but not before this summer.
Because there are no annual limits on green cards for citizens’ immediate relatives, there are no systemic backlogs. But initial approvals are centralized at the immigration agency in the United States. After that step, generally the longest, the visas must also pass through the State Department and foreign consulates. The law prohibits foreigners who want to become residents from entering as tourists while their documents are in process.
After Mr. Obama announced the deferral program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, in 2012, he gave Citizenship and Immigration Services only two months to get it running. Agency officials scrambled. As of last week, 521,815 youths had received deferrals, with the agency handling more than 2,000 applications a day.
The agency drew rare praise from immigrants and advocates for the efficiency of the program, which is highly popular among Latinos. It has been widely regarded as a successful dress rehearsal for a larger legalization.
But soon after the deferrals were underway, Americans with green card applications felt the impact.
“You end up seeing a steep decline in approvals for people like me who followed the law,” said Forrest Nabors, 47, a political science professor at the University of Alaska in Anchorage, who filed in July for a green card for his wife, Zdenka, who is Czech.
An immigration service center near Kansas City assigned to handle both the green card applications and many of the deferrals was rapidly overwhelmed, officials said. But although the agency is financed by fees and does not depend on congressional appropriations, no new employees were brought on at that center, because of “unanticipated hiring difficulties,” officials said, without elaborating.
For some families, prolonged separations have been especially hard on children. Jessica Veltstra, 32, applied in March for a green card for her husband of eight years, Andre, 41, who is Dutch. But he is still in the Netherlands, and she is rooming with relatives in New Jersey, unable to make plans.
Their older daughter, who is 4, refuses to speak to her father on the phone in Dutch, her first language, and bursts out crying when she sees a photo of him.
“My husband has done nothing wrong,” Ms. Veltstra said. “But they can do whatever they want because they have your spouse basically hostage.”
Mr. Bachert was so certain he would see his family soon when he left Australia last summer that his children, both American citizens, did not go to the airport to see him off. He had little doubt his wife would qualify: They have been married for 17 years, and she had a green card once before, when Mr. Bachert, who works with electric utilities, had an earlier job in the United States. But the document expired, and she could not renew it when they were living in Australia.
Some lawyers urged Mrs. Bachert to come as a tourist to join her husband. After deliberating for two sleepless weeks, she said, she decided she would rather bide her time apart than lie to American customs officials about her intentions to remain in the United States.
Mr. Bachert, who will eventually work in upstate New York but is camped out in a temporary apartment near his company’s headquarters in Hartford, said his lowest moment had been a frantic predawn phone call from his wife. Their son was in a hospital heading for emergency surgery after shattering his forearm and wrist in a bicycle fall. Two months later, Mr. Bachert shuddered to recall the episode, although his son’s bones have healed. “No parent,” he said, “should be separated from their family in periods such as that.”
Source: NYT Click green below:
Program Benefiting Some Immigrants Extends Visa Wait for Others
- New York Times - by Julia Preston - 2 days ago
Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times. Many thousands of Americans seeking green cards for foreign ... The long waits came when the agency, Citizenship and Immigration ... the agency detected the problem and tried to speed up the green cards by ..... _______________________________________________________________________________
Lost Sleep Is Hard to Find
A long night’s rest merely masks the effects of chronic sleep loss
Harvard Magazine
IT’S A time-honored practice among medical residents, cramming undergrads, and anyone else burning the candle at both ends: get very little sleep for days, maybe even pull an all-nighter, and then crash for an extra-long night of shut-eye to catch up.
Ten hours of sleep at once may indeed recharge us, and allow us to perform well for several hours after waking, according to research recently published in Science Translational Medicine. But “the brain literally keeps track of how long we’ve been asleep and awake—for weeks,” says Harvard Medical School (HMS) neurology instructor Daniel A. Cohen, M.D., lead author of the study. And that means that the bigger our aggregate sleep deficit, the faster our performance deteriorates, even after a good night’s rest.
Cohen and his coauthors monitored nine young men and women who spent three weeks on a challenging schedule: awake for 33 hours, asleep for 10—the equivalent of 5.6 hours of sleep a day. (This approximates the schedule of a medical resident, but many of us live under similar conditions; the National Sleep Foundation reports that 16 percent of Americans sleep six or fewer hours a night.) When the study participants were awake, they took a computer-based test of reaction time and sustained attention every four hours.
The researchers were surprised to discover just how much an extended rest boosted test performance. “Even though people were staying awake for almost 33 hours, when they had the opportunity to sleep for 10 hours, their performance shortly after waking was back to normal,” Cohen says. “The really interesting finding here is that there’s a short-term aspect of sleep loss that can be made up relatively quickly, within a long night.”
But the days and weeks of lost sleep eventually took their toll. The investigators knew from previous research that people awake for 24 hours straight display reaction times comparable to those of people who are legally drunk. Cohen’s new study reveals that those who pull an all-nighter on top of two or three weeks of chronic sleep loss reach that level of severe impairment faster—after just 18 hours awake.
Sleep researchers sometimes use the analogy of an hourglass to illustrate how we lose our ability to function as the day wears on. A good night’s sleep gives us a full ration of sand at the top of the glass; the grains begin to fall when we wake up, and “with each grain that drops, there’s an increasing level of impairment,” Cohen explains. The new study’s findings led its senior author, associate professor of medicine Elizabeth Klerman, to refine the analogy: “She says chronic sleep loss essentially enlarges the hole between the halves of the hourglass, so the sand falls a lot faster. That means you can be fully restored [by a long night’s sleep], but you peter out very quickly.”
Cohen’s study also revealed valuable information about how circadian rhythms influence our responses to sleep deprivation. The researchers determined that hitting the body’s circadian high (from about 3 P.M. to 7 P.M. for most people, when levels of the hormone melatonin are lowest in the bloodstream) can effectively mask the effects of sleep loss on performance—suggesting why chronically sleep-deprived individuals may not feel very sleepy for much of the day and think they’re sufficiently rested. To make matters worse, Cohen says, “Prior research shows that people start to overrate how they perform when they’re chronically sleep deprived.” But the inevitable circadian low (roughly 3 A.M. to 7 A.M., when melatonin levels are highest) magnifies the effects of sleep loss, slowing reaction times by a factor of 10—one reason overnight drivers, for example, are especially prone to errors.
Scientists don’t yet know how long it takes to overcome a long-term sleep debt. “It certainly takes longer than three days,” Cohen says. “It could even take up to a couple of weeks of a normal sleep schedule before people are fully caught up”—an important fact for people with safety-sensitive jobs to know, so they can make adequate sleep a priority. He admits some trouble with this himself, especially during his medical training. “But since I’ve been in the sleep field,” he says, “I’ve tried to shoot for closer to eight hours per night.”
Sleep inertia - Wikipedia,
========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================
- When you get a good night's sleep, it's like giving your body a tiny vacation.
- SLEEP INFO - 2 LINKS
- Notice: These articles has excellent & important SLEEP information for children AND adults (even though the title may only stated "kids"). Additional sleep articles further below.
- Sleep - How Many Hours
- click green: All About Sleep - Kids, Teens & Adults _____________
- Notice: Both articles have excellent & important SLEEP information for children AND adults (even though the title may only stated "kids")
- Click green:
- What Sleep Is and Why All Need It - Health - the stages of sleep - Rem - Dreams - How to Catch Your ZZZs ___________
- Other fully printed-out sleep articles further - below
____________ - Click: Inheriting Stress
- __________________
- Additional web links & fully printed-out sleep articles further - below (one next below) =========================================================____________________________
Anti-Anxiety, Sleeping Pills May Double Risk of Deathwww.theepochtimes.com/.../593174-anti-anxiety-sleeping-pills-may-dou...
Mar 31, 2014 - Anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills have been linked to an increased risk of early death, according to new research.
Good Night & Sleep well; Here is how:
Sleeping pills are dangerous - natural healthy sleep is easy to reach when you follow the instructions here:
Avoid all sleeping pills - learn to meditate, do yoga, take related classes, leave at least 3 hours between dinner & your bedtime, in your bedroom you do only two things: make love & sleep - TV and technology away from your bedroom (keep in another room). Use ear plugs if outside noise bothers, cover the windows if any outside light visible. Alcohol: max 1 -2 glasses (or 1 or 2 beers, avoid them as a daily use, have herb teas (chamomile & other soothing herb teas - search the web). Follow the biblical advice: "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, do not give the devil a foothold."(Ephesians 4:26-27) - settle your arguments before your bedtime - you sleep better and stay healthier.
Sleeping pills are dangerous - natural healthy sleep is easy to reach when you follow the above instructions
(1) click: Understanding the Side Effects of Sleeping Pills - WebMDwww.webmd.com/sleep.../understanding-the-side-effects-of-slee...
(2) Sleeping Pills Called 'as Risky as Cigarettes'Study Links Sleeping Pills to 4.6-Fold Higher Death Risk
Click: Sleeping Pills Called "as Risky as Cigarettes" - WebMD
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Article 1 of 2 (2 of 2 next below)
Anti-Anxiety, Sleeping Pills May Double Risk of Premature Death
"The key message here is that we really do have to use these drugs more carefully," says Scott Weich.
"This builds on a growing body of evidence suggesting that their side effects are significant and dangerous."
Anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills have been linked to an increased risk of death, according to new research.
The large study, published in BMJ, shows that several anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs or hypnotic drugs (sleeping pills) are associated with a doubling in the risk of mortality. Although these findings are based on routine data and need to be interpreted cautiously, the researchers recommend that a greater understanding of the drugs’ impact is essential.
“The key message here is that we really do have to use these drugs more carefully,” says Scott Weich, professor of psychiatry at the University of Warwick. “This builds on a growing body of evidence suggesting that their side effects are significant and dangerous. We have to do everything possible to minimize over reliance on anxiolytics and sleeping pills.”
“That’s not to say that they cannot be effective. But, particularly due to their addictive potential, we need to make sure that we help patients to spend as little time on them as possible and that we consider other options, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, to help them to overcome anxiety or sleep problems.”
The study accounted, where possible, for other factors such as age, smoking, and alcohol use, other prescriptions, and socioeconomic status. Crucially, the team controlled for contributing risk factors such as sleep disorders, anxiety disorders, and other psychiatric illness in all participants.
34,727 people were tracked for seven and a half years on average from the time that they first received prescriptions for either an anxiolytic or hypnotic drug.
Benzodiazepines were the most commonly prescribed drug class, including diazepam and temazepam. The study also examined the effects of two other groups of drugs; the so-called ‘Z-drugs’ and all other anxiolytic and hypnotic drugs. Many patients received more than one drug over the course of the study, and five percent received prescriptions for drugs from all three groups.
Source: University of Warwick. (Article 2 of 2 next below)
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Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
A Deeper Look at Drug Ads
"De-normalizing drug Risk"
By Conan Milner, Epoch Times | April 7, 2014
According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) your doctor is your best source of information on prescription drugs. However, Americans receive much more pharmaceutical advice from television, where they may be exposed to as many as 16 hours of drug ads each year.
Direct to consumer drug advertising was first permitted in the early 1990s, and since then, the number of prescriptions has jumped more than 70 percent. In tandem, the number of cases of addiction, overdose, and adverse reactions, have risen sharply as well.
According to the FDA, part of the prescription drug problems in America stems from the fact that people don’t take drug warnings more seriously. Regulators believe that the format of TV drug ads is part of the problem and say that the list of side effects (which may include minor concerns such as dry mouth and night sweats) is too long. The FDA is considering requirements that TV ads have more concise warnings that make the biggest risks of a drug more apparent.
This year the agency will test-market consumer comprehension with a new ad format that only lists serious risks—such as addiction or cancer. The updated ads will point to a website for consumers interested in further details.
Kent Runyon executive director of Novus Detox Center, a Florida treatment facility serving high-dosage addiction patients, said that while he appreciates regulators seeking to improve understanding of prescription drug risks, he believes the task of regulating ads requires more comprehensive action.
“I think the length of the list is a factor that we have to consider, but we need to have a holistic viewpoint of these ads. What are the marketers doing purposely to diminish the message of the risks?” he said.
The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising. According to the Pew Research Center, the pharmaceutical industry spent about $3.1 billion on marketing aimed at the U.S. consumer in 2012.
Proponents justify these ads as educational tools that allow consumers to learn about innovative treatments. But Runyon sees them more as promotion than education.
“I see a marketing professional packaging an ad no different than McDonalds, Coca Cola, or any other business that is trying to increase sales,” he said. “Marketers are masters. Their job is to get into our brains to a degree and impact our decision making. It doesn’t mean we don’t have control, but certainly there’s an art form to it.”
Doctor Misconceptions and the Quick-Fix Culture
The most abused prescription drugs, opioid painkillers, are generally not advertised. However, Runyon believes the promotional prevalence of other drugs has normalized prescription pharmaceuticals to such an extent that even many doctors don’t comprehend the risks involved.
A study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published March 2014 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that doctors are the biggest suppliers to the prescription opioid abuse epidemic, not friends and family as was previously believed.
Study author and CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden told the Los Angeles Times that many doctors “may just not realize that the risks are so high and benefits so limited.”
Runyon, who has helped people overcome addiction to both prescription and illicit drugs for over 20 years, has seen many addictions start from just a single prescription. He said that patients and doctors don’t spend enough time considering other treatment options because the alternatives don’t receive nearly the same level of promotion as drugs.
Another part of the problem is the cultural environment in which modern pharmaceuticals exist. In this age of convenience, we’re conditioned to seek an easy solution.
“We’re the fast-food generation. We’re the quick-fix generation. Sometimes I think prescription pills are that quick-fix,” he said.
The FDA will accept public comment on the study until April 21, 2014.
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News for WSJ article Newark focus on crimeNewark's Focus Is on Crime
Newark's Focus Is on Crime As the Mayoral Election Looms, Murders and Carjackings Erode Renewal Efforts
Date: Sat-Sun May 10-11/14
Click green for further info
NEWARK—After murders rose to 111 last year, a level not seen in two decades, a special crew of state troopers now patrols the city's southern stretches, often asking people why they are standing outside.
A separate task force tries to stop carjackings, which have almost doubled in recent years, to 382, according to a spokeswoman for the Essex County prosecutor's office.
This city's cheerleaders, led by former Mayor Cory Booker, have touted an urban revival in recent years, with gleaming buildings like the Prudential Center arena, the city's first Whole Foods Market, slated to occupy a long-vacant landmark building, and a recent ribbon-cutting for a new visitor's center.
But as voters in New Jersey's largest city prepare to elect a new mayor Tuesday, many are asking the candidates vying for the job— Shavar Jeffries and Ras Baraka —why some neighborhoods are now more dangerous. Violent crime has risen steadily in recent years, to more than 3,000 incidents annually, while the city's police force is down by more than 20% from five years ago—to about 1,000 officers.
"People are afraid to come out," said Joaquin Calvo, a major with the Salvation Army in Newark, adding that it had canceled programs for seniors and children after 6 p.m. for safety reasons.
At Joe's Shoe Shop on Halsey Street downtown, employee Michael McKnight said: "People were getting shot in broad daylight." He said he saw a shooting about a month ago.
"We have parents who refuse to let their children play outside, who are paralyzed in their own homes," said Mr. Jeffries. "If we don't get our arms around this epidemic of violence, it undermines our community on every level."
Earlier
The race between the two candidates—both from the city's violence-plagued South Ward—has turned nasty, with both waging direct personal attacks and negative campaign ads. In recent days, polls have tightened, with hot-button issues including education policy and the city's double-digit unemployment rate driving a heated debate.
Still, "public safety seems to be the most energetic of issues," said Clement Price, the city's historian and a Rutgers University professor. It is one both candidates have seized upon.
Mr. Baraka, a councilman in the South Ward, has attacked Mr. Jeffries for not being closely involved in the district and for vowing to hire more police officers, while Mr. Baraka says the money just isn't there. The city faces a budget deficit that could surpass $90 million.
Mr. Jeffries, formerly an assistant state attorney general, ties the crime spike in Mr. Baraka's neighborhood to his rival's leadership, saying the crime policies he supported had failed.
One flash point in the race: a letter Mr. Baraka wrote supporting Altariq Gumbs, a convicted gang leader, which the inmate used in a bid to lower his sentence. Mr. Baraka has espoused a philosophy of trying to change gang culture and working to broker a gang truce and ceasefire.
Mr. Jeffries has lambasted Mr. Baraka for the letter, saying he was "lenient and apologetic for the gang culture."
Mr. Baraka said he doesn't regret writing the letter and that Mr. Gumbs had tried to encourage others not to participate in gang violence.
Both men said Newark needed to focus more on crime prevention by investing more in after-school and job-training programs, though they gave few specifics on how to fund them.
And both attributed a rise in crime to Mr. Booker, who left office in October 2013, laying off police officers in 2010 after a lengthy fight with the union. There are now about 1,000 cops in Newark, according to police spokesman Ronald Glover, compared with about 1,300 when Mr. Booker took office.
A spokeswoman for the current mayor, Luis Quintana, referred requests for comment to the police department, which didn't not return further calls.
In an interview, Mr. Booker said he left Newark much safer than when he arrived, citing revitalized parks and widespread development and declined to endorse either candidate. "If you're going to say there's a [crime] perception problem, the fact is all over our city, in every ward, we're seeing growth, development, population returning," he said.
But his record is mixed. Violent crime and murders fell significantly during his first three years—2008 was one of the safest years in Newark's history—but climbed annually since. Murders in 2013 were higher than in 2006, when he took office, according to state police statistics.
Mr. Booker was lauded by outside gun-control groups for his efforts to keep firearms off the streets, but some police officials say guns are a bigger problem than ever. And while new development has helped boost safety in some neighborhoods, carjackings have risen.
"Carjackings really started to peak in 2010," said Anthony Ambrose, the chief of detectives in Essex County. He said more guns and drugs were fueling the crime uptick in some parts of the city, while others are far safer than they were decades ago.
Still, reinforcements arrived in April, when a crew of state troopers—directed by the attorney general—descended on the city. Paul Loriquet, a spokesman for the attorney general's office, declined to say how many officers were in Newark and said it was unclear how long they would stay beyond the summer.
But he was clear on one point: "The attorney general did not want a repeat of last summer, when we saw a significant spike in shootings and murders."
Source: WSJ
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- Hearing Impairment
23 causes for hearing loss
Medically Reviewed by George Krucik, MD, MBA
What Is Hearing Loss?Hearing loss is when you are unable to partially or completely hear sound in one or both of your ears. In most people, hearing loss begins after age 20 (MedlinePlus). Hearing loss typically occurs gradually over time, but by the time a person reaches 65, hearing loss can be quite significant. The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NICDC) reported that, in 2010, 30 percent of those between the ages of 65 and 74 said they had hearing loss (NICDC).
Hearing loss is also known as:
- decreased hearing
- deafness
- loss of hearing
- conductive hearing loss
How Hearing WorksThere are three main parts to the ear: the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The hearing process includes these basic steps.
- Hearing begins when sound waves pass through the outer ear to the eardrum (a thin piece of skin between your outer and middle ear).
- When the sound waves reach the eardrum, the eardrum vibrates.
- The eardrum and the three bones of the middle ear (the hammer, anvil, and stirrup, together called the ossicles) then work together to increase the vibrations as the sound waves travel onward to the inner ear.
- When the sound waves reach the inner ear, they travel through the fluids of the cochlea. The cochlea is an inner-ear structure sometimes described as being snail-shaped (Mayo, 2011).
- In the cochlea are nerve cells with thousands of mini hairs attached to them. These hairs help to convert the sound wave vibrations into electrical signals that are then communicated to your brain.
- Your brain then interprets these electrical signals as sound. Different sound vibrations create different reactions in these tiny hairs; thereby signaling different sounds to your brain.
What Are the Common Underlying Causes of Hearing Loss?The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) reports that there are three basic types of hearing loss, each caused by different underlying factors. The three most common causes of decreased hearing include conductive hearing loss, sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), and mixed hearing loss (ASHA).
Conductive Hearing LossThis type of hearing loss occurs when sounds are not able to travel from the outer ear to the eardrum and the bones of the middle ear. When this type of hearing loss occurs, you may find it difficult to hear soft or muffled sounds. Conductive hearing loss can be treated through medical interventions and is not always permanent. Treatment may include antibiotics or surgical interventions, such as a cochlear implant. A cochlear implant is a small electrical machine (placed under your skin behind the ear) that translates sound vibrations into electrical signals that your brain can then interpret as meaningful sound.
Conductive hearing loss can be caused by:
- ear infections (otitis media)
- allergies (serous otitis media)
- swimmer’s ear (otitis externa)
- a buildup of wax in the ear
- a foreign object that has become stuck in the ear
- benign tumors
- scarring of the ear canal due to recurrent infections
SNHL can result because of:
- birth defects that alter the structure of the ear
- aging
- working around loud noises
- trauma to the head or skull
- infections that damaged the nerves of the ear, such as measles, meningitis, mumps, or scarlet fever
- acoustic neuroma (a noncancerous tumor that grows on the nerve that connects the ear to the brain, known as the vestibular cochlear nerve)
- Meniere’s disease (disorder of the inner ear that can affect hearing and balance)
Mixed Hearing LossMixed hearing loss may also occur. This happens when both conductive hearing loss and SNHL occur at the same time.
When Should You Call Your Doctor?Hearing loss typically occurs over time. At first, you may not notice any changes in your hearing. However, if you experience any of the following symptoms, you should contact your doctor:
- hearing loss that interferes with your daily activities
- hearing loss that becomes worse or that does not go away
- hearing loss that is worse in one ear
- sudden hearing loss
- ringing in the ear
- severe hearing loss
- having ear pain along with hearing problems
- headaches, numbness, or weakness
How Can the Symptoms of Hearing Loss Be Treated?If you develop hearing loss that is due to a buildup of wax in the ear canal, you can remove the wax at home. Over-the-counter solutions, including wax softeners, can be used to remove wax from the ear. Syringes can also be used to push warm water through the ear canal to remove the wax. If a foreign object is stuck in the ear canal, you may (depending on the object) be able to remove the object at home. However, in this case, it would be wise to consult your doctor before attempting to remove the object—you do not want to unintentionally damage your ear.
For other causes of hearing loss, you will need to see your doctor. If your hearing loss is caused by an infection, your doctor may need to prescribe antibiotics. If your hearing loss is caused by other conductive hearing problems, your doctor may refer you to a specialist to receive a hearing aid or a cochlear implant.
What Are the Complications of Hearing Loss?Hearing loss has been shown to negatively impact a person’s quality of life and mental state. If you develop hearing loss, you may have difficulty understanding others. This can increase your anxiety level or cause depression. Treatment for hearing loss may improve your life significantly. It may restore self-confidence while also improving your ability to communicate with friends and family members.
How Can You Prevent Hearing Loss?Not all cases of hearing loss can be prevented. However, there are several steps that you can take to protect your hearing:
- Use safety equipment if you work in areas with loud noises, and wear earplugs when you swim and go to concerts. Statistics from 2010 showed that 15 percent of individuals ages 20 to 69 experienced hearing loss due to loud noise (NIDCD).
- Have regular hearing tests if you work around loud noises, swim often, or go to concerts on a regular basis.
- Avoid prolonged exposure to loud noises and music.
- Seek help for ear infections, as they may cause permanent damage to the ear if left untreated.
Written by Darla Burke
Medically Reviewed by George Krucik, MD
Published on July 18, 2012
Article Sources:
- Cone, B., Dorn, P., Konrad-Martin, D., Lister, J., Ortiz, C., & Schairer, K. (n.d.). Ototoxic medications (medication effects). American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Retrieved July 22, 2012, from http://www.asha.org/public/hearing/Ototoxic-Medications/
- Dugdale III, D. C., & Vyas, J. M. (2010, September 15). Meningitis. National Library of Medicine – National Health Institutes. Retrieved July 22, 2012, fromhttp://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000680.htm
- Hearing loss. (2011, August 23). Mayo Clinic. Retrieved July 18, 2012, from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/hearing-loss/DS00172:
- Quick statistics. (2010, June 16). National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Retrieved July 22, 2012, fromhttp://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/statistics/Pages/quick.aspx
- Schwartz, S. (2011, August 31). Meniere’s disease.National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health.Retrieved July 22, 2012, from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000702.htm
- Types of hearing loss. (n.d.). American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. Retrieved July 18, 2012, fromhttp://www.asha.org/public/hearing/disorders/types.htm
- Vorvick, L. J., & Schwartz, S. (2011, May 31). Acoustic neuroma. National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health.Retrieved July 22, 2012, fromhttp://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000778.htm
- Vorvick, L. J., & Schwartz, S. (2011, May 31). Hearing loss. National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Health.Retrieved July 18, 2012, fromhttp://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003044.htm
- What is hearing loss? (2009, June). National Institutes of Health, Senior Health. Retrieved July 18, 2012, fromhttp://nihseniorhealth.gov/hearingloss/hearinglossdefined/01.html
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Narrow your results with Symptom Checker
Click here to add another symptom
Possible Causes - Listed in order from the most common to the least.1
Otitis Externa
An outer ear infection is an infection in the tube that connects the opening of the ear to the eardrum.
Read more »
2
Middle Ear Infection
A middle ear infection (otitis media) occurs when the area behind the eardrum becomes inflamed and fluid filled as a result of an infection or allergies. The condition is most common in children. It can cause pain...
Read more »
3
Foreign Body in Ear
In medical terms, a foreign object is something that is in the body but does not belong there. It may be inserted into the body accidentally or intentionally.
Read more »
4
Eardrum Rupture
An eardrum rupture is a small hole or tear in your eardrum, or tympanic membrane. The tympanic membrane is a thin tissue that divides your middle ear and outer ear canal. This membrane vibrates when sound waves ente...
Read more »
5
Head Injury
This condition is considered a medical emergency. Urgent care may be required.
A head injury could be an injury to the brain, skull, or scalp. It can vary in severity depending on the cause. In some cases face swelling can be a sign of a head injury.
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6
Otitis Media with Effusion
Normally, the Eustachian tube drains fluid from your ears to the back of your throat. If it becomes clogged, otitis media with effusion (OME) can occur. If you have OME, the middle part of your ear is filled with fluid...
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7
Menieres Disease
Meniere's disease is a disorder of the inner ear that causes vertigo, hearing problems, and a ringing sound. It's thought to be caused by changes in the fluid of the inner ear, and usually only affects one ear.
Read more »
8
Ear Barotrauma
Ear barotrauma causes ear discomfort due to pressure changes. Occasional ear barotrauma is common, especially in changing altitudes when flying in an airplane. It is generally not harmful, but frequent cases can caus...
Read more »
9
Labyrinthitis
Labyrinthitis is a disorder of the inner ear in which a nerve that detects head movement becomes inflamed. It causes dizziness, nausea, vertigo, and potentially permanent loss of hearing.
Read more »
10
Cerebral Palsy
Cerebral palsy is a disorder of muscle movement and coordination caused by an injury to a child's brain that occurs before birth or during infancy. It affects the part of the brain that controls body movement. Othe...
Read more »
11
Paget's Disease of the Bone
A typical human skeleton consists of 206 bones. Bones are constantly being broken down and rebuilt. If this process is altered, bones can break down and re-form abnormally and in ways that compromise the integrity o...
Read more »
12
Temporal Arteritis
Temporal arteritis is a condition in which the temporal arteries, which supply blood to the head and brain, become inflamed or damaged. It is also known as cranial arteritis or giant cell arteritis. Although thi...
Read more »
13
Neurofibromatosis 2 (NF2)
Neurofibromatosis, also known as NF, is a genetic disorder. This means that an abnormality in your genes is responsible for the disease. There are two types of NF, both of which cause tumor growth and affect multipl...
Read more »
14
Brittle Bone Disease (Osteogenesis Imperfecta)
Brittle bone disease is a congenital disorder that results in fragile bones that break easily. When it occurs, it is present at birth, but only in babies who have a family history of the disease. Your doctor may refe...
Read more »
15
Shingles
Shingles is an infection caused by the virus varicella-zoster, which is the same virus that causes chickenpox. Even after chickenpox is treated, the virus may live on in your nerve tissues for years before reactivatin...
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16
Adult Brain Tumor
A brain tumor is a collection of abnormal cells in the brain. Brain tumors can be either malignant (cancerous) or benign (unlikely to spread). However, there is a limited amount of space in the skull. Therefore, an...
Read more »
17
Lead Poisoning
Lead poisoning is a serious and sometimes fatal condition. It occurs when lead builds up in the body. Lead is a highly toxic metal and a very strong poison. It is found in lead-based paints, including paint on the wall...
Read more »
18
Beriberi
Beriberi is a disease brought on by a Vitamin B-1 (thiamine) deficiency. There are two types of the disease: wet beriberi and dry beriberi . Wet beriberi can effect heart function and, in the most extreme cases, hear...
Read more »
19
Reye's Syndrome
Reye's syndrome is a rare but serious condition that strikes without warning. It most often affects children ages 4 to 12 whoare recovering from a viral infection.The National Reye's Syndrome Foundation (NRSF) note...
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20
Acoustic Trauma
Acoustic trauma is an injury to the inner ear that is often caused by exposure to a high decibel noise. This injury can be related to a single very loud noise or by exposure to a lower decibel noise over a long perio...
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This feature is for informational purposes only and should not be used to diagnose.
Please consult a healthcare professional if you have health concerns.
Add another symptom
Possible Causes - Listed in order from the most common to the least.21
Acrodysostosis
Genetic changes that occur while the fetus is growing can cause disorders that are present at birth. These are sometimes referred to as "congenital disorders." Acrodysostosis is one such condition, albeit a rare one...
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22
Adrenoleukodystrophy
Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) refers to several different inherited conditions that affect the nervous system and adrenal glands. Other names for it are adrenomyeloneuropathy, childhood cerebral ALD, and Schilder-Addiso...
Read more »
23
Vertebrobasilar Circulatory Disorders
This condition is considered a medical emergency. Urgent care may be required.
An intricate web of blood vessels supply the brain with oxygen and vital nutrients. A group of arteries known as the vertebrobasilar arteries feeds the back (posterior) of the brain. Vertebrobasilar arteries ar...
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This feature is for informational purposes only and should not be used to diagnose.
Please consult a healthcare professional if you have health concerns.
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When it comes to undisclosed toxins in everyday stuff, cleaning products win the prize. Here's a quick guide to common toxicological troubles that may hide where we least expect them.
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Even before having children, I loved the idea of cloth diapering. I vowed to use cloth diapers for my future children to help the planet by not generating unnecessary garbage. Well, now he's here. And I have to admit, while I primarily use cloth diapers and feel great about my effort to help the environment, I must fall back on disposables from time to time.
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Good Practices Lead to Great Results
Seventh Generation has long been a leader, not just by creating "green" products, but by practicing a better way to do business. In 2008, the company joined the founding class of Certified B Corporations and now, four years later, we have reaffirmed their commitment to creating a positive impact and re-certified for the third time.
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In recent years, a whole lot of medical ugly in my world has made cancer impossible to personally ignore. Thankfully, I discovered a book, which anyone who has cancer, knows someone who does, or wants to avoid it themselves must read right now. The core idea: Every human body creates cancer cells. But not everybody gets cancer. Why? Because cancer mostly only comes when we let it.
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Clark's County Recorder's Office500 S Grand Central Parkway
2nd Floor
Las Vegas, NV 89106
Re: Official copy of a Marriage Certificate - the document that shows us as a married couple, the date & the location
We got married in the exciting Las Vegas on July the 5th, 1995
We need a copy of the marriage certificate.
Wife: Julia Medwedeff (originally "Julie" - I do not remember which one (Julie or Julia) my wife used in the marriage licence and then in the marriage ceremony for the marriage certificate)
Husband: Dr. Christianos von Colijeff
Location: Little Chapel of Flowers (is the name fully correctly here, not sure but that's the place)
Date: July 5, 1995
Enclosed a money order of $15 (fifteen) for one copy of our marriage certificate - the document that shows us as a married couple, the date & the location
Please mail to:
Dr. Christianos von Colijeff
P.O. Box 1555
New York, NY 10163-1555
Phone: 646-503-9171
Thank you very much - I just recently ordered one marriage certificate but for some reason we lost that in just couple of months - moving arrangements. (The certificate copy is real beautiful.)
Please send urgently as soon as you just can because we need that for the court.
I know you do it fast anyway - thank you for your excellent service. We come to say hello when next time in Las Vegas.
Respectfully,
Dr. Christianos von Colijeff
P.S.
Meet me in my 2 nationwide & worldwide known websites - I write daily blogs to readers in a million scale
(1) www.staf1org.weebly.com
(2) www.gcg1org.weebly.com
Both have a radio show (science) I am hosting - free CEU, College & University credits available for the listeners (see the info in the websites tab:
Radio/TV Shows). Show titles: (1) DrDrCanYouHelpMe and (2) The Miracle Show - The show recordings are in the internet and can be listened to any day & any time 24/7
Tell your co-workers, to your neighbors and your friends
The topic of my blogs & radio shows is "LIFE" - science and advice for the good life
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2nd Floor
Las Vegas, NV 89106
Re: Official copy of a Marriage Certificate - the document that shows us as a married couple, the date & the location
We got married in the exciting Las Vegas on July the 5th, 1995
We need a copy of the marriage certificate.
Wife: Julia Medwedeff (originally "Julie" - I do not remember which one (Julie or Julia) my wife used in the marriage licence and then in the marriage ceremony for the marriage certificate)
Husband: Dr. Christianos von Colijeff
Location: Little Chapel of Flowers (is the name fully correctly here, not sure but that's the place)
Date: July 5, 1995
Enclosed a money order of $15 (fifteen) for one copy of our marriage certificate - the document that shows us as a married couple, the date & the location
Please mail to:
Dr. Christianos von Colijeff
P.O. Box 1555
New York, NY 10163-1555
Phone: 646-503-9171
Thank you very much - I just recently ordered one marriage certificate but for some reason we lost that in just couple of months - moving arrangements. (The certificate copy is real beautiful.)
Please send urgently as soon as you just can because we need that for the court.
I know you do it fast anyway - thank you for your excellent service. We come to say hello when next time in Las Vegas.
Respectfully,
Dr. Christianos von Colijeff
P.S.
Meet me in my 2 nationwide & worldwide known websites - I write daily blogs to readers in a million scale
(1) www.staf1org.weebly.com
(2) www.gcg1org.weebly.com
Both have a radio show (science) I am hosting - free CEU, College & University credits available for the listeners (see the info in the websites tab:
Radio/TV Shows). Show titles: (1) DrDrCanYouHelpMe and (2) The Miracle Show - The show recordings are in the internet and can be listened to any day & any time 24/7
Tell your co-workers, to your neighbors and your friends
The topic of my blogs & radio shows is "LIFE" - science and advice for the good life
_________________________________________
Arts in Prison provides life changing programs, using art as a medium, in prisons and detention centers in Kansas and Missouri
so that our participants are better equipped to be successful when they re-enter our communities.
SINGING, solo, choir, SONG WRITING, COMPOSING, POETRY - BOOK /ESSAY/ REPORT/ ARTICLE/ MOVIE SCRIPT WRITING/ MOTIVATIONAL WRITING/HOW-TO-WRITING
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- Arts in Prison, Inc. - A Comprehensive Arts in Corrections ...www.artsinprison.org/
Arts in Prison provides life changing programs, using art as a medium, in prisons and detention centers in Kansas and Missouri so that our participants are better ...East Hill Singers - Events - About Us - Donate Now
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Wikipedia
Byron Janis (born March 24, 1928) is an American classical pianist. He made several recordings for RCA Victor and Mercury Records, and occupies two ... - Byron Janis (Piano) - Short Biography - Bach Cantataswww.bach-cantatas.com/Bio/Janis-Byron.htm
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Arts in Prison provides life changing programs, using art as a medium, in prisons and detention centers in Kansas and Missouri
so that our participants are better equipped to be successful when they re-enter our communities.
- Arts in Prison, Inc. - A Comprehensive Arts in Corrections ...www.artsinprison.org/
Arts in Prison provides life changing programs, using art as a medium, in prisons and detention centers in Kansas and Missouri so that our participants are better ...East Hill Singers - Events - About Us - Donate Now
POETRY - BOOK /ESSAY/ REPORT/ ARTICLE/ MOVIE SCRIPT WRITING/ MOTIVATIONAL WRITING/HOW-TO-WRITING
MUSIC - A Healing Art
Article 1 of 2
By BYRON JANIS
Can music heal? There's been a great deal of study by neuroscientists on the different ways music acts upon the brain, affecting our behavior, memory and the like. But there is also growing scientific evidence attesting to its curative, healing powers.
Curative: synonyms:healing, therapeutic, medicinal, remedial, corrective, restorative, tonic,health-giving More
Many ancient cultures used sound and music for healing. Pythagoras called it "music medicine." In the Middle Ages, the study of music became a mandatory part of a physician's education.
In this country, music therapy began to develop as a profession during World War I, and in World War II music was incorporated into the Army's Reconditioning Program under direct supervision of medical personnel, the first official recognition of music as a therapeutic aid by the military. And in the 1930s researchers discovered that sounds made by the ancients' drums, rattles and didgeridoos—so-called ultrasound—had huge diagnostic and healing properties. Today there are more than 5,000 certified music therapists in the U.S., and more than 70 colleges and universities offer music-therapy programs treating everything from posttraumatic stress disorder to Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and pain.
In his book "Awakenings," the British-American neurologist Oliver Sacks writes of patients who went from being catatonic to fully functional when music was added to their environment.
In our own time there have been many stories about the healing power of music. One of the most famous is William Styron's. He writes of the moment music saved him from suicide in "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness." While watching "The Bostonians" on television in the 1980s, he heard Brahms's Alto Rhapsody on the soundtrack. The music brought back "all the joys the house had known. ... All this I realized was more than I could ever abandon. ... And just as powerfully I realized I could not commit this desecration on myself."
After Gabrielle Giffords was shot in 2011, intensive singing therapy slowly brought back her ability to speak.
I recently witnessed the healing effects of music first hand. As part of their "National Initiative for Arts and Health in the Military," I was invited by Americans for the Arts to visit the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and participate in "Stages of Healing." This program, created by Dr. Micah Sickel, helps patients learn how to play a musical instrument and facilitates live performances whose aim, according to the hospital, is to "enhance the healing process ... enrich the lives of patients, visitors and staff" and help relieve the stress often associated with a hospital setting.
I knew what I wanted to play for them—two Chopin waltzes and "A Hero's Passing By" (which I had written for a TV documentary on my wife's father, Gary Cooper, but performed here as a dedication to all the world's heroes). I then played two songs from a musical I had written about the Hunchback of Notre Dame. One was a love song and the other is titled "Like Any Man," which I felt very much suited the occasion. The Hunchback sings that although he is so disabled, he is just like any man.
The piano was placed in the middle of a beautiful, large, circular, blue, star-ringed carpet in a spacious open area. Furniture was arranged on one side so people could sit on couches and chairs quite close to the piano. On the other side, folding chairs were set up for an audience who, given their medical schedules, family visits, etc., were able to come go as needed. It felt like there was very intense listening going on and, for me, very emotional playing. There was a sense of activity everywhere—patients, staff, visitors, all getting on with their lives.
After my performance, my wife and I talked with some of our brave young veterans suffering from a range of physical and psychological conditions. Many told me how much music had helped their recovery.
Barry Bittman is a renowned neurologist and top researcher in the studies of sound, music and the brain. He is the president of the Yamaha Music and Wellness Institute, with which I am affiliated. I once asked him whether there was a difference in the effects of listening to versus playing music. "Statistically significant benefits," he said, "extended exclusively to the group creating music," which requires "a high level of engagement on many levels." Dr. Bittman's research on creative musical expression, even for people convinced that they were not musical, also recently proved that playing any kind of instrument—no matter how well or badly—enhances the brain's ability to facilitate healing.
This is confirmed in another program at Walter Reed called Musicorps, where, working with professional musicians, computer-based music workstations and actual instruments, patients learn, play, compose and record music. It is designed to help patients suffering from PTSD and traumatic brain injury. "Learning, creating, and performing music involves so many aspects of brain function that it is believed to recruit uninjured parts of the brain to compensate for parts that have been injured, and help those parts that are injured recover," notes the hospital in its literature on the program.
The memory of our visit to Walter Reed stayed with us long after we'd returned home, and I wanted to be more involved. Then I learned about Music for All Seasons, which hosts performances at venues in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and California. Founded by husband and wife Brian Dallow and Rena Fruchter out of the belief that live music has "a therapeutic, educational and healing influence on all who listen and participate," it is now in its 22nd season. Their newest initiative, Voices of Valor, brings groups of six to 10 veterans together with two musician facilitators to write their lyrics to a group song, set it to music and record it in a professional studio. The CD is then presented to the veterans' friends and family.
I visited a transitional housing facility in Glen Gardner, N.J., called Veteran's Haven North, where men who had served in various wars were in the middle of an eight-week program. I asked to hear their stories and they asked me if I would share mine. (Though they were not the result of combat, I have had serious injuries to my hands and disabilities to overcome in the course of my 75-year career as a concert pianist.) As we shared our experiences and feelings, I played the same music as I had at Walter Reed.
They then sang me a powerful song they were working on. Here are some of the lyrics:
On the outside I'm fine
On the inside are scars
We're fighting for a freedom
But the freedom's not ours
Just because I'm not on the battlefield
Doesn't mean I'm not at war
May not be who I used to be
But I'm so much more
Several weeks later I was elated to learn that one of the men was so inspired that he planned to take a course in music at Rutgers University. I only wished they knew how much they inspired me.
Mr. Janis is a world-renowned concert pianist particularly known for his interpretations of Chopin, and the author of "Chopin and Beyond: My Extraordinary Life in Music and the Paranormal," an autobiography.
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS - WIKIPEDIA, THE FREE ENCYCLOPEDIAEN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/GABRIELLE_GIFFORDS
WIKIPEDIA
GABRIELLE DEE "GABBY" GIFFORDS (BORN JUNE 8, 1970) IS A RETIRED AMERICAN POLITICIAN. AS A DEMOCRATIC MEMBER OF THE UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SHE ...2011 TUCSON SHOOTING - JARED LEE LOUGHNER - MARK KELLY - BLUE DOG COALITION
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Article 2 of 2
- The Power of Music: Sounds That Heal - AARPwww.aarp.org › Home & Family › Caregiving
AARP
by Sally Abrahms - Feb 26, 2013 - Caregivers can use music to affect the lives of those with Alzheimer's ... AARP The Magazine · AARP Bulletin · In Your State · AARP ....After former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in January 2011 and suffered brain ...
The Power of Music: Sounds That Heal
Caregivers can use music to make a difference in the lives of those with Alzheimer's Disease and other challenges like depression, autism, brain injury and more
by Sally Abrahms, AARP, February 26, 2013En español |
The field of music therapy formally debuted in 1950, but has only recently gained many fans, including hospitals, adult day care and senior centers, and nursing homes. Health care professionals often refer patients to music therapists — the country has more than 6,000 music therapists nationally certified through the American Music Therapy Association and they can help you find one in your area. Health workers are also using music to treat a long list of conditions: depression, Tourette's syndrome, Huntington's disease, autism, Parkinson's disease, stroke, brain injury and cardiac disease. It can be part of pain management and cancer treatments.
Visit AARP’s HealthLawFacts.org for detailed information about the health care law.
Lately, researchers have focused on how music can benefit those with Alzheimer's. Anecdotal evidence shows that music can tap memories and reduce anxiety, pain, heart rate and blood pressure. It can help accelerate healing, boost learning, improve neurological disorders and increase social interaction.
Research on how exactly music works on the brain is still in its infancy, but is suggesting that it may improve specific function such as speech and movement.
If you're taking care of someone who has difficulty moving or speaking, music can easily be incorporated into your daily caregiving routine. Music therapists offer these suggestions:
Select familiar songsMost people remember music from childhood or when they were in their 20s. Does Mom love opera or show tunes? What songs make her dance?
After former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in January 2011 and suffered brain damage, she was unable to speak. But her mother knew her favorite songs — "American Pie," "Brown Eyed Girl," "Over the Rainbow" — and along with Giffords' dad, husband and music therapist, surrounded her with the music she loved.
"Gabby could sing several words in a phrase, but couldn't put a three-word sentence together on her own," says her music therapist, Maegan Morrow, of TIRR Memorial Hermann hospital in Houston. Morrow had her sing her needs, such as "I want to go to bed" or "I'm tired." Help your loved one recall words by singing part of a familiar song and having her finish the line with you, or alone.
Article 3 of 3
links
Music Therapy in the Media
- Huffington Post - June 2014 - Can Music Save Lives?
- American Psychological Association - June 2014 - Speaking of Psychology: Music and Your Health
- CBS Los Angeles - June 2014 - CHLA's Music Therapy Program Helps Family Copes with Tragedy
- Indiana Public Media - May 2014 - Indy Sings: Music Therapy for Children with Autism
- Converse College - May 2014 - Converse Partners with Greenville Health System on Music Therapy Program
- Providence Business News - May 2014 - Communication Cues are Music to Their Ears
- Star Tribune - May 2014 - 5 Things You May Not Know About Music Therapy
- Cincinnati Children's Blog - May 2014 - And the Beat Goes On
- Channel 6 Lawrence - April 2014 - KU Researcher Studying How Music Can Help Premature Babies Develop
- TEDxUNLV - April 2014 - Music Powers Potential Building Mental Fitness
- Washington Post / MD Gazette - April 2014 - At Walter Reed Hospital, Music Heals
- NIH - April 2014 - 5 Things to Know About Complimentary Health Practices for Cognitive Function, Dementia and Alzheimbers Disease
- Boston Globe - April 2014 - Music Therapist Take a Melodic Approach to Healing
- WTOP - April 2014 - Therapists Use Music as a Tool to Deliver Treatment
- CBS2 News - April 2014 - Autism Awareness Month
- Washington Post - March 2014 - Mt. Vernon High School in Fairfax County Receives Grant from Grammy Foundationfor its Music Therapy Program
- NVATE.com - March 2014 - Improve Your Mental Health with Music Therapy
- University of Dayton News - March 2014 - 40 Years of Music That Heals
- Good Day Sacramento - March 2014 - Sutter Children's Center & Music Therapy
- Huffington Post - March 2014 - Music Therapy with Military Populations: An Update
- Oxford University Press blog - March 2014 - The Rise of Music Therapy
- American Music Therapy Association - March 2014 - White Paper Provides Model Programs and Research Addressing the Myriad Issues Facing Service Members and Their Families
- Lansing State Journal - February 2014 - Couple Receives Music Therapy Award
- Liberty Voice - February 2014 - Glee Star Lea Michelle Gets Through Grief with Music
- Daily Herald - February 2014 - Music Therapy Helps Troubled Teens Connect
- WNCT 9 - February 2014 - Music Therapy in Schools
- NBC 114 News - February 2014 - Babies Soothed with Music Therapy in NIC Unit
- Star Tribune Health - February 2014 - Hospice Music Therapists Hit the Right Note
- Futurity Health and Medicine - February 2014 - Musical Pacifier Teaches Preemies How to Eat
- American Music Therapy Association - January 2014 - Setting the Record Straight: What Music Therapy Is... and Is Not
- American Music Therapy Association - January 2014 - Landmark Multi-Site Study Reveals Positive Effects of Music Therapy Protocol Among Youth in Cancer Treatment
- Huffington Post - January 2014 - Women We Love
- New Magazine - Janaury 2014 - Tuning in to Kids
- San Diego Union-Tribune - December 2013 - The Power of Music
- ASU News - December 2013 - Music Therapy Grad Pursues a Rewarding Profession
- Primary Children's Medical Center Blog - December 2013 - Music Therapy Brings Hope to Naomi
- NYU Langone Medical Center - December 2013 - Healing Through Music Therapy
- The National - December 2013 - The Brain that Sings Plays the Way to Happiness for Autistic Emaratis at DIFF
- BBC News - December 2013 - Belting out a Tune Helps Those Struggling to Breathe
- DNAinfo Chicago - December 2013 - Program Helps Terminally Sick Children Write Songs for Therapy, Funerals
- Press Relases - December 2013 - Rapper Kris Warren Attends AMTA National Conference
- Florida Times-Union - November 2013 - One of Us
- Oxford University Press Blog - November 2013 - Music Therapy Research and Evidenced-Based Practice
- Oxford University Press Blog - November 2013 - A Conversation with Dr. Andrea Farbman on Music Therapy
- Oxford University Press Blog - November 2013 - The Evolution of Music Therapy Research
- WJCT - November 2013 - Jax Conference Shows the Healing Power of Music Therapy
- WYPR - October 2013 - The Music of Robin Spielberg
- Medical Xpress - October 2013 - Music Therapy May Work Where Other Treatments Have Failed
- Live Science - October 2013 - Is Playing a Musical Instrument Good for your Health?
- Huffington Post - October 2013 - Music, Creativity, and Unlocking Our Full Potential
- Detroit News - October 2013 - Berkley Studio Gives Musicians Creative Freedom to Overcome Obstacles
- Gulf Weekley Worldwide - October 2013 - The Musical Touch
- WWMT TV Newschannel 3 - September 2013 - Music Therapy, Medicine and Education Coming Together in Upcoming Conference
- Atlanta Journal Constitution - September 2013 - Sweet Music to Their Ears
- Today - September 2013 - Therapists Offer Free Treatment to Grieving Kids
- Houston Press - September 2013 - Music Therapists Bring Healing Through Tunes and Beats
- US News & World Report - August 2013 - Hospital Expands Music Therapy Program
- CNN - August 2013 - When Patients Have 'Music Emergencies'
- WIDY Radio - August 2013 - PIanist Robin Spielberg on WIDY Classics
- AllTreatment.com - August 2013 - Music Therapy: The Best Kept Secret in Addiction Recovery
- Asheville Citizen Times - August 2013 - Music Therapy Taps Deep Connections
- Your News Now - August 2013 - Music Helps Young People with Special Needs Connect with the World
- Boston Magazine - August 2013 - How Music Therapy Works
- The Diabetes Educator - August 2013 - Effects fo Music Therapy & Music-Assisted Relaxation & Imagery on Health-Related Outcomes in Diabetes Education
- National Center for Alternative and Complimentary Medicine - July 2013 - Musical Training and the Brain
- Dallas Observer - July 2013 - Meet the Dallas Doctors Using Music for Therapy
- Windsor Star - July 2013 - Study Finds Music Can Reduce Pain for Kids in ER
- NBC 33 News - July 2013 - Music Therapy Brings Different Tone to Health Care
- Southeast Missourian - July 2013 - Swan Received 2013 Music Therapy Advocate Award
- Salt Lake Tribune - June 2013 - Music Therapy Has a New Home
- ABC4 Utah News - June 2013 - Sophie's Place Unveiled
- Journal of the American Medical Association - May 2013 - Effects of Patient-Directed Music Intervention on Anxiety and Sedative Exposure in Critically Ill Patients Receiving Mechanical Ventilatory Support - A Randomized Clinical Trial
- Journal of Pain and Symptom Management - May 2013 - Music Therapy Reduces Pain in Palliative Care Patients
- PEERSnet - May 2013 - Mental Health Matters - Music in Recovery
- ASU News - May 2013 - Music Therapy Program Helps Veterans Heal
- CBS This Morning - May 2013 - Big Names in Music Honored at Berklee College
- Crane's New York Business - May 2013 - The Singing Cure, So to Speak
- AARP - April 2013 - AARP Family and Caregiving Expert Discusses Music Therapy Treatment
- Newswise - April 2013 - Vanderbilt Patients Collaborate with Nashville's Music Row Superstars to Bring Their Songs to Life
- The Daily Iowan - April 2013 - UI Professor Brings Music Therapy to Dementia Patients
- Huffington Post - April 2013 - How Music Therapy Helps Preemies
- US News Health - April 2013 - Lullabies Soothe Preemies, Parents Alike
- New York Times - April 2013 - Live Music's Charms, Soothing Premature Hearts
- FoxNews.com - April 2013 - Lullabies, other music may help sick preemies
- Huffington Post Live - April 2013 - Your Brain on Art
- Washington Times Communities - March 2013 - Music as a Universal Language Might Just Be Good Medicine
- Care 2 Make a Difference - March 2013 - 4 Ways to Use Music as Medicine
- New Age Music World - March 2013 - Interview with Chuck Wild of Liquid Mind Music
- AARP Blog - March 2013 - 3 Ways Caregivers Can Use Music Therapeutically
- Psychology Today - March 2013 - Can You Divorce Music From Communication?
- NBC Connecticut - March 2013 - Music Therapy, Using the Magic of Music to Treat Kids with Autism
- AARP Magazine - February 2013 - The Power of Music: Sounds that Heal
- KSDK.com - February 2013 - New Music Program Helps Kids Rock Cancer
- The Globe and Mail - February 2013 - Music Therapy Programs Opening New Worlds for Patients
- The Miami Hurricane - February 2013 - Music Therapy Helps Tackle Parkinson's
- Examiner - February 2013 - Music That Heals: Medical and Surgical Relief
- Science Daily - February 2013 - Music Therapy Improves Behavior in Children with Autism, Study Suggests
- TedX Youth Talks - February 2013 - When Meds Fail: A Case for Music Therapy
- Democrat and Chronicle - February 2013 - Documentary to Highlight Rochester's Growing Music Therapy Field
- jconline.com - January 2013 - Indiana Bill Seeks to Protect, Advance Music Therapy
- Fox News - January 2013 - Music Therapy Helps Stroke Patient Speak Again
- Huffington Post - January 2013 - Music Therapy and the Military
- Business Lexington - January 2013 - UK Music Therapy Program Hums with Excitement
- MesotheliomaHelp.net - January 2013 - Music Therapy Can Speed Recovery Time in Mesothelioma Patients Undergoing Surgery
- ProviderMagazine.com - January 2013 - Stars in their Own Right
- ArizonaNewsZap.com - December 2012 - Patients Turning to Music Therapy to Ease Pain, Improve Social Skills and Mobility
- AARP Blog - November 2012 - He Has Alzheimer's, Now What?
- Indy Star.com - October 2012 - Blue Star Connection Provides Musical Instruments to Avon Sisters
- St. Charles County Surburban Journal - October 2012 - Music Therapy Has Educational Beat
- Boston's NPR News - October 2012 - Music Therapists Help Ease Treatment of Children with Severe Burns
- NewMediaChill.com - September 2012 - Harmony That Heals: Music Therapy's Mark in Medicine
- Northcoast Voice - August 22, 2012 - Music Heals (article, page 12)
- CBS Los Angeles - July 31, 2012 - Music Therapy Wellness Clinic
- Elephant Journal.com - August 21, 2012 - Drum Circles Aren't Just for Hippies: Using Music To Help Children's Spirits - One Beat at a Time
- Dana-Farber Cancer Institute - Music Therapy Helps My Son Through Cancer Treatment
- Science Daily - May 22, 2012 - New Musical Pacifier Helps Premature Babies Get Healthy
- Florida State University - May 21, 2012 - New Musical Pacifier Helps Premature Babies Get Healthy
- About.com - May 15, 2012 - Music Therapy in Neurology
- About.com - May 12, 2012 - The Musical Mind: How the Brain Appreciates Music
- KOCO.com Oklahoma City - May 9. 2012 - Music Therapy Aided OKC Brain Injury Sufferer
- KCAUTV.com Sioux City - March 16, 2012 - Music Used as Therapy
- Asbury Park Press - April 20, 2012 - Autistic Kids Find Music Therapeutic
- NBC Nightly News - April 9, 2012 - Sparking Memories Musically
- CNN iReport - April 1, 2012 - Music Therapy and Autism: Amy's Challenging but Joyful Journey
- Huffington Post Blog - March 15, 2012 - Music Therapy Intervention in Medical Settings
- National Stroke Association - March 14, 2012 - Music Therapy... Something Beautiful out of Something Devastating
- Wisconsin State Journal, March 12, 2012 - Accomplished orchestra musicians make special connection with audiences
- PBS Newshour - February 27, 2012 - The Healing Power of Music
- PBS Newshour blog - A New Look at Music Therapy
- Erie Times News, February 26, 2012 - Music Helps Jamestown, NY Man Regain Speech
- Washington Times - February 20, 2012 - Glen Campbell: Alzheimer's Can't Silence the Music
- About.com - October 27, 2011 - How Music Helps Us and Why Music Therapy Promotes Health
- NY City Woman - October 7, 2011 - Healing Power of Music
- Sam Houston State University - Music Therapist Works to Give Children with Autism a Voice
- ABC News Nightline - Gabby Giffords Finding Voice Through Music Therapy - available on YouTube in three parts: Part I, Part 2, Part 3
- Majoring in Music.com - Music Majors: How to Choose a Music Therapy Program
- America Speaks Ink - January 2012 - The Magical Medicine of Music
- National Public Radio's Science Friday - December 16, 2011 - Treating Stress, Speech Disorders with Music
- News Observer.com - Spotlight Falls on Music Therapists
- Huffington Post bog - January 9, 2012 - Music Therapy in Early Childhood Classrooms
- WebMD - Alan Cumming Tunes into Music Therapy
- Huffington Post Blog - July 21, 2011 - Music Therapy: Global Perspectives
- Cleveland.com - Music Therapy Eases Patients' Pain, Helps on Road to Recovery
- Winston Salem Journal - Music Therapy Moving Toward Licensure in State
- ABC News - Facing Rehab: Exhaustion, Rehabilitation and Love
- Huffington Post Blog - June 1, 2011 - What is Music Therapy?
- KHOU News - Initial Stages of Rehab Keeping Giffords Busy
- New Major Motion Picture Features Music Therapist: "The Music Never Stopped"
- New York Times Bestselling Novelist Features Music Therapist in Upcoming Novel: "Sing You Home"
- About.com - Benefits of Music Therapy
- AARP Blog - Music Can Help Families Living with Alzheimer's
- BYU TV - See the Good in Show Stoppers
- American Pain Foundation - Prescribed Music Could Ease Pain or Depression
- Psychology Today - Top 12 Reasons Why I Have a Job
- The Boston Globe - When Language is Blocked, Music May Offer Detour
- Parade Magazine - Healing Sick Kids Through Music
- Psychology Today - Music Therapy & Dyslexia: There's Still Hope
- Families of Loved Ones Magazine - Music Therapy Helps Adults with Vision Loss
- Pittsburgh Parent Magazine - Music Therapy Meets Special Needs
- Chicago Tribune - Music therapy: Teachers strike an emotional chord wtih disabled students
- Psychology Today - What is a Music Therapist? Consider Us Your Personal Trainer.
- Families of Loved Ones Magazine - Music Therapy Helps Adults with Vision Loss
- Wall Street Journal - A Key for Unlocking Memories
- AFP - A Very Special Drum Circle
- PBS - Musical Minds
- PBS - How Music Can Reach the Silent Brain
- SpeechPathology.com - Music Therapy and the Emergence of Spoken Language in Children with Autism
- New York Times.com - The Songs They Can't Forget
- NJ.com - Using the language of music to speak to children with autism
- Science Daily - Music Therapy May Offer for People with Depression
- Columbus Dispatch - Reactions to Music Analyzed
- Star Bulletin - How Music Brings Peace
- Star Bulletin - Drumming Beats the Blues Away
- TheStreet.com - Couch Session Alternatives
- National Public Radio - Author Explains Mysteries of Music and the Mind
- Nevada Appeal - Advocates Drum Up Support for Music Therapy Program
- Star Builletin - Music Makes Good Medicine
- USA Today - Music Provides 'Audio Analgesic' for Some...
- US News and World Report - The Fine Art of Healing the Sick
- CBS Sunday Morning - Music Healing
- NBC News - WILX - Music Therapy
- Winter Ramblings - Singing the Praises of Music Therapy!
- WNYC - New York Public Radio - Music is Medicine for Kids with Asthma
- Lawrence Journal-World - Senior Center Sings Praises of KU Music Therapy Program
- ABC Eyewitness News - WABC-DT - The Healing Power of Music
- FSU News - Music Therapy Researcher named Lawton Distinguished Professor
- Time Magazine -Music and the Mind
- National Public Radio - Music Therapy
music/arts in sing sing etc.prisons
+++++++++++++++++++
New Hampshire for Women Poetry workshop
Massachusetts
- Theater of Hope Crystal Tiala, [email protected]
- And Still We Rise Dev Luthra, 857.719.3884, [email protected]
- Changing Lives Through Literature (508) 999-8752, [email protected]
- Voices from Inside [email protected]
- Boston University Prison Education Program Arts courses
- Inside/Outside Envelope Project Phyllis Kornfeld, [email protected]
- Actors’ Shakespeare Project (617) 776-2200, [email protected]
- Shakespeare & Company – Shakespeare in the Courts Jonathan Croy, [email protected]
- On With Living and Learning, Inc. [email protected]
- Blackout Arts Collective [email protected]
- Artistic Noise Julie Martini, [email protected]
- Black & Pink Art [email protected]
- MCI-Concord Art, Music Theory, Poetry, Creative Writing, Read To Me Daddy Program
- Writing Workshop – Offender Re-entry Program (ORP)
- PEN New England Creative Writing Workshop Helen Elaine Lee
- Moving Steps Foundation Dance, Adrianne Tabet,[email protected]
- Space in Prison for the Arts and Creative Expression (SPACE) Janet Isserlis, [email protected]
- Visual art classes and art exhibition Marietta Cleasby, [email protected]
- AS220 Youth Anne Kugler, [email protected]
- Prison Mindfulness Institute
- The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre’s Hamlet Project Steve Kidd, 401-723-4266, [email protected]
- CCRI Art History/Studio Course Nancy Wyllie, [email protected]
- Harvest Kitchen Chef Jen Stott, [email protected]
- Power to the Poets (2009) Lisa Starr, [email protected]
- Garden Time Kate LaCouture, [email protected]
- Judy Dworin Performance Project (JDPP) [email protected]
- Avodah Dance Ensemble [email protected]
- Community Partners in Action Jeffrey Greene, (860) 722-9450, [email protected]
- The Dante Project Ronald Jenkins, 860.685.2595, [email protected]
- York Correctional Institution Joe Lea, (860) 691-6814
- Blackout Arts Collective 203-500-1225, [email protected]
- New Beginnings: Rehabilitation Workshop and Resettlement Program, Deb Rogala, [email protected]
- HartBeat Ensemble, Steve Ginsburg, [email protected]
- Yale students tutoring in Cheshire CI and other institutions
- Maine Inside/Out [email protected]
- Art At Work Linking municipal employees, elected officials, and local artists
- Transom – Blunt Youth Radio Incarcerated Youth Speak Out
- Guitar Doors Jim Svendsen, [email protected], 207-222-2152
- Maine State Prison Prison Industries and Art Therapy at the Intensive Mental Health Unit
- Vermont Action for Political Prisoners Art exhibition, [email protected]
- Community High School of Vermont 802-951-5037, [email protected]
Visible Men - Writing in the prison programs
The sliding door buzzes and rumbles open. The guard calls out: “Come on, you’re next.” I stand up from the waiting area pews, where I have stowed my bag, watch and jewelry in a locker, and step forward. I enter the trap, a room between outside and inside worlds. I turn my pockets inside out, remove my shoes, walk through the metal detector and receive an ultraviolet stamp on my wrist. Every few months for 12 years, I have visited a Massachusetts prison to teach creative writing to a group of locked-up men.
The visits begin with a welcoming. The men rise from their circled chairs and thank me for coming to their cramped classroom. They hurry to get me tea or instant coffee and animal crackers, for which they have chipped in. They pass around a baggie of what my grandmother called penny candy: caramel squares and peppermint wheels, root beer barrels and Atomic Fireballs. Take a minute to breathe, they urge me. How’s your moms, your son?
After we’re settled, we go around the circle for a check-in. I had a visit. I moved cells. I worked on my garden plot. I worked on my appeal. They tell their mostly mundane news, each one finishing up with And with that, I’m in, conveying his commitment to the group’s efforts while passing the focus to the next man.
After everyone has spoken, we turn to our afternoon’s work with meditation. “Close your eyes,” one of them says. “Picture yourself in a green meadow, feeling the sun, the grass, the summer breeze.” He banishes the wasteland of prison and conjures color, life, peace. When we have returned from our imagined freedoms, I offer up a writing exercise:
Write about a toy or game you played with as a child, revealing something important about your experience.
One speaks of playing with the Lone Ranger and Tonto on his bedspread, enacting dramas of power and race. Another remembers the toy backhoe, a miniature version of the one his father drove on a chain gang down South. One recalls playing checkers with his granny while she schooled him about life. And one seems almost free again as he talks about riding his yellow bicycle into the wind, away from the safety and constraints of home.
Write about when you ceased to be a child.
One was claimed at age 13 by the streets, as one parent succumbed to mental illness and the other disappeared. Another left boyhood behind at 12, when the only way to fulfill his duty as the eldest child — to bring home the items on his mother’s grocery list — was to switch supermarket price tags. Some were initiated by drinking, drugs or sex; others tie the shift to the right to drive, or vote. For one, the lynching of an uncle signaled the passage from boy to man.
Write about your neighborhood. Write about the stories you were told, a family journey, an act of generosity. Take us step by step through something you do well. Define masculinity. Write about a time when you were lost. Capture a memory through the sense of taste.
Their possessions and freedoms are few, but their memories are abundant. For three charged hours, through their writing, they become visible. They become more than their worst things.
Together, they excavate a home, a reference point, a goodness that was sown, a point at which they lost the way. They discover something to draw upon in a world defined by absence, where they grapple with the pain and loss they have suffered and caused. We push on, identifying ways to make the leap from life to fiction, and coaxing out detail. They probe for what matters, showing compassion, owning responsibility. Writers dream of going to the heart of things, and I am amazed at the brief access I’m given to the inner lives of men.
Early on, I struggled to reconcile what I knew about their crimes with what I saw and heard in that classroom. Now I try to hold before me the truths of their offenses, alongside the truths of the brotherhood, honesty and generosity I see them call forth. The forces that bring us to our present lives are tangled and complex. Each of our stories contains both wrongdoing and grace, and it is not my job to unravel the skein of their guilt, to judge or absolve. I am here as a witness. I am here in the name of story and its power to transform.
When we are done with the telling and the listening, with the Lone Ranger and bicycles tearing free, with all the things that grow us up and heal and haunt us, we go around the circle to check out, each person stating, according to the group’s custom, a feeling and a blessing.
Today I feel good, one says. You got me to remembering some things. You made me laugh, Helen. You made me think. Another says, softly, I’m grateful you took this time to come, when you could be out in the summer sunshine. I hope you get those papers corrected. I hope your moms feels better soon. I hope you get home safe.
We say goodbye until next time, and soon I am standing at the razor-wire fence, ready to go back through the trap, while they return to their cells and work at resuming their hard postures and concealing what we have just urged out into the light. What is home for them, I wonder, and what kind of safe return is possible?
I have finished writing the novels about prison that first inspired me to volunteer. But I still go. The men compel me. Something large happens as we write and talk together in that room, separated from the rest of the world. These men bring forth their best selves, and I, too, am the awake, compassionate me. Far too often I half-listen, already on to the next errand, the next place I need to be. Too busy to extend myself. Too pressed to pay attention. I fail to see the woman who has dry-cleaned my clothes or sold me my coffee, the man who pumps my gas. I fail to wonder at the past life of the woman making her way slowly across the street on her walker, or to imagine the private yearnings of the man-child with the snapback hat and sagging pants who slouches by the door of the subway train. With all the disconnection, discourtesy and relentless motion of the free world, it can be hard to recognize, let alone love, your fellow human beings.
A feeling and a blessing. I hope you know the power of your words and stories, I would like to tell the men who have revealed their youthful toys and games, and relived their crossings into manhood. Your humanity has been visible to me, I am saying to you here, on this page, and I see that you are more than your worst things. I hope you get home safe.
And with that, I’m in.
Helen Elaine Lee is the author of the novel “The Serpent’s Gift” and a professor of comparative media studies and writing at M.I.T.
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STAF, Inc.'s specialist agree that it is better to eat lighter in the morning because our human circadian rhythms
click: Circadian Rhythms Fact Sheet
There are 3 basic circadian cycles in the human body within each 24 hours. Each cycle is about 8 hours long. One of those cycles is from about 4 a.m. to 12 noon. This is called the elimination cycle during which the immune system actively prepares toxins to be eliminated. During the elimination cycle it would be wise to eat lighter. First in the morning (when your stomach is still empty) drink plain 1-minute boiled water (boiling kills the harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with fresh lemon & lime (50% each) blended fruit (juice+pulp) when waking up. Boil only the plain water, do NOT boil the lemon/lime as the boiling would lower the nutritional value of the fresh fruit. The hot lemon-lime-water is refreshing and helps the elimination cycle.
During the morning cycle up to about 12 noon is best to eat only or mostly fresh fruit (a variety) but all in empty stomach. Fruit is best to eat in the empty stomach and NOT to mix with any heavier food because fruit and heavier food digest in the different speed and use different levels of acid in the stomach. If fruit is eaten together with food that takes more time (most more solid food takes 3 - 4 hours to leave the stomach (the water leaves stomach in 15 minutes when the stomach was empty to start with)
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Ten Tips for Your Child's Success in School
Helping Your Child Succeed in School - U.S. Department of Education
www2.ed.gov/.../succeed/succeed....
United States Department of Education and stay involved and help your child to read better, to take on challenging math and science classes, to ... and contributes greatly to their success in school.
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Link at the end for this text:
It should come as no surprise that success — or failure — at school starts at home. Studies have linked poor academic performance to factors such as a lack of sleep, poor nutrition, obesity, and a lack of parental support.
The good news is that those same studies also show higher test scores for students who live in homes where healthy habits, regular routines, and good communication exist. How can you ensure your child heads off to school this fall with the best possible foundation? Follow these 10 tips and watch your child thrive.
Enforce Healthy Habits
You can’t perform well when you don’t feel good. To help your child have the best chance at doing well in school, make sure she follows healthy habits at home. Choose a bedtime that will give your child plenty of sleep, and provide a healthy breakfast each morning. Encourage exercise, and limit the amount of time she spends watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, or using the computer.
Stick to a Routine
Most kids thrive on structure and will respond well to routines that help them organize their days. In our house, for example, my son gets dressed, makes his bed, and eats breakfast while I make his lunch and pack his school bag with completed homework and forms. When he gets home in the afternoon, I serve him a snack and he does his homework while I prepare dinner. Your routines may differ, but the key is to make it the same every day so your child knows what to expect.
Create a “Launch Pad”
Veteran parents know it’s important to have a single place to put backpacks, jackets, shoes, lunchboxes, and school projects each day. Some call it a “launch pad,” while others call it a “staging area.” Our area is a hook by the back door.
Whatever you call it, find a place where your child can keep the items he needs for school each day and keep him organized. Then you’ll know right where to find everything during the morning rush.
Designate a Space
At school your child has a desk or table where she works. There is plenty of light, lots of supplies, and enough room to work. Why not provide her with the same type of environment for homework? A designated homework space often makes it easier and more fun for children to complete assignments at home. A desk is great, but a basket of supplies and a stretch of kitchen counter work just as well.
Read, Again and Again
It is often said that children spend the first several years learning to read, and the rest of the lives reading to learn. The written word is a gateway to all kinds of learning, and the more you read to your child, the better chance he has of becoming a proficient and eager reader.
Try to sit down with your child to read a little bit every day, give him plenty of opportunities to read out loud to you, as well, and above all have fun. While the importance of reading with your child cannot be stressed enough, it should not be the cause of stress.
Learn Always
Your child may be past the preschool years, but home education is still a critical part of his overall learning experience. “Some of the attitude recently is that it’s up to the schools and teachers to figure it all out, to make sure children are learning and healthy and safe,” says Barbara Frankowski, M.D., MPH, FAAP, and member of the AAP Council on School Health. “There’s only so much teachers can do. Parents have to fill in with good support at home.”
Look for ways to teach your child throughout the day. For example, cooking combines elements of math and science. Use the time when you make dinner as an opportunity to read and follow directions, to discuss fractions, to make hypotheses (“What will happen when I beat the egg whites?”), and to examine results.
Take the Lead
Children learn by example. Let your kids “catch” you reading. Take time to learn a new skill and discuss the experience with them. Sit down and pay bills or do other “homework” while your kids do their schoolwork.
If you display a strong work ethic and continually seek out learning opportunities for yourself, your kids will begin to model that same behavior in their own lives.
Talk Often
Do you know how your child feels about her classroom, her teacher, and her classmates? If not, ask her. Talk with her about what she likes and doesn’t like at school. Give her a chance to express her anxieties, excitements, or disappointments about each day, and continue to support and encourage her by praising her achievements and efforts.
Show Interest
Don’t limit your support to your child; extend it to her teachers as well. Meet the teachers and stay in regular contact by phone or e-mail so that you can discuss any concerns as they arise. Not only will it pave the way for you to ask questions, but it will also make the teachers more comfortable with calling you if they have concerns about your child.
Expect Success
Perhaps the most important way you can support your child’s efforts at school is to expect him to succeed. That doesn’t mean that you demand he be the best student or the best athlete or the best artist. Rather, let him know that you expect him to do “his best” so that he’ll be proud of what he can accomplish.
If you make that expectation clear and provide a home environment that promotes learning, then your child will have a greater chance of becoming the best student he can be.
This article was featured in Healthy Children Magazine. To view the full issue, click here.
Author Last Updated 5/11/2013
Source Healthy Children Magazine, Back to School 2007
The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.
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May 11, 2013 - American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) discusses ways to help your child's academic success. _________________________________________________
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BloggingThe bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth theconversation.com/the-bitter-truth-about-what-sugar-...
The Conversation
Mar 31, 2014 - The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been consulting on draftsugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily ..
Article 1 of 2 (2 of 2 next below) (The Conversation magazine)
The bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been consulting on draft sugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily intake downwards to address obesity and dental disease. The body says it’s particularly concerned about the increasing global consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, including soft drinks and sports drinks.
Current WHO guidelines (published in 2002) recommend sugars should make up no more than 10% of daily total energy intake. The new draft guidelines suggest revising this to 5% – the equivalent of around six teaspoons of sugar a day for an average adult. It highlights the role of “hidden” sugars in obesity and how sugar leads to the development of dental disease.
The WHO describes dental diseases as the most prevalent non-communicable diseases globally. More than 90% of Australian adults have experienced tooth decay and almost 60% of 14-year-olds have decay in their permanent teeth. In 2010-11, more than 23,000 Australian children were hospitalised for dental treatment under general anaesthetic – mostly for treatment of tooth decay.
Sweet tooth Sugar feeds the bacteria that live on the surface of everyone’s teeth, enabling them to rapidly produce acids that dissolve tooth enamel. Known as “demineralisation”, this process weakens the tooth structure through loss of minerals.
High-frequency sugar intake, coupled with bacterial acids not being removed regularly and properly, will lead to demineralisation to the point of creating cavities. Indeed, it’s an eye-opener to see just how quickly sugar damages teeth.
In unpublished laboratory experiments we’ve done with colleagues, teeth were given a ten-minute dose of sucrose solution four times a day, without the benefits of tooth brushing or drinking water. It took less than two weeks for cavities to begin to form. More frequent sucrose doses led to cavities appearing sooner.
Even though we have ways to treat cavities, through fillings and tooth removal when necessary, treatments don’t eliminate the underlying cause of tooth decay. And too many filled or removed teeth increases a person’s risk of future oral health problems, such as difficulty eating effectively when teeth are lost and an ongoing need for more complex fillings.
Tooth-rotting drinks and food Most Australians know how to avoid dental cavities. If nothing else, they know sugar is bad for teeth and brushing is good. But people are generally not well informed about the sugar content of what they eat and drink.
In many cases, they’re not aware that drinks they believe to be healthy are actually damaging to their oral health. Scientists comparing the cavity-creating potential of a number of soy milks to cows' milk, for instance, found the former produced decay-causing acid at five to six times the rate of cows' milk – a damaging recipe for teeth.
Many soft drinks and sports drinks not only contain sugar but also food acids (citric and phosphoric acids) that can cause erosion of tooth enamel when consumed frequently. These food acids are also found in the sugar-free versions of these drinks, so sugar-free soft and sports drinks are not necessarily better for your teeth.
Compounding the problem of the increasing popularity of sweet beverages is the fact that people often drink these instead of plain water. Water is much better for your teeth because it helps rinse away food, liquids, sugar and acids.
More than 90% of Australians have access to fluoridated tap water, which helps to protect teeth against demineralisation, but note that most bottled water has only low levels of fluoride.
Not normal The ubiquity of dental decay may create the impression that oral disease is inevitable and not of serious public concern. But that’s not the case. Although most dental disease is preventable, treatment costs the Australian economy $8.4 billion a year.
The cost to individuals is measured in lost teeth, in the inability to maintain a healthy diet into older age, and in the social disadvantage arising from the stigma and embarrassment caused by poor teeth.
There are ways to prevent this beyond the level of the individual. The State of California, for instance, is considering legislation that would make it the first jurisdiction to require warning labels on sugary drinks. Under the proposed bill, beverages with added sweeteners over a certain limit would read:
STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.
We can reduce the prevalence of cavities in Australia. The proposed recommendation by the World Health Organisation will provide solid grounds for calling for better community understanding of the amount and forms of sugar we’re consuming.
TAGS Tooth decay, WHO, Sugary drinks
RELATED ARTICLES 19 March 2014 How ‘hidden’ sugars are pushing up your daily dose - 9 January 2014 The amount of hidden sugar in your diet might shock you - 2 January 2014 Feeling down: when does a mood become a disorder? - 12 November 2013 How best to help the Philippines recover from Typhoon Haiyan - 31 October 2013 Sugary drinks tax could swell coffers, shrink waistlines
ARTICLES ALSO BY THESE AUTHORS 10 February 2013 - Filling the gaps in Australia’s dental workforce -
11 November 2012 How fluoride in water helps prevent tooth decay - 10 September 2012 Monday’s medical myth: knocked-out teeth are history - 14 February 2012 What happens when teeth whitening goes wrong? - 5 September 2011 Monday’s medical myth: infant teething causes fevers
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How fluoride in water helps prevent tooth decay
11 November 2012
AUTHORDISCLOSURE STATEMENT Mike Morgan has acted as an advisor to the Victorian Department of Health on Community Water Fluoridation.
Provides funding as a Founding Partner of The Conversation.
unimelb.edu.au
Fluoridated water protects against the tooth decay from acid produced by bacteria in the mouth. T. Faltings
The most effective way to prevent tooth decay is delivered to most Australian homes every day through their water pipes. It is, of course, fluoride distributed via the water supply.
Dental decay occurs when acid destroys or demineralises the outer surface of the tooth – the enamel. Bacteria in the mouth from food and drinks containing sugar produces acid and fluoride repairs demineralisation before it becomes permanent. It does this by encouraging remineralisation or repair of the enamel surface. Fluoride also helps strengthen the mineral structure of developing teeth.
Fluoride is a naturally occurring compound found in plants and rocks and, in very low levels, in almost all fresh water. Sometimes, fluoride is found naturally in the water supplies of Australian communities at exactly the level recommended to reduce dental decay, but this is rare and happens by chance.
Community water fluoridation is the adjustment of fluoride in drinking water to a level that helps protect teeth against decay. Drinking water in many parts of Australia has been fluoridated since the early 1960s.
Fluoride helps strengthen the mineral structure of developing teeth.
Although widely accepted and applauded as a crucial public health policy, fluoridation has attracted some vocal critics. Fluoridation opponents over the years have claimed that putting fluoride in water causes health problems, is too expensive and is a form of mass medication. Some go as far as to suggest that fluoridation is a communist plot and affects children’s IQ.
Despite these claims, fluoridation is supported by many national and international organisations including the
World Health Organization, World Health Assembly,World Dental Federation, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Dental Association and the Public Health Association of Australia.
In 2006, the WHO and the International Dental Federation and the International Association for Dental Research, released a statement endorsing community water fluoridation.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States includes water fluoridation in its list of the top ten health initiatives of the twentieth century, alongside immunisation, compulsory seat belt wearing and smoking bans.
In November 2007, the NHMRC completed a review of the latest scientific evidence in relation to fluoride and health. Based on this review, the NHMRC recommended community water fluoridation programs as the most effective and socially equitable community measure for protecting the population from tooth decay. The scientific and medical support for the benefits of fluoridation certainly outweighs the claims of the vocal minority against it.
The recommended level varies around Australia and depends on the annual average maximum daytime temperature. In Victoria, for instance, the maximum level of fluoride added to drinking water is one milligram per litre or one part per million as recommended by the World Health Organization.
In hotter climates where people drink more, the recommended level can drop to around 0.7 parts per million. As a comparison, the amount of fluoride in children’s toothpaste is 400 to 500 parts per million. In regular toothpaste, it’s 1,000 parts per million.
We’ve known about the role of fluoride in reducing dental decay since the early part of the twentieth century and some countries, such as the United States, have been adding it to water and toothpastes since the 1950s.
Canberra was the first Australian capital city to be fluoridated – back in 1964. Melbourne has had community water fluoridation since 1977. And other parts of Australia have had fluoridated drinking water for more than 50 years.
Some communities in regional and rural Australia, previously without optimal water fluoridation, have recently started to receive fluoride through their drinking water as part of a program to prevent tooth decay and improve oral health. Australia has now achieved overall population coverage of 90%.
But tooth decay remains significant problem. In Victoria, for instance, more than 4,400 children under 10, including 197 two-year-olds and 828 four-year-olds, required general anaesthetic in hospital for the treatment of dental decay during 2009-10. Indeed, 95% of all preventable dental admissions to hospital for children up to nine years old in Victoria are due to dental decay.
Children under ten in non-optimally fluoridated areas are twice as likely to require a general anaesthetic for treatment of dental decay as children in optimally fluoridated areas.
Community water fluoridation remains a vital public health activity and has a key role to play in preventing dental decay and improving oral health for all Australians. The provision of drinking water through our pipes was never more important.
RELATED ARTICLES14 April 2014Solar panels could help produce biofuel9 April 2014Alpha Coal ruling breaks new ground for protecting water3 April 2014Waterworld? Cassini spots the motion of Enceladus’s ocean31 March 2014The bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth27 March 2014Brain hardwired to stop us drinking too much
ARTICLES ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR31 March 2014The bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth10 February 2013Filling the gaps in Australia’s dental workforce10 September 2012Monday’s medical myth: knocked-out teeth are history14 February 2012What happens when teeth whitening goes wrong?5 September 2011Monday’s medical myth: infant teething causes fevers
Source: Conversations
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Free Drug Samples for Doctors Might Prove Costly for Patients
04/16/2014 04:00 PM EDT
Study of dermatologists found those with access to samples from drug makers more likely to prescribe expensive meds.
Free Drug Samples for Doctors Might Prove Costly for Patients
Study of dermatologists found those with access to samples from drug makers more likely to prescribe expensive meds
WEDNESDAY, April 16, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Dermatologists who receive free drug samples are more likely to give their patients prescriptions for expensive medicines, a new study says.
Researchers looked at data on prescriptions for adult acne medications written in 2010 by dermatologists across the United States.
For a single visit, the average retail cost of prescriptions for patients whose doctors received free samples from drug makers was about $465, compared with about $200 for patients whose doctors did not receive free samples, the study found.
Brand name drugs and "branded generics" -- off-patent drugs that have different dosages or new formulations and are sold under a new name -- accounted for 79 percent of prescriptions written by dermatologists nationwide, the study showed.
In contrast, such drugs only accounted for 17 percent of prescriptions written by doctors at an academic medical center that doesn't allow its doctors to accept free drug samples, researchers found.
Brand name drugs and branded generics have similar retail prices, while generic drugs are cheaper, noted the authors of the study published April 16, 2014 in the journal JAMA Dermatology.
Among other medical specialties, the percentage of prescriptions written with a free drug sample decreased from 7 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in 2010, according to study background information. But the percentage increased among dermatologists during that time, from 12 percent to 18 percent, the new study found.
"Physicians may not be aware of the cost difference between brand-name and generic drugs, and patients may not realize that, by accepting samples, they could be unintentionally channeled into subsequently receiving a prescription for a more expensive medication," study senior author Dr. Alfred Lane, emeritus professor of dermatology and of pediatrics at Stanford University, said in a university news release.
He and his colleagues said their findings contribute to the debate about whether free drug samples are helpful or cause doctors to favor more expensive brand name drugs instead of generic drugs, thereby increasing costs for patients and health insurers.
Previous research has found that drug companies give about $16 billion in free drug samples to doctors every year, the news release noted.
"Many physicians believe that free samples have both benefits and drawbacks," study first author Michael Hurley, a Stanford medical student, said in the news release.
"Primarily, they feel that the samples give them more freedom and flexibility to help people who are uninsured, or with less financial means," Hurley said. "But the national data don't really support that. Those people are not the ones who are typically getting these samples."
More information
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more about generic medications.
SOURCE: Stanford University School of Medicine, news release, April 16, 2014
-- Robert Preidt
Last Updated: Apr 16, 2014
Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Source: study published April 16, 2014 in the journal JAMA Dermatology ___________________________________________________________________________
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- Take Heart: Mediterranean Diet Combats Diabetes, Study Saysconsumer.healthday.com/.../take-heart-study-says-mediterrane...
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Take Heart: Mediterranean Diet Combats Diabetes, Study Says It's especially beneficial to those at risk of heart disease, researcher contends
THURSDAY, March 27, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Adhering to a so-calledMediterranean diet may reduce your risk of diabetes, especially if ... to adher = stick fast to, synonyms:stick (fast), cohere, cling, bond, attach; More
- THURSDAY, March 27, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Adhering to a so-called Mediterranean diet may reduce your risk of diabetes, especially if you're at high risk for heart disease.
That's the finding of researchers who reviewed 19 studies that included more than 162,000 people in different countries for an average of 5.5 years.
The analysis revealed that a Mediterranean diet -- which is rich in fish, nuts, vegetables and fruits -- was associated with a 21 percent lower risk of diabetes compared with other eating patterns.
A Mediterranean diet reduced the risk of diabetes even more -- by 27 percent -- among people at high risk for heart disease. Diabetes prevention is especially important for people at risk of heart disease, according to the authors of the study, which is to be presented at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting, in Washington, D.C.
"Adherence to the Mediterranean diet may prevent the development of diabetes irrespective of age, sex, race or culture," lead investigator Demosthenes Panagiotakos, a professor at Harokopio University in Athens, Greece, said in a college news release. "This diet has a beneficial effect, even in high-risk groups, and speaks to the fact that it is never too late to start eating a healthy diet."
Panagiotakos noted that the studies included in the review included Europeans and non-Europeans. This is important because most studies that have examined the effects of a Mediterranean diet have been European-based and there have been concerns that region-specific factors such as genetics, environment, and lifestyle might affect the results.
This review showed that a Mediterranean diet reduces diabetes risk in both Europeans and non-Europeans. This type of large-scale analysis "is important to help inform guidelines and evidence-based care," Panagiotakos said in the news release.
The number of diabetes cases worldwide has doubled in the past 30 years and this spike has been linked to the growing obesity epidemic.
"Diabetes is an ongoing epidemic and its relation to obesity, especially in the Westernized populations, is well known. We have to do something to prevent diabetes and changing our diet may be an effective treatment," Panagiotakos said.
Studies presented at meetings are typically considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.
SOURCE: American College of Cardiology, news release, March 27, 2014
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How You Digest Carbs May Influence Weight Gain, Study
- Researchers focus on saliva-related gene
By Robert Preidt
Thursday, April 3, 2014
- THURSDAY, April 3, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- The way your body digests carbohydrates may affect your risk for obesity, a new genetic study indicates.
Researchers focused on a gene called AMY1, which is responsible for an enzyme in the saliva called salivary amylase. When food enters the mouth, the enzyme begins the process of starch absorption that continues in the digestive system. Starches are a type of carbohydrate.
People typically have two copies of AMY1, but the number of copies can vary widely. It's believed that higher numbers of the gene evolved in response to diets that contained greater levels of starch, the researchers said.
They studied the number of copies of AMY1 in thousands of people from France, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom, and found those with a low number of copies were more likely to be obese.
People with fewer than four copies of the gene were about eight times more likely to be obese than those with nine copies. For every additional copy of the gene, a person was about 20 percent less likely to be obese, according to the authors of the study published March 30, 2014 in Nature Genetics.
"I think this is an important discovery because it suggests that how we digest starch and how the end products from the digestion of complex carbohydrates behave in the gut could be important factors in the risk of obesity," study co-lead author Dr. Philippe Froguel, chair of genomic medicine at the School of Public Health of Imperial College London, said in a college news release.
"Future research is needed to understand whether or not altering the digestion of starchy food might improve someone's ability to lose weight, or prevent a person from becoming obese," Froguel said.
"We are also interested in whether there is a link between this genetic variation and people's risk of other metabolic disorders such as diabetes, as people with a low number of copies of the salivary amylase gene may also be glucose intolerant," Froguel said.
Previous studies investigating obesity have identified variations in genes that act in the brain and often result in differences in appetite, study first author Dr. Mario Falchi, also from Imperial College London, said in the news release. "Our finding is related to how the body physically handles digestion of carbohydrates."
Falchi said researchers are starting to develop a clearer picture of a combination of genetic factors that contribute to a person's chances of becoming obese. "This should ultimately help us to find better ways of tackling obesity," he said.
SOURCE: (1) Imperial College London, news release, March 30, 2014,
- (2) Published March 30, 2014 in Nature Genetics
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- Mother's Pregnancy Weight Gain May Influence Child's Obesity Risk NOTICE: Study found that either too few or too many added pounds upped child's odds for being overweight
LINK TO THE ARTICLE: Pregnancy Weight
- Mother's Pregnancy Weight Gain May Influence Child's ...www.nlm.nih.gov/.../fullstory...
United States National Library of Medicine
2 days ago - Mother's Pregnancy Weight Gain May Influence Child's Obesity Risk. Study found that either too few or too many added pounds upped child's ...
The Article
By Robert Preidt
Tuesday, April 15, 2014Related MedlinePlus Pages
TUESDAY, April 15, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Children born to mothers who gain either too much or too little weight during their pregnancy are more likely to be overweight or obese, a new study has found.
Putting on too few or too many pounds during a pregnancy "may permanently affect mechanisms that manage energy balance and metabolism in the offspring, such as appetite control and energy expenditure," study author Sneha Sridhar, of Kaiser Permanente's Division of Research, theorized in a Kaiser news release. Click: Kaiser Permanente
"This could potentially have long-term effects on the child's subsequent growth and weight," she said.
In the study, Sridhar's team looked at the medical records of children aged 2 to 5 born to more than 4,100 women in California.
They found that 20.4 percent of those children whose mothers gained more than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy were overweight or obese, compared to 14.5 percent of those whose mothers gained weight within recommended guidelines.
Similar numbers arose when the researchers compared overweight rates for children whose mothers gained less than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy.
Among women with a body-mass index (a measurement of body fat based on height and weight) in the normal range before pregnancy, those who gained less than the recommended amount of weight during pregnancy were 63 percent more likely to have an overweight or obese child, the researchers said. The risk was 80 percent higher among those who gained more than recommended amount of weight during their pregnancy.
The study could only point to an association between pregnancy weight gain and a child's risk for obesity; it could not prove cause and effect. But according to senior study author Monique Hedderson, also from Kaiser Permanente, the fact that the trend was found among non-obese, normal weight women "suggests that perhaps weight gain in pregnancy may have an impact on the child that is independent of genetic factors."
Current Institute of Medicine guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy are: for obese women (a BMI of 30 or above), 11 to 20 pounds; for overweight women (BMI of 25 to 29), 15 to 25 pounds; for normal weight women (BMI Of 18.5 to 25), 25 to 35 pounds; and for underweight women (BMI under 18.5), 28 to 40 pounds.
The study was published April 14 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
SOURCE: Kaiser Permanente, news release, April 14, 2014
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Obesity May Shorten Colon Cancer Survival
04/09/2014 12:00 PM EDT
Patients' risk of death rises with every 5-point increase in BMI, study suggests
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Apr 9, 2014 - WEDNESDAY, April 9, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Colon cancer patients who were obese before their diagnosis may have an increased risk of ...
04/13/2014 10:24 PM EDT
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Nearly 10 Percent of U.S. Adults Now Have Diabetes
04/14/2014 05:00 PM EDT
Researchers found a nationwide rise of the disease since late 1980s, and a parallel rise in obesity
Source: HealthDay
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Dramatic Rise in Diabetes
04/15/2014 09:16 AM EDT
Source: HealthDay -
Too Little Vitamin D May Add to Obesity's Burden
04/15/2014 02:00 PM EDT
Study suggests severely overweight people are slowed down by low 'sunshine vitamin' levels
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Obesity Linked to Increased Odds of Losing Baby, Study Finds
04/15/2014 04:00 PM EDT
Weight counseling should start before pregnancy, expert says
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- MONDAY, April 7, 2014 (HealthDay News) --
- Children born to obese fathers, but not obese mothers, may have a slightly higher risk of autism than kids with thinner dads, a large new study suggests.
- ------------------
- Could Dads' Obesity Raise Autism Risk for Kids?consumer.healthday.com/.../autism.../could-dads-obesity-raise-...HealthDay
- --------------------------
- Could Dads' Obesity Raise Autism Risk for Kids? Study finds slight increase linked to weight of fathers, not mothers
- Researchers found that of nearly 93,000 Norwegian children they followed, those born to obese dads had double the risk of developing autism. But the odds were still small: just under 0.3 percent were diagnosed with autism, versus 0.14 percent of kids with normal-weight fathers.
The findings, published online April 7, 2014 in Pediatrics, are the first to link fathers' obesity to autism risk. And experts stressed that it's not clear whether dads' extra pounds, per se, cause the increase.
One possibility is that there's an "indirect" association, said lead researcher Dr. Pal Suren, of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health in Oslo.
Certain gene variations, for example, could be linked to heightened risks of both obesity and autism, Suren explained. Or, he said, obese men might be more likely to have certain environmental exposures that contribute to autism risk.
On the other hand, Suren said, it's possible that fathers' obesity has some direct effect -- by altering sperm quality, for instance. But for now, that's all speculation.
What was surprising, the researchers said, is that mothers' obesity was not tied to a heightened autism risk. Some past research has pointed to such a connection.
But in this study, any link between moms' weight and risk for the developmental disorder disappeared once fathers' weight was taken into account.
This offers hints that fathers' weight might actually be more important, although it's not clear why, Suren said. Much more research is needed to understand what's going on, he said.
"It would definitely be beneficial to replicate our analyses in population studies from other countries, to see whether the association is generalizable to other populations," Suren said.
An autism expert who reviewed the study agreed. And if the link is confirmed, "then you need to understand why this association exists," said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York.
For now, Adesman stressed that the risk linked to fathers' obesity was small.
Of the almost 93,000 children who were followed until age 7 on average, 419 were diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. That included 25 children with autistic disorder born to obese fathers.
"So most of the autism cases were not related to paternal obesity," Adesman said. Plus, he added, "over 99.5 percent of kids born to obese men did not have autism. That's reassuring."
Still, Adesman said, even if fathers' obesity had only a small effect on autism risk, that would still be concerning on the broad population level since obesity has become so common across the globe.
According to the latest figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 68 U.S. children has been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. The term refers to a group of developmental disorders that, to varying degrees, impair people's ability to communicate and socialize with others.
No one knows the exact causes of autism, but experts generally agree that it's a complex mix of genetic vulnerability and environmental exposures.
Researchers have managed to find a few hundred genes linked to autism risk. There are no definite environmental culprits yet, but studies have suggested that certain factors during pregnancy might be important, including mothers' exposure to air pollution, low intake of the B vitamin folate and viral infections.
SOURCES: Pal Suren, M.D., Ph.D., division of epidemiology, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Oslo; Andrew Adesman, M.D., chief, developmental and behavioral pediatrics, Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children's Medical Center of New York, New Hyde Park, N.Y.; May 2014 Pediatrics, online
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Ten Tips for Your Child's Success in School
Helping Your Child Succeed in School - U.S. Department of Education
www2.ed.gov/.../succeed/succeed....
United States Department of Education and stay involved and help your child to read better, to take on challenging math and science classes, to ... and contributes greatly to their success in school.
________________________
Link at the end for this text:
It should come as no surprise that success — or failure — at school starts at home. Studies have linked poor academic performance to factors such as a lack of sleep, poor nutrition, obesity, and a lack of parental support.
The good news is that those same studies also show higher test scores for students who live in homes where healthy habits, regular routines, and good communication exist. How can you ensure your child heads off to school this fall with the best possible foundation? Follow these 10 tips and watch your child thrive.
Enforce Healthy Habits
You can’t perform well when you don’t feel good. To help your child have the best chance at doing well in school, make sure she follows healthy habits at home. Choose a bedtime that will give your child plenty of sleep, and provide a healthy breakfast each morning. Encourage exercise, and limit the amount of time she spends watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, or using the computer.
Stick to a Routine
Most kids thrive on structure and will respond well to routines that help them organize their days. In our house, for example, my son gets dressed, makes his bed, and eats breakfast while I make his lunch and pack his school bag with completed homework and forms. When he gets home in the afternoon, I serve him a snack and he does his homework while I prepare dinner. Your routines may differ, but the key is to make it the same every day so your child knows what to expect.
Create a “Launch Pad”
Veteran parents know it’s important to have a single place to put backpacks, jackets, shoes, lunchboxes, and school projects each day. Some call it a “launch pad,” while others call it a “staging area.” Our area is a hook by the back door.
Whatever you call it, find a place where your child can keep the items he needs for school each day and keep him organized. Then you’ll know right where to find everything during the morning rush.
Designate a Space
At school your child has a desk or table where she works. There is plenty of light, lots of supplies, and enough room to work. Why not provide her with the same type of environment for homework? A designated homework space often makes it easier and more fun for children to complete assignments at home. A desk is great, but a basket of supplies and a stretch of kitchen counter work just as well.
Read, Again and Again
It is often said that children spend the first several years learning to read, and the rest of the lives reading to learn. The written word is a gateway to all kinds of learning, and the more you read to your child, the better chance he has of becoming a proficient and eager reader.
Try to sit down with your child to read a little bit every day, give him plenty of opportunities to read out loud to you, as well, and above all have fun. While the importance of reading with your child cannot be stressed enough, it should not be the cause of stress.
Learn Always
Your child may be past the preschool years, but home education is still a critical part of his overall learning experience. “Some of the attitude recently is that it’s up to the schools and teachers to figure it all out, to make sure children are learning and healthy and safe,” says Barbara Frankowski, M.D., MPH, FAAP, and member of the AAP Council on School Health. “There’s only so much teachers can do. Parents have to fill in with good support at home.”
Look for ways to teach your child throughout the day. For example, cooking combines elements of math and science. Use the time when you make dinner as an opportunity to read and follow directions, to discuss fractions, to make hypotheses (“What will happen when I beat the egg whites?”), and to examine results.
Take the Lead
Children learn by example. Let your kids “catch” you reading. Take time to learn a new skill and discuss the experience with them. Sit down and pay bills or do other “homework” while your kids do their schoolwork.
If you display a strong work ethic and continually seek out learning opportunities for yourself, your kids will begin to model that same behavior in their own lives.
Talk Often
Do you know how your child feels about her classroom, her teacher, and her classmates? If not, ask her. Talk with her about what she likes and doesn’t like at school. Give her a chance to express her anxieties, excitements, or disappointments about each day, and continue to support and encourage her by praising her achievements and efforts.
Show Interest
Don’t limit your support to your child; extend it to her teachers as well. Meet the teachers and stay in regular contact by phone or e-mail so that you can discuss any concerns as they arise. Not only will it pave the way for you to ask questions, but it will also make the teachers more comfortable with calling you if they have concerns about your child.
Expect Success
Perhaps the most important way you can support your child’s efforts at school is to expect him to succeed. That doesn’t mean that you demand he be the best student or the best athlete or the best artist. Rather, let him know that you expect him to do “his best” so that he’ll be proud of what he can accomplish.
If you make that expectation clear and provide a home environment that promotes learning, then your child will have a greater chance of becoming the best student he can be.
This article was featured in Healthy Children Magazine. To view the full issue, click here.
Author Last Updated 5/11/2013
Source Healthy Children Magazine, Back to School 2007
The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.
click: Ten Tips for Your Child's Success in School
Ten Tips for Your Child's Success in School -
HealthyChildreSuccessful child n.orgwww.healthychildren.org/.../gradeschool/school/.../Ten-...
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May 11, 2013 - American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) discusses ways to help your child's academic success. _________________________________________________
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BloggingThe bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth theconversation.com/the-bitter-truth-about-what-sugar-...
The Conversation
Mar 31, 2014 - The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been consulting on draftsugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily ..
Article 1 of 2 (2 of 2 next below) (The Conversation magazine)
The bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been consulting on draft sugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily intake downwards to address obesity and dental disease. The body says it’s particularly concerned about the increasing global consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, including soft drinks and sports drinks.
Current WHO guidelines (published in 2002) recommend sugars should make up no more than 10% of daily total energy intake. The new draft guidelines suggest revising this to 5% – the equivalent of around six teaspoons of sugar a day for an average adult. It highlights the role of “hidden” sugars in obesity and how sugar leads to the development of dental disease.
The WHO describes dental diseases as the most prevalent non-communicable diseases globally. More than 90% of Australian adults have experienced tooth decay and almost 60% of 14-year-olds have decay in their permanent teeth. In 2010-11, more than 23,000 Australian children were hospitalised for dental treatment under general anaesthetic – mostly for treatment of tooth decay.
Sweet tooth Sugar feeds the bacteria that live on the surface of everyone’s teeth, enabling them to rapidly produce acids that dissolve tooth enamel. Known as “demineralisation”, this process weakens the tooth structure through loss of minerals.
High-frequency sugar intake, coupled with bacterial acids not being removed regularly and properly, will lead to demineralisation to the point of creating cavities. Indeed, it’s an eye-opener to see just how quickly sugar damages teeth.
In unpublished laboratory experiments we’ve done with colleagues, teeth were given a ten-minute dose of sucrose solution four times a day, without the benefits of tooth brushing or drinking water. It took less than two weeks for cavities to begin to form. More frequent sucrose doses led to cavities appearing sooner.
Even though we have ways to treat cavities, through fillings and tooth removal when necessary, treatments don’t eliminate the underlying cause of tooth decay. And too many filled or removed teeth increases a person’s risk of future oral health problems, such as difficulty eating effectively when teeth are lost and an ongoing need for more complex fillings.
Tooth-rotting drinks and food Most Australians know how to avoid dental cavities. If nothing else, they know sugar is bad for teeth and brushing is good. But people are generally not well informed about the sugar content of what they eat and drink.
In many cases, they’re not aware that drinks they believe to be healthy are actually damaging to their oral health. Scientists comparing the cavity-creating potential of a number of soy milks to cows' milk, for instance, found the former produced decay-causing acid at five to six times the rate of cows' milk – a damaging recipe for teeth.
Many soft drinks and sports drinks not only contain sugar but also food acids (citric and phosphoric acids) that can cause erosion of tooth enamel when consumed frequently. These food acids are also found in the sugar-free versions of these drinks, so sugar-free soft and sports drinks are not necessarily better for your teeth.
Compounding the problem of the increasing popularity of sweet beverages is the fact that people often drink these instead of plain water. Water is much better for your teeth because it helps rinse away food, liquids, sugar and acids.
More than 90% of Australians have access to fluoridated tap water, which helps to protect teeth against demineralisation, but note that most bottled water has only low levels of fluoride.
Not normal The ubiquity of dental decay may create the impression that oral disease is inevitable and not of serious public concern. But that’s not the case. Although most dental disease is preventable, treatment costs the Australian economy $8.4 billion a year.
The cost to individuals is measured in lost teeth, in the inability to maintain a healthy diet into older age, and in the social disadvantage arising from the stigma and embarrassment caused by poor teeth.
There are ways to prevent this beyond the level of the individual. The State of California, for instance, is considering legislation that would make it the first jurisdiction to require warning labels on sugary drinks. Under the proposed bill, beverages with added sweeteners over a certain limit would read:
STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.
We can reduce the prevalence of cavities in Australia. The proposed recommendation by the World Health Organisation will provide solid grounds for calling for better community understanding of the amount and forms of sugar we’re consuming.
TAGS Tooth decay, WHO, Sugary drinks
RELATED ARTICLES 19 March 2014 How ‘hidden’ sugars are pushing up your daily dose - 9 January 2014 The amount of hidden sugar in your diet might shock you - 2 January 2014 Feeling down: when does a mood become a disorder? - 12 November 2013 How best to help the Philippines recover from Typhoon Haiyan - 31 October 2013 Sugary drinks tax could swell coffers, shrink waistlines
ARTICLES ALSO BY THESE AUTHORS 10 February 2013 - Filling the gaps in Australia’s dental workforce -
11 November 2012 How fluoride in water helps prevent tooth decay - 10 September 2012 Monday’s medical myth: knocked-out teeth are history - 14 February 2012 What happens when teeth whitening goes wrong? - 5 September 2011 Monday’s medical myth: infant teething causes fevers
_________________________________
How fluoride in water helps prevent tooth decay
11 November 2012
AUTHORDISCLOSURE STATEMENT Mike Morgan has acted as an advisor to the Victorian Department of Health on Community Water Fluoridation.
Provides funding as a Founding Partner of The Conversation.
unimelb.edu.au
Fluoridated water protects against the tooth decay from acid produced by bacteria in the mouth. T. Faltings
The most effective way to prevent tooth decay is delivered to most Australian homes every day through their water pipes. It is, of course, fluoride distributed via the water supply.
Dental decay occurs when acid destroys or demineralises the outer surface of the tooth – the enamel. Bacteria in the mouth from food and drinks containing sugar produces acid and fluoride repairs demineralisation before it becomes permanent. It does this by encouraging remineralisation or repair of the enamel surface. Fluoride also helps strengthen the mineral structure of developing teeth.
Fluoride is a naturally occurring compound found in plants and rocks and, in very low levels, in almost all fresh water. Sometimes, fluoride is found naturally in the water supplies of Australian communities at exactly the level recommended to reduce dental decay, but this is rare and happens by chance.
Community water fluoridation is the adjustment of fluoride in drinking water to a level that helps protect teeth against decay. Drinking water in many parts of Australia has been fluoridated since the early 1960s.
Fluoride helps strengthen the mineral structure of developing teeth.
Although widely accepted and applauded as a crucial public health policy, fluoridation has attracted some vocal critics. Fluoridation opponents over the years have claimed that putting fluoride in water causes health problems, is too expensive and is a form of mass medication. Some go as far as to suggest that fluoridation is a communist plot and affects children’s IQ.
Despite these claims, fluoridation is supported by many national and international organisations including the
World Health Organization, World Health Assembly,World Dental Federation, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), Australian Dental Association and the Public Health Association of Australia.
In 2006, the WHO and the International Dental Federation and the International Association for Dental Research, released a statement endorsing community water fluoridation.
And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States includes water fluoridation in its list of the top ten health initiatives of the twentieth century, alongside immunisation, compulsory seat belt wearing and smoking bans.
In November 2007, the NHMRC completed a review of the latest scientific evidence in relation to fluoride and health. Based on this review, the NHMRC recommended community water fluoridation programs as the most effective and socially equitable community measure for protecting the population from tooth decay. The scientific and medical support for the benefits of fluoridation certainly outweighs the claims of the vocal minority against it.
The recommended level varies around Australia and depends on the annual average maximum daytime temperature. In Victoria, for instance, the maximum level of fluoride added to drinking water is one milligram per litre or one part per million as recommended by the World Health Organization.
In hotter climates where people drink more, the recommended level can drop to around 0.7 parts per million. As a comparison, the amount of fluoride in children’s toothpaste is 400 to 500 parts per million. In regular toothpaste, it’s 1,000 parts per million.
We’ve known about the role of fluoride in reducing dental decay since the early part of the twentieth century and some countries, such as the United States, have been adding it to water and toothpastes since the 1950s.
Canberra was the first Australian capital city to be fluoridated – back in 1964. Melbourne has had community water fluoridation since 1977. And other parts of Australia have had fluoridated drinking water for more than 50 years.
Some communities in regional and rural Australia, previously without optimal water fluoridation, have recently started to receive fluoride through their drinking water as part of a program to prevent tooth decay and improve oral health. Australia has now achieved overall population coverage of 90%.
But tooth decay remains significant problem. In Victoria, for instance, more than 4,400 children under 10, including 197 two-year-olds and 828 four-year-olds, required general anaesthetic in hospital for the treatment of dental decay during 2009-10. Indeed, 95% of all preventable dental admissions to hospital for children up to nine years old in Victoria are due to dental decay.
Children under ten in non-optimally fluoridated areas are twice as likely to require a general anaesthetic for treatment of dental decay as children in optimally fluoridated areas.
Community water fluoridation remains a vital public health activity and has a key role to play in preventing dental decay and improving oral health for all Australians. The provision of drinking water through our pipes was never more important.
RELATED ARTICLES14 April 2014Solar panels could help produce biofuel9 April 2014Alpha Coal ruling breaks new ground for protecting water3 April 2014Waterworld? Cassini spots the motion of Enceladus’s ocean31 March 2014The bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth27 March 2014Brain hardwired to stop us drinking too much
ARTICLES ALSO BY THIS AUTHOR31 March 2014The bitter truth about what sugar is doing to your teeth10 February 2013Filling the gaps in Australia’s dental workforce10 September 2012Monday’s medical myth: knocked-out teeth are history14 February 2012What happens when teeth whitening goes wrong?5 September 2011Monday’s medical myth: infant teething causes fevers
Source: Conversations
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Free Drug Samples for Doctors Might Prove Costly for Patients
04/16/2014 04:00 PM EDT
Study of dermatologists found those with access to samples from drug makers more likely to prescribe expensive meds.
Free Drug Samples for Doctors Might Prove Costly for Patients
Study of dermatologists found those with access to samples from drug makers more likely to prescribe expensive meds
WEDNESDAY, April 16, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Dermatologists who receive free drug samples are more likely to give their patients prescriptions for expensive medicines, a new study says.
Researchers looked at data on prescriptions for adult acne medications written in 2010 by dermatologists across the United States.
For a single visit, the average retail cost of prescriptions for patients whose doctors received free samples from drug makers was about $465, compared with about $200 for patients whose doctors did not receive free samples, the study found.
Brand name drugs and "branded generics" -- off-patent drugs that have different dosages or new formulations and are sold under a new name -- accounted for 79 percent of prescriptions written by dermatologists nationwide, the study showed.
In contrast, such drugs only accounted for 17 percent of prescriptions written by doctors at an academic medical center that doesn't allow its doctors to accept free drug samples, researchers found.
Brand name drugs and branded generics have similar retail prices, while generic drugs are cheaper, noted the authors of the study published April 16, 2014 in the journal JAMA Dermatology.
Among other medical specialties, the percentage of prescriptions written with a free drug sample decreased from 7 percent in 2001 to 4 percent in 2010, according to study background information. But the percentage increased among dermatologists during that time, from 12 percent to 18 percent, the new study found.
"Physicians may not be aware of the cost difference between brand-name and generic drugs, and patients may not realize that, by accepting samples, they could be unintentionally channeled into subsequently receiving a prescription for a more expensive medication," study senior author Dr. Alfred Lane, emeritus professor of dermatology and of pediatrics at Stanford University, said in a university news release.
He and his colleagues said their findings contribute to the debate about whether free drug samples are helpful or cause doctors to favor more expensive brand name drugs instead of generic drugs, thereby increasing costs for patients and health insurers.
Previous research has found that drug companies give about $16 billion in free drug samples to doctors every year, the news release noted.
"Many physicians believe that free samples have both benefits and drawbacks," study first author Michael Hurley, a Stanford medical student, said in the news release.
"Primarily, they feel that the samples give them more freedom and flexibility to help people who are uninsured, or with less financial means," Hurley said. "But the national data don't really support that. Those people are not the ones who are typically getting these samples."
More information
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has more about generic medications.
SOURCE: Stanford University School of Medicine, news release, April 16, 2014
-- Robert Preidt
Last Updated: Apr 16, 2014
Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Source: study published April 16, 2014 in the journal JAMA Dermatology ___________________________________________________________________________
Intense Exercise Could Make You Age Faster, Shorten Your lifespan BLOGGING
Telomeres = a compound structure at the end of a chromosome ???What are telomeres and telomerase?Facts about Telomeres and Telomerasewww4.utsouthwest...
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at...
The following section will teach you the basics of telomeres and telomerase. It will also ... Words in italics are defined in the glossary. At the end of some
www.theepochtimes.com/.../582178-intense-exercise-could-mak...by Tara MacIsaac - in 36 Google+ circles
Mar 25, 2014 - Intense Exercise Could Make You Age Faster, Shorten Your Lifespan ... number of times they can divide, thus one's lifespan may be shortened. ____________________________________________________________________________________
Intense Exercise Could Make You Age Faster, Shorten Your Lifespan
Intense exercise increases metabolism and cells are made to divide more rapidly to replace damaged or worn out cells. Cells have a finite number of times they can divide, thus one’s lifespan may be shortened.
Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes. With each cell division, telomeres become shorter, and thus they are markers for aging. When telomeres in a cell are worn down completely, a cell can no longer reproduce and it will die. Wearing out telomeres more quickly, therefore, can shorten one’s lifespan.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D., wrote in his blog: “The prevailing myth is that a faster metabolism is preferable, because it would lead to weight loss. However, having a fast metabolism does not mean that you are healthier—in fact, it may cause you to age more quickly.”
Fuhrman cited a study of families in which multiple siblings lived to be older than 90. The study, conducted by researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, found longevity could be linked to lower thyroid activity and thus lower metabolism.
Instead of trying to boost metabolism, said Fuhrman, get your body to run on fewer calories. Some of the world’s oldest people have also said they felt a key to their longevity was moderate eating.
“I eat to live, I don’t live to eat,” Yisrael Kristal, 110, told Israeli publication Haartz. “You don’t need too much. Anything that’s too much isn’t good. … It’s not good to have a full stomach.” Jiroemon Kimura, who died at the age of 116, said eating light is good for long life, according to Japan Times.
Qigong and some other ancient eastern practices have taught slow and gentle movements for a healthy body, as opposed to strenuous and accelerated movement. These practices often also come with guidance on character improvement, including moderation in eating and other aspects of life.
Many doctors agree that a normal level of exercise is beneficial, but intensive training can be hard on the body. Stress has also been shown to decrease the length of telomeres, prematurely aging people.
Dr. Fuhrman said in an email to Epoch Times: “Exercise above a certain level is likely more harmful than helpful. And, that would be the case with triathletes, marathon running and other sports that require extreme conditioning be maintained for many years. The competitive nature of some of the events push the participants toward the limit of human endurance and that cannot be lifespan promoting to maintain those stresses on the body for many years.”
——————————————————————————————————————————--
Telomeres = a compound structure at the end of a chromosome ???What are telomeres and telomerase?Facts about Telomeres and Telomerasewww4.utsouthwest...
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at...
The following section will teach you the basics of telomeres and telomerase. It will also ... Words in italics are defined in the glossary. At the end of some
www.theepochtimes.com/.../582178-intense-exercise-could-mak...by Tara MacIsaac - in 36 Google+ circles
Mar 25, 2014 - Intense Exercise Could Make You Age Faster, Shorten Your Lifespan ... number of times they can divide, thus one's lifespan may be shortened. ____________________________________________________________________________________
Intense Exercise Could Make You Age Faster, Shorten Your Lifespan
Intense exercise increases metabolism and cells are made to divide more rapidly to replace damaged or worn out cells. Cells have a finite number of times they can divide, thus one’s lifespan may be shortened.
Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes. With each cell division, telomeres become shorter, and thus they are markers for aging. When telomeres in a cell are worn down completely, a cell can no longer reproduce and it will die. Wearing out telomeres more quickly, therefore, can shorten one’s lifespan.
Joel Fuhrman, M.D., wrote in his blog: “The prevailing myth is that a faster metabolism is preferable, because it would lead to weight loss. However, having a fast metabolism does not mean that you are healthier—in fact, it may cause you to age more quickly.”
Fuhrman cited a study of families in which multiple siblings lived to be older than 90. The study, conducted by researchers at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands, found longevity could be linked to lower thyroid activity and thus lower metabolism.
Instead of trying to boost metabolism, said Fuhrman, get your body to run on fewer calories. Some of the world’s oldest people have also said they felt a key to their longevity was moderate eating.
“I eat to live, I don’t live to eat,” Yisrael Kristal, 110, told Israeli publication Haartz. “You don’t need too much. Anything that’s too much isn’t good. … It’s not good to have a full stomach.” Jiroemon Kimura, who died at the age of 116, said eating light is good for long life, according to Japan Times.
Qigong and some other ancient eastern practices have taught slow and gentle movements for a healthy body, as opposed to strenuous and accelerated movement. These practices often also come with guidance on character improvement, including moderation in eating and other aspects of life.
Many doctors agree that a normal level of exercise is beneficial, but intensive training can be hard on the body. Stress has also been shown to decrease the length of telomeres, prematurely aging people.
Dr. Fuhrman said in an email to Epoch Times: “Exercise above a certain level is likely more harmful than helpful. And, that would be the case with triathletes, marathon running and other sports that require extreme conditioning be maintained for many years. The competitive nature of some of the events push the participants toward the limit of human endurance and that cannot be lifespan promoting to maintain those stresses on the body for many years.”
——————————————————————————————————————————--
Six Artificial Colors Have Been Linked to Hyperactivity in Children, and Three of Them are Still Legal in the United States
NIMH · Attention Deficit HyperactivityADHD Disorderwww.nimh.nih.gov/.../attention-deficit...
National Institute of Mental Health
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common childhood brain disorders and can continue through adolescence and adulthood.
Click: ADHD Disorder
Michael Pollan
A groundbreaking 2007 study published in The Lancet found that six different artificial colors and the preservative sodium benzoate decreased attention and promoted hyperactivity in both children diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and those without the condition.
Of these products, three are colorings already illegal in the United States: quinoline yellow (E104), carmoisine (E122) and ponceau 4R (E124). In addition to hyperactivity, all three have been linked to other health problems, from allergies to cancer.
Three of the colorings implicated are still legal in the United States: sunset yellow (E110 or Yellow No. 6), tartrazine (E102 or Yellow No. 5) and allura red (E129 or Red No. 40). All three are produced from either coal tar or petroleum and have also been linked to allergies, stomach upsets, skin swelling and cancer.
Sodium benzoate, the preservative implicated in the study, is also still legal in the United States. Although the European Union has shied away from taking action against sodium benzoate, it now requires warning labels on products containing any of the six colors. The FDA has yet to follow suit.
FDA
U S FDAood and
- the world's leading medical journal v
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NIMH · Attention Deficit HyperactivityADHD Disorderwww.nimh.nih.gov/.../attention-deficit...
National Institute of Mental Health
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most common childhood brain disorders and can continue through adolescence and adulthood.
Click: ADHD Disorder
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Dec 29, 2011 - What is palliative care?It is hard to live with an illness that cannot be cured. You may feel lonely, angry, scared, or sad. You may feel that your Hospice and Palliative Nurses Associationwww.hpna.org/
The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) is the national, professional nursing organization, which represents the specialty of Palliative Nursing.
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The Bitter Truth About What Sugar is Doing to Your Teethwww.theepochtimes.com/.../593908-the-bitter-truth-about-what-sugar-is-...
Mar 31, 2014 - The WHO has been consulting on draft sugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily intake downwards to address ...
Article - An example from Australia - the istuation is the same all over the world
The Bitter Truth About What Sugar is Doing to Your Teeth
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been consulting on draft sugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily intake downwards to address obesity and dental disease. The body says it’s particularly concerned about the increasing global consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, including soft drinks and sports drinks.
Click: World Health Organization: WHO
Current WHO guidelines (published in 2002) recommend sugars should make up no more than 10% of daily total energy intake. The new draft guidelines suggest revising this to 5% – the equivalent of around six teaspoons of sugar a day for an average adult. It highlights the role of “hidden” sugars in obesity and how sugar leads to the development of dental disease.
The WHO describes dental diseases as the most prevalent non-communicable diseases globally. More than 90% of Australian adults have experienced tooth decay and almost 60% of 14-year-olds have decay in their permanent teeth. In 2010-11, more than 23,000 Australian children were hospitalised for dental treatment under general anaesthetic – mostly for treatment of tooth decay.
Sweet Tooth
Sugar feeds the bacteria that live on the surface of everyone’s teeth, enabling them to rapidly produce acids that dissolve tooth enamel. Known as “demineralisation”, this process weakens the tooth structure through loss of minerals.
High-frequency sugar intake, coupled with bacterial acids not being removed regularly and properly, will lead to demineralisation to the point of creating cavities. Indeed, it’s an eye-opener to see just how quickly sugar damages teeth.
In unpublished laboratory experiments we’ve done with colleagues, teeth were given a ten-minute dose of sucrose solution four times a day, without the benefits of tooth brushing or drinking water. It took less than two weeks for cavities to begin to form. More frequent sucrose doses led to cavities appearing sooner.
Even though we have ways to treat cavities, through fillings and tooth removal when necessary, treatments don’t eliminate the underlying cause of tooth decay. And too many filled or removed teeth increases a person’s risk of future oral health problems, such as difficulty eating effectively when teeth are lost and an ongoing need for more complex fillings.
Tooth-Rotting Drinks and Food
Most Australians know how to avoid dental cavities. If nothing else, they know sugar is bad for teeth and brushing is good. But people are generally not well informed about the sugar content of what they eat and drink.
Some sources of sugar are more obvious than others. (Alison Clarke/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA)In many cases, they’re not aware that drinks they believe to be healthy are actually damaging to their oral health. Scientists comparing the cavity-creating potential of a number of soy milks to cows’ milk, for instance, found the former produced decay-causing acid at five to six times the rate of cows’ milk – a damaging recipe for teeth.
Many soft drinks and sports drinks not only contain sugar but also food acids (citric and phosphoric acids) that can cause erosion of tooth enamel when consumed frequently. These food acids are also found in the sugar-free versions of these drinks, so sugar-free soft and sports drinks are not necessarily better for your teeth.
Compounding the problem of the increasing popularity of sweet beverages is the fact that people often drink these instead of plain water. Water is much better for your teeth because it helps rinse away food, liquids, sugar and acids.
More than 90% of Australians have access to fluoridated tap water, which helps to protect teeth against demineralisation, but note that most bottled water has only low levels of fluoride.
Not Normal
The ubiquity of dental decay may create the impression that oral disease is inevitable and not of serious public concern. But that’s not the case. Although most dental disease is preventable, treatment costs the Australian economy $8.4 billion a year.
The cost to individuals is measured in lost teeth, in the inability to maintain a healthy diet into older age, and in the social disadvantage arising from the stigma and embarrassment caused by poor teeth.
There are ways to prevent this beyond the level of the individual. The State of California, for instance, is considering legislation that would make it the first jurisdiction to require warning labels on sugary drinks. Under the proposed bill, beverages with added sweeteners over a certain limit would read: “STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.”
We can reduce the prevalence of cavities in Australia. The proposed recommendation by the World Health Organisation will provide solid grounds for calling for better community understanding of the amount and forms of sugar we’re consuming.
Mike Morgan receives funding from the National and Medical Research Council and Dental Health Services Victoria.
Stuart Dashper receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Cooperative Research Centre scheme
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
______________________________________________________________________
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
New on the MedlinePlus End of Life Issues page:
Preparing the Children: Infants and Toddlers
05/06/2014 02:41 PM EDT
Source: Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association - PDF
Preparing the Children: Preteens and Teens
05/06/2014 02:41 PM EDT
Source: Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association - PDF
Respecting Cultural Beliefs
05/06/2014 02:41 PM EDT
Source: Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association - PDF
Palliative Care Treatment Definition and Information - WebMDwww.webmd.com/palliative-care/palliative-care-topic-overview
WebMD
Dec 29, 2011 - What is palliative care?It is hard to live with an illness that cannot be cured. You may feel lonely, angry, scared, or sad. You may feel that your Hospice and Palliative Nurses Associationwww.hpna.org/
The Hospice and Palliative Nurses Association (HPNA) is the national, professional nursing organization, which represents the specialty of Palliative Nursing.
===================================================================================================
The Bitter Truth About What Sugar is Doing to Your Teethwww.theepochtimes.com/.../593908-the-bitter-truth-about-what-sugar-is-...
Mar 31, 2014 - The WHO has been consulting on draft sugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily intake downwards to address ...
Article - An example from Australia - the istuation is the same all over the world
The Bitter Truth About What Sugar is Doing to Your Teeth
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has been consulting on draft sugar intake guidelines that propose revising the recommended daily intake downwards to address obesity and dental disease. The body says it’s particularly concerned about the increasing global consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, including soft drinks and sports drinks.
Click: World Health Organization: WHO
Current WHO guidelines (published in 2002) recommend sugars should make up no more than 10% of daily total energy intake. The new draft guidelines suggest revising this to 5% – the equivalent of around six teaspoons of sugar a day for an average adult. It highlights the role of “hidden” sugars in obesity and how sugar leads to the development of dental disease.
The WHO describes dental diseases as the most prevalent non-communicable diseases globally. More than 90% of Australian adults have experienced tooth decay and almost 60% of 14-year-olds have decay in their permanent teeth. In 2010-11, more than 23,000 Australian children were hospitalised for dental treatment under general anaesthetic – mostly for treatment of tooth decay.
Sweet Tooth
Sugar feeds the bacteria that live on the surface of everyone’s teeth, enabling them to rapidly produce acids that dissolve tooth enamel. Known as “demineralisation”, this process weakens the tooth structure through loss of minerals.
High-frequency sugar intake, coupled with bacterial acids not being removed regularly and properly, will lead to demineralisation to the point of creating cavities. Indeed, it’s an eye-opener to see just how quickly sugar damages teeth.
In unpublished laboratory experiments we’ve done with colleagues, teeth were given a ten-minute dose of sucrose solution four times a day, without the benefits of tooth brushing or drinking water. It took less than two weeks for cavities to begin to form. More frequent sucrose doses led to cavities appearing sooner.
Even though we have ways to treat cavities, through fillings and tooth removal when necessary, treatments don’t eliminate the underlying cause of tooth decay. And too many filled or removed teeth increases a person’s risk of future oral health problems, such as difficulty eating effectively when teeth are lost and an ongoing need for more complex fillings.
Tooth-Rotting Drinks and Food
Most Australians know how to avoid dental cavities. If nothing else, they know sugar is bad for teeth and brushing is good. But people are generally not well informed about the sugar content of what they eat and drink.
Some sources of sugar are more obvious than others. (Alison Clarke/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA)In many cases, they’re not aware that drinks they believe to be healthy are actually damaging to their oral health. Scientists comparing the cavity-creating potential of a number of soy milks to cows’ milk, for instance, found the former produced decay-causing acid at five to six times the rate of cows’ milk – a damaging recipe for teeth.
Many soft drinks and sports drinks not only contain sugar but also food acids (citric and phosphoric acids) that can cause erosion of tooth enamel when consumed frequently. These food acids are also found in the sugar-free versions of these drinks, so sugar-free soft and sports drinks are not necessarily better for your teeth.
Compounding the problem of the increasing popularity of sweet beverages is the fact that people often drink these instead of plain water. Water is much better for your teeth because it helps rinse away food, liquids, sugar and acids.
More than 90% of Australians have access to fluoridated tap water, which helps to protect teeth against demineralisation, but note that most bottled water has only low levels of fluoride.
Not Normal
The ubiquity of dental decay may create the impression that oral disease is inevitable and not of serious public concern. But that’s not the case. Although most dental disease is preventable, treatment costs the Australian economy $8.4 billion a year.
The cost to individuals is measured in lost teeth, in the inability to maintain a healthy diet into older age, and in the social disadvantage arising from the stigma and embarrassment caused by poor teeth.
There are ways to prevent this beyond the level of the individual. The State of California, for instance, is considering legislation that would make it the first jurisdiction to require warning labels on sugary drinks. Under the proposed bill, beverages with added sweeteners over a certain limit would read: “STATE OF CALIFORNIA SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.”
We can reduce the prevalence of cavities in Australia. The proposed recommendation by the World Health Organisation will provide solid grounds for calling for better community understanding of the amount and forms of sugar we’re consuming.
Mike Morgan receives funding from the National and Medical Research Council and Dental Health Services Victoria.
Stuart Dashper receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Cooperative Research Centre scheme
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
______________________________________________________________________
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
Things to Avoid When Breastfeeding Things to Avoid When Breastfeeding - HealthyChildren.org
www.healthychildren.org/.../breastfeeding/.../Things-to-..
Healthy Children
May 11, 2013 - American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) discusses substances to avoid when breastfeeding.
Many women find the need to restrict or alter their diets during pregnancy and after difficult. It may not be easy for someone accustomed to five cups of coffee a day (or an alcoholic drink or two during dinner) to abruptly change her habits and give up her daily java jolt and put alcohol aside. After nine months, however, the improvements to your diet and lifestyle may have become routine. If so, you’re fortunate: your new, healthier eating habits will help contribute to your baby’s health and development—as well as your own health. Still, now that your baby is born, it’s natural to wonder whether it’s all right to enjoy a cup of coffee with breakfast or a glass of wine with dinner without worrying that doing so will harm your baby. Fortunately, the mammary glands that produce your milk are able to provide your baby with highly nutritious milk even if your diet isn’t perfect every day. The mammary glands and milk-producing cells also help regulate how much of what you eat and drink actually reaches your baby through your milk.
Caffeine
Consuming coffee, tea, and caffeinated sodas in moderation is fine when you are breastfeeding. Breast milk usually contains less than 1 percent of the caffeine ingested by the mom. And if you drink no more than three cups of coffee spread throughout the day, there is little to no caffeine detected in the baby’s urine. However, if you feel that your infant becomes more fussy or irritable when you consume excessive amounts of caffeine (usually more than five caffeinated beverages per day), consider decreasing your intake. Pay attention to the amount of tea and soda you drink and chocolate you eat, too. Most teas, sodas, and chocolate contain caffeine.
Alcohol
Alcohol passes through your milk to your baby, so it’s best to avoid habitual use while breastfeeding. And while drinking beer does not increase your milk supply, as urban myth suggests, consuming alcohol of any kind may decrease the amount of milk your baby drinks. Alcohol can change the taste of your milk, and this may be objectionable to some babies.
If you choose to have an alcoholic drink, it’s best to do so just after you nurse or express milk rather than before, and allow at least two or rather tree hours per drink or two before your next breastfeeding or pumping session. That way, your body will have as much time as possible to rid itself of the alcohol before the next feeding and less will reach your infant.
One alcoholic drink—the equivalent of a 12-ounce beer, 4-ounce glass of wine, or 1 ounce of hard liquor—will probably not harm your baby. However, there are concerns about long-term, repeated exposures of infants to alcohol via the mother’s milk, so moderation is definitely advised. Chronic consumption of alcohol may also reduce milk production.
Mercury
As you know, including fish in your diet is a good way to get protein and healthy omega-3 fatty acids without ingesting too many saturated fats. However, nearly all fish contain some traces of mercury, a metal that occurs naturally in the environment and that is increased by industrial pollution. Most people are not affected by these tiny amounts of mercury. But in babies and small children, mercury can cause damage to the nervous system. That’s why women of childbearing age and pregnant and lactating women need to avoid fish that are high in mercury, namely, shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish.
When you do eat fish, it’s important to eat varieties that contain less mercury, such as canned light tuna, shrimp, salmon, pollock, and catfish. Some people may prefer albacore or “white” tuna. But albacore tuna generally contains more mercury than the canned light variety. If you enjoy albacore, limit your intake to 6 ounces a week (about one meal).
If you like to eat fish caught in local waters, check local advisories about the safety of the fish. If the information is unavailable, limit your consumption to 6 ounces (about one meal) a week. These same recommendations also apply when you’re feeding fish and shellfish to your young child. Just make sure to serve smaller portions.
Last Updated 5/11/2013Source New Mother's Guide to Breastfeeding, 2nd Edition (Copyright © 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics)
The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.
www.healthychildren.org/.../breastfeeding/.../Things-to-..
Healthy Children
May 11, 2013 - American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) discusses substances to avoid when breastfeeding.
Many women find the need to restrict or alter their diets during pregnancy and after difficult. It may not be easy for someone accustomed to five cups of coffee a day (or an alcoholic drink or two during dinner) to abruptly change her habits and give up her daily java jolt and put alcohol aside. After nine months, however, the improvements to your diet and lifestyle may have become routine. If so, you’re fortunate: your new, healthier eating habits will help contribute to your baby’s health and development—as well as your own health. Still, now that your baby is born, it’s natural to wonder whether it’s all right to enjoy a cup of coffee with breakfast or a glass of wine with dinner without worrying that doing so will harm your baby. Fortunately, the mammary glands that produce your milk are able to provide your baby with highly nutritious milk even if your diet isn’t perfect every day. The mammary glands and milk-producing cells also help regulate how much of what you eat and drink actually reaches your baby through your milk.
Caffeine
Consuming coffee, tea, and caffeinated sodas in moderation is fine when you are breastfeeding. Breast milk usually contains less than 1 percent of the caffeine ingested by the mom. And if you drink no more than three cups of coffee spread throughout the day, there is little to no caffeine detected in the baby’s urine. However, if you feel that your infant becomes more fussy or irritable when you consume excessive amounts of caffeine (usually more than five caffeinated beverages per day), consider decreasing your intake. Pay attention to the amount of tea and soda you drink and chocolate you eat, too. Most teas, sodas, and chocolate contain caffeine.
Alcohol
Alcohol passes through your milk to your baby, so it’s best to avoid habitual use while breastfeeding. And while drinking beer does not increase your milk supply, as urban myth suggests, consuming alcohol of any kind may decrease the amount of milk your baby drinks. Alcohol can change the taste of your milk, and this may be objectionable to some babies.
If you choose to have an alcoholic drink, it’s best to do so just after you nurse or express milk rather than before, and allow at least two or rather tree hours per drink or two before your next breastfeeding or pumping session. That way, your body will have as much time as possible to rid itself of the alcohol before the next feeding and less will reach your infant.
One alcoholic drink—the equivalent of a 12-ounce beer, 4-ounce glass of wine, or 1 ounce of hard liquor—will probably not harm your baby. However, there are concerns about long-term, repeated exposures of infants to alcohol via the mother’s milk, so moderation is definitely advised. Chronic consumption of alcohol may also reduce milk production.
Mercury
As you know, including fish in your diet is a good way to get protein and healthy omega-3 fatty acids without ingesting too many saturated fats. However, nearly all fish contain some traces of mercury, a metal that occurs naturally in the environment and that is increased by industrial pollution. Most people are not affected by these tiny amounts of mercury. But in babies and small children, mercury can cause damage to the nervous system. That’s why women of childbearing age and pregnant and lactating women need to avoid fish that are high in mercury, namely, shark, swordfish, king mackerel, and tilefish.
When you do eat fish, it’s important to eat varieties that contain less mercury, such as canned light tuna, shrimp, salmon, pollock, and catfish. Some people may prefer albacore or “white” tuna. But albacore tuna generally contains more mercury than the canned light variety. If you enjoy albacore, limit your intake to 6 ounces a week (about one meal).
If you like to eat fish caught in local waters, check local advisories about the safety of the fish. If the information is unavailable, limit your consumption to 6 ounces (about one meal) a week. These same recommendations also apply when you’re feeding fish and shellfish to your young child. Just make sure to serve smaller portions.
Last Updated 5/11/2013Source New Mother's Guide to Breastfeeding, 2nd Edition (Copyright © 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics)
The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.
News for
shampoo ingredients to avoid
----
same:
Shampoo Ingredients You Want to Avoid The Epoch Times-16 minutes ago
I asked board-certified hair transplant surgeon Dr. David Dorin his perspective on whatshampoo ingredients we should avoid and why.
Home made shampoo recipe at the end
Shampoo Ingredients You Want to Avoid
By June Fakkert, Epoch Times | April 11, 2014
Most of us have a favorite shampoo. We’ve shopped around and found one that smells right and leaves our hair soft, full, tamed, shiny, and the like. However, we probably don’t know what’s in our preferred hair-care product because reading a shampoo label is like reading a foreign language.
For example, the chemical dimethicone (which makes hair shiny and easy to comb) is in many shampoos but is classified by the Canadian government as a possible toxin that warrants further study. How can we know if it’s safe?
In addition, there has been a lot of debate about the safety of sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES).
I asked board-certified hair transplant surgeon Dr. David Dorin his perspective on what shampoo ingredients we should avoid and why. The following is what Dr. Dorin had to say.
Ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate. Look for a shampoo that does not contain these ingredients, as they are harsh detergents.
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), another harsh detergent, is the agent in many shampoos that causes that foaming lather we often see in hair commercials.
What you don’t know is that exposing your hair to this chemical actually destroys it in the long run, stripping it of essential oils it needs to stay healthy, breaking down protein and halting healthy hair growth. Products containing SLS have a cleaning power that is overwhelming, stripping the hair.
Sodium Chloride. Better known as table salt, sodium chloride is used as a thickener in shampoos and conditioners containing sodium lauryl sulfate. Sodium chloride may also cause dry and itchy scalp in addition to hair loss. Also, this should be avoided in people who have keratin treatments, as it undoes the benefit faster.
Polyethelyne Glycol. Also called PEG/Polyethelyne or Polyoxyethelyne, this ingredient is included in shampoos as a thickening agent. It strips hair and skin of their natural moisture.
Diethanolamine (DEA) and Triethanolamine (TEA). Products containing DEA or TEA can cause scalp irritation and bad allergic reactions, and they also destroy all the good stuff in your hair (such as keratin), making your hair dry, brittle, and lifeless.
Parabens. Used to prolong shelf life of an average hair-care product, parabens like methylparaben and propylparaben are chemicals that are known for their toxic nature. Parabens not only irritate the skin—which can make your scalp unhealthy—they can also affect your hormonal balance, which can result in hair loss.
Formaldehyde. Excessive exposure to formaldehyde, which is found in some shampoos, may cause some hair loss.
Alcohol. Almost all hair-care products contain some form of alcohol, which can dry your hair out if it is in high concentrations. Stay clear of shampoos with alcohol listed as one of the first four ingredients, as this means that there is more [than usual] in the product.
Synthetic Fragrance or Parfum. This usually represents a complex mixture of dozens of chemicals. Some 3,000 chemicals are used in just one fragrance. Many fragrances are irritants and can cause the scalp to become irritated.
Synthetic Colors. Artificial colors are used widely in hair-care products for aesthetic purposes. These ingredients frequently appear as FD&C or D&C followed by a color and a number. Color pigments may cause skin sensitivity along with scalp irritation.
Propylene Glycol. Also known as the antifreeze you put in your car, propylene glycol is a common ingredient in shampoos and other personal care products to keep the product from freezing during shipping and storage. It can irritate skin, causing allergic reactions, and it alters skin structure.
Lanolin, Petroleum, and Mineral Oil. These ingredients are widely used in greases and pomades formulated for ethnic hair and offer no real moisturizing benefits. These ingredients actually weigh the hair down and prevent the natural oils produced by the scalp from being absorbed by the hair shaft.
Dimethicone. Dimethicone is a synthetic polymer and a form of silicone with two methyl groups attached (hence the name Di-methicone). It is usually used as a surface sealant in skin and hair products to coat surfaces in order to seal in moisture and act as a smoothing, texturizing additive.
Its safety has been called into question, as there are reports of people who react to this silicone derivative, which can cause irritation to the skin and scalp, resulting in chapped skin, rashes, burning, and itching.
Some people also report cystic acne, as dimethicone tends to clog pores and seal in oils and bacteria. It does not allow our skin and scalp to breathe, resulting in increased acne and irritation to the hair follicles, which can initiate hair shedding.
Questions still remain if in fact dimethicone can cause mutations and tumors in the skin and internal organs such as the liver and lymph nodes. To date, a causative relationship to its topical use has not been shown. But look for makeup, skin creams, and hair shampoos and conditioners that do not contain dimethicone.
The Sodium Sulfate Debate
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) is a surfactant, emulsifier, and a harsh detergent added to literally thousands of cleaners and cosmetic products and toiletries (shampoos, hair dyes, makeup, toothpaste, mouthwash, hand soaps, and laundry detergents).
SLS is derived from coconuts, but during the manufacturing process, it undergoes “ethoxylation,” which results in an unwanted byproduct—1,4 dioxane. This byproduct contamination is suspected to be carcinogenic. Although there are no definitive studies proving a causative relationship, there is enough data to suggest caution.
The same concern applies to sodium laureth sulfate (SLES). Not only does SLES contain 1,4 dioxane, but it also contains ethylene oxide, which is what the “E” stands for in SLES, and this, too, is an impurity that is considered a potential carcinogenic agent.
The key here is that there are thousands of hair and skin care products that contain these byproducts, but it is the continued gradual use and its ability to gain access to our bodies that causes the potential hazard.
In this case, not only do SLS and SLES contain the bad byproducts, but also their molecular size is small enough to get into our skin and scalp, giving the bad byproducts entry into our bodies.
Conversely there are other cleansers that contain a small amount of these bad byproducts, but their molecular size is much larger, and so they do not get into our bodies. Therefore, these pose much less concern and health risk. Regardless, both SLS and SLES are harsh detergents and are irritants because they gain access to our skin and scalp.
What Studies Say
The safety of SLS and SLES has been debated for a while now as thousands of small testing studies have been done, all with varying testing standards and therefore results. There still is no definitive clear-cut answer proving that the use of these chemicals in cosmetic products does cause disease.
However, I feel that there is enough evidence to at least classify these as mild irritants and harsh detergents that have a molecular size small enough to get into our skin and scalp.
I opt not to use these chemicals in my personal care. However, I am not an alarmist, so I am willing to use products that may have trace amounts of the bad byproducts (as there are in every industry) but which do not readily gain access to our bodies.
Shampoo the Doctor Ordered
For the past 12 years, I have dedicated my medical career to the practice of medical and cosmetic surgical hair restoration and related disorders. During this time, I have seen a need to develop a hair-care line based on research, literature review, scientific evidence, and clinical trials, and to avoid the above issues for my patients as well as to improve hair and scalp health.
The result was the development of Scientific Essentials Hair Care Line. This line addresses the issues discussed above and more.
Next week: Part 2 about what ingredients are good to have in your shampoo.
Dr. Robert Dorin has over 10 years experience helping New Yorkers restore and improve their hair. TrueDorin.com
____________________________
4 Hair-Protection Tips
1. Look for shampoos that do not contain ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate.
2. Look for shampoos that use a milder form of a cleanser such as sodium lauryl sulfoaccetate and sodium lauryl sulfosuccinate. These shampoos may not foam as much as shampoos that contain the harsher SLS or SLES, but they can efficiently cleanse the hair and scalp without overstripping your hair.
3. Look for a conditioner that does not contain dimethicone.
4. One of the best alternatives is to find a conditioner that utilizes 18-methyleicosanoic acid (18-MEA). This is one of the naturally occurring lipids our hair extrudes and coats itself with. When our hair elongates, the18-MEA is incorporated into our hair and acts as a natural sealer that helps balance the hair shaft’s moisture, increases the hair shaft’s integrity, and renders natural shine.
_________________________
Print this out and carry it in your wallet so it’s handy when you are shopping for shampoo.
Ingredients to Avoid in Your Shampoo
Alcohol when listed as one of the first four ingredients
Ammonium lauryl sulfate
Diethanolamine (DEA)
Dimethicone
Formaldehyde
Lanolin
Mineral oil
Parabens (methylparaben, propylparaben, for example)
Petroleum
Polyethelyne glycol (also called PEG/polyethelyne, or polyoxyethelyne)
Propylene glycol
Sodium chloride
Sodium laureth sulfate
Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)
Synthetic colors (often listed as FD&C or D&C followed by a color and a number)
Synthetic fragrance or parfum
Triethanolamine (TEA)
This list courtesy of Dr. Robert Dorin
Click: Dr Robert Dorin – New York Hair Transplant | IAHRS Memberwww.iahrs.org › Find a Doctor › New York Hair
Transplant Surgeons
click: Dr. Robert Dorin - Hair Transplant?www.hairtransplantnetwork.com/consult-a-physician/doctors.asp?DrID...
Robert J. Dorin, DO, ABHRS is recommended for hair restoration and hair transplants in New York, New York.
Dr. Dorin graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Bio-Chemistry from Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY in December 1993. Following his ...
Tags: hair health shampoo
Category: Health Alternative Health Good to Know
_________________________
Home made shampoo recipe
Not tested by STAF, Inc., yet - warning: use at your own risk
From the public:
"I make my own shampoo. Take 1/2 cup vegetable glycerin, 1/2 cup distilled water, 1/2 cup Bragg’s apple cider vinegar, and 1/2 cup Eco Store dish wash liquid ( all plant based). Mix together and put in pint bottle. It makes the most wonderful shampoo – shiny hair – no tangles. Can be used on pets also.
warning: use at your own risk
click: Vegetable Glycerin
click: EcoStore USA Plant Based Dishwash Liquid review -
______________________________________________________________________________________
.
Article 1 of 2 (Article 2 of 2 next below)
5 Reasons Why You Don’t Need to Count Calories Ever Again
If you think that a calorie is a calorie – and it doesn’t matter if it comes from kale or cookies, then it’s time to rethink what you think you know about calories. Contrary to what your Momma, track coach or even Doctor led you to believe, all calories are NOT created equal, and thinking you’ll lose weight simply by counting them or cutting them will likely leave you hungry, irritable, malnourished and not much lighter than you were when you started. So instead of slashing and burning the caloric field, let’s level it with the following food for thought:
1. All Calories Are Not Created Equal
Thinking that all calories are the same is an antiquated notion. Granted, by definition calories represent units of energy provided by a particular food, but thinking they’re all alike is like saying a diamond and a rhinestone are the same because they both glitter. With calories, as with diamonds, it’s the quality that matters most and enhances their value.
2. Crap is Crap, No Matter How Many Calories are Involved
Calories from nutrient rich foods vs. nutritionally-bankrupt ones from processed or refined carbs will have different effects on the body. Healthy, nutrient rich foods will keep hunger at bay, help maintain stable blood sugar levels, minimize cravings and enable your brain to signal your belly that it’s full. Nutrient poor foods will have the opposite effect, wreaking hormonal havoc, spiking insulin, setting off cravings, dulling satiety signals and encouraging overeating. In other words, nutrient dense foods help keep weight in check naturally, no calculator required.
3. Think of Counting Calories as Nutritional Navel-gazing
Tracking every scrap that goes in your mouth may give you a feeling of control over your food but it doesn’t mean you’re getting enough of the nutrients your body needs. Take for example those who diet on processed, portion-controlled, “diet” microwaveable meals (you know who you are). Aside from being loaded with chemicals, GMOs, allergenic and inflammatory ingredients, these crappy excuses for food don’t deliver enough protein, fiber, good fats or even volume to make you feel full, much less healthy and vibrant. The result is that you’re hungry, mentally foggy, and malnourished, possibly setting the stage for a host of health problems down the line – but you do know how many calories you ate getting there. For what that’s worth.
4. For the weight loss the classic caloric restriction belongs to garbage. While it does work for a time, it’s not recommended. It’s hard to sustain in the long-term, and it won’t make you feel energetic or vibrant in the short-term, again because you’re not supporting your body with enough essential nutrients. Worse, these crash diets actually slow down metabolism, lowering your food burning furnace, an adjustment your body makes, to conserve energy and prevent starvation. So what’s the work-around? Trade hunger, calorie-counting and denial, for filling, nutrient-dense, organic or local produce, poultry, pasture-raised meats and wild fish. Eat them until you are full, not until you’ve hit some abstract, virtually meaningless magic number. By eating these kinds of foods, your body will tell you when you’ve had enough. Refined carbs like wheat, grains and sugar – the crystal meth of the supermarket aisle – never will.
5. Put Away the Abacus*) and Fill Up on the Right Stuff
To curb appetite, feed your body with foods that fill your belly, send the message of satiety to the brain and supply the body with health-enhancing nutrients. There is abundant evidence to show that low-carb diets generally satisfy far more effectively than high-carb ones. At the top of the satiety superstar list are the “good” fats like coconut oil, avocados, nuts, wild fish and grass fed, organic meats, which help balance hormonal and metabolic responses, in addition to being delicious additions to any plate. Next up: non starchy vegetables, which are nutrient dense, while adding belly-filling bulk. And last but not least, is protein, which is extremely helpful in creating feelings of satiety and takes more energy for the body to metabolize. Bottom line, all three will help reduce appetite with little effort, blood sugar spikes and no counting. All you need to do is enjoy them.
To whip your fridge into shape quickly, easily and healthfully, checkout the essentials of a fantastic diet here.
*)
The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.
Click: Wikipedia (Article 2 of 2 next below)
____________________
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
Lose weight! Boost immunity! Improve your love life!
If there were a pharmaceutical drug that did all three, there’d be a stampede*) to the pharmacy, but for now, no such pill exists. My advice? Build your own – not a pill, but a plan – an eating strategy that packs power, nutritional value and a host of benefits into every bite. Where to start? Simply load up on the “Superfine 9” – nine of the most nutritionally valuable foods you can buy. The 9 are all in this article 2 of 2.
*) stampede = (1) a mass movement of people at a common impulse, (2) a situation in which a lot of people try to do the same thing at the same time, (2) an occurrence in which a large group of frightened or excited animals or people run together in a wild and uncontrolled way to escape from something, get out of a place, etc.
What makes them super? Few calories, low in sugar and salt plus lots of soluble fiber, nutrients, and health-boosting phytochemicals*). Even better – not a drop of guilt should you over-indulge! If you’re interested in looking great, feeling great, and weighing less, the real “magic pill” can be found in the organic produce aisle and at the seafood counter.
*) phytochemicals = Phytochemicals are chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants. Some are responsible for color and other organoleptic**) properties, such as the deep purple of blueberries and the smell of garlic. Click: Wikipedia
**) being, affecting, or relating to qualities (as taste, color, odor, and feel) of a substance (as a food or drug) that stimulate the sense organs
click: Organoleptic - Wikipedia
1.) LEAFY GREENS
What’s so amazing about the leafys is that calorie for calorie, they deliver more nutrients than just about any other food on the planet. Loaded with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals, leafy greens stock your body with the artillery needed to fight off potential killers like heart disease and cancer. Simply put: leafys benefit virtually every cell you’ve got!
My favorite leafy greens are kale, spinach, Swiss chard, mustard, and dandelion greens because they’re both nutritious AND delicious. You can toss them into virtually anything to boost nutrition, but be sure to give them a good rinse first. Raw or cooked, on their own or added to smoothies, omelets and sauces, leafys add health-sustaining doses of vitamins A, C, K, folate, potassium, and calcium to every meal.
For an easy added boost try greens powder in your smoothies.
2.) CRUCIFEROUS VEGGIES
Want to lower your cancer risk? Put the cruciferous on your list, namely broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and bok choy. Research suggests cruciferous veggies have the ability to inhibit the growth of some types of cancer cells and even stop others by reducing the production of free radicals.
How to stuff more of cruciferous veggies into your diet? Don’t wait ‘til dinner, start your day with them – try cruciferous veggies at breakfast with a recipe like this delicious Brussles sprouts hash – and put more healthy nutrients on your plate first thing, at the start of your day.
3.) AVOCADO
Don’t be afraid of an avocado because you think it’s fattening! The often over-looked avocado is a delicious, creamy superfood that’s simply too health-boosting to skip. The myriad of healthy fats and nutrients found in avocados – oleic acid, lutein, folate, vitamin E, monounsaturated fats and glutathione among them – can help protect your body from heart disease, cancer, degenerative eye and brain diseases. Avocados also taste great and are easily integrated into any meal – or even a fruit smoothie. Add a half an avocado to smoothies to add creamy texture and a powerful nutritional boost, or enjoy an avocado half as a nutritious “side” to your morning omelet instead of potatoes or toast.
4.) BLUEBERRIES
Tasty, sweet and packed with disease-fighting phytochemicals, flavinoids and soluble fiber – blueberries have the power to help prevent serious diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stomach ulcers and high blood pressure. In sum, blueberries are nearly miraculous! They also help tame inflammation throughout the body and can reduce “bad” cholesterol – so dig in for better health.
We love to blend blueberries into our Sustain smoothies, but while most of us think of blueberries for breakfast, they’re also perfect for dessert. Having a snack attack? Instead of ice cream, curl up with a small bowl of frozen blueberries and enjoy popping ‘em in your mouth, one by one.
5.) BEANS
Dense and delicious, beans help raise levels of the hormone leptin which curbs appetite. They also deliver a powerful combination of B vitamins, calcium, potassium and folate. All of this good stuff will help maintain healthy brain, cell and skin function and even helps to reduce blood pressure and stroke risk. Pretty amazing, eh? To increase your intake, trying eating beans as a filling side-dish instead of bread or potatoes. They’ll help keep you feeling fuller longer and deliver an excellent source of sugar-free energy through much of your day.
If you’re intimidated by beans, here’s a very comprehensive look at varieties, preparation methods, and tips for easy digestion.
6.) WALNUTS
Walnuts — you don’t need to eat a lot of them to tap into their power. Just a small handful a day will deliver a healthy dose of omega-3’s, alpha-linolenic acid, melatonin, copper, manganese and the hard-to-find gamma-tocopherol form of vitamin E which helps protect your heart. Walnuts on your plate may also protect your brain and help slow the onset of
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Not a nut fan? Then try adding chopped walnuts to cereal or fruit, or blend in 2 tablespoons of organic walnut butter to fruit smoothies. Either way, you’ll still reap the benefits of the mighty walnut.
7.) WILD SALMON
Wild salmon is a rich source of protein, vitamin D, selenium, B2, B3, B6 and B12 and those all-important omega-3 fatty acids. So exactly what can wild salmon do for you? Quite a bit, including protection from cancer, cardiovascular problems, macular degeneration, depression, and cognitive decline – that’s a lot of pluses in a pretty compact package. The best salmon to buy? Wild caught, Alaskan salmon, which routinely ranks low in contaminants and high in nutrients. Wild salmon’s benefits start to kick in at about 2 servings a week, so there’s no need to over-do it.
8.) CHOCOLATE
Dairy free chocolate, in moderation, is a delicious treat that actually does a body good. It can help elevate mood, improve blood flow and even lower blood pressure. It helps reduce inflammation and LDL “bad cholesterol,” and it’s loaded with antioxidants, which can help prevent cell damage, degenerative diseases and even cancer – all of which is good news for chocolate lovers. Keep in mind though, chocolate’s numerous health benefits are not a license to set up camp in the candy aisle. You have to manage your “dose,” keeping yours to a modest 1 oz. serving, a few times a week. To maximize chocolate’s benefits, look for high-quality, dairy-free dark chocolate that’s at least 70% cocoa – and enjoy!
9.) CHIA SEEDS
"Chia" means strength"Chia" means strengthThe Chia seed has a rich history behind it that goes back over a thousand years ago, when it was used in the diets of ancient Mayans and Aztecs. Chia means “strength” in the Mayan language. Aztec warriors used the chia seed to boost energy and increase stamina
click: Mayan languages - Wikipedia
Chia seeds are tiny, nutritional dynamos – in fact, they’re the single richest source of plant-based omega-3 fatty acids you can buy. They’re also loaded with antioxidants, protein and minerals, plus soluble and insoluble fiber to help keep your digestion moving in the right direction. What’s more, chia seeds have an unusual property – they swell to more than 5 times their weight in liquid, so adding a spoonful or two to meals will help you feel fuller faster. How to eat ‘em? They’re virtually tasteless, so you can drop a spoonful or two into just about anything, including smoothies, sauces, soups and salads. But my favorite way to take advantage of this unusual superfood is to combine it with another superfood, i.e. chocolate, dig into a serving of Chocolate Chia Pudding.
Click:
shampoo ingredients to avoid
- Shampoo Ingredients You Want to Avoid
The Epoch Times - Friday April 11, 2014
I asked board-certified hair transplant surg eon Dr. David Dorin his perspective on what shampoo ingredients we should avoid and why.
----
same:
Shampoo Ingredients You Want to Avoid The Epoch Times-16 minutes ago
I asked board-certified hair transplant surgeon Dr. David Dorin his perspective on whatshampoo ingredients we should avoid and why.
Home made shampoo recipe at the end
Shampoo Ingredients You Want to Avoid
By June Fakkert, Epoch Times | April 11, 2014
Most of us have a favorite shampoo. We’ve shopped around and found one that smells right and leaves our hair soft, full, tamed, shiny, and the like. However, we probably don’t know what’s in our preferred hair-care product because reading a shampoo label is like reading a foreign language.
For example, the chemical dimethicone (which makes hair shiny and easy to comb) is in many shampoos but is classified by the Canadian government as a possible toxin that warrants further study. How can we know if it’s safe?
In addition, there has been a lot of debate about the safety of sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) and sodium laureth sulfate (SLES).
I asked board-certified hair transplant surgeon Dr. David Dorin his perspective on what shampoo ingredients we should avoid and why. The following is what Dr. Dorin had to say.
Ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate. Look for a shampoo that does not contain these ingredients, as they are harsh detergents.
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate. Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS), another harsh detergent, is the agent in many shampoos that causes that foaming lather we often see in hair commercials.
What you don’t know is that exposing your hair to this chemical actually destroys it in the long run, stripping it of essential oils it needs to stay healthy, breaking down protein and halting healthy hair growth. Products containing SLS have a cleaning power that is overwhelming, stripping the hair.
Sodium Chloride. Better known as table salt, sodium chloride is used as a thickener in shampoos and conditioners containing sodium lauryl sulfate. Sodium chloride may also cause dry and itchy scalp in addition to hair loss. Also, this should be avoided in people who have keratin treatments, as it undoes the benefit faster.
Polyethelyne Glycol. Also called PEG/Polyethelyne or Polyoxyethelyne, this ingredient is included in shampoos as a thickening agent. It strips hair and skin of their natural moisture.
Diethanolamine (DEA) and Triethanolamine (TEA). Products containing DEA or TEA can cause scalp irritation and bad allergic reactions, and they also destroy all the good stuff in your hair (such as keratin), making your hair dry, brittle, and lifeless.
Parabens. Used to prolong shelf life of an average hair-care product, parabens like methylparaben and propylparaben are chemicals that are known for their toxic nature. Parabens not only irritate the skin—which can make your scalp unhealthy—they can also affect your hormonal balance, which can result in hair loss.
Formaldehyde. Excessive exposure to formaldehyde, which is found in some shampoos, may cause some hair loss.
Alcohol. Almost all hair-care products contain some form of alcohol, which can dry your hair out if it is in high concentrations. Stay clear of shampoos with alcohol listed as one of the first four ingredients, as this means that there is more [than usual] in the product.
Synthetic Fragrance or Parfum. This usually represents a complex mixture of dozens of chemicals. Some 3,000 chemicals are used in just one fragrance. Many fragrances are irritants and can cause the scalp to become irritated.
Synthetic Colors. Artificial colors are used widely in hair-care products for aesthetic purposes. These ingredients frequently appear as FD&C or D&C followed by a color and a number. Color pigments may cause skin sensitivity along with scalp irritation.
Propylene Glycol. Also known as the antifreeze you put in your car, propylene glycol is a common ingredient in shampoos and other personal care products to keep the product from freezing during shipping and storage. It can irritate skin, causing allergic reactions, and it alters skin structure.
Lanolin, Petroleum, and Mineral Oil. These ingredients are widely used in greases and pomades formulated for ethnic hair and offer no real moisturizing benefits. These ingredients actually weigh the hair down and prevent the natural oils produced by the scalp from being absorbed by the hair shaft.
Dimethicone. Dimethicone is a synthetic polymer and a form of silicone with two methyl groups attached (hence the name Di-methicone). It is usually used as a surface sealant in skin and hair products to coat surfaces in order to seal in moisture and act as a smoothing, texturizing additive.
Its safety has been called into question, as there are reports of people who react to this silicone derivative, which can cause irritation to the skin and scalp, resulting in chapped skin, rashes, burning, and itching.
Some people also report cystic acne, as dimethicone tends to clog pores and seal in oils and bacteria. It does not allow our skin and scalp to breathe, resulting in increased acne and irritation to the hair follicles, which can initiate hair shedding.
Questions still remain if in fact dimethicone can cause mutations and tumors in the skin and internal organs such as the liver and lymph nodes. To date, a causative relationship to its topical use has not been shown. But look for makeup, skin creams, and hair shampoos and conditioners that do not contain dimethicone.
The Sodium Sulfate Debate
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) is a surfactant, emulsifier, and a harsh detergent added to literally thousands of cleaners and cosmetic products and toiletries (shampoos, hair dyes, makeup, toothpaste, mouthwash, hand soaps, and laundry detergents).
SLS is derived from coconuts, but during the manufacturing process, it undergoes “ethoxylation,” which results in an unwanted byproduct—1,4 dioxane. This byproduct contamination is suspected to be carcinogenic. Although there are no definitive studies proving a causative relationship, there is enough data to suggest caution.
The same concern applies to sodium laureth sulfate (SLES). Not only does SLES contain 1,4 dioxane, but it also contains ethylene oxide, which is what the “E” stands for in SLES, and this, too, is an impurity that is considered a potential carcinogenic agent.
The key here is that there are thousands of hair and skin care products that contain these byproducts, but it is the continued gradual use and its ability to gain access to our bodies that causes the potential hazard.
In this case, not only do SLS and SLES contain the bad byproducts, but also their molecular size is small enough to get into our skin and scalp, giving the bad byproducts entry into our bodies.
Conversely there are other cleansers that contain a small amount of these bad byproducts, but their molecular size is much larger, and so they do not get into our bodies. Therefore, these pose much less concern and health risk. Regardless, both SLS and SLES are harsh detergents and are irritants because they gain access to our skin and scalp.
What Studies Say
The safety of SLS and SLES has been debated for a while now as thousands of small testing studies have been done, all with varying testing standards and therefore results. There still is no definitive clear-cut answer proving that the use of these chemicals in cosmetic products does cause disease.
However, I feel that there is enough evidence to at least classify these as mild irritants and harsh detergents that have a molecular size small enough to get into our skin and scalp.
I opt not to use these chemicals in my personal care. However, I am not an alarmist, so I am willing to use products that may have trace amounts of the bad byproducts (as there are in every industry) but which do not readily gain access to our bodies.
Shampoo the Doctor Ordered
For the past 12 years, I have dedicated my medical career to the practice of medical and cosmetic surgical hair restoration and related disorders. During this time, I have seen a need to develop a hair-care line based on research, literature review, scientific evidence, and clinical trials, and to avoid the above issues for my patients as well as to improve hair and scalp health.
The result was the development of Scientific Essentials Hair Care Line. This line addresses the issues discussed above and more.
Next week: Part 2 about what ingredients are good to have in your shampoo.
Dr. Robert Dorin has over 10 years experience helping New Yorkers restore and improve their hair. TrueDorin.com
____________________________
4 Hair-Protection Tips
1. Look for shampoos that do not contain ammonium lauryl sulfate, sodium lauryl sulfate or sodium laureth sulfate.
2. Look for shampoos that use a milder form of a cleanser such as sodium lauryl sulfoaccetate and sodium lauryl sulfosuccinate. These shampoos may not foam as much as shampoos that contain the harsher SLS or SLES, but they can efficiently cleanse the hair and scalp without overstripping your hair.
3. Look for a conditioner that does not contain dimethicone.
4. One of the best alternatives is to find a conditioner that utilizes 18-methyleicosanoic acid (18-MEA). This is one of the naturally occurring lipids our hair extrudes and coats itself with. When our hair elongates, the18-MEA is incorporated into our hair and acts as a natural sealer that helps balance the hair shaft’s moisture, increases the hair shaft’s integrity, and renders natural shine.
_________________________
Print this out and carry it in your wallet so it’s handy when you are shopping for shampoo.
Ingredients to Avoid in Your Shampoo
Alcohol when listed as one of the first four ingredients
Ammonium lauryl sulfate
Diethanolamine (DEA)
Dimethicone
Formaldehyde
Lanolin
Mineral oil
Parabens (methylparaben, propylparaben, for example)
Petroleum
Polyethelyne glycol (also called PEG/polyethelyne, or polyoxyethelyne)
Propylene glycol
Sodium chloride
Sodium laureth sulfate
Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)
Synthetic colors (often listed as FD&C or D&C followed by a color and a number)
Synthetic fragrance or parfum
Triethanolamine (TEA)
This list courtesy of Dr. Robert Dorin
Click: Dr Robert Dorin – New York Hair Transplant | IAHRS Memberwww.iahrs.org › Find a Doctor › New York Hair
Transplant Surgeons
click: Dr. Robert Dorin - Hair Transplant?www.hairtransplantnetwork.com/consult-a-physician/doctors.asp?DrID...
Robert J. Dorin, DO, ABHRS is recommended for hair restoration and hair transplants in New York, New York.
Dr. Dorin graduated Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Bio-Chemistry from Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY in December 1993. Following his ...
Tags: hair health shampoo
Category: Health Alternative Health Good to Know
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Home made shampoo recipe
Not tested by STAF, Inc., yet - warning: use at your own risk
From the public:
"I make my own shampoo. Take 1/2 cup vegetable glycerin, 1/2 cup distilled water, 1/2 cup Bragg’s apple cider vinegar, and 1/2 cup Eco Store dish wash liquid ( all plant based). Mix together and put in pint bottle. It makes the most wonderful shampoo – shiny hair – no tangles. Can be used on pets also.
warning: use at your own risk
click: Vegetable Glycerin
click: EcoStore USA Plant Based Dishwash Liquid review -
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- 5 Reasons Why You Don't Need
- to Count Calories Ever Again
www.drfranklipman.com/5-reasons-why-you-dont-need-to-cou...
by Frank Lipman - in 108 Google+ circles
If you think that a calorie is a calorie – and it doesn't matter if it comes from kale or cookies, then it's time to rethink what you think you know aboutcalories. - 5 Reasons Why You Don't Need to Count Calories Ever Againwww.theepochtimes.com/.../607265-5-reasons-why-you-dont-need-to-c...
5 days ago - If you think that a calorie is a calorie – and it doesn't matter if it comes from kale or cookies, then it's time to rethink what you think you know ... - 11 reasons people think calories don't count– and why they ...
evidencemag.com/calories-count/
by Armi Legge
Jan 20, 2014 - Once again, people claim this is proof that calories don'tcount. ... Myth #5: Your metabolism slows when you cut calories, so cuttingcalories doesn't work. .... Supplements like CLA have never been shown tocause significant ... - 5 Reasons To Never Count Another Calorie - Prevention.comwww.prevention.com/.../5-reasons-never-count-another-calori...
Prevention
Here are 5 reasons why counting calories doesn't lead to weight loss. ... In fact, it's one of the worst strategies you can use when you want to lose weight. - 6 Reasons to NOT Count Calories - Stonesoupthestonesoup.com/blog/2013/10/6-reasons-to-not-count-calories/
Oct 1, 2013 - Counting calories encourages you to eat packaged processed food. ...5. Calorie restriction doesn't work for maintaining weight loss in the long term. ... We don't just eat because our bodies need fuel. .... Again, it's that safeguard that keeps me balanced. 5 ... This may be my favorite post you have ever done. - Myth: Eat Fewer Calories If You Want to Lose Weight ...
modernhealthmonk.com/low-calorie-myth/
by Alexander Heyne - in 140 Google+ circles
Just counting calories won't matter much unless you look at the kinds of .... One of the main reasons we get fatter as we age is due to the decrease in muscle mass ... So here's what I give you for today, the new 5 commandments of your health. .... you have to introduce “cheat” meals to stock back up again or you don't have ... __________________________________
Article 1 of 2 (Article 2 of 2 next below)
5 Reasons Why You Don’t Need to Count Calories Ever Again
If you think that a calorie is a calorie – and it doesn’t matter if it comes from kale or cookies, then it’s time to rethink what you think you know about calories. Contrary to what your Momma, track coach or even Doctor led you to believe, all calories are NOT created equal, and thinking you’ll lose weight simply by counting them or cutting them will likely leave you hungry, irritable, malnourished and not much lighter than you were when you started. So instead of slashing and burning the caloric field, let’s level it with the following food for thought:
1. All Calories Are Not Created Equal
Thinking that all calories are the same is an antiquated notion. Granted, by definition calories represent units of energy provided by a particular food, but thinking they’re all alike is like saying a diamond and a rhinestone are the same because they both glitter. With calories, as with diamonds, it’s the quality that matters most and enhances their value.
2. Crap is Crap, No Matter How Many Calories are Involved
Calories from nutrient rich foods vs. nutritionally-bankrupt ones from processed or refined carbs will have different effects on the body. Healthy, nutrient rich foods will keep hunger at bay, help maintain stable blood sugar levels, minimize cravings and enable your brain to signal your belly that it’s full. Nutrient poor foods will have the opposite effect, wreaking hormonal havoc, spiking insulin, setting off cravings, dulling satiety signals and encouraging overeating. In other words, nutrient dense foods help keep weight in check naturally, no calculator required.
3. Think of Counting Calories as Nutritional Navel-gazing
Tracking every scrap that goes in your mouth may give you a feeling of control over your food but it doesn’t mean you’re getting enough of the nutrients your body needs. Take for example those who diet on processed, portion-controlled, “diet” microwaveable meals (you know who you are). Aside from being loaded with chemicals, GMOs, allergenic and inflammatory ingredients, these crappy excuses for food don’t deliver enough protein, fiber, good fats or even volume to make you feel full, much less healthy and vibrant. The result is that you’re hungry, mentally foggy, and malnourished, possibly setting the stage for a host of health problems down the line – but you do know how many calories you ate getting there. For what that’s worth.
4. For the weight loss the classic caloric restriction belongs to garbage. While it does work for a time, it’s not recommended. It’s hard to sustain in the long-term, and it won’t make you feel energetic or vibrant in the short-term, again because you’re not supporting your body with enough essential nutrients. Worse, these crash diets actually slow down metabolism, lowering your food burning furnace, an adjustment your body makes, to conserve energy and prevent starvation. So what’s the work-around? Trade hunger, calorie-counting and denial, for filling, nutrient-dense, organic or local produce, poultry, pasture-raised meats and wild fish. Eat them until you are full, not until you’ve hit some abstract, virtually meaningless magic number. By eating these kinds of foods, your body will tell you when you’ve had enough. Refined carbs like wheat, grains and sugar – the crystal meth of the supermarket aisle – never will.
5. Put Away the Abacus*) and Fill Up on the Right Stuff
To curb appetite, feed your body with foods that fill your belly, send the message of satiety to the brain and supply the body with health-enhancing nutrients. There is abundant evidence to show that low-carb diets generally satisfy far more effectively than high-carb ones. At the top of the satiety superstar list are the “good” fats like coconut oil, avocados, nuts, wild fish and grass fed, organic meats, which help balance hormonal and metabolic responses, in addition to being delicious additions to any plate. Next up: non starchy vegetables, which are nutrient dense, while adding belly-filling bulk. And last but not least, is protein, which is extremely helpful in creating feelings of satiety and takes more energy for the body to metabolize. Bottom line, all three will help reduce appetite with little effort, blood sugar spikes and no counting. All you need to do is enjoy them.
To whip your fridge into shape quickly, easily and healthfully, checkout the essentials of a fantastic diet here.
*)
The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use centuries before the adoption of the written modern numeral system and is still widely used by merchants, traders and clerks in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.
Click: Wikipedia (Article 2 of 2 next below)
____________________
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
Lose weight! Boost immunity! Improve your love life!
If there were a pharmaceutical drug that did all three, there’d be a stampede*) to the pharmacy, but for now, no such pill exists. My advice? Build your own – not a pill, but a plan – an eating strategy that packs power, nutritional value and a host of benefits into every bite. Where to start? Simply load up on the “Superfine 9” – nine of the most nutritionally valuable foods you can buy. The 9 are all in this article 2 of 2.
*) stampede = (1) a mass movement of people at a common impulse, (2) a situation in which a lot of people try to do the same thing at the same time, (2) an occurrence in which a large group of frightened or excited animals or people run together in a wild and uncontrolled way to escape from something, get out of a place, etc.
What makes them super? Few calories, low in sugar and salt plus lots of soluble fiber, nutrients, and health-boosting phytochemicals*). Even better – not a drop of guilt should you over-indulge! If you’re interested in looking great, feeling great, and weighing less, the real “magic pill” can be found in the organic produce aisle and at the seafood counter.
*) phytochemicals = Phytochemicals are chemical compounds that occur naturally in plants. Some are responsible for color and other organoleptic**) properties, such as the deep purple of blueberries and the smell of garlic. Click: Wikipedia
**) being, affecting, or relating to qualities (as taste, color, odor, and feel) of a substance (as a food or drug) that stimulate the sense organs
click: Organoleptic - Wikipedia
1.) LEAFY GREENS
What’s so amazing about the leafys is that calorie for calorie, they deliver more nutrients than just about any other food on the planet. Loaded with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals, leafy greens stock your body with the artillery needed to fight off potential killers like heart disease and cancer. Simply put: leafys benefit virtually every cell you’ve got!
My favorite leafy greens are kale, spinach, Swiss chard, mustard, and dandelion greens because they’re both nutritious AND delicious. You can toss them into virtually anything to boost nutrition, but be sure to give them a good rinse first. Raw or cooked, on their own or added to smoothies, omelets and sauces, leafys add health-sustaining doses of vitamins A, C, K, folate, potassium, and calcium to every meal.
For an easy added boost try greens powder in your smoothies.
2.) CRUCIFEROUS VEGGIES
Want to lower your cancer risk? Put the cruciferous on your list, namely broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and bok choy. Research suggests cruciferous veggies have the ability to inhibit the growth of some types of cancer cells and even stop others by reducing the production of free radicals.
How to stuff more of cruciferous veggies into your diet? Don’t wait ‘til dinner, start your day with them – try cruciferous veggies at breakfast with a recipe like this delicious Brussles sprouts hash – and put more healthy nutrients on your plate first thing, at the start of your day.
3.) AVOCADO
Don’t be afraid of an avocado because you think it’s fattening! The often over-looked avocado is a delicious, creamy superfood that’s simply too health-boosting to skip. The myriad of healthy fats and nutrients found in avocados – oleic acid, lutein, folate, vitamin E, monounsaturated fats and glutathione among them – can help protect your body from heart disease, cancer, degenerative eye and brain diseases. Avocados also taste great and are easily integrated into any meal – or even a fruit smoothie. Add a half an avocado to smoothies to add creamy texture and a powerful nutritional boost, or enjoy an avocado half as a nutritious “side” to your morning omelet instead of potatoes or toast.
4.) BLUEBERRIES
Tasty, sweet and packed with disease-fighting phytochemicals, flavinoids and soluble fiber – blueberries have the power to help prevent serious diseases like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stomach ulcers and high blood pressure. In sum, blueberries are nearly miraculous! They also help tame inflammation throughout the body and can reduce “bad” cholesterol – so dig in for better health.
We love to blend blueberries into our Sustain smoothies, but while most of us think of blueberries for breakfast, they’re also perfect for dessert. Having a snack attack? Instead of ice cream, curl up with a small bowl of frozen blueberries and enjoy popping ‘em in your mouth, one by one.
5.) BEANS
Dense and delicious, beans help raise levels of the hormone leptin which curbs appetite. They also deliver a powerful combination of B vitamins, calcium, potassium and folate. All of this good stuff will help maintain healthy brain, cell and skin function and even helps to reduce blood pressure and stroke risk. Pretty amazing, eh? To increase your intake, trying eating beans as a filling side-dish instead of bread or potatoes. They’ll help keep you feeling fuller longer and deliver an excellent source of sugar-free energy through much of your day.
If you’re intimidated by beans, here’s a very comprehensive look at varieties, preparation methods, and tips for easy digestion.
6.) WALNUTS
Walnuts — you don’t need to eat a lot of them to tap into their power. Just a small handful a day will deliver a healthy dose of omega-3’s, alpha-linolenic acid, melatonin, copper, manganese and the hard-to-find gamma-tocopherol form of vitamin E which helps protect your heart. Walnuts on your plate may also protect your brain and help slow the onset of
Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Not a nut fan? Then try adding chopped walnuts to cereal or fruit, or blend in 2 tablespoons of organic walnut butter to fruit smoothies. Either way, you’ll still reap the benefits of the mighty walnut.
7.) WILD SALMON
Wild salmon is a rich source of protein, vitamin D, selenium, B2, B3, B6 and B12 and those all-important omega-3 fatty acids. So exactly what can wild salmon do for you? Quite a bit, including protection from cancer, cardiovascular problems, macular degeneration, depression, and cognitive decline – that’s a lot of pluses in a pretty compact package. The best salmon to buy? Wild caught, Alaskan salmon, which routinely ranks low in contaminants and high in nutrients. Wild salmon’s benefits start to kick in at about 2 servings a week, so there’s no need to over-do it.
8.) CHOCOLATE
Dairy free chocolate, in moderation, is a delicious treat that actually does a body good. It can help elevate mood, improve blood flow and even lower blood pressure. It helps reduce inflammation and LDL “bad cholesterol,” and it’s loaded with antioxidants, which can help prevent cell damage, degenerative diseases and even cancer – all of which is good news for chocolate lovers. Keep in mind though, chocolate’s numerous health benefits are not a license to set up camp in the candy aisle. You have to manage your “dose,” keeping yours to a modest 1 oz. serving, a few times a week. To maximize chocolate’s benefits, look for high-quality, dairy-free dark chocolate that’s at least 70% cocoa – and enjoy!
9.) CHIA SEEDS
"Chia" means strength"Chia" means strengthThe Chia seed has a rich history behind it that goes back over a thousand years ago, when it was used in the diets of ancient Mayans and Aztecs. Chia means “strength” in the Mayan language. Aztec warriors used the chia seed to boost energy and increase stamina
click: Mayan languages - Wikipedia
Chia seeds are tiny, nutritional dynamos – in fact, they’re the single richest source of plant-based omega-3 fatty acids you can buy. They’re also loaded with antioxidants, protein and minerals, plus soluble and insoluble fiber to help keep your digestion moving in the right direction. What’s more, chia seeds have an unusual property – they swell to more than 5 times their weight in liquid, so adding a spoonful or two to meals will help you feel fuller faster. How to eat ‘em? They’re virtually tasteless, so you can drop a spoonful or two into just about anything, including smoothies, sauces, soups and salads. But my favorite way to take advantage of this unusual superfood is to combine it with another superfood, i.e. chocolate, dig into a serving of Chocolate Chia Pudding.
Click:
The Smart Way to Do Fracking - Wall Street Journal
online.wsj.com/.../articles/SB200014240...
The Wall Street Journal
Apr 5, 2014 - New York state has a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. So do Los Angeles, Quebec and France. Polls show rising opposition to this ...
New York state has a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. So do Los Angeles, Quebec and France. Polls show rising opposition to this controversial oil field technique, which cracks open rocks to free oil and natural gas, and some critics want it banned unless it can be proven safe.
Meanwhile, U.S. energy companies are drilling and fracking about 100 wells every day across much of the country. Whether you think that it is an economic godsend or fear that it is an environmental disaster, whether you spell it fracking or fraccing (as the energy industry prefers), that is a lot of holes in the ground.
Fracking is a fairly straightforward process. You drill a well straight down for a few thousand feet and gradually turn the shaft until it runs horizontally through the shale. Then you isolate a section of the rock and inject water, sand and chemicals under high pressure. This makes the rock fracture—hence the name. The sand stays behind to prop open the new network of fractures, and oil and gas flow out.
Like it or not, fracking will continue. It is big business for giants such as to smaller firms such as . From railroads to petrochemicals, many sectors of the economy are reliant on the business of the energy boom, creating a broad coalition to support it. Fracking generates middle-class jobs and pays checks to mineral-rights owners. It can help U.S. national security by making the country less reliant on foreign oil, and it provides plenty of relatively low-carbon, affordable energy that makes North America the envy of the world.
But fracking is an industrial process, and its many critics have some real and legitimate concerns about its impact on the environment and the communities near the wells.
Since we're fracking so much, what can we do to make it safer for people and the planet? I've asked this question, in one form or another, to hundreds of engineers, executives, academics and environmentalists since touring my first frack site more than a decade ago. I've heard many answers. Here are three that seem eminently reasonable.
Fix the leaks.
Natural gas is an efficient fuel, and burning it emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than burning coal. But natural gas is mostly methane, a very potent contributor to climate change. If too much methane leaks, natural gas stops being part of a climate solution and becomes part of the problem.
We don't really know how much methane is leaking from wells and pipelines. A recent article in the journal Science suggested that leakage rates are well above current federal estimates.
"If you want to argue that gas is part of the climate solution, you have to deal with methane leakage," says Hal Harvey, chief executive of Energy Innovations LLC, a policy and technology consultant. The good news, he adds: "It's a plumbing problem. It's not thermodynamics." Making a power plant twice as efficient is difficult engineering; cutting methane leakage in half isn't. You just find the leaks and plug them.
Some companies are ready to comply. "When you keep methane in the pipe, not only is it the right thing to do, but you capture it for sale," says Ted Brown, senior vice president of The Houston company is the largest oil and gas producer in Colorado, which recently proposed new air-emission rules. Noble plans to hire 16 full-time employees to use infrared cameras to find leaks around its wells and pipelines.
Methane also contributes to smog, and Denver's air quality is deteriorating. Tackling smog would create a visible sign of the industry's efforts to run a tighter ship.
Get better data.
Fights over whether fracking contaminates groundwater are bitter and divisive. Many people who live near fracking sites worry that their health is at risk. The only way to take these concerns off the table—or fix problems as they arise—is to require more testing, especially before drilling starts.
The Center for Sustainable Shale Development, a joint effort of major operators, environmental groups and foundations, says that it is critical to test groundwater before drilling begins and then for at least a year afterward.
"We want to say, 'Here's the data, it speaks for itself,' " says Susan Packard LeGros, executive director of the group, which counts , the Environmental Defense Fund and the William Penn Foundation among its partners.
Requiring independent tests of water before drilling begins makes sense, says Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. "It would be good for companies because it protects them from abusive false claims," he says. "It would also give the local community peace of mind and evidence to take action if they need to take action."
Testing should go further, he says. Before-and-after air sampling could identify locations that release toxic compounds. Surveys of community-health metrics could help identify ways in which concentrated drilling activity harms nearby residents—or dispel misconceptions and worries.
Mr. Webber says that requiring this kind of testing would also create valuable data on water resources and environmental quality across the country, something that doesn't now exist. "We have big data in everything in life except for our natural resources and the environment," he says.
Build better wells.
In 2012, Claude Cooke called me after an article I wrote about poorly built gas wells. He is one of nine men whom the Society of Petroleum Engineers has honored as a "Legend of Hydraulic Fracturing."
He said that people worried that the cracks in the rock caused by fracking would cause environmental problems. This fear was misplaced, he said: Fracking takes place miles below the surface of the earth or any potable aquifer.
"If there is a problem, the issue is well integrity," he said, and most likely a problem with the cement placed around wells to prevent any fluid or gas from migrating upward. Faulty cement doomed the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico and led to the death of 11 men and the worst offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history.
California has set an interesting example in ensuring that wells are built well. Last year, when the state published interim regulations on fracking, chief among them were steps to ensure a well's integrity, including testing its cement.
Mr. Cooke says that more can be done to make sure that a well is safe and secure—and built to last for decades. After all, the U.S. is drilling 100 new wells a day. It would be a colossal problem if they were unsound.
The industry figured out how to extract abundant energy from the densest rocks imaginable. Now it has a chance to do something even more audacious: to show that it can provide that energy in a safe, clean way.
—Mr. Gold covers the energy industry for The Wall Street Journal and is the author of "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World," to be published by Simon & Schuster on April 8, 2014
__________________________________
Topic
Citizenship-for-Cash Program in Malta Stirs Security Concerns in European Union
PARIS, April 2014 — A program in Malta that offers citizenship for cash is raising concern among officials who fear it could open a back door into Europe and the United States for swindlers, criminals or terrorists who can afford the price tag of up to $1.57 million.
The program, which was begun in February, has already attracted interest from hundreds of applicants, including Chinese billionaires, wealthy Russians and executives from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates and Libya.
Citing worries about security, opposition leaders in Malta, a Mediterranean island 50 miles south of Sicily, moved last month to block the plan. But the motion was defeated and the governing Labour Party, which has a large majority, is forging ahead with the program, which it hopes will raise $1.9 billion for development projects and job creation.
Though Maltese officials say the plan will attract foreign investment and lift the economy, critics fear that in a race for cash, the screening process will be shortchanged — particularly since the tiny nation has outsourced the vetting of citizenship applicants to a private company that stands to make tens of millions of dollars in commissions if applicants are accepted.
European Union officials are among those most concerned. Though selling citizenship outright is rare, Malta’s move comes as a growing number of European countries buffeted by economic hard times, including Portugal, Spain and Greece, are dangling the possibility of residency to high-flying foreigners in return for substantial investments. The United States also offers residency, though not citizenship, for entrepreneurs who invest at least $1 million and meet other criteria.
Opponents of the program in Malta say most potential applicants have no interest in Malta, per se, but covet a European Union passport, which would allow them to live or work elsewhere in the union, including in London or Paris. Under threat of legal action by the European Commission, the union’s executive body, Malta tightened the law in January and added a one-year residency requirement before an applicant can get a passport.
Jason Azzopardi, home affairs spokesman for the opposition National Party, said the news that two passengers on a missing Malaysian jet were traveling on stolen passports, despite having been vetted by immigration and security officials, underlined the danger of passports’ being abused. “The fear is that people with serious criminal records, scam artists or even terrorists could buy their way into the country and use Malta as an illegal gateway for Europe,” he said.
The citizenship offer — which will enable travel within the European Union’s 27 other member states and visa-free trips to 69 countries outside the bloc, including the United States — comes at a steep price: $891,000 in cash, and up to $685,000 in property and investments.
Officials in the government of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat reject criticism that the plan is a get-rich-quick scheme that could expose Europe to a flood of undesirable entrants. “We are not trying to make a quick buck,” Kurt Farrugia, a government spokesman, said in a phone interview. “We are a small country, and we want people to know about us and invest in our country.”
Mr. Farrugia insisted that the screening would be rigorous and that the government would make the final decision on citizenship for each applicant.
But opponents say they are concerned about a potential conflict of interest in th e vetting process, which is being subcontracted chiefly to Henley & Partners, a consulting firm based in the British Channel Islands. The company is both recruiting applicants and examining them to weed out criminals, terrorists and other questionable characters.
Eric G. Major, the chief executive of Henley & Partners, said in a telephone interview that Iranian and Syrian applicants would not be accepted because of the international sanctions imposed against those countries. He said those interested in the program came mainly from countries from which travel is restricted.
“They can get the travel monkey off of their backs,” Mr. Major said. Those with murky pasts, he added emphatically, need not apply.
Under its contract with the government, Henley gets a 4 percent commission on the $891,000 fee. It will also charge client fees of $96,000 for each applicant. After vetting applicants, Identity Malta, a government agency, will make a final decision based on Henley’s recommendation. Henley will get its commission only if an applicant is accepted.
Mr. Major said there was no conflict of interest because Henley had created a strict separation between the departments doing marketing and vetting.
Opponents say they are particularly concerned about a provision in the law that allows someone with a criminal record to obtain citizenship, at the discretion of the internal affairs minister, if the Maltese agency overseeing the program is “satisfied that the applicant is still worthy of being considered for approval due to special circumstances.” Among the worries is that wealthy criminals could abuse this provision by claiming they are fleeing politically motivated charges.
Mr. Major said the vetting process encompassed multiple steps, including criminal and financial background checks using online databases, vetting by independent security contractors and an analysis using risk assessment software. He said the Maltese government would then do its own checks through resources such as Interpol and American government agencies.
American officials said the United States reviewed the security impact of its visa waiver programs with individual countries every two years. They stressed that visa-free travel does not guarantee admission to the United States.
So-called golden passport or residency programs have long faced controversy, immigration experts say, including questions about money laundering and fraud. Canada, citing widespread abuses, announced last month that it would scrap a program that had offered permanent residency to foreigners who gave the government a $730,000, interest-free loan for five years.
Some people with criminal records have slipped through the cracks in countries offering immigrant investment programs.
The Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, who is wanted in the United States on charges of copyright infringement committed by his now-defunct file-sharing company, Megaupload, was granted New Zealand residency in 2010. He had invested about $8 million in a program for wealthy foreigners, despite convictions for insider trading and fraud in his native Germany. In 2012, he was arrested in Auckland at the request of United States officials, and he is now fighting an attempt to extradite him. ===========================
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Civilization's Starter Kit - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/2014/.../civilizations-starter-kit.ht...The New York Times
Mar 29, 2014 - What would you need to know, if you had to start over? ... Civilization's Starter Kit ... Continue reading the main story Share This Page. Continue ... Click: Astrobiology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe: extraterrestrial life and life on Earth. This interdisciplinary field ...
Overview - Methodology - Life in the Solar System - Rare Earth hypothesis Civilization’s Starter Kit By LEWIS DARTNELL MARCH 29, I’M an astrobiologist — I study the essential building blocks of life, on this planet and others. But I don’t know how to fix a dripping tap, or what to do when the washing machine goes on the blink. I don’t know how to bake bread, let alone grow wheat. I’m utterly useless with my hands. My father-in-law used to joke that I had three degrees, but didn’t know anything about anything, whereas he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Life.It’s not just me. Many purchases today no longer even come with an instruction manual. If something breaks it’s easier to chuck it and buy a new model than to reach for the screwdriver. Over the past generation or two we’ve gone from being producers and tinkerers to consumers. As a result, I think we feel a sense of disconnect between our modern existence and the underlying processes that support our lives. Who has any real understanding of where their last meal came from or how the objects in their pockets were dug out of the earth and transformed into useful materials? What would we do if, in some science-fiction scenario, a global catastrophe collapsed civilization and we were members of a small society of survivors?
My research has to do with what factors planets need to support life. Recently, I’ve been wondering what factors are needed to support our modern civilization. What key principles of science and technology would be necessary to rebuild our world from scratch?
The great physicist Richard Feynman once posed a similar question: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”
That certainly does encapsulate a huge amount of understanding, but it also wouldn’t be particularly useful, in a practical sense. So, allowing myself to be a little more expansive than a single sentence, I have some suggestions for what someone scrabbling around the ruins of civilization would need to know about basic necessities.
You would need to start with germ theory — the notion that contagious diseases are not caused by whimsical gods but by invisibly small organisms invading your body. Drinking water can be disinfected with diluted household bleach or even swimming pool chlorine. Soap for washing hands can be made from any animal fat or plant oil stirred with lye, which is soda from the ashes of burned seaweed combined with quicklime from roasted chalk or limestone. When settling down, ensure that your excrement isn’t allowed to contaminate your water source — this may sound obvious, but wasn’t understood even as late as the mid-19th century.
In the longer term, you’ll need to remaster the principles of agriculture and the ability to stockpile a food reserve and support dense cities away from the fields. The cereal crops that have sustained civilizations throughout history — wheat, rice and maize — are fast growing, perfect as fodder for livestock or, after processing, for human sustenance.
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The millstone grinding grain into flour is a technological extension of our molar teeth. And when we bake bread or boil rice or pasta, we wield the transformative power of heat to help break down the complex molecules and release more easily absorbed nourishment. So in a sense, the pots and pans we use in the kitchen today are a pre-digestive system, processing what we consume so that it doesn’t poison us and maximizing the nutrition our body can extract.
Then there are the many materials society requires: How do you transform base substances like clay and iron into brick or concrete or steel, and then shape that material into a useful tool? To learn a small piece of this, I spent a day in a traditional, 18th-century iron forge, learning the essentials of the craft of the blacksmith. Sweating over an open coke-fired hearth, I managed to beat a lump of steel into a knife. Once shaped, I got it cherry-red hot and then quenched it with a satisfying squeal into a water trough, before reheating the blade slightly to temper it for extra toughness.
The first thing I did when I got home was to use the knife to slice some Cheddar and bread and make myself a grilled cheese. Unfortunately, the blade immediately developed a ruinous crack, and I’ve not had the nerve to use it again. But I made something real with my own hands and I’ve got a good idea of how to do it better next time.
Of course, it needn’t take a catastrophic collapse of civilization to make you appreciate the importance of understanding the basics of how devices around you work. Localized disasters can disrupt normal services, making a reasonable reserve of clean water, canned food and backup technologies like kerosene lamps a prudent precaution. And becoming a little more self-reliant is immensely rewarding in its own right. Thought experiments like these can help us to explore how our modern world actually came to be, and to appreciate all that we take for granted.
Take, for example, plain old glass — a wonder material that is somehow relatively strong and yet perfectly transparent. The recipe to create it is simple enough and uses some of the same ingredients as soap: a handful of silica (pure white sand, quartz or flint), some potash or soda ash (extracted by soaking wood or seaweed ash in water, straining the water and then boiling it down) and quicklime (roasted chalk or limestone); mix them together and bake in a kiln. Once the substance is fluid and bubble-free, you can form it into jars or bottles or window panes.
Glass also happens to be a crucial material for understanding the world, in the form of thermometers and test tubes, and even for manipulating light itself, when shaped into lenses for microscopes and telescopes — tools that are indispensable for science, including my own field of astrobiology. I may never have to practice the alchemy that transforms sand, soda and quicklime into this miraculous transparent membrane, but the world outside my window feels closer and more in focus for the knowing.
Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology research fellow at the University of Leicester and the author of the forthcoming book “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch.”2014 ___________________________________________________________________________________________ The Christian Penumbra - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/.../douthat-the-christian-penumbra....The New York Times
Mar 29, 2014 - Continue reading the main story Share This Page ... In the Christian penumbra, certain religious expectations could endure (a bias
The Christian Penumbra Penumbra = a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree : fringe. =================================================================================================================================================================America's Active Shooter Crisis: Issues and Response - The ...www.theepochtimes.com/.../614344-americas-active-shooter-crisis-issues...
1 day ago - Active shooter tragedies have reached staggering proportions in Americaand every organization and community is a potential victim.
America’s Active Shooter Crisis: Issues and Response Reawakening the Nation
By click: Vincent J. Bove | April 11, 2014
America’s active shooter crisis was dramatized at Fort Hood with three shot dead, 16 wounded, and the shooter’s suicide on April 2. Flags fly at half-staff once again, imploring our nation to mourn, reflect, and respond.
The Department of Homeland Security defines the problem: “An Active Shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims. Active shooter situations are unpredictable and evolve quickly. Typically, the immediate deployment of law enforcement is required to stop the shooting and mitigate harm to victims. Because active shooter situations are often over within 10 to 15 minutes, before law enforcement arrives on the scene, individuals must be prepared both mentally and physically to deal with an active shooter situation.”
Active Shooter Incidents Triple Since 2009
Addressing police chiefs in Philadelphia on Oct. 21, 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States saw an average of five active shooting incidents a year between 2000 and 2008. “Alarmingly, since 2009, this annual average has tripled. We’ve seen at least 12 active shooter situations so far in 2013,” Holder said.
Before the attorney general concluded his remarks, the number had risen to 13. That day a Nevada middle school student shot a math teacher, two classmates, and himself. The classmates survived, but the teacher and the shooter did not. This incident—as well as several incidents since then—punctuates the attorney general’s call for an “aggressive national response” to the disturbing rise in active shooter situations.
NYPD Recommendations
As detailed on the NYPD SHIELD website, there is a guide to mitigate active shooter attacks. The guide provides recommendations tailored to building security personnel including:
Procedures
• Conduct a realistic security assessment to determine the facility’s vulnerability to an
active shooter attack.
• Identify multiple evacuation routes and practice evacuations … post evacuation routes in conspicuous locations … ensure that evacuation routes account for individuals with special needs and disabilities.
• Designate shelter locations with thick walls, solid doors with locks, minimal interior
windows, first-aid emergency kits, communication devices, and duress alarms.
• Designate a point-of-contact with knowledge … to liaise with police and other emergency agencies in the event of an attack.
• Incorporate an active shooter drill into the organization’s emergency preparedness
procedures.
• Vary security guards’ patrols and patterns of operation.
• Limit access to blueprints, floor plans, and other documents … make sure these documents are available to law enforcement responding to an incident.
• Establish a central command station for building security.
Systems
• Put in place credential-based access control systems that provide accurate attendance
reporting, limit unauthorized entry, and do not impede emergency egress.
• Put in place closed-circuit television systems that provide domain awareness of the
entire facility and its perimeter; ensure that video feeds are viewable from a central
command station.
Training
• Conduct training as outlined by the Department of Homeland Security in “Active Shooter: How to Respond” on the following steps: Evacuate; Hide; Take Action.
• Train building occupants to call 911 as soon as it is safe to do so.
• Train building occupants on how to respond when law enforcement arrives.
Final Reflection
Active shooter tragedies have reached staggering proportions in America and each company, school, facility, house of worship, agency, and community is a potential victim. Law enforcement and private security must exercise leadership, vigilance, and collaboration to protect those entrusted to their care. Citizens must report concerns.
Balancing cutting edge crime prevention, crisis management principles, and training initiatives—including warning signs and mental health issues—with ongoing analysis is critical to safeguarding the nation.
Vincent J. Bove, CPP is a national speaker on issues critical to America and recipient of the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award for combating crime and violence. His latest book is “Listen To Their Cries.” www.vincentbove.com
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of STAF, Inc.
Source: click: Vincent J. Bove | April 11, 2014
About Vincent J. Bove, cppVincent J. Bove, CPP is a Board Certified Protection Professional,Board Certified Crime Prevention Specialist, Certified Law Enforcement Instructor and U.S. Department of Justice Certified Community Anti-Terrorism Awareness Trainer.
As a nationally acclaimed leadership, character and security educator with more than 30 years experience, Mr. Bove has been a champion of transforming schools and communities. He has put his ideas and insights into his latest book LISTEN TO THEIR CRIES: Calling the Nation to Renewal from Columbine to Virginia Tech.
Mr. Bove is the 2007 New Jersey recipient of the prestigious FBI Director's Community Leadership Award. This special award, presented on behalf of the Director of the FBI, was formally created in 1990 as a way to honor individuals and organizations for their efforts in combating crime, terrorism, drugs, and violence in America.
He was also hand-selected to participate in the annual National Conference on Ethics in America at the United States Military Academy at West Point, serving various roles since 2007 including speaker, senior leader, facilitator and mentor.
In June 2007, Mr. Bove was asked to address the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy and to attend the governor's meeting with them. He continues to serve as a spokesperson, tirelessly addressing the pre-crisis, crisis and post crisis issues on their behalf.
Since the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999 (Littleton, Colorado), Mr. Bove has been called upon to inform, instruct and inspire over 50,000 educators, parents, students, mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, and community leaders throughout the United States. His constant challenge to audiences is that we all must do our part to transform our schools and campuses into safe havens for developing citizens of character and achievement.
He has addressed numerous FBI venues, as well as the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, in advanced techniques of leadership, crime prevention and terrorism preparedness.
Vincent Bove is the recipient of two Master's degrees and has authored two books based on his past experience as confidant/counselor with the New York Yankees. Additionally, Mr. Bove has written numerous articles which have appeared in law enforcement, private security, and association publications. These articles address issues critical to current American society such as:
online.wsj.com/.../articles/SB200014240...
The Wall Street Journal
Apr 5, 2014 - New York state has a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. So do Los Angeles, Quebec and France. Polls show rising opposition to this ...
New York state has a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. So do Los Angeles, Quebec and France. Polls show rising opposition to this controversial oil field technique, which cracks open rocks to free oil and natural gas, and some critics want it banned unless it can be proven safe.
Meanwhile, U.S. energy companies are drilling and fracking about 100 wells every day across much of the country. Whether you think that it is an economic godsend or fear that it is an environmental disaster, whether you spell it fracking or fraccing (as the energy industry prefers), that is a lot of holes in the ground.
Fracking is a fairly straightforward process. You drill a well straight down for a few thousand feet and gradually turn the shaft until it runs horizontally through the shale. Then you isolate a section of the rock and inject water, sand and chemicals under high pressure. This makes the rock fracture—hence the name. The sand stays behind to prop open the new network of fractures, and oil and gas flow out.
Like it or not, fracking will continue. It is big business for giants such as to smaller firms such as . From railroads to petrochemicals, many sectors of the economy are reliant on the business of the energy boom, creating a broad coalition to support it. Fracking generates middle-class jobs and pays checks to mineral-rights owners. It can help U.S. national security by making the country less reliant on foreign oil, and it provides plenty of relatively low-carbon, affordable energy that makes North America the envy of the world.
But fracking is an industrial process, and its many critics have some real and legitimate concerns about its impact on the environment and the communities near the wells.
Since we're fracking so much, what can we do to make it safer for people and the planet? I've asked this question, in one form or another, to hundreds of engineers, executives, academics and environmentalists since touring my first frack site more than a decade ago. I've heard many answers. Here are three that seem eminently reasonable.
Fix the leaks.
Natural gas is an efficient fuel, and burning it emits significantly fewer greenhouse gases than burning coal. But natural gas is mostly methane, a very potent contributor to climate change. If too much methane leaks, natural gas stops being part of a climate solution and becomes part of the problem.
We don't really know how much methane is leaking from wells and pipelines. A recent article in the journal Science suggested that leakage rates are well above current federal estimates.
"If you want to argue that gas is part of the climate solution, you have to deal with methane leakage," says Hal Harvey, chief executive of Energy Innovations LLC, a policy and technology consultant. The good news, he adds: "It's a plumbing problem. It's not thermodynamics." Making a power plant twice as efficient is difficult engineering; cutting methane leakage in half isn't. You just find the leaks and plug them.
Some companies are ready to comply. "When you keep methane in the pipe, not only is it the right thing to do, but you capture it for sale," says Ted Brown, senior vice president of The Houston company is the largest oil and gas producer in Colorado, which recently proposed new air-emission rules. Noble plans to hire 16 full-time employees to use infrared cameras to find leaks around its wells and pipelines.
Methane also contributes to smog, and Denver's air quality is deteriorating. Tackling smog would create a visible sign of the industry's efforts to run a tighter ship.
Get better data.
Fights over whether fracking contaminates groundwater are bitter and divisive. Many people who live near fracking sites worry that their health is at risk. The only way to take these concerns off the table—or fix problems as they arise—is to require more testing, especially before drilling starts.
The Center for Sustainable Shale Development, a joint effort of major operators, environmental groups and foundations, says that it is critical to test groundwater before drilling begins and then for at least a year afterward.
"We want to say, 'Here's the data, it speaks for itself,' " says Susan Packard LeGros, executive director of the group, which counts , the Environmental Defense Fund and the William Penn Foundation among its partners.
Requiring independent tests of water before drilling begins makes sense, says Michael Webber, deputy director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas. "It would be good for companies because it protects them from abusive false claims," he says. "It would also give the local community peace of mind and evidence to take action if they need to take action."
Testing should go further, he says. Before-and-after air sampling could identify locations that release toxic compounds. Surveys of community-health metrics could help identify ways in which concentrated drilling activity harms nearby residents—or dispel misconceptions and worries.
Mr. Webber says that requiring this kind of testing would also create valuable data on water resources and environmental quality across the country, something that doesn't now exist. "We have big data in everything in life except for our natural resources and the environment," he says.
Build better wells.
In 2012, Claude Cooke called me after an article I wrote about poorly built gas wells. He is one of nine men whom the Society of Petroleum Engineers has honored as a "Legend of Hydraulic Fracturing."
He said that people worried that the cracks in the rock caused by fracking would cause environmental problems. This fear was misplaced, he said: Fracking takes place miles below the surface of the earth or any potable aquifer.
"If there is a problem, the issue is well integrity," he said, and most likely a problem with the cement placed around wells to prevent any fluid or gas from migrating upward. Faulty cement doomed the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico and led to the death of 11 men and the worst offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history.
California has set an interesting example in ensuring that wells are built well. Last year, when the state published interim regulations on fracking, chief among them were steps to ensure a well's integrity, including testing its cement.
Mr. Cooke says that more can be done to make sure that a well is safe and secure—and built to last for decades. After all, the U.S. is drilling 100 new wells a day. It would be a colossal problem if they were unsound.
The industry figured out how to extract abundant energy from the densest rocks imaginable. Now it has a chance to do something even more audacious: to show that it can provide that energy in a safe, clean way.
—Mr. Gold covers the energy industry for The Wall Street Journal and is the author of "The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World," to be published by Simon & Schuster on April 8, 2014
__________________________________
Topic
Citizenship-for-Cash Program in Malta Stirs Security Concerns in European Union
PARIS, April 2014 — A program in Malta that offers citizenship for cash is raising concern among officials who fear it could open a back door into Europe and the United States for swindlers, criminals or terrorists who can afford the price tag of up to $1.57 million.
The program, which was begun in February, has already attracted interest from hundreds of applicants, including Chinese billionaires, wealthy Russians and executives from countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, United Arab Emirates and Libya.
Citing worries about security, opposition leaders in Malta, a Mediterranean island 50 miles south of Sicily, moved last month to block the plan. But the motion was defeated and the governing Labour Party, which has a large majority, is forging ahead with the program, which it hopes will raise $1.9 billion for development projects and job creation.
Though Maltese officials say the plan will attract foreign investment and lift the economy, critics fear that in a race for cash, the screening process will be shortchanged — particularly since the tiny nation has outsourced the vetting of citizenship applicants to a private company that stands to make tens of millions of dollars in commissions if applicants are accepted.
European Union officials are among those most concerned. Though selling citizenship outright is rare, Malta’s move comes as a growing number of European countries buffeted by economic hard times, including Portugal, Spain and Greece, are dangling the possibility of residency to high-flying foreigners in return for substantial investments. The United States also offers residency, though not citizenship, for entrepreneurs who invest at least $1 million and meet other criteria.
Opponents of the program in Malta say most potential applicants have no interest in Malta, per se, but covet a European Union passport, which would allow them to live or work elsewhere in the union, including in London or Paris. Under threat of legal action by the European Commission, the union’s executive body, Malta tightened the law in January and added a one-year residency requirement before an applicant can get a passport.
Jason Azzopardi, home affairs spokesman for the opposition National Party, said the news that two passengers on a missing Malaysian jet were traveling on stolen passports, despite having been vetted by immigration and security officials, underlined the danger of passports’ being abused. “The fear is that people with serious criminal records, scam artists or even terrorists could buy their way into the country and use Malta as an illegal gateway for Europe,” he said.
The citizenship offer — which will enable travel within the European Union’s 27 other member states and visa-free trips to 69 countries outside the bloc, including the United States — comes at a steep price: $891,000 in cash, and up to $685,000 in property and investments.
Officials in the government of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat reject criticism that the plan is a get-rich-quick scheme that could expose Europe to a flood of undesirable entrants. “We are not trying to make a quick buck,” Kurt Farrugia, a government spokesman, said in a phone interview. “We are a small country, and we want people to know about us and invest in our country.”
Mr. Farrugia insisted that the screening would be rigorous and that the government would make the final decision on citizenship for each applicant.
But opponents say they are concerned about a potential conflict of interest in th e vetting process, which is being subcontracted chiefly to Henley & Partners, a consulting firm based in the British Channel Islands. The company is both recruiting applicants and examining them to weed out criminals, terrorists and other questionable characters.
Eric G. Major, the chief executive of Henley & Partners, said in a telephone interview that Iranian and Syrian applicants would not be accepted because of the international sanctions imposed against those countries. He said those interested in the program came mainly from countries from which travel is restricted.
“They can get the travel monkey off of their backs,” Mr. Major said. Those with murky pasts, he added emphatically, need not apply.
Under its contract with the government, Henley gets a 4 percent commission on the $891,000 fee. It will also charge client fees of $96,000 for each applicant. After vetting applicants, Identity Malta, a government agency, will make a final decision based on Henley’s recommendation. Henley will get its commission only if an applicant is accepted.
Mr. Major said there was no conflict of interest because Henley had created a strict separation between the departments doing marketing and vetting.
Opponents say they are particularly concerned about a provision in the law that allows someone with a criminal record to obtain citizenship, at the discretion of the internal affairs minister, if the Maltese agency overseeing the program is “satisfied that the applicant is still worthy of being considered for approval due to special circumstances.” Among the worries is that wealthy criminals could abuse this provision by claiming they are fleeing politically motivated charges.
Mr. Major said the vetting process encompassed multiple steps, including criminal and financial background checks using online databases, vetting by independent security contractors and an analysis using risk assessment software. He said the Maltese government would then do its own checks through resources such as Interpol and American government agencies.
American officials said the United States reviewed the security impact of its visa waiver programs with individual countries every two years. They stressed that visa-free travel does not guarantee admission to the United States.
So-called golden passport or residency programs have long faced controversy, immigration experts say, including questions about money laundering and fraud. Canada, citing widespread abuses, announced last month that it would scrap a program that had offered permanent residency to foreigners who gave the government a $730,000, interest-free loan for five years.
Some people with criminal records have slipped through the cracks in countries offering immigrant investment programs.
The Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, who is wanted in the United States on charges of copyright infringement committed by his now-defunct file-sharing company, Megaupload, was granted New Zealand residency in 2010. He had invested about $8 million in a program for wealthy foreigners, despite convictions for insider trading and fraud in his native Germany. In 2012, he was arrested in Auckland at the request of United States officials, and he is now fighting an attempt to extradite him. ===========================
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Civilization's Starter Kit - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/2014/.../civilizations-starter-kit.ht...The New York Times
Mar 29, 2014 - What would you need to know, if you had to start over? ... Civilization's Starter Kit ... Continue reading the main story Share This Page. Continue ... Click: Astrobiology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology
Astrobiology is the study of the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life in the universe: extraterrestrial life and life on Earth. This interdisciplinary field ...
Overview - Methodology - Life in the Solar System - Rare Earth hypothesis Civilization’s Starter Kit By LEWIS DARTNELL MARCH 29, I’M an astrobiologist — I study the essential building blocks of life, on this planet and others. But I don’t know how to fix a dripping tap, or what to do when the washing machine goes on the blink. I don’t know how to bake bread, let alone grow wheat. I’m utterly useless with my hands. My father-in-law used to joke that I had three degrees, but didn’t know anything about anything, whereas he graduated summa cum laude from the University of Life.It’s not just me. Many purchases today no longer even come with an instruction manual. If something breaks it’s easier to chuck it and buy a new model than to reach for the screwdriver. Over the past generation or two we’ve gone from being producers and tinkerers to consumers. As a result, I think we feel a sense of disconnect between our modern existence and the underlying processes that support our lives. Who has any real understanding of where their last meal came from or how the objects in their pockets were dug out of the earth and transformed into useful materials? What would we do if, in some science-fiction scenario, a global catastrophe collapsed civilization and we were members of a small society of survivors?
My research has to do with what factors planets need to support life. Recently, I’ve been wondering what factors are needed to support our modern civilization. What key principles of science and technology would be necessary to rebuild our world from scratch?
The great physicist Richard Feynman once posed a similar question: “If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”
That certainly does encapsulate a huge amount of understanding, but it also wouldn’t be particularly useful, in a practical sense. So, allowing myself to be a little more expansive than a single sentence, I have some suggestions for what someone scrabbling around the ruins of civilization would need to know about basic necessities.
You would need to start with germ theory — the notion that contagious diseases are not caused by whimsical gods but by invisibly small organisms invading your body. Drinking water can be disinfected with diluted household bleach or even swimming pool chlorine. Soap for washing hands can be made from any animal fat or plant oil stirred with lye, which is soda from the ashes of burned seaweed combined with quicklime from roasted chalk or limestone. When settling down, ensure that your excrement isn’t allowed to contaminate your water source — this may sound obvious, but wasn’t understood even as late as the mid-19th century.
In the longer term, you’ll need to remaster the principles of agriculture and the ability to stockpile a food reserve and support dense cities away from the fields. The cereal crops that have sustained civilizations throughout history — wheat, rice and maize — are fast growing, perfect as fodder for livestock or, after processing, for human sustenance.
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The millstone grinding grain into flour is a technological extension of our molar teeth. And when we bake bread or boil rice or pasta, we wield the transformative power of heat to help break down the complex molecules and release more easily absorbed nourishment. So in a sense, the pots and pans we use in the kitchen today are a pre-digestive system, processing what we consume so that it doesn’t poison us and maximizing the nutrition our body can extract.
Then there are the many materials society requires: How do you transform base substances like clay and iron into brick or concrete or steel, and then shape that material into a useful tool? To learn a small piece of this, I spent a day in a traditional, 18th-century iron forge, learning the essentials of the craft of the blacksmith. Sweating over an open coke-fired hearth, I managed to beat a lump of steel into a knife. Once shaped, I got it cherry-red hot and then quenched it with a satisfying squeal into a water trough, before reheating the blade slightly to temper it for extra toughness.
The first thing I did when I got home was to use the knife to slice some Cheddar and bread and make myself a grilled cheese. Unfortunately, the blade immediately developed a ruinous crack, and I’ve not had the nerve to use it again. But I made something real with my own hands and I’ve got a good idea of how to do it better next time.
Of course, it needn’t take a catastrophic collapse of civilization to make you appreciate the importance of understanding the basics of how devices around you work. Localized disasters can disrupt normal services, making a reasonable reserve of clean water, canned food and backup technologies like kerosene lamps a prudent precaution. And becoming a little more self-reliant is immensely rewarding in its own right. Thought experiments like these can help us to explore how our modern world actually came to be, and to appreciate all that we take for granted.
Take, for example, plain old glass — a wonder material that is somehow relatively strong and yet perfectly transparent. The recipe to create it is simple enough and uses some of the same ingredients as soap: a handful of silica (pure white sand, quartz or flint), some potash or soda ash (extracted by soaking wood or seaweed ash in water, straining the water and then boiling it down) and quicklime (roasted chalk or limestone); mix them together and bake in a kiln. Once the substance is fluid and bubble-free, you can form it into jars or bottles or window panes.
Glass also happens to be a crucial material for understanding the world, in the form of thermometers and test tubes, and even for manipulating light itself, when shaped into lenses for microscopes and telescopes — tools that are indispensable for science, including my own field of astrobiology. I may never have to practice the alchemy that transforms sand, soda and quicklime into this miraculous transparent membrane, but the world outside my window feels closer and more in focus for the knowing.
Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology research fellow at the University of Leicester and the author of the forthcoming book “The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World From Scratch.”2014 ___________________________________________________________________________________________ The Christian Penumbra - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/.../douthat-the-christian-penumbra....The New York Times
Mar 29, 2014 - Continue reading the main story Share This Page ... In the Christian penumbra, certain religious expectations could endure (a bias
The Christian Penumbra Penumbra = a surrounding or adjoining region in which something exists in a lesser degree : fringe. =================================================================================================================================================================America's Active Shooter Crisis: Issues and Response - The ...www.theepochtimes.com/.../614344-americas-active-shooter-crisis-issues...
1 day ago - Active shooter tragedies have reached staggering proportions in Americaand every organization and community is a potential victim.
America’s Active Shooter Crisis: Issues and Response Reawakening the Nation
By click: Vincent J. Bove | April 11, 2014
America’s active shooter crisis was dramatized at Fort Hood with three shot dead, 16 wounded, and the shooter’s suicide on April 2. Flags fly at half-staff once again, imploring our nation to mourn, reflect, and respond.
The Department of Homeland Security defines the problem: “An Active Shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearms(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims. Active shooter situations are unpredictable and evolve quickly. Typically, the immediate deployment of law enforcement is required to stop the shooting and mitigate harm to victims. Because active shooter situations are often over within 10 to 15 minutes, before law enforcement arrives on the scene, individuals must be prepared both mentally and physically to deal with an active shooter situation.”
Active Shooter Incidents Triple Since 2009
Addressing police chiefs in Philadelphia on Oct. 21, 2013, Attorney General Eric Holder said the United States saw an average of five active shooting incidents a year between 2000 and 2008. “Alarmingly, since 2009, this annual average has tripled. We’ve seen at least 12 active shooter situations so far in 2013,” Holder said.
Before the attorney general concluded his remarks, the number had risen to 13. That day a Nevada middle school student shot a math teacher, two classmates, and himself. The classmates survived, but the teacher and the shooter did not. This incident—as well as several incidents since then—punctuates the attorney general’s call for an “aggressive national response” to the disturbing rise in active shooter situations.
NYPD Recommendations
As detailed on the NYPD SHIELD website, there is a guide to mitigate active shooter attacks. The guide provides recommendations tailored to building security personnel including:
Procedures
• Conduct a realistic security assessment to determine the facility’s vulnerability to an
active shooter attack.
• Identify multiple evacuation routes and practice evacuations … post evacuation routes in conspicuous locations … ensure that evacuation routes account for individuals with special needs and disabilities.
• Designate shelter locations with thick walls, solid doors with locks, minimal interior
windows, first-aid emergency kits, communication devices, and duress alarms.
• Designate a point-of-contact with knowledge … to liaise with police and other emergency agencies in the event of an attack.
• Incorporate an active shooter drill into the organization’s emergency preparedness
procedures.
• Vary security guards’ patrols and patterns of operation.
• Limit access to blueprints, floor plans, and other documents … make sure these documents are available to law enforcement responding to an incident.
• Establish a central command station for building security.
Systems
• Put in place credential-based access control systems that provide accurate attendance
reporting, limit unauthorized entry, and do not impede emergency egress.
• Put in place closed-circuit television systems that provide domain awareness of the
entire facility and its perimeter; ensure that video feeds are viewable from a central
command station.
Training
• Conduct training as outlined by the Department of Homeland Security in “Active Shooter: How to Respond” on the following steps: Evacuate; Hide; Take Action.
• Train building occupants to call 911 as soon as it is safe to do so.
• Train building occupants on how to respond when law enforcement arrives.
Final Reflection
Active shooter tragedies have reached staggering proportions in America and each company, school, facility, house of worship, agency, and community is a potential victim. Law enforcement and private security must exercise leadership, vigilance, and collaboration to protect those entrusted to their care. Citizens must report concerns.
Balancing cutting edge crime prevention, crisis management principles, and training initiatives—including warning signs and mental health issues—with ongoing analysis is critical to safeguarding the nation.
Vincent J. Bove, CPP is a national speaker on issues critical to America and recipient of the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award for combating crime and violence. His latest book is “Listen To Their Cries.” www.vincentbove.com
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of STAF, Inc.
Source: click: Vincent J. Bove | April 11, 2014
About Vincent J. Bove, cppVincent J. Bove, CPP is a Board Certified Protection Professional,Board Certified Crime Prevention Specialist, Certified Law Enforcement Instructor and U.S. Department of Justice Certified Community Anti-Terrorism Awareness Trainer.
As a nationally acclaimed leadership, character and security educator with more than 30 years experience, Mr. Bove has been a champion of transforming schools and communities. He has put his ideas and insights into his latest book LISTEN TO THEIR CRIES: Calling the Nation to Renewal from Columbine to Virginia Tech.
Mr. Bove is the 2007 New Jersey recipient of the prestigious FBI Director's Community Leadership Award. This special award, presented on behalf of the Director of the FBI, was formally created in 1990 as a way to honor individuals and organizations for their efforts in combating crime, terrorism, drugs, and violence in America.
He was also hand-selected to participate in the annual National Conference on Ethics in America at the United States Military Academy at West Point, serving various roles since 2007 including speaker, senior leader, facilitator and mentor.
In June 2007, Mr. Bove was asked to address the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech tragedy and to attend the governor's meeting with them. He continues to serve as a spokesperson, tirelessly addressing the pre-crisis, crisis and post crisis issues on their behalf.
Since the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999 (Littleton, Colorado), Mr. Bove has been called upon to inform, instruct and inspire over 50,000 educators, parents, students, mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, and community leaders throughout the United States. His constant challenge to audiences is that we all must do our part to transform our schools and campuses into safe havens for developing citizens of character and achievement.
He has addressed numerous FBI venues, as well as the FBI/NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force, in advanced techniques of leadership, crime prevention and terrorism preparedness.
Vincent Bove is the recipient of two Master's degrees and has authored two books based on his past experience as confidant/counselor with the New York Yankees. Additionally, Mr. Bove has written numerous articles which have appeared in law enforcement, private security, and association publications. These articles address issues critical to current American society such as:
- Preparing Young Leaders: The Future of America
- MySpace and Internet Security Concerns for
Educators and Law Enforcement - Appreciating Diversity: Reawakening the Heart of America
- Leadership Lessons from the United States Military
- Community: The Hope of America
- Violence Concerns from the Schoolhouse to the White House
- American Leadership in an Age of Scandal
- America's Response to the Gang Culture
- Sacred Honor: Police Officer, Soldier, Patriot
- In Remembrance: Honoring American Military Sacrifices _____________________________________________________________________________
For BLOGGING
7GEN: Gas Mileage Tips, Ingredient Guide, Black Bean Recipe - in get_tp.... eail inbox 4/2/14 at 10.47
For BLOGGING: vinegar use + its comments
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For the future mother &
for the future father
- this is to both of you -
FOR INTERNET SEMINAR: "How to Keep Heavenly Happiness in Your Marriage" - MODIFY AND CONTINUE...... editing
You can have from STAF, Inc. additional internet seminars for other areas in life and keep your weekly family learning meetings for life success. It is our opinion, based on our nation/worldwide work that the weekly family meetings are an important key to keep your marriage enjoyable and to raise your children in a rewarding manner for their good success in life.
For the next internet seminar we suggest:
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The "Heavenly Happiness in Your Marriage" seminar is based on the most recent related research studies added with STAF, Inc.'s vast nationwide & worldwide experience guiding people to keep Heavenly Happiness in their marriage and avoid the monsters: separation & divorce. These two monsters would deeply hurt both parents and put your children on the road to disasters. This new internet seminar would
When you study that seminar also with your whole family (1) the parents' marriage gets filled with heavenly happiness but also(2) the children learn early on how to avoid all pitfalls & wrong roads to failure. An important gift to your child(ren) for life.
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(1) New on the MedlinePlus Breastfeeding page: TV Time, Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for Obesity - 03/17/2014
(2 a - 2 ) New on the MedlinePlus Parenting page:New on the MedlinePlus Parenting page:
Electronic Media and Health Outcomes
03/18/2014 09:14 AM EDT
Source: HealthDay -
TV, Computer Time Tied to Heavier, Less Happy Kids
03/17/2014 04:00 PM EDT
Parents can help reduce screen time, experts say
Source: HealthDay
TV Time, Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for Obesity
03/17/2014 09:00 AM EDT
Practices that foster weight gain are common among U.S. parents, researchers say
Source: HealthDay
Returning Military Dads Often Struggle to Reconnect with Kids
03/12/2014 04:00 PM EDT
The toddler they come home to can be much different from the baby they left behind
Source: HealthDay
(3) Not only the mother's health level affects the baby's safe development but also the father's health before conceiving will affect your baby's future & sickness level
Balanced Diet Before & During Pregnancy Will Lower Risk of Preterm Delivery and Improve Your Baby's Health
Increasing intake of healthy foods before & during pregnancy
more important than eliminating unhealthy foods,
not only during the pregnancy but also important before conceiving
Definition
Preterm Delivery
By Mayo Clinic Staff
A preterm/premature birth is a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the baby is due — in other words, after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, which usually lasts about 40 weeks.
Premature birth gives the baby less time to develop in the womb. Premature babies, especially those born earliest, often have complicated medical problems.
Depending on how early a baby is born, he or she may be:
(1) Late preterm, born between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy
(2) Very preterm, born at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy
(3) Extremely preterm, born at less than 25 weeks of pregnancy
Most premature births occur in the late preterm stage.
When you're pregnant, eating healthy foods is more important than ever.
You need more protein, iron, calcium, and click: folic acid than you did before pregnancy. Folic acid is a B vitamin.
It helps the body make healthy new cells. Everyone needs folic acid. For women who may get pregnant, it is really important. Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can prevent major birth click: defects of her baby's brain or spine.
Foods with folic acid in them include
- Leafy green vegetables
- Fruits
- Dried beans, peas, and nuts
- Enriched breads, cereals and other grain products
You also need more calories. But "eating for two" doesn't mean eating twice as much. It means that the foods you eat are the main source of nutrients for your baby. Sensible, balanced meals will be best for you and your baby.You should gain weight gradually during your pregnancy, with most of the weight gained in the last trimester. Generally, doctors suggest women gain weight at the following rate:
- 2 to 4 pounds total during the first trimester
- 3 to 4 pounds per month for the second and third trimesters
Expectant mothers are often told to eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and a new study adds to evidence that a healthy diet is linked to a reduced risk of premature birth.
Researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 66,000 pregnant women in Norway between 2002 and 2008. Premature birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) occurred in slightly more than 5 percent of the pregnancies.
Women who ate a "prudent" diet that included plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and water had a much lower risk of preterm delivery, as did those with a traditional Norwegian diet of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables, the investigators found.
A Western diet of salty and sweet snacks, white bread, desserts and processed meat products did not seem to have an effect on the risk of premature birth, according to the study, which was published online March 4, 2014 in the journal BMJ.
click: BMJ: Home
STAF, Inc.'s comment: The Western diet causes more health risks in the pregnant mother including diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Your baby needs healthy foods that are packed with nutrients - you need the same healthy foods also.
Thus, eat in the manner during your pregnancy that is safe for your baby and for you as the mother.
However, increasing consumption of healthy foods is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, the researchers said because every pregnant woman has sometimes unhealthy cravings and may forget to let them pass. The findings also support advice given to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet that includes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and enough water (no soda, no energy drinks, no energy bars (too sugary, they are like candy bars).
However, although the study found an association between eating a healthy diet during pregnancy and a lower risk of preterm delivery, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study authors said premature birth can lead to major short- and long-term health problems, and it accounts for nearly 75 percent of all newborn deaths.
Healthy eating during pregnancy is always a good idea, according to an accompanying editorial by Lucilla Poston, of King's College London.
Poston said several studies have suggested that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent premature birth. "Health professionals would therefore be well advised to reinforce the message that pregnant women eat a healthy diet," she said.
SOURCE: (1) BMJ (British Medical Journal), news release, March 4, 2014, (2) NIH: National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements, (3) Mayo Clinic, (4) Medline, (5) Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health
More Health News on: Pregnancy and Nutrition Premature Babies Recent Health News
New on the MedlinePlus Pregnancy and Nutrition page:
Balanced Diet During Pregnancy
May Lower Risk of Preterm Delivery
03/04/2014
Increasing intake of healthy foods more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, study finds
_______
Mayo Clinicwww.mayoclinic.org/Mayo Clinic
Locations in Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida, and Scottsdale, Arizona. Describes activities and services of the clinic, and lists job offerings.
__________________________________________________
Low Birth Weight, Lack of Breast-Feeding Tied to Inflammation Risk in Adulthood
- Low Birth Weight, Lack of Breast-Feeding Tied to ...consumer.healthday.com/.../breast-feeding.../briefs-emb-4-14-...
Article 1 of 2 (Article 2 of 2 next below)
THURSDAY, April 17, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Years later, people who were underweight at birth, and those who were breast-fed only a short time or not at all, could be at increased risk for chronic inflammation and related health problems, a new study suggests.
Researchers examined health data from 10,500 American adults and found that those with low birth weight and those who had little or no breast-feeding had higher levels of C-reactive protein (CRP), an indicator of inflammation.
Chronic inflammation is associated with health risks such as diabetes and heart attack, the study authors noted.
The study did not find a cause-and-effect relationship, however.
The researchers explained that it can be difficult to determine how birth weight and breast-feeding affect long-term health because these problems are more common among children whose parents have lower levels of education and income. This means it's unclear if other factors play a role.
But this study included a large number of siblings and the researchers found that even within the same family, birth weight and breast-feeding influenced the risk of inflammation in adulthood.
The findings will be published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
"There were good reasons to hypothesize that breast-feeding was important to influencing levels of inflammation in adulthood," study author Thomas McDade, a Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Fellow in the child and brain development program at Northwestern University, said in an institute news release.
"[Breast-feeding] promotes development of the immune system. Children who are breast-fed get fewer infectious diseases and are less likely to become overweight," he noted.
SOURCE: Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, news release, April 14, 2014
Journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on: Birth Weight Breastfeeding Recent Health News
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
C-reactive protein
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C-reactive protein is produced by the liver. The level of CRP rises when there is inflammation throughout the body.
This article discusses the blood test done to measure the amount of CRP in your blood.
How the Test is Performed
A blood sample is needed. This is usually taken from a vein. The procedure is called a venipuncture.
How to Prepare for the Test
No preparation is necessary for this test.
How the Test Will Feel
When the needle is inserted to draw blood, some people feel moderate pain, while others feel only a prick or stinging sensation. Afterward, there may be some throbbing.
Why the Test is Performed
The CRP test is a general test to check for inflammation in the body. It is not a specific test. That means it can reveal that you have inflammation somewhere in your body, but it cannot pinpoint the exact location.
Your doctor may order this test to:
- Check for flare-ups of inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, or vasculitis
- Determine if anti-inflammatory medicine is working to treat a disease or condition
A more sensitive CRP test, called a high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) assay, is available to determine a person's risk for heart disease. Many consider a high CRP level to be a risk factor for heart disease. However, it is not known whether CRP is merely a sign of cardiovascular disease or if it actually plays a role in causing heart problems.
Normal Results
Normal CRP values vary from lab to lab. Generally, there is no CRP detectable in the blood.
Your doctor may also use a highly sensitive test called hs-CRP to help determine your risk of heart disease. According to the American Heart Association:
- You are at low risk of developing cardiovascular disease if your hs-CRP level is lower than 1.0mg/L
- You are at average risk of developing cardiovascular disease if your levels are between 1.0 and 3.0 mg/L
- You are at high risk for cardiovascular disease if your hs-CRP level is higher than 3.0 mg/L
The examples above show the common measurements for results for these tests. Some laboratories use different measurements or may test different specimens.
What Abnormal Results Mean
A positive test means you have inflammation in the body. This may be due to a variety of different conditions, including:
click: green\:
- Cancer
- Connective tissue disease
- Heart attack
- Infection
- Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
- Lupus
- Pneumococcal pneumonia
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Rheumatic fever
- Tuberculosis
Note: Positive CRP results also occur during the last half of pregnancy or with the use of birth control pills (oral contraceptives).
Risks
Veins and arteries vary in size from one patient to another and from one side of the body to the other. Obtaining a blood sample from some people may be more difficult than from others.
Other risks associated with having blood drawn are slight but may include:
- Excessive bleeding
- Fainting or feeling light-headed
- Hematoma (blood accumulating under the skin)
- Infection (a slight risk any time the skin is broken)
References
Ridker PM, Libby P. Risk Factors for Atherothrombotic Disease. In: Libby P, Bonow RO, Mann DL, Zipes DP, eds. Braunwald's Heart Disease: A Textbook of Cardiovascular Medicine. 8th ed. Philadelphia, Pa; Saunders Elsevier; 2007: chap 39.
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143 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health
SUGAR BAD BAD BAD
141 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health | Nancy Appleton Books ...nancyappleton.com/141-reasons-sugar-ruins-your-health/
Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation can influence muscle force production in offspring, ... Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. ..... Thank you for this list.
By Nancy Appleton PhD & G.N. Jacobs
Excerpted from Suicide by Sugar
Used with permission
11. Sugar causes a decline in tissue elasticity and function – the more sugar you eat, the more elasticity and function you lose.
12. Sugar reduces high-density lipoproteins (HDL).
13. Sugar can lead to chromium deficiency.
14. Sugar can lead to ovarian cancer.
15. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose.
16. Sugar causes copper deficiency.
17. Sugar interferes with the body’s absorption of calcium and magnesium.
18. Sugar may make eyes more vulnerable to age-related macular degeneration.
19. Sugar raises the level of neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
20. Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.
21. Sugar can lead to an acidic digestive tract.
22. Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline levels in children.
23. Sugar is frequently malabsorbed in patients with functional bowel disease.
24. Sugar can cause premature aging.
25. Sugar can lead to alcoholism.
26. Sugar can cause tooth decay.
27. Sugar can lead to obesity.
28. Sugar increases the risk of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
29. Sugar can cause gastric or duodenal ulcers.
30. Sugar can cause arthritis.
31. Sugar can cause learning disorders in school children.
32. Sugar assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections).
33. Sugar can cause gallstones.
34. Sugar can cause heart disease.
35. Sugar can cause appendicitis.
36. Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.
37. Sugar can cause varicose veins.
38. Sugar can lead to periodontal disease.
39. Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.
40. Sugar contributes to saliva acidity.
41. Sugar can cause a decrease in insulin sensitivity.
42. Sugar can lower the amount of Vitamin E in the blood.
43. Sugar can decrease the amount of growth hormones in the body.
44. Sugar can increase cholesterol.
45. Sugar increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which form when sugar binds non-enzymatically to protein.
46. Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein.
47. Sugar causes food allergies.
48. Sugar can contribute to diabetes.
49. Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.
50. Sugar can lead to eczema in children.
51. Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.
52. Sugar can impair the structure of DNA.
53. Sugar can change the structure of protein.
54. Sugar can make the skin wrinkle by changing the structure of collagen.
55. Sugar can cause cataracts.
56. Sugar can cause emphysema.
57. Sugar can cause atherosclerosis.
58. Sugar can promote an elevation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL).
59. Sugar can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in the body.
60. Sugar lowers enzymes ability to function.
61. Sugar intake is associated with the development of Parkinson’s disease.
62. Sugar can increase the size of the liver by making the liver cells divide.
63. Sugar can increase the amount of liver fat.
64. Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney.
65. Sugar can damage the pancreas.
66. Sugar can increase the body’s fluid retention.
67. Sugar is the number one enemy of the bowel movement.
68. Sugar can cause myopia (nearsightedness).
69. Sugar can compromise the lining of the capillaries.
70. Sugar can make tendons more brittle.
71. Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines.
72. Sugar plays a role in pancreatic cancer in women.
73. Sugar can adversely affect children’s grades in school.
74. Sugar can cause depression.
75. Sugar increases the risk of gastric cancer.
76. Sugar can cause dyspepsia (indigestion).
77. Sugar can increase the risk of developing gout.
78. Sugar can increase the levels of glucose in the blood much higher than complex carbohydrates in a glucose tolerance test can.
79. Sugar reduces learning capacity.
80. Sugar can cause two blood proteins – albumin and lipoproteins – to function less effectively, which may reduce the body’s ability to handle fat and cholesterol.
81. Sugar can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
82. Sugar can cause platelet adhesiveness, which causes blood clots.
83. Sugar can cause hormonal imbalance – some hormones become underactive and others become overactive.
84. Sugar can lead to the formation of kidney stones.
85. Sugar can cause free radicals and oxidative stress.
86. Sugar can lead to biliary tract cancer.
87. Sugar increases the risk of pregnant adolescents delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.
88. Sugar can lead to a substantial decrease the in the length of pregnancy among adolescents.
89. Sugar slows food’s travel time through the gastrointestinal tract.
90. Sugar increases the concentration of bile acids in stool and bacterial enzymes in the colon, which can modify bile to produce cancer-causing compounds and colon cancer.
91. Sugar increases estradiol (the most potent form of naturally occurring estrogen) in men.
92. Sugar combines with and destroys phosphatase, a digestive enzyme, which makes digestion more difficult.
93. Sugar can be a risk factor for gallbladder cancer.
94. Sugar is an addictive substance.
95. Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.
96. Sugar can aggravate premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
97. Sugar can decrease emotional stability.
98. Sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese people.
99. Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit disorder (ADD).
1. Sanchez, A, et al. “Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis.” Am J Clin Nutr. Nov 1973; 261: 1180-1184.
2. Bernstein, L et al. “Depression of Lymphocyte Transformation Following Oral Glucose Ingestion.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1997; 30: 613.
3. Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).
4. Bayol, S.A “Evidence that a Maternal ‘Junk Food’ Diet during Pregnancy and Lactation Can Reduce Muscle Force in Offspring.” Eur J Nutr. Dec 19, 2008.
5. Rajeshwari, R, et al. “Secular Trends in Children’s Sweetened-beverage Consumption (1973 to 1994): The Bogalusa Heart Study.” J Am Diet Assoc. Feb 2005; 105(2): 208-214.
6. Behall, K. “Influence of Estrogen Content of Oral Contraceptives and Consumption of Sucrose on Blood Parameters.” Disease Abstracts International.1982; 431-437. POPLINE Document Number: 013114.
7. Mohanty, P., et al. “Glucose Challenge Stimulates Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) Generation by Leucocytes.” J Clin Endocrin Metab. Aug 2000; 85(8): 2970-2973.
Couzy, F., et al. “Nutritional Implications of the Interaction Minerals.”Progressive Food & Nutrition Science. 1933; 17: 65-87.
8. Goldman, L et al. “Behavioral Effects of Sucrose on Preschool Children.” J Abnorm Child Psy. 1986; 14(4): 565-577.
9. Scanto, S. and Yudkin, J. “The Effect of Dietary Sucrose on Blood Lipids, Serum Insulin, Platelet Adhesiveness and Body Weight in Human Volunteers.” Postgrad Med J. 1969; 45: 602-607.
10. Ringsdorf, w., Cheraskin, E., and Ramsay. R “Sucrose, Neutrophilic Phagocytosis and Resistance to Disease.” Dental Survey. 1976; 52(12): 46-48.
11. Cerami, A, et al. “Glucose and Aging.” Scientific American. May 1987: 90.
Lee, A T. and Cerami, A “The Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals N Y Acad Sci. 663: 63-67.
12. Albrink, M. and Ullrich, LH. “Interaction of Dietary Sucrose and Fiber on Serum Lipids in Healthy Young Men Fed High Carbohydrate Diets.” Clin Nutr.1986;43: 419-428.
Pamplona, R, et al. “Mechanisms of Glycation in Atherogenesis.” Medical Hypotheses. Mar 1993; 40(3): 174-81.
13. Kozlovsky, A, et al. “Effects of Diets High in Simple Sugars on Urinary Chromium Losses.” Metabolism. Jun 1986; 35: 515-518.
14. Takahashi, E. Tohoku, University School of Medicine. Wholistic Health Digest. Oct 1982: 41.
15. Kelsay, L et al. “Diets High in Glucose or Sucrose and Young Women.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1974; 27: 926-936.
Thomas, B. L et al. “Relation of Habitual Diet to Fasting Plasma Insulin Concentration and the Insulin Response to Oral Glucose.” Hum Nutr Clin Nutr. 1983; 36C(1): 49-51.
16. Fields, M., et al. “Effect of Copper Deficiency on Metabolism and Mortality in Rats Fed Sucrose or Starch Diets.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1983; 113: 1335-1345.
17. Lemann, J. “Evidence that Glucose Ingestion Inhibits Net Renal Tubular Reabsorption of Calcium and Magnesium.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1976; 70: 236-245.
18. Chiu, C. “Association between Dietary Glycemic Index and Age-related Macular Degeneration in Nondiabetic Participants in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study.” Am J Clin Nutr. Jul 2007; 86: 180-188.
19. “Sugar, White Flour Withdrawal Produces Chemical Response.” The Addiction Letter. Jul1992: 4.
20. Dufty, William. Sugar Blues. (New York: Warner Books, 1975).
21. Ibid.
Ibid. (Latin, short for ibidem, meaning "in the same place") is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for asource that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. This is similar in meaning to idem (meaning something that has been mentioned previously; the same), abbreviated Id., which is commonly used in legal citation.[1] To find the ibid. source, one must look at the reference preceding it. Ibid. may also be used in the Harvard (name-date) system for in-text references where there has been a close previous citation from the same source material.[2][3] The previous reference should be immediately visible, e.g. within the same paragraph or page. Many academic publishers now prefer that "ibid." should not be given in italics, as it is a commonly found term.[4]
Notice that ibid. is an abbreviation where the last two letters of the word are not present; thus, it always takes a period (full stop) in both American and British usage.
22. Jones, T.W., et al. “Enhanced Adrenomedullary Response and Increased Susceptibility to Neuroglygopenia: Mechanisms Underlying the Adverse Effect of Sugar Ingestion in Children.” J Ped. Feb 1995; 126: 171-177.
23. Ibid.
24. Lee, A. T. and Cerami, A. “The Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals NY Acad Sci. 1992; 663: 63-70.
25. Abrahamson, E. and Peget, A. Body, Mind and Sugar. (New York: Avon, 1977).
26. Glinsmann, w., et al. “Evaluation of Health Aspects of Sugar Contained in Carbohydrate Sweeteners.” FDA Report of Sugars Task Force. 1986: 39.
Makinen, K.K., et al. “A Descriptive Report of the Effects of a 16-month Xylitol Chewing-Gum Programme Subsequent to a 40-Month Sucrose Gum Programme.”Caries Res. 1998; 32(2): 107-12.
Riva Touger-Decker and Cor van Loveren, “Sugars and Dental Caries.” Am J Clin Nutr. Oct 2003; 78: 881-892.
27. Keen, H., et al. “Nutrient Intake, Adiposity and Diabetes.” Brit Med J. 1989; 1: 655-658.
28. Tragnone, A, et al. “Dietary Habits as Risk Factors for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. Jan 1995; 7(1): 47-51.
29. Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. (New York: Bantam Books: 1974) 129.
30. Darlington, L., and Ramsey. et al. “Placebo-Controlled, Blind Study of Dietary Manipulation Therapy in Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Lancet. Feb 1986; 8475(1): 236-238.
31. Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).
32. Crook, W. J. The Yeast Connection. (TN: Professional Books, 1984).
33. Heaton, K. “The Sweet Road to Gallstones.” Brit Med J. Apr 14, 1984; 288: 1103-1104.
Misciagna, G., et al. “Insulin and Gallstones.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1999; 69: 120-126.
34. Yudkin, J. “Sugar Consumption and Myocardial Infarction.” Lancet. Feb 6, 1971; 1(7693): 296-297.
Chess, D.J., et al. “Deleterious Effects of Sugar and Protective Effects of Starch on Cardiac Remodeling, Contractile Dysfunction, and Mortality in Response to Pressure Overload.” Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. Sep 2007; 293(3): H1853-H1860.
35. Cleave, T. The Saccharine Disease. (New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1974).
36. Ibid.
37. Cleave, T. and Campbell, G. Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis and the Saccharine Disease. (Bristol, England: John Wright and Sons, 1960).
38. Glinsmann, W., et al. “Evaluation of Health Aspects of Sugar Contained in Carbohydrate Sweeteners.” F.D.A. Report of Sugars Task Force. 1986; 39: 36-38.
39. Tjiiderhane, L. and Larmas, M. “A High Sucrose Diet Decreases the Mechanical Strength of Bones in Growing Rats.” J Nutr. 1998; 128: 1807-1810.
40. Wilson, RE and Ashley, EP. “The Effects of Experimental Variations in Dietary Sugar Intake and Oral Hygiene on the Biochemical Composition and pH of Free Smooth-surface and Approximal Plaque.” J Dent Res. Jun 1988; 67(6): 949-953.
41. Beck-Nielsen, H., et al. “Effects of Diet on the Cellular Insulin Binding and the Insulin Sensitivity in Young Healthy Subjects.” Diabetes. 1978; 15: 289-296.
42. Mohanty, P., et al. “Glucose Challenge Stimulates Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) Generation by Leucocytes.” J Clin Endocrin Metab. Aug 2000; 85(8): 2970-2973.
43. Gardner, L. and Reiser, S. “Effects of Dietary Carbohydrate on Fasting Levels of Human Growth Hormone and Cortisol.” Proc Soc Exp Bioi Med. 1982; 169: 36-40.
44. Ma, Y, et al. “Association Between Carbohydrate Intake and Serum Lipids.” J Am Coli Nutr. Apr 2006; 25(2): 155-163.
45. Furth, A and Harding, J. “Why Sugar Is Bad For You.” New Scientist. Sep 23, 1989; 44.
46. Lee, AT. and Cerami, A “Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals N Y Acad Sci. Nov 21,1992; 663: 63-70.
47. Appleton, N. Lick the Sugar Habit. (New York: Avery Penguin Putnam, 1988).
48. Henriksen, H. B. and Kolset, S.O. Tidsslcr Nor Laegeforen. Sep 6, 2007; 127(17): 2259-62.
49. Cleave, T. The Saccharine Disease. (New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1974).
50. Ibid., at 132.
51. Vaccaro, 0., et al. “Relationship of Postload Plasma Glucose to Mortality with 19 Year Follow-up.” Diabetes Care. Oct 15,1992; 10: 328-334.
Tominaga, M., et al, “Impaired Glucose Tolerance Is a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease, but Not Fasting Glucose.” Diabetes Care. 1999; 2(6): 920-924.
52. Lee, A T. and Cerami, A “Modifications of Proteins and Nucleic Acids by Reducing Sugars: Possible Role in Aging.” Handbook of the Biology of Aging. (New York: Academic Press, 1990).
53. Monnier, V. M. “Nonenzymatic Glycosylation, the Maillard Reaction and the Aging Process.” J Ger. 1990; 45(4): 105-110.
54. Dyer, D. G., et al. “Accumulation of Maillard Reaction Products in Skin Collagen in Diabetes and Aging.” J Clin Invest. 1993; 93(6): 421-422.
55. Veromann, S., et al. “Dietary Sugar and Salt Represent Real Risk Factors for Cataract Development.” Ophthalmologica. Jul-Aug 2003; 217(4): 302-307.
56. Monnier, V. M. “Nonenzymatic Glycosylation, the Maillard Reaction and the Aging Process.” J Ger. 1990; 45(4): 105-110.
57. Schmidt, AM., et al. “Activation of Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products: a Mechanism for Chronic Vascular Dysfunction in Diabetic Vasculopathy and Atherosclerosis.” Circ Res. Mar 1999; 1984(5): 489-97.
58. Lewis, G. F. and Steiner, G. “Acute Effects of Insulin in the Control of VLDL Production in Humans. Implications for The Insulin-resistant State.” Diabetes Care. Apr 1996; 19(4): 390-393.
R. Pamplona, M.J., et al. “Mechanisms of Glycation in Atherogenesis.” Medical Hypotheses. 1990; 40: 174-181.
59. Ceriello, A “Oxidative Stress and Glycemic Regulation.” Metabolism. Feb 2000; 49(2 Suppl1): 27-29.
60. Appleton, Nancy. Lick the Sugar Habit. (New York: Avery Penguin Putnam, 1988).
61. Hellenbrand, W., et al. “Diet and Parkinson’s Disease. A Possible Role for the Past Intake of Specific Nutrients. Results from a Self-administered Food-frequency Questionnaire in a Case-control Study.” Neurology. Sep 1996; 47: 644-650.
Cerami, A, et al. “Glucose and Aging.” Sci Am. May 1987: 90.
62. Goulart, F. S. “Are You Sugar Smart?” American Fitness. Mar-Apr 1991: 34-38.
63. Scribner, K.B., et al. “Hepatic Steatosis and Increased Adiposity in Mice Consuming Rapidly vs. Slowly Absorbed Carbohydrate.” Obesity. 2007; 15: 2190-2199.
64. Yudkin, L Kang, S., and Bruckdorfer, K. “Effects of High Dietary Sugar.” Brit Med J. Nov 22, 1980; 1396.
65. Goulart, F. S. “Are You Sugar Smart?” American Fitness. Mar-Apr 1991: 34-38
66. Ibid.
Note: Ibid. (Latin, short for ibidem, meaning "in the same place") is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for asource that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. This is similar in meaning to idem (meaning something that has been mentioned previously; the same), abbreviated Id., which is commonly used in legal citation.[1] To find the ibid. source, one must look at the reference preceding it. Ibid. may also be used in the Harvard (name-date) system for in-text references where there has been a close previous citation from the same source material.[2][3] The previous reference should be immediately visible, e.g. within the same paragraph or page. Many academic publishers now prefer that "ibid." should not be given in italics, as it is a commonly found term.[4]Notice that ibid. is an abbreviation where the last two letters of the word are not present; thus, it always takes a period (full stop) in both American and British usage.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Nash, J. “Health Contenders.” Essence. Jan 1992; 23: 79-81.
71. Grand, E. “Food Allergies and Migraine.” Lancet. 1979; 1: 955-959.
72. Michaud, D. “Dietary Sugar, Glycemic Load, and Pancreatic Cancer Risk in a Prospective Study.” J Natl Cancer Inst. Sep 4, 2002; 94(17): 1293-300.
73. Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).
74. Peet, M. “International Variations in the Outcome of Schizophrenia and the Prevalence of Depression in Relation to National Dietary Practices: An Ecological Analysis.” Brit J Psy. 2004; 184: 404-408.
75. Cornee, L et al. “A Case-control Study of Gastric Cancer and Nutritional Factors in Marseille, France.” Eur J Epid. 1995; 11: 55-65.
76. Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. (New York: Bantam Books, 1974).
77. Ibid., at 44.
78. Reiser, S., et al. “Effects of Sugars on Indices on Glucose Tolerance in Humans.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1986: 43; 151-159.
79. Ibid.
Molteni, R, et al. “A High-fat, Refined Sugar Diet Reduces Hippocampal Brainderived Neurotrophic Factor, Neuronal Plasticity, and Learning.”NeuroScience. 2002; 112(4): 803-814.
80. Monnier, v., “Nonenzymatic Glycosylation, the Maillard Reaction and the Aging Process.” J Ger. 1990; 45: 105-111.
81. Frey, J. “Is There Sugar in the Alzheimer’s Disease?” Annales De Biologie Clinique. 2001; 59(3): 253-257.
82. Yudkin, J. “Metabolic Changes Induced by Sugar in Relation to Coronary Heart Disease and Diabetes.” Nutr Health. 1987; 5(1-2): 5-8.
83. Ibid.
84. Blacklock, N.J., “Sucrose and Idiopathic Renal Stone.” Nutr Health. 1987; 5(1-2):9-12.
Curhan, G., et al. “Beverage Use and Risk for Kidney Stones in Women.” Ann Inter Med. 1998; 28: 534-340.
85. Ceriello, A “Oxidative Stress and Glycemic Regulation.” Metabolism. Feb 2000; 49(2 Suppl1): 27-29.
86. Moerman, C. L et al. “Dietary Sugar Intake in the Etiology of Biliary Tract Cancer.” Inter J Epid. Apr 1993; 2(2): 207-214.
87. Lenders, C. M. “Gestational Age and Infant Size at Birth Are Associated with Dietary Intake among Pregnant Adolescents.” J Nutr. Jun 1997; 1113-1117.
88. Ibid.
89.Yudkin, J. and Eisa, O. “Dietary Sucrose and Oestradiol Concentration in Young Men.” Ann Nutr Metab. 1988; 32(2): 53-55.
90. Bostick, RM., et al. “Sugar, Meat, and Fat Intake and Non-dietary Risk Factors for Colon Cancer Incidence in Iowa Women.” Cancer Causes & Control. 1994; 5: 38-53.
Kruis, w., et al. “Effects of Diets Low and High in Refined Sugars on Gut Transit, Bile Acid Metabolism and Bacterial Fermentation.” Gut. 1991; 32: 367-370.
Ludwig, D. S., et al. “High Glycemic Index Foods, Overeating, And Obesity.”Pediatrics. Mar 1999; 103(3): 26-32.
91. Yudkin, J. and Eisa, O. “Dietary Sucrose and Oestradiol Concentration in Young Men.” Ann Nutr Metab. 1988; 32(2): 53-55.
92. Lee, AT. and Cerami, A “The Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals N Y Acad Sci. 1992; 663: 63-70.
93. Moerman, c., et al.”Dietary Sugar Intake in the Etiology of Gallbladder Tract Cancer.” Inter J Epid. Apr 1993; 22(2): 207-214.
94. Avena, N.M. “Evidence for Sugar Addiction: Behavioral and Nuerochemical Effects of Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake.” Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2008; 32(1): 20-39.
Colantuoni, c., et al. “Evidence That Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake Cause Endogenous Opioid Dependence.” Obesity. Jun 2002; 10(6): 478-488.
95. Ibid.
96. The Edell Health Letter. Sep 1991; 7: 1.
97. Christensen, L., et al. “Impact of A Dietary Change on Emotional Distress.” J Abnorm Psy. 1985; 94(4): 565-79.
98. Ludwig, D.S., et al. “High Glycemic Index Foods, Overeating and Obesity.”Pediatrics. Mar 1999; 103(3): 26-32.
99. Girardi, N.L.” Blunted Catecholamine Responses after Glucose Ingestion in Children with Attention Deficit Disorder.” Pediatr Res. 1995; 38: 539-542.
Berdonces, J.L. “Attention Deficit and Infantile Hyperactivity.” Rev Enferm. Jan 2001; 4(1): 11-4.
100. Lechin, E, et al. “Effects of an Oral Glucose Load on Plasma Neurotransmitters in Humans.” Neuropsychobiology. 1992; 26(1-2): 4-11.
101. Arieff, AI. “IVs of Sugar Water Can Cut Off Oxygen to the Brain.” Veterans Administration Medical Center in San Francisco. San Jose Mercury. Jun 12/86.
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103. Sandler, B.P. Diet Prevents Polio. (Milwakuee, WI: The Lee Foundation for Nutr Research,1951).
104. Murphy, P. “The Role of Sugar in Epileptic Seizures.” Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. May 2001.
105. Stern, N. and Tuck, M. “Pathogenesis of Hypertension in Diabetes Mellitus.”Diabetes Mellitus, a Fundamental and Clinical Test. 2nd Edition. (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000) 943-957.
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120. Cleve, T.L. On the Causation of Varicose Veins. (Bristol, England: John Wright, 1960).
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125. Powers, L. “Sensitivity: You React to What You Eat.” Los Angeles Times. Feb 12, 1985.
Cheng, L et al. “Preliminary Clinical Study on the Correlation Between Allergic Rhinitis and Food Factors.” Lin Chuang Er Bi Yan Hou Ke Za Zhi. Aug 2002; 16(8): 393-396.
126. Jarnerot, G. “Consumption of Refined Sugar by Patients with Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative colitis, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” Scand J Gastroenterol. Nov 1983; 18(8): 999-1002.
127. Allen, S. “Sugars and Fats: The Neurobiology of Preference.” J Nutr. 2003; 133: 831S-834S.
128. De Stefani, E., et al. “Sucrose as a Risk Factor for Cancer of the Colon and Rectum: a Case-control Study in Uruguay.” Int J Cancer. Jan 5, 1998; 75(1): 40-4.
129. Levi, E, et al. “Dietary Factors and the Risk of Endometrial Cancer.” Cancer. Jun 1, 1993; 71(11): 3575-3581.
130. Mellemgaard, A, et al. “Dietary Risk Factors for Renal Cell Carcinoma in Denmark.” Eur J Cancer. Apr 1996; 32A(4): 673-82.
131. Rogers, AE., et al. “Nutritional and Dietary Influences on Liver Tumorigenesis in Mice and Rats.” Arch Toxicol Suppl. 1987; 10: 231-43. Review.
132. Sorensen, L.B., et al. “Effect of Sucrose on Inflammatory Markers in Overweight Humans” Am J Clin Nutr. Aug 2005; 82(2).
133. Smith, R.N., et al. “The Effect of a High-protein, Low Glycemic-load Diet Versus a Conventional, High Glycemic-load Diet on Biochemical Parameters Associated with Acne Vulgaris: A Randomized, Investigator-masked, Controlled TriaL” JAm Acad Dermatol. 2007; 57: 247-256.
134. Selva, D.M., et al. “Monosaccharide-induced Lipogenesis Regulates the Human Hepatic Sex Hormone-binding Globulin Gene.” J Clin Invest. 2007. doi:10.1172/JCI32249.
135. Krietsch, K., et al. “Prevalence, Presenting Symptoms, and Psychological Characteristics of Individuals Experiencing a Diet-related Mood-disturbance.”Behavior Therapy. 1988; 19(4): 593-604.
136. Berglund, M., et al. “Comparison of Monounsaturated Fat with Carbohydrates as a Replacement for Saturated Fat in Subjects with a High Metabolic Risk Profile: Studies in the Fasting and Postprandial States.” Am J Clin Nutr. Dec 1, 2007; 86(6): 1611-1620.
137. Gao, X., et al. “Intake of Added Sugar and Sugar-Sweetened Drink and Serum Uric Acid Concentration in US Men and Women.” Hypertension. Aug 1, 2007; 50(2): 306-312.
138. Wu, T., et al. Fructose, Glycemic Load, and Quantity and Quality of Carbohydrate in Relation to Plasma C-peptide Concentrations in US Women.” Am J Clin Nutr. Oct 2004; (4):1043-1049.
139. Matthias, B. and Schulze, M.B. “Dietary Pattern, Inflammation, and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Women.” Am J Clin Nutr. Sep 2005; 82: 675-684.
140. Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. (New York: Bantam Books: 1974) 169.
141. http://www.endo-society.org/media/press/upload/CARONIA_FINAL.pdfdated June 13, 2009
142. Ross, AP, et. al. “A High Fructose Diet Impairs Spatial Memory in Male Rats” Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2009 Jun 12. [Epub ahead of print]
143. Gul, A. et al. “Role of fructose concentration on cataractogenesis in senile diabetic and non-diabetic patients.” Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2009 Jun;247(6):809-14. Epub 2009 Feb 6.
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SUGAR BAD BAD BAD
141 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health | Nancy Appleton Books ...nancyappleton.com/141-reasons-sugar-ruins-your-health/
Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation can influence muscle force production in offspring, ... Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. ..... Thank you for this list.
By Nancy Appleton PhD & G.N. Jacobs
Excerpted from Suicide by Sugar
Used with permission
- Sugar can suppress your immune system.
- Sugar upsets the mineral relationships in the body.
- Sugar can cause juvenile delinquency in children.
- Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation can influence muscle force production in offspring, which can affect an individual’s ability to exercise.
- Sugar in soda, when consumed by children, results in the children drinking less milk.
- Sugar can elevate glucose and insulin responses and return them to fasting levels slower in oral contraceptive users.
- Sugar can increase reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can damage cells and tissues.
- Sugar can cause hyperactivity, anxiety, inability to concentrate and crankiness in children.
- Sugar can produce a significant rise in triglycerides.
11. Sugar causes a decline in tissue elasticity and function – the more sugar you eat, the more elasticity and function you lose.
12. Sugar reduces high-density lipoproteins (HDL).
13. Sugar can lead to chromium deficiency.
14. Sugar can lead to ovarian cancer.
15. Sugar can increase fasting levels of glucose.
16. Sugar causes copper deficiency.
17. Sugar interferes with the body’s absorption of calcium and magnesium.
18. Sugar may make eyes more vulnerable to age-related macular degeneration.
19. Sugar raises the level of neurotransmitters: dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine.
20. Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.
21. Sugar can lead to an acidic digestive tract.
22. Sugar can cause a rapid rise of adrenaline levels in children.
23. Sugar is frequently malabsorbed in patients with functional bowel disease.
24. Sugar can cause premature aging.
25. Sugar can lead to alcoholism.
26. Sugar can cause tooth decay.
27. Sugar can lead to obesity.
28. Sugar increases the risk of Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
29. Sugar can cause gastric or duodenal ulcers.
30. Sugar can cause arthritis.
31. Sugar can cause learning disorders in school children.
32. Sugar assists the uncontrolled growth of Candida Albicans (yeast infections).
33. Sugar can cause gallstones.
34. Sugar can cause heart disease.
35. Sugar can cause appendicitis.
36. Sugar can cause hemorrhoids.
37. Sugar can cause varicose veins.
38. Sugar can lead to periodontal disease.
39. Sugar can contribute to osteoporosis.
40. Sugar contributes to saliva acidity.
41. Sugar can cause a decrease in insulin sensitivity.
42. Sugar can lower the amount of Vitamin E in the blood.
43. Sugar can decrease the amount of growth hormones in the body.
44. Sugar can increase cholesterol.
45. Sugar increases advanced glycation end products (AGEs), which form when sugar binds non-enzymatically to protein.
46. Sugar can interfere with the absorption of protein.
47. Sugar causes food allergies.
48. Sugar can contribute to diabetes.
49. Sugar can cause toxemia during pregnancy.
50. Sugar can lead to eczema in children.
51. Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.
52. Sugar can impair the structure of DNA.
53. Sugar can change the structure of protein.
54. Sugar can make the skin wrinkle by changing the structure of collagen.
55. Sugar can cause cataracts.
56. Sugar can cause emphysema.
57. Sugar can cause atherosclerosis.
58. Sugar can promote an elevation of low-density lipoproteins (LDL).
59. Sugar can impair the physiological homeostasis of many systems in the body.
60. Sugar lowers enzymes ability to function.
61. Sugar intake is associated with the development of Parkinson’s disease.
62. Sugar can increase the size of the liver by making the liver cells divide.
63. Sugar can increase the amount of liver fat.
64. Sugar can increase kidney size and produce pathological changes in the kidney.
65. Sugar can damage the pancreas.
66. Sugar can increase the body’s fluid retention.
67. Sugar is the number one enemy of the bowel movement.
68. Sugar can cause myopia (nearsightedness).
69. Sugar can compromise the lining of the capillaries.
70. Sugar can make tendons more brittle.
71. Sugar can cause headaches, including migraines.
72. Sugar plays a role in pancreatic cancer in women.
73. Sugar can adversely affect children’s grades in school.
74. Sugar can cause depression.
75. Sugar increases the risk of gastric cancer.
76. Sugar can cause dyspepsia (indigestion).
77. Sugar can increase the risk of developing gout.
78. Sugar can increase the levels of glucose in the blood much higher than complex carbohydrates in a glucose tolerance test can.
79. Sugar reduces learning capacity.
80. Sugar can cause two blood proteins – albumin and lipoproteins – to function less effectively, which may reduce the body’s ability to handle fat and cholesterol.
81. Sugar can contribute to Alzheimer’s disease.
82. Sugar can cause platelet adhesiveness, which causes blood clots.
83. Sugar can cause hormonal imbalance – some hormones become underactive and others become overactive.
84. Sugar can lead to the formation of kidney stones.
85. Sugar can cause free radicals and oxidative stress.
86. Sugar can lead to biliary tract cancer.
87. Sugar increases the risk of pregnant adolescents delivering a small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infant.
88. Sugar can lead to a substantial decrease the in the length of pregnancy among adolescents.
89. Sugar slows food’s travel time through the gastrointestinal tract.
90. Sugar increases the concentration of bile acids in stool and bacterial enzymes in the colon, which can modify bile to produce cancer-causing compounds and colon cancer.
91. Sugar increases estradiol (the most potent form of naturally occurring estrogen) in men.
92. Sugar combines with and destroys phosphatase, a digestive enzyme, which makes digestion more difficult.
93. Sugar can be a risk factor for gallbladder cancer.
94. Sugar is an addictive substance.
95. Sugar can be intoxicating, similar to alcohol.
96. Sugar can aggravate premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
97. Sugar can decrease emotional stability.
98. Sugar promotes excessive food intake in obese people.
99. Sugar can worsen the symptoms of children with attention deficit disorder (ADD).
- Sugar can slow the ability of the adrenal glands to function.
- Sugar can cut off oxygen to the brain when given to people intravenously.
- Sugar is a risk factor for lung cancer.
- Sugar increases the risk of polio.
- Sugar can cause epileptic seizures.
- Sugar can increase systolic blood pressure (pressure when the heart is contracting).
- Sugar can induce cell death.
- Sugar can increase the amount of food that you eat.
- Sugar can cause antisocial behavior in juvenile delinquents.
- Sugar can lead to prostate cancer.
- Sugar dehydrates newborns.
- Sugar can cause women to give birth to babies with low birth weight.
- Sugar is associated with a worse outcome of schizophrenia.
- Sugar can raise homocysteine levels in the bloodstream.
- Sugar increases the risk of breast cancer.
- Sugar is a risk factor in small intestine cancer.
- Sugar can cause laryngeal cancer.
- Sugar induces salt and water retention.
- Sugar can contribute to mild memory loss.
- Sugar water, when given to children shortly after birth, results in those children preferring sugar water to regular water throughout childhood.
- Sugar causes constipation.
- Sugar can cause brain decay in pre-diabetic and diabetic women.
- Sugar can increase the risk of stomach cancer.
- Sugar can cause metabolic syndrome.
- Sugar increases neural tube defects in embryos when it is consumed by pregnant women.
- Sugar can cause asthma.
- Sugar increases the chances of getting irritable bowl syndrome.
- Sugar can affect central reward systems.
- Sugar can cause cancer of the rectum.
- Sugar can cause endometrial cancer.
- Sugar can cause renal (kidney) cell cancer.
- Sugar can cause liver tumors.
- Sugar can increase inflammatory markers in the bloodstreams of overweight people.
- Sugar plays a role in the cause and the continuation of acne.
- Sugar can ruin the sex life of both men and women by turning off the gene that controls the sex hormones.
- Sugar can cause fatigue, moodiness, nervousness, and depression.
- Sugar can make many essential nutrients less available to cells.
- Sugar can increase uric acid in blood.
- Sugar can lead to higher C-peptide concentrations.
- Sugar causes inflammation.
- Sugar can cause diverticulitis, a small bulging sac pushing outward from the colon wall that is inflamed.
- Sugar can decrease testosterone production.
- Sugar impairs spatial memory.
- Sugar can cause cataracts.
1. Sanchez, A, et al. “Role of Sugars in Human Neutrophilic Phagocytosis.” Am J Clin Nutr. Nov 1973; 261: 1180-1184.
2. Bernstein, L et al. “Depression of Lymphocyte Transformation Following Oral Glucose Ingestion.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1997; 30: 613.
3. Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).
4. Bayol, S.A “Evidence that a Maternal ‘Junk Food’ Diet during Pregnancy and Lactation Can Reduce Muscle Force in Offspring.” Eur J Nutr. Dec 19, 2008.
5. Rajeshwari, R, et al. “Secular Trends in Children’s Sweetened-beverage Consumption (1973 to 1994): The Bogalusa Heart Study.” J Am Diet Assoc. Feb 2005; 105(2): 208-214.
6. Behall, K. “Influence of Estrogen Content of Oral Contraceptives and Consumption of Sucrose on Blood Parameters.” Disease Abstracts International.1982; 431-437. POPLINE Document Number: 013114.
7. Mohanty, P., et al. “Glucose Challenge Stimulates Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) Generation by Leucocytes.” J Clin Endocrin Metab. Aug 2000; 85(8): 2970-2973.
Couzy, F., et al. “Nutritional Implications of the Interaction Minerals.”Progressive Food & Nutrition Science. 1933; 17: 65-87.
8. Goldman, L et al. “Behavioral Effects of Sucrose on Preschool Children.” J Abnorm Child Psy. 1986; 14(4): 565-577.
9. Scanto, S. and Yudkin, J. “The Effect of Dietary Sucrose on Blood Lipids, Serum Insulin, Platelet Adhesiveness and Body Weight in Human Volunteers.” Postgrad Med J. 1969; 45: 602-607.
10. Ringsdorf, w., Cheraskin, E., and Ramsay. R “Sucrose, Neutrophilic Phagocytosis and Resistance to Disease.” Dental Survey. 1976; 52(12): 46-48.
11. Cerami, A, et al. “Glucose and Aging.” Scientific American. May 1987: 90.
Lee, A T. and Cerami, A “The Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals N Y Acad Sci. 663: 63-67.
12. Albrink, M. and Ullrich, LH. “Interaction of Dietary Sucrose and Fiber on Serum Lipids in Healthy Young Men Fed High Carbohydrate Diets.” Clin Nutr.1986;43: 419-428.
Pamplona, R, et al. “Mechanisms of Glycation in Atherogenesis.” Medical Hypotheses. Mar 1993; 40(3): 174-81.
13. Kozlovsky, A, et al. “Effects of Diets High in Simple Sugars on Urinary Chromium Losses.” Metabolism. Jun 1986; 35: 515-518.
14. Takahashi, E. Tohoku, University School of Medicine. Wholistic Health Digest. Oct 1982: 41.
15. Kelsay, L et al. “Diets High in Glucose or Sucrose and Young Women.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1974; 27: 926-936.
Thomas, B. L et al. “Relation of Habitual Diet to Fasting Plasma Insulin Concentration and the Insulin Response to Oral Glucose.” Hum Nutr Clin Nutr. 1983; 36C(1): 49-51.
16. Fields, M., et al. “Effect of Copper Deficiency on Metabolism and Mortality in Rats Fed Sucrose or Starch Diets.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1983; 113: 1335-1345.
17. Lemann, J. “Evidence that Glucose Ingestion Inhibits Net Renal Tubular Reabsorption of Calcium and Magnesium.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1976; 70: 236-245.
18. Chiu, C. “Association between Dietary Glycemic Index and Age-related Macular Degeneration in Nondiabetic Participants in the Age-Related Eye Disease Study.” Am J Clin Nutr. Jul 2007; 86: 180-188.
19. “Sugar, White Flour Withdrawal Produces Chemical Response.” The Addiction Letter. Jul1992: 4.
20. Dufty, William. Sugar Blues. (New York: Warner Books, 1975).
21. Ibid.
Ibid. (Latin, short for ibidem, meaning "in the same place") is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for asource that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. This is similar in meaning to idem (meaning something that has been mentioned previously; the same), abbreviated Id., which is commonly used in legal citation.[1] To find the ibid. source, one must look at the reference preceding it. Ibid. may also be used in the Harvard (name-date) system for in-text references where there has been a close previous citation from the same source material.[2][3] The previous reference should be immediately visible, e.g. within the same paragraph or page. Many academic publishers now prefer that "ibid." should not be given in italics, as it is a commonly found term.[4]
Notice that ibid. is an abbreviation where the last two letters of the word are not present; thus, it always takes a period (full stop) in both American and British usage.
22. Jones, T.W., et al. “Enhanced Adrenomedullary Response and Increased Susceptibility to Neuroglygopenia: Mechanisms Underlying the Adverse Effect of Sugar Ingestion in Children.” J Ped. Feb 1995; 126: 171-177.
23. Ibid.
24. Lee, A. T. and Cerami, A. “The Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals NY Acad Sci. 1992; 663: 63-70.
25. Abrahamson, E. and Peget, A. Body, Mind and Sugar. (New York: Avon, 1977).
26. Glinsmann, w., et al. “Evaluation of Health Aspects of Sugar Contained in Carbohydrate Sweeteners.” FDA Report of Sugars Task Force. 1986: 39.
Makinen, K.K., et al. “A Descriptive Report of the Effects of a 16-month Xylitol Chewing-Gum Programme Subsequent to a 40-Month Sucrose Gum Programme.”Caries Res. 1998; 32(2): 107-12.
Riva Touger-Decker and Cor van Loveren, “Sugars and Dental Caries.” Am J Clin Nutr. Oct 2003; 78: 881-892.
27. Keen, H., et al. “Nutrient Intake, Adiposity and Diabetes.” Brit Med J. 1989; 1: 655-658.
28. Tragnone, A, et al. “Dietary Habits as Risk Factors for Inflammatory Bowel Disease.” Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol. Jan 1995; 7(1): 47-51.
29. Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. (New York: Bantam Books: 1974) 129.
30. Darlington, L., and Ramsey. et al. “Placebo-Controlled, Blind Study of Dietary Manipulation Therapy in Rheumatoid Arthritis,” Lancet. Feb 1986; 8475(1): 236-238.
31. Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).
32. Crook, W. J. The Yeast Connection. (TN: Professional Books, 1984).
33. Heaton, K. “The Sweet Road to Gallstones.” Brit Med J. Apr 14, 1984; 288: 1103-1104.
Misciagna, G., et al. “Insulin and Gallstones.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1999; 69: 120-126.
34. Yudkin, J. “Sugar Consumption and Myocardial Infarction.” Lancet. Feb 6, 1971; 1(7693): 296-297.
Chess, D.J., et al. “Deleterious Effects of Sugar and Protective Effects of Starch on Cardiac Remodeling, Contractile Dysfunction, and Mortality in Response to Pressure Overload.” Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol. Sep 2007; 293(3): H1853-H1860.
35. Cleave, T. The Saccharine Disease. (New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1974).
36. Ibid.
37. Cleave, T. and Campbell, G. Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis and the Saccharine Disease. (Bristol, England: John Wright and Sons, 1960).
38. Glinsmann, W., et al. “Evaluation of Health Aspects of Sugar Contained in Carbohydrate Sweeteners.” F.D.A. Report of Sugars Task Force. 1986; 39: 36-38.
39. Tjiiderhane, L. and Larmas, M. “A High Sucrose Diet Decreases the Mechanical Strength of Bones in Growing Rats.” J Nutr. 1998; 128: 1807-1810.
40. Wilson, RE and Ashley, EP. “The Effects of Experimental Variations in Dietary Sugar Intake and Oral Hygiene on the Biochemical Composition and pH of Free Smooth-surface and Approximal Plaque.” J Dent Res. Jun 1988; 67(6): 949-953.
41. Beck-Nielsen, H., et al. “Effects of Diet on the Cellular Insulin Binding and the Insulin Sensitivity in Young Healthy Subjects.” Diabetes. 1978; 15: 289-296.
42. Mohanty, P., et al. “Glucose Challenge Stimulates Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) Generation by Leucocytes.” J Clin Endocrin Metab. Aug 2000; 85(8): 2970-2973.
43. Gardner, L. and Reiser, S. “Effects of Dietary Carbohydrate on Fasting Levels of Human Growth Hormone and Cortisol.” Proc Soc Exp Bioi Med. 1982; 169: 36-40.
44. Ma, Y, et al. “Association Between Carbohydrate Intake and Serum Lipids.” J Am Coli Nutr. Apr 2006; 25(2): 155-163.
45. Furth, A and Harding, J. “Why Sugar Is Bad For You.” New Scientist. Sep 23, 1989; 44.
46. Lee, AT. and Cerami, A “Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals N Y Acad Sci. Nov 21,1992; 663: 63-70.
47. Appleton, N. Lick the Sugar Habit. (New York: Avery Penguin Putnam, 1988).
48. Henriksen, H. B. and Kolset, S.O. Tidsslcr Nor Laegeforen. Sep 6, 2007; 127(17): 2259-62.
49. Cleave, T. The Saccharine Disease. (New Canaan, CT: Keats Publishing, 1974).
50. Ibid., at 132.
51. Vaccaro, 0., et al. “Relationship of Postload Plasma Glucose to Mortality with 19 Year Follow-up.” Diabetes Care. Oct 15,1992; 10: 328-334.
Tominaga, M., et al, “Impaired Glucose Tolerance Is a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease, but Not Fasting Glucose.” Diabetes Care. 1999; 2(6): 920-924.
52. Lee, A T. and Cerami, A “Modifications of Proteins and Nucleic Acids by Reducing Sugars: Possible Role in Aging.” Handbook of the Biology of Aging. (New York: Academic Press, 1990).
53. Monnier, V. M. “Nonenzymatic Glycosylation, the Maillard Reaction and the Aging Process.” J Ger. 1990; 45(4): 105-110.
54. Dyer, D. G., et al. “Accumulation of Maillard Reaction Products in Skin Collagen in Diabetes and Aging.” J Clin Invest. 1993; 93(6): 421-422.
55. Veromann, S., et al. “Dietary Sugar and Salt Represent Real Risk Factors for Cataract Development.” Ophthalmologica. Jul-Aug 2003; 217(4): 302-307.
56. Monnier, V. M. “Nonenzymatic Glycosylation, the Maillard Reaction and the Aging Process.” J Ger. 1990; 45(4): 105-110.
57. Schmidt, AM., et al. “Activation of Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products: a Mechanism for Chronic Vascular Dysfunction in Diabetic Vasculopathy and Atherosclerosis.” Circ Res. Mar 1999; 1984(5): 489-97.
58. Lewis, G. F. and Steiner, G. “Acute Effects of Insulin in the Control of VLDL Production in Humans. Implications for The Insulin-resistant State.” Diabetes Care. Apr 1996; 19(4): 390-393.
R. Pamplona, M.J., et al. “Mechanisms of Glycation in Atherogenesis.” Medical Hypotheses. 1990; 40: 174-181.
59. Ceriello, A “Oxidative Stress and Glycemic Regulation.” Metabolism. Feb 2000; 49(2 Suppl1): 27-29.
60. Appleton, Nancy. Lick the Sugar Habit. (New York: Avery Penguin Putnam, 1988).
61. Hellenbrand, W., et al. “Diet and Parkinson’s Disease. A Possible Role for the Past Intake of Specific Nutrients. Results from a Self-administered Food-frequency Questionnaire in a Case-control Study.” Neurology. Sep 1996; 47: 644-650.
Cerami, A, et al. “Glucose and Aging.” Sci Am. May 1987: 90.
62. Goulart, F. S. “Are You Sugar Smart?” American Fitness. Mar-Apr 1991: 34-38.
63. Scribner, K.B., et al. “Hepatic Steatosis and Increased Adiposity in Mice Consuming Rapidly vs. Slowly Absorbed Carbohydrate.” Obesity. 2007; 15: 2190-2199.
64. Yudkin, L Kang, S., and Bruckdorfer, K. “Effects of High Dietary Sugar.” Brit Med J. Nov 22, 1980; 1396.
65. Goulart, F. S. “Are You Sugar Smart?” American Fitness. Mar-Apr 1991: 34-38
66. Ibid.
Note: Ibid. (Latin, short for ibidem, meaning "in the same place") is the term used to provide an endnote or footnote citation or reference for asource that was cited in the preceding endnote or footnote. This is similar in meaning to idem (meaning something that has been mentioned previously; the same), abbreviated Id., which is commonly used in legal citation.[1] To find the ibid. source, one must look at the reference preceding it. Ibid. may also be used in the Harvard (name-date) system for in-text references where there has been a close previous citation from the same source material.[2][3] The previous reference should be immediately visible, e.g. within the same paragraph or page. Many academic publishers now prefer that "ibid." should not be given in italics, as it is a commonly found term.[4]Notice that ibid. is an abbreviation where the last two letters of the word are not present; thus, it always takes a period (full stop) in both American and British usage.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid.
69. Ibid.
70. Nash, J. “Health Contenders.” Essence. Jan 1992; 23: 79-81.
71. Grand, E. “Food Allergies and Migraine.” Lancet. 1979; 1: 955-959.
72. Michaud, D. “Dietary Sugar, Glycemic Load, and Pancreatic Cancer Risk in a Prospective Study.” J Natl Cancer Inst. Sep 4, 2002; 94(17): 1293-300.
73. Schauss, A. Diet, Crime and Delinquency. (Berkley, CA: Parker House, 1981).
74. Peet, M. “International Variations in the Outcome of Schizophrenia and the Prevalence of Depression in Relation to National Dietary Practices: An Ecological Analysis.” Brit J Psy. 2004; 184: 404-408.
75. Cornee, L et al. “A Case-control Study of Gastric Cancer and Nutritional Factors in Marseille, France.” Eur J Epid. 1995; 11: 55-65.
76. Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. (New York: Bantam Books, 1974).
77. Ibid., at 44.
78. Reiser, S., et al. “Effects of Sugars on Indices on Glucose Tolerance in Humans.” Am J Clin Nutr. 1986: 43; 151-159.
79. Ibid.
Molteni, R, et al. “A High-fat, Refined Sugar Diet Reduces Hippocampal Brainderived Neurotrophic Factor, Neuronal Plasticity, and Learning.”NeuroScience. 2002; 112(4): 803-814.
80. Monnier, v., “Nonenzymatic Glycosylation, the Maillard Reaction and the Aging Process.” J Ger. 1990; 45: 105-111.
81. Frey, J. “Is There Sugar in the Alzheimer’s Disease?” Annales De Biologie Clinique. 2001; 59(3): 253-257.
82. Yudkin, J. “Metabolic Changes Induced by Sugar in Relation to Coronary Heart Disease and Diabetes.” Nutr Health. 1987; 5(1-2): 5-8.
83. Ibid.
84. Blacklock, N.J., “Sucrose and Idiopathic Renal Stone.” Nutr Health. 1987; 5(1-2):9-12.
Curhan, G., et al. “Beverage Use and Risk for Kidney Stones in Women.” Ann Inter Med. 1998; 28: 534-340.
85. Ceriello, A “Oxidative Stress and Glycemic Regulation.” Metabolism. Feb 2000; 49(2 Suppl1): 27-29.
86. Moerman, C. L et al. “Dietary Sugar Intake in the Etiology of Biliary Tract Cancer.” Inter J Epid. Apr 1993; 2(2): 207-214.
87. Lenders, C. M. “Gestational Age and Infant Size at Birth Are Associated with Dietary Intake among Pregnant Adolescents.” J Nutr. Jun 1997; 1113-1117.
88. Ibid.
89.Yudkin, J. and Eisa, O. “Dietary Sucrose and Oestradiol Concentration in Young Men.” Ann Nutr Metab. 1988; 32(2): 53-55.
90. Bostick, RM., et al. “Sugar, Meat, and Fat Intake and Non-dietary Risk Factors for Colon Cancer Incidence in Iowa Women.” Cancer Causes & Control. 1994; 5: 38-53.
Kruis, w., et al. “Effects of Diets Low and High in Refined Sugars on Gut Transit, Bile Acid Metabolism and Bacterial Fermentation.” Gut. 1991; 32: 367-370.
Ludwig, D. S., et al. “High Glycemic Index Foods, Overeating, And Obesity.”Pediatrics. Mar 1999; 103(3): 26-32.
91. Yudkin, J. and Eisa, O. “Dietary Sucrose and Oestradiol Concentration in Young Men.” Ann Nutr Metab. 1988; 32(2): 53-55.
92. Lee, AT. and Cerami, A “The Role of Glycation in Aging.” Annals N Y Acad Sci. 1992; 663: 63-70.
93. Moerman, c., et al.”Dietary Sugar Intake in the Etiology of Gallbladder Tract Cancer.” Inter J Epid. Apr 1993; 22(2): 207-214.
94. Avena, N.M. “Evidence for Sugar Addiction: Behavioral and Nuerochemical Effects of Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake.” Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2008; 32(1): 20-39.
Colantuoni, c., et al. “Evidence That Intermittent, Excessive Sugar Intake Cause Endogenous Opioid Dependence.” Obesity. Jun 2002; 10(6): 478-488.
95. Ibid.
96. The Edell Health Letter. Sep 1991; 7: 1.
97. Christensen, L., et al. “Impact of A Dietary Change on Emotional Distress.” J Abnorm Psy. 1985; 94(4): 565-79.
98. Ludwig, D.S., et al. “High Glycemic Index Foods, Overeating and Obesity.”Pediatrics. Mar 1999; 103(3): 26-32.
99. Girardi, N.L.” Blunted Catecholamine Responses after Glucose Ingestion in Children with Attention Deficit Disorder.” Pediatr Res. 1995; 38: 539-542.
Berdonces, J.L. “Attention Deficit and Infantile Hyperactivity.” Rev Enferm. Jan 2001; 4(1): 11-4.
100. Lechin, E, et al. “Effects of an Oral Glucose Load on Plasma Neurotransmitters in Humans.” Neuropsychobiology. 1992; 26(1-2): 4-11.
101. Arieff, AI. “IVs of Sugar Water Can Cut Off Oxygen to the Brain.” Veterans Administration Medical Center in San Francisco. San Jose Mercury. Jun 12/86.
102. De Stefani, E. “Dietary Sugar and Lung Cancer: a Case Control Study in Uruguay.” Nutr Cancer. 1998; 31(2): 132-7.
103. Sandler, B.P. Diet Prevents Polio. (Milwakuee, WI: The Lee Foundation for Nutr Research,1951).
104. Murphy, P. “The Role of Sugar in Epileptic Seizures.” Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients. May 2001.
105. Stern, N. and Tuck, M. “Pathogenesis of Hypertension in Diabetes Mellitus.”Diabetes Mellitus, a Fundamental and Clinical Test. 2nd Edition. (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000) 943-957.
Citation Preuss, H.G., et al. “Sugar-Induced Blood Pressure Elevations Over the Lifespan of Three Substrains of Wistar Rats.” J Am Coli Nutr. 1998; 17(1): 36-37.
106. Christansen, D. “Critical Care: Sugar Limit Saves Lives.” Science News. Jun 30, 2001; 159: 404.
Donnini, D., et al. “Glucose May Induce Cell Death through a Free Radicalmediated Mechanism.” Biochem Biophys Res Commun. Feb 15, 1996; 219(2): 412-417.
107. Levine, AS., et al. “Sugars and Fats: The Neurobiology of Preference” J Nutr. 2003; 133: 831S-834S.
108. Schoenthaler, S. “The Los Angeles Probation Department Diet-Behavior Program: Am Empirical Analysis of Six Institutional Settings.” Int J Biosocial Res. 5(2): 88-89.
109. Deneo-Pellegrini H., et al. “Foods, Nutrients and Prostate Cancer: a Casecontrol Study in Uruguay.” Br J Cancer. May 1999; 80(3-4): 591-7.
110. “Gluconeogenesis in Very Low Birth Weight Infants Receiving Total Parenteral Nutrition.” Diabetes. Apr 1999; 48(4): 791-800.
111. Lenders, C. M. “Gestational Age and Infant Size at Birth Are Associated with Dietary Intake Among Pregnant Adolescents.” J Nutr. 1998; 128: 807-1810.
112. Peet, M. “International Variations in the Outcome of Schizophrenia and the Prevalence of Depression in Relation to National Dietary Practices: An Ecological Analysis.” Brit J Psy. 2004; 184: 404-408.
113. Fonseca, v., et al. “Effects of a High-fat-sucrose Diet on Enzymes in Homosysteine Metabolism in the Rat.” Metabolism. 2000; 49: 736-41.
114. Potischman, N., et al. “Increased Risk of Early-stage Breast Cancer Related to Consumption of Sweet Foods Among Women Less than Age 45 in the United States.” Cancer Causes & Control. Dec 2002; 13(10): 937-46.
115. Negri, E., et al. “Risk Factors for Adenocarcinoma of the Small Intestine.” Int J Cancer. Jul1999; 2(2): 171-4.
116. Bosetti, c., et al. “Food Groups and Laryngeal Cancer Risk: A Case-control Study from Italy and Switzerland.” Int J Cancer. 2002; 100(3): 355-358.
117. Shannon, M. “An Empathetic Look at Overweight.” CCL Family Found. NovDec 1993; 20(3): 3-5. POPLINE Document Number: 091975.
118. Harry, G. and Preuss, MD, Georgetown University Medical School.http://www.usa.weekend.com/food/carper_archive/961201carper_eatsmart.html.
119. Beauchamp, G.K., and Moran, M. “Acceptance of Sweet and Salty Tastes in 2-year-old Children.” Appetite. Dec 1984; 5(4): 291-305.
120. Cleve, T.L. On the Causation of Varicose Veins. (Bristol, England: John Wright, 1960).
121. Ket, Yaffe, et al. “Diabetes, Impaired Fasting Glucose and Development of Cognitive Impairment in Older Women.” Neurology. 2004; 63: 658-663.
122. Chatenoud, Liliane, et al. “Refined-cereal Intake and Risk of Selected Cancers in Italy.” Am J Clin Nutr. Dec 1999; 70: 1107-1110.
123. Yoo, Sunmi, et al. “Comparison of Dietary Intakes Associated with Metabolic Syndrome Risk Factors in Young Adults: the Bogalusa Heart Study.” Am J Clin Nutr. Oct 2004; 80(4): 841-848.
124. Shaw, Gary M., et al. “Neural Tube Defects Associated with Maternal Periconceptional Dietary Intake of Simple Sugars and Glycemic Index.” Am J Clin Nutr. Nov 2003; 78: 972-978.
125. Powers, L. “Sensitivity: You React to What You Eat.” Los Angeles Times. Feb 12, 1985.
Cheng, L et al. “Preliminary Clinical Study on the Correlation Between Allergic Rhinitis and Food Factors.” Lin Chuang Er Bi Yan Hou Ke Za Zhi. Aug 2002; 16(8): 393-396.
126. Jarnerot, G. “Consumption of Refined Sugar by Patients with Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative colitis, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome.” Scand J Gastroenterol. Nov 1983; 18(8): 999-1002.
127. Allen, S. “Sugars and Fats: The Neurobiology of Preference.” J Nutr. 2003; 133: 831S-834S.
128. De Stefani, E., et al. “Sucrose as a Risk Factor for Cancer of the Colon and Rectum: a Case-control Study in Uruguay.” Int J Cancer. Jan 5, 1998; 75(1): 40-4.
129. Levi, E, et al. “Dietary Factors and the Risk of Endometrial Cancer.” Cancer. Jun 1, 1993; 71(11): 3575-3581.
130. Mellemgaard, A, et al. “Dietary Risk Factors for Renal Cell Carcinoma in Denmark.” Eur J Cancer. Apr 1996; 32A(4): 673-82.
131. Rogers, AE., et al. “Nutritional and Dietary Influences on Liver Tumorigenesis in Mice and Rats.” Arch Toxicol Suppl. 1987; 10: 231-43. Review.
132. Sorensen, L.B., et al. “Effect of Sucrose on Inflammatory Markers in Overweight Humans” Am J Clin Nutr. Aug 2005; 82(2).
133. Smith, R.N., et al. “The Effect of a High-protein, Low Glycemic-load Diet Versus a Conventional, High Glycemic-load Diet on Biochemical Parameters Associated with Acne Vulgaris: A Randomized, Investigator-masked, Controlled TriaL” JAm Acad Dermatol. 2007; 57: 247-256.
134. Selva, D.M., et al. “Monosaccharide-induced Lipogenesis Regulates the Human Hepatic Sex Hormone-binding Globulin Gene.” J Clin Invest. 2007. doi:10.1172/JCI32249.
135. Krietsch, K., et al. “Prevalence, Presenting Symptoms, and Psychological Characteristics of Individuals Experiencing a Diet-related Mood-disturbance.”Behavior Therapy. 1988; 19(4): 593-604.
136. Berglund, M., et al. “Comparison of Monounsaturated Fat with Carbohydrates as a Replacement for Saturated Fat in Subjects with a High Metabolic Risk Profile: Studies in the Fasting and Postprandial States.” Am J Clin Nutr. Dec 1, 2007; 86(6): 1611-1620.
137. Gao, X., et al. “Intake of Added Sugar and Sugar-Sweetened Drink and Serum Uric Acid Concentration in US Men and Women.” Hypertension. Aug 1, 2007; 50(2): 306-312.
138. Wu, T., et al. Fructose, Glycemic Load, and Quantity and Quality of Carbohydrate in Relation to Plasma C-peptide Concentrations in US Women.” Am J Clin Nutr. Oct 2004; (4):1043-1049.
139. Matthias, B. and Schulze, M.B. “Dietary Pattern, Inflammation, and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Women.” Am J Clin Nutr. Sep 2005; 82: 675-684.
140. Yudkin, J. Sweet and Dangerous. (New York: Bantam Books: 1974) 169.
141. http://www.endo-society.org/media/press/upload/CARONIA_FINAL.pdfdated June 13, 2009
142. Ross, AP, et. al. “A High Fructose Diet Impairs Spatial Memory in Male Rats” Neurobiol Learn Mem. 2009 Jun 12. [Epub ahead of print]
143. Gul, A. et al. “Role of fructose concentration on cataractogenesis in senile diabetic and non-diabetic patients.” Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2009 Jun;247(6):809-14. Epub 2009 Feb 6.
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Tuesday renewed combined BABY seminar 4/7/14 - is also in hotmail(4/1/ ren. below)
Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents;
By Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. -not-for-profit-This Internet Seminar has
three parts - all based on the most
science
(1) Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy (Article 1 of 3),
(2) Complete Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan for your pregnancy, for your baby, for the parents, and for the whole family (Article 2 of 3),
(3) Introduction to Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.'s nationwide-worldwide services to ease human suffering and search for the good life
(Article 3 of 3)
(4) At the end additional information for lifetime opportunities
________________________
Pick all items as natural, raw, no pre-cooked, no salted, no roasted, peanuts buy without the outer shell with the inner, thin peel on.
From each list pick the cheapest and the one you know. It should up to over 20 different items eaten daily - all in small portions, some of them even counted between 1 - 5 daily (like nuts, berries, etc.) From each list choose items with different colors (if naturally available) and in the same color group the one(s) that have the deepest of that color. It is said: eat the rainbow every day. The rainbow colors are: red, orange, green, yellow, blue, indigo (darker) blue, violent - 7 colors. Eat every day 7 or more colors. The colors indicates different phytochemicals with different nutritional meaning. Basically, the deeper the color, the more beneficial the food item is for the human body & mind.
Click: Lifesaver, lentils, peas, soy beans (soy beans are often cheapest, yet nutritious). The same as with the grains (and with everything else possible)- buy beans in bulk = not in small bags - the price can be half of the smaller packages. One serving a day gives healthier arteries, an excellent lifesaver. They also have plenty of nutrients - and they are delicious. A common belief is that beans & peas can cause flatulence. Flatulence can be caused also by wrong food combining (next below a few words about it). Notice: before cooking soak all beans overnite in their own cooking pan (rinse the beans well before soaking but DO NOT throw the soaking water away in the morning - cook the beans in their soaking water and add water as needed. To throw away the soaking water is waste of nutrients - many instructions tell to throw the soaking water away - that's wrong. For soaking add little salt and to avoid flatulence add this item in the soaking water overnight and after full cooking add this (info in the link, click: Flatulence. Cook common beans, lentils, peas & soy beans each in their own pan because their cooking time is different. Before boiling or steaming study the cooking time for each bean - search the internet (different beans may have a different cooking time). Lentils are among the fastest.
============================================================
Tuesday renewed combined BABY seminar 4/1/14 - is also in hotmail dated 4/7/14 below from 4/1/14
Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents;
By Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. -not-for-profit-This Internet Seminar has
three parts - all based on the most recent science
(1) Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy (Article 1 of 3),
(2) Complete Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan for your pregnancy, for your baby, for the parents, and for the whole family (Article 2 of 3),
(3) Introduction to Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.'s nationwide-worldwide services to ease human suffering and search for the good life
(Article 3 of 3)
(4) At the end additional information for lifetime opportunities
________________________
Article 1 of 3
(Articles 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 next below)
Throughout all 3 articles click green for further info
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Founding President of STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
________________
Updated: April 1, 2014
Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy Internet Seminar
Foreword
This internet seminar is written for both parents.
When both parents are involved in every step of the pregnancy & monitoring the mother's and the baby's safety, the wife-husband bond and the parents - new child bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Also, this complete guide is written for your possible children. If you do not have children, read this foreword anyway for the future use for your children and take from this text the ideas that fit now for your present family situation. The study instructions are still the same for the two of you to do together now. Save this seminar for your future children and teach them a few years from now.
Have your children (of any age) living with you involved daily in every step of the pregnancy - then the whole family bond will get stronger and your children will learn valuable healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles. Your children would also learn early on how to have healthy babies when their own time comes. Handle and discuss this guide material in a weekly family meeting during the pregnancy months - anyone who can read should study this guide and prepare pre-agreed text parts for meetings. Have your children of any age present in the family meetings, even the toddlers. The more new words your child learns early in life, the better chances for higher success in the future. Go through the whole guide step by step together as a family.
(click: Your Toddler's & Child's Success = the article "Tips for your child's success" - see what else is there to your interest - the link has text, voice, videos - American Academy of Pediatrics)
In addition to the basic text, this internet seminar has plenty of web links. For proper learning every member of your family who can read will study also the web link articles. Some links maybe sensitive and may need added parental guidance during the family meetings.
The weekly meetings can be done at home or (depending on the season) as a family pick-nick trip to your favorite park or to other outdoors place - the nature has plenty of fresh oxygen (good for the new mother and for everyone), it will be relaxing, refreshing, beautiful & healthy for the body & mind. Some outdoors locations may not have access to the internet - those links can be viewed at home. During the colder months you may have another inside destination with privacy to have pick-nick & your weekly family learning meeting.
The more different experiences your family has together also outside the home, the deeper the family bonds and the more successful your children will be in their adult lives. A weekly family meeting, no matter how small or big your family, will create miracles - you'll see. You and your children will value these weekly family outings and meetings for learning. You all will remember them forever as a pleasure. As the result your family bonds will be strong forever.
Guide your children to learn all what this internet seminar teaches. Your children will remember this as a well-appreciated gift given by their parents for life.
During the pregnancy it is especially important that the mother (1) eats healthy food & keeps herself away from all harmful ingredients, (2) keeps herself well hydrated with plain water, (3) keeps her body & mind in top-condition, (4) sleeps enough hours and (5) sees her pediatrician and/or her primary care physician as required. When the pregnant mother asks the other family members to help her remember what to do to stay healthy and the new baby to stay healthy, everyone learns at the same time.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
When you involve your children to help you to stay healthy, they will gladly do it, remind you enthusiastically and then they will easily copy what the mother and the father do. The children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do. With all these actions the family union gets healthier and stronger. Then your children can much easier resist the wrong models outside their loving home. That's an important benefit for everyone in your family. The earlier you involve your children to learn the health & success rules for life, the easier they can avoid harmful habits and the more successful they will become in life.
After the delivery it is as important as during the pregnancy to continue applying healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for the breastfeeding milk quality and for the mother's own health safety for life. Then your children see that healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition is not only for being pregnant but is the basic success principle for the whole life.
A big blessing for all of you.
As the whole family, apply all information in this seminar guide - then you give the gift of good health and successful, long life to all of you.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
One more final thing: Negotiate with your delivery doctor how to have your whole family best involved in the actual delivery process in the hospital. What does the mother want? Whom does the doctor & the hospital allow to be in the delivery room, etc.? The whole family being involved is best for everyone because it will be a learning process and will strengthen your family ties.
It's also important to realize that this internet seminar is not written to give you medical guidance - only your pediatrician or primary care physician who know you can do that. This seminar guides you in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition and is written for educational purposes. The web links are provided for additional detailed information.
When your new baby is safely in the family and you all have studied together this whole seminar, then, all of you in your family, keep applying the life-quality lifting healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for a better, richer and longer life.
Then next:
Let us at STAF, Inc. know how many family members (girls/boys plus their first name & age) are studying/studied this seminar "Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents"
A girl or a boy? Let us know your new baby's name & birthday & birth weight and please, mail us
a picture of your new baby. In an old-fashioned manner, mail us a postal letter and use our
NYC mailing address at the very end of this internet seminar. On the envelope write also
"New Baby". In your letter add your email address so we can email our suggestion for your next
STAF, Inc.'s Internet Seminar.
Make your weekend family meetings a permanent event. It is worth it.
The important reason for using the old-fashioned mail when contacting us and not the email, is explained below under the title: "Flash-Card" - How to find a brilliant pediatrician.
STAF, Inc.'s postal mailing address is at the very end of this internet seminar.
____________
The Internet Seminar
A Well-Balanced Diet (1) Before & (2) During Pregnancy Will Lower The Risk of Preterm Delivery and (3) After Pregnancy Will Give More Nutrients in Your Baby's Breastfeeding & Improving Your Baby's Health for Life
Notice: The level of both parents' health at the time of
the conception will to a great extent affect the baby's future health.
A guide how to be fully prepared for your baby's best.
A well-balanced diet
means getting the right types & right amounts of food to supply nutrition & energy for maintaining body cells, tissues & organs, and for supporting normal growth & development, getting enough water for proper hydration and
giving the immune system strength to fight any disease.
(Throughout the text click green for further info)
The opposite:
An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases including (click each): high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal blood lipids*), overweight/obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and any other deadly disease. *) Lipids: Another word for "fats."
This seminar text continues below after the event with The Earth Day deadline
______________________________
Before we go forward in this seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
we place next a temporary text
Do this important thing before
April 22, 2014, The Earth Day:
(this matter also relates to your baby having a healthier life)
Sign online to demand The U.S. Congress
to take action to protect the human life
(Links & info below)
This April 22, 2014 topic concerns everyone and every family including YOUR family.
1st example: According to experts at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over 300 (three-hundred) toxic chemicals are showing up in our umbilical cords.
click: Umbilical cord care: Do's and don'ts for parents
click: Images for Umbilical cord
2nd example: Women put, on a daily basis, an average of515 toxic chemicals on their faces alone. That is 515 too many.
That has contributed (1) to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women, (2) to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age and (3) to in growing numbers to adult women starting menopause 10-15 years earlier. These facts point to a shorter life span. click: Menopause
3rd example: Most of our daily food we all eat, no matter what the food origin, has hundreds harmful chemicals. The air, the water, the ground - they are all more or less polluted with environmental toxins. Not even the organic products are fully safe. Is it then a wonder that our modern lifestyle kills over half of the population at the half-life.
We can still clean up this earth - but we all must change our lifestyle.
The governments must create effective regulations (based on science, not on politics) leading to cleaning, not to more greed and not to additional environmental, killing toxins.
Latest on April 22, 2014, give your signature to fight back - that is for everyone's best.
Environmental toxins in pregnancy and in every day life
click: Wikipedia - Environmental toxins & Fetal Development
(with info how to avoid some of the toxins) - click: Fetus
click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC www.cdc.gov
click: Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals - CDC
click: Updated Tables - National Report on Human exposure
to environmental chemicals - CDC
Poisonous stuff
that can hurt our nervous systems, mess with our developing brains and lower our IQs. Really bad stuff that's also linked to cancer, birth defects and asthma.
Fight back - help to bring the U.S. Congress to its knees. You have the power to do so - to make them listen and take action.
It's time for the lawmakers to do something about all the bad chemicals out there. Because that stuff ends up in our babies, in hour homes, in all our bodies, we must have a real change in this very wrong situation creating human suffering, costing lives and endangering our future generations.
FIGHTTOXINS.COM will gather 100,000 signatures by Earth Day,
April 22, 2014, and force a discussion with the government to get protective legislation to save human lives.
Click: We the People - The White House petitions.whitehouse.gov
Take a swing at these dangerous chemicals,
visit (copy & paste) fighttoxins.com
& sign the petition latest on the Earth day, April 22, 2014
click: Earth Day
If you & your family lives in another country, you can be involved and sign the petition as this concerns the whole world - put your voice up - it matters.
As Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. is one important organization to help your family to a better life the U.S. or worldwide,
we would appreciate if you could send us a letter in an old-fashioned manner via the postal service and let us know (1) if you & your family(including your children), signed the 100,000 petition (how many in your family signed), (2) your opinion about this FIGHTTOXINS.COM petition to fight the chemicals and
(3) we would appreciate if you could enclose a donation (as paper money) to STAF, Inc. - we do need your support as a not-for-profit organization.
Our extensive, "World's # 1 advice website in all family matters for the good life" has everything your family needs for healthier, financially richer life.
When you, based on our guidance, reach your new goals, we at STAF, Inc. would like to know your family's success story in a new letter.
Mailing address: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_____________The End of The Earth Day Event ______________
The Internet Seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
Continues:
*) Lipids: Another word for "fats." Lipids can be more formally defined as substances such as a fat, oil or wax that dissolves in alcohol but not in water.
Lipids contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen but have far less oxygen proportionally than carbohydrates click: Carbohydrates
Lipids are an important part of living cells. Together with carbohydrates and proteins, lipids are the main constituents of plant and animal cells.
Click: Cholesterol and click: triglycerides are lipids. Lipids are easily stored in the body. They serve as a source of fuel and are an important constituent of the structure of cells.
Etymology of the word lipid
Whereas the everyday term "fat" comes from the Old English (from "faett" meaning crammed = completely full), the more scientific term "lipid" comes from the Greek "lipos" which referred to animal fat or vegetable oil.
Increasing intake of healthy foods before & during pregnancy
is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, not only during the pregnancy but also important before conceiving and also important afterthe delivery because good breastfeeding can be based only on correct, healthy nutrition.
The breastfeeding should go on at least the first six months - the longer beyond 6 months the better - you want the best for your baby. Your baby gets the best nutrients in a correct combination and the best, lasting protection against sickness from your breastfeeding efforts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that breastfeeding continue for at least twelve (12) months.
click: American Academy of Pediatrics www.aap.org
If for some reason the mother cannot breastfeed, other safe, natural solutions are introduced in the Healthy Eating Plan below.
It is not recommended to use formula as several worldwide studies show they can cause serious dangers to the baby because they are man-made, factory products with non-natural ingredients.
A brief quote of one of the earliest formula study:
"Decades of bottle-feeding, formula babies may have left a costly legacy, in both human and financial terms, of a generation of adults at higher risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke than they should be, according to research published in the Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, establishes beyond doubt that breastfed babies become healthier adults."
This Lancet study was published already 20 years ago and even though tens of other studies after the Lancet have the same findings, the man-made formula is still widely & strongly pretending being suitable for a baby - it is not.
There are other safe choices.
Best is the breastfeeding , the 2nd best introduced below - the man-made formulas cannot have what the nature can provide.
The easy-to-remember truth for the adult, teenager, child, toddler & for the baby food is in this
Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(click: Michael Pollan)
The mother's milk is perfect food for the baby- it is made of what the mother eats. For the safety of the baby the mother needs to eat food that the nature has made - not the processed, factory made disguise.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
Below detailed information what not to and what to eat.
Any questions after studying all information below, ask free via email
(contact info below).
Click for the Lancet article: Bottle-fed babies 'face higher risks
One more important area of facts:
It is understandable that we all know that the mother's health condition
matters when planning for a pregnancy. But it is now known that the father's health condition also matters as well.
This first link has info for both of you - even though it states as the source:
Office of Women's Health - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services -
Click: Preconception health
Click: Future fathers: 10 ways to help her get pregnant
___________________
Definition
Preterm Delivery
By Mayo Clinic Staff
A preterm/premature birth is a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the baby is due — in other words, after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, which usually lasts about 40 weeks.
Premature birth gives the baby less time to develop in the womb. Premature babies, especially those born earliest, often have complicated medical problems.
Depending on how early a baby is born, he or she may be:
(1) Late preterm, born between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy
(2) Very preterm, born at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy
(3) Extremely preterm, born at less than 25 weeks of pregnancy
Most premature births occur in the late preterm stage.
_________
When you're pregnant, eating healthy foods is more important than ever.
You need more protein, iron, calcium, and click: folic acid than you did before
pregnancy.
Folic acid is a B vitamin. It helps the body make healthy new cells. Everyone needs folic acid. For women who may get pregnant, it is really important. Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can prevent major birth click: defects of the baby's brain or spine.
Foods with folic acid in them include
- Leafy green vegetables
- Fruits (fresh, not from a can)
- Dried beans, peas, peanuts & nuts (not roasted, no salt)
- Full grain breads, full grain, unprocessed cereals and other full grain products
You also need more calories. But "eating for two" doesn't mean eating twice as much. It means that the foods you eat are the main source of nutrients for your baby. Sensible, balanced meals will be best for you and your baby.You should gain weight gradually during your pregnancy, with most of the weight gained in the last trimester. Generally, doctors suggest women gain weight at the following rate:
- 2 to 4 pounds total during the first trimester
- 3 to 4 pounds per month for the second and third trimesters
Expectant mothers are often told to eat lots of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, and a new study adds to evidence that a healthy diet is linked to a reduced risk of premature birth.
Researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 66,000 pregnant women in Norway between 2002 and 2008. Premature birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) occurred in slightly more than 5 percent of the pregnancies.
Women who ate a "prudent" diet that included plenty of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and water had a much lower risk of preterm delivery, as did those with a traditional Norwegian diet of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables, the investigators found.
The study was published online March 4, 2014 in the journal BMJ (= British Medical Journal).
click: BMJ: Home
STAF, Inc.'s comment: The Western diet causes more health risks in the pregnant mother including diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Your baby needs healthy foods that are packed with nutrients - you also need the same healthy foods. When you breastfeed your baby the milk must be healthy - it can be healthy milk only if and when the mother has eaten healthy, natural food. Human milk is the most perfect food but must be clean and have no poisonous chemicals.
Thus, eat in the manner during your pregnancy that is safe for your baby and for you as the mother. All needed guidance is in this compact healthy lifestyle guide.
However, increasing consumption of healthy foods is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, the researchers said because every pregnant woman has sometimes unhealthy cravings and may forget to let them pass.
The findings also support advice given to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet that includes (more detailed 'what to eat' info in article 2 of 2):
(1) variety of fresh fruits (not from cans), (2) variety of fresh (or steamed) vegetables, (3) whole grains, fish (best: Atlantic salmon from Alaska, mackerel & sardines - these 3 fish types all can be from a can = low price & suitable as human food as long the label states: Wild Caught), (4) and drink enough plain water - enough is most likely more than you may be used to: drink daily fresh water the same amount in liquid oz. as your "normal healthy weight" is in lbs (not the overweight lbs). Drink no soda(no sugary, no diet - both with their chemicals harmful), no energy drinks (full of harmful chemicals), no energy bars (too sugary, partially processed, dead calories, they are candy bars in disguise), no chips (dead, processed calories, too salty with many other unhealthy ingredients).
AND: of course, during pregnancy: (1) no smoking, (2) no alcohol, no wine either, (3) avoid caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate have caffeine), (4) keep your
system hydrated = drink water daily as instructed a few lines above. Our human body is about 70 % made of water, blood and brains, both about 90+ % water - thus it is important to have enough water every day.
This Healthy Eating Guide gives all necessary details - apply the advice in every detail. You will be glad you did - the desired results will be there. These these same principles in full to your children - they will be glad you did. The weekly family meeting is the way to teach them as instructed in this guide.
However, although the study found an association between eating a healthy diet during pregnancy and a lower risk of preterm delivery, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study authors said premature birth can lead to major short- and long-term health problems, and it accounts for nearly 75 percent of all newborn deaths.
Healthy eating during pregnancy is always a good idea, according to an accompanying editorial by Lucilla Poston, of King's College London.
Poston said several studies have suggested that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent premature birth. "[Health professionals] would therefore be well advised to reinforce the message that pregnant women eat a healthy diet," she said.
There is more to study for your precious baby's best:
See the important 3 links next below as an important part of this Article 1 of 3
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Links to additional pregnancy topics
Both parents need to study these seven (7) links below and together monitor that everything above and in these links is applied - give a safe start to your precious baby.
Notice:
When both parents care for the baby, before and after the baby's birth, the emotional parent-child bond and the wife-husband bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Click each:
(1) Getting pregnant
(2) Pregnancy week by week
(3) Labor & delivery, postpartum care
(LAT. post = after; partum = childbirth)
(4) Medical Care and Your Newborn
(5) Breastfeeding - American Academy of Pediatrics
Click: Breast-feeding twins
Click: Breast-feeding: Pumping tips
Click: More - several links
(6) Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for
Obesity: Study
Click: Infant development: Birth to 3 months
(7) American Academy of Pediatrics
SOURCES:
(1) BMJ (British Medical Journal), news release, March 4, 2014,
(2) NIH: National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements,
(3) Mayo Clinic, (4) Kid's Health,
(5) Medline,
(6) Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health,
(7) American Academy of Pediatrics,
(8) United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - www.cdc.gov
(9) STAF, Inc.
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"Flash-Card" - How to find a brilliant pediatrician
Many baby doctors (and also many other older physicians, doctors, dentists, counselors) often do NOT have much (or enough) training in nutrition. Thus, asking an older pediatrician for guidance in nutrition may often be similar to asking for a street beggar's guidance for how to become a millionaire . However, because she/he KNOWS your baby, has seen & has medically examined your baby, he/she may know correctly your baby's development level for different common fruits, vegetables, berries & other food, or may not - you may be surprised. Except if the pediatrician is publicly well-known of being up-to-date with the modern science, double check the info you get from him/her. See what answers you'll find either on the internet or contact your local government sources. Or: contact STAF, Inc. with your questions.
You can always contact STAF, Inc. to get correct, up-to-date answers to tough nutritional questions. We cannot give any medical advice - only your pediactrician can. She/he has seen your baby, checked medically your baby and has stated "fully healthy", "normal", or something else.
Give the "history" of your question (+ who said what, the sayer's profession & degree level, etc.) and tell us your reasons for doubting the answer and what your opinion is based on what. Then with that history we have a faster possibility giving you guidance. Let us know if your baby is fully healthy in general and if not what is going on with your precious baby.
Send your question(s) letter to STAF, Inc. ONLY via the postal mail service
to the address at the very end of this internet seminar - include your email address & phone number in your letter (contact info is for the purpose IF we have to ask you something additional before we can answer).
STAF, Inc.'s mailing address is at the very end of this seminar after all sections.
If you email your question(s) to us you take a risk that we might never get your email - why is that?
Please realize, the postal mail is more reliable, because often the emails end to spam mail (we check the spam daily) or do not reach even our spam mail because the email-provider's anti-spam system can eliminate any email before it is even sent to our direction through their "safety net".
The email provider may not send it to us at all either by (1) a mistake or
(2) because of the "baby poop talk" in the email and (3) because some of the medical terminology are doomed as porn and porn will not go through.
Thus the only way is to send all questions to us a the STAF, Inc. by the old-fashioned mail service. Use the air mail when you send your letter from another country.
STAF, Inc.'s mailing address is at the very end of this internet seminar.
When my wife and I had our first baby, the pediatrician had no knowledge in the modern nutritional sciences. Because I, the new father, was trained in nutrition I could evaluate that almost all guidance my wife and I received was worthless and even dangerous. Once the same pediatrician broke the tip of the thermometer in our baby's anus. The baby had to be taken to the hospital following with months of pain to the baby to heal. Things can happen - do your research before you select your baby doctor. We selected this baby doctor based on the length she had been practicing because our thinking was "long experience is a good fact". At that point we did not know that their training is not necessarily kept up-to-date. We learned in the hard way.
This baby doctor retired soon after we had met her.
In addition, too many baby doctors still believe in commercially made "imitation-food" (=formula) as a primary source of nutrition - it is not a wise attitude.
Sometimes that is a brief, temporary choice , but should never be the first and the only choice if breastfeeding is possible and if the baby otherwise is a healthy baby. There are other natural food sources perfect and safe for your baby - the commercial imitation-"foods" with their negative side effects need not to be any choice. The other natural sources are explained in this internet seminar.
Too many pediatricians (and other e.g. primary care & family doctors) with their medical school tens of years back, had no training in nutrition in those days. Still today some medical schools do not, which is really a shame. How can you take care of anyone's health if you do not have training in the most important element: healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition? Are the negative side-effects giving toxic chemical pills called "medicine" supposed to keep a human being healthy or heal the person (as was the common belief 50 years ago)?
Sickness comes from toxins in the human body. If we put there more toxins we are supposed to get healthy and stay healthy? Yet, these "medical schools" still exist today without training health. Perhaps they should be renamed "sickness-maintaining schools" and the "M.D. title those medical schools give could be S.B.D. = sickness-bringing-doctor".
The leading medical schools worldwide all have a top-level, wide department in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition. Harvard has, Columbia has, UCLA has, Sorbonne has (Paris, France), University of South Africa has, University of Hong Kong has, Helsinki University has - some examples round the world, etc. - but that is not such a long time ago they did not have. The new, wise trend started in the late 90's and fortunately is widening. Perhaps we finally learned.
It has been similar as still in the 50's it was commonly believed that smoking is healthy. Medical doctors appeared in the cigarette ads and TV commercials smoking and stating "I smoke Life for my health & success" ("Life" was a name of a cigarette).
How could we have such a belief? Because smoking makes hurt pump faster it was believed that it is healthy in the same manner as when we run the heart start pumping faster. With the cigarettes the heart pumps faster and screams "help, help, I need more fresh air". Did we hear when we smoked and some still do?
And the tobacco companies are now selling their killer-products in the developing countries misleading people and making them deadly sick.
Now, this is told that we all, looking for a pediatrician, "hire" the baby doctor who has the training based on the most recent science and training in the modern nutritional sciences.
Your baby deserves the best, not the 2nd or the 3rd best.
This means, that unfortunately some pediatricians, with longer experience in their field, may still give as nutrition advice based only on their personal, family tradition opinions. Long-lived, used-to-be opinions do not always match the most recent science in our modern world with the environmental toxins. If you have a choice in your area, find your pediatrician among the younger generation with probably more relevant nutritional training based on the related up-to-date sciences.
Ask what kind of a training the pediatrician has in nutrition - however, you may risk an angry attitude. Before you ask and/or make your pediatrician choice, find the baby doctor's educational background, year of being licensed, age and other info on the internet. As needed, call your city/town/state for info how to find the educational & licensing records for every pediatricians (and other doctors, physicians, dentists, etc. as the need comes up).
(1) Click: Licensing & Certification Needed to Become a Pediatrician
work.chron.com › Careers › Jobs in EducationAll physicians, including pediatricians, must meet state requirements for a license to practice medicine, which includes education and training. Pediatricians are ...
(2) Click: Medical Care and Your Newborn
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The next article 2 of 3 is for every member of your family - study & handle together in your weekly family meeting. Give your children the most precious gift: health for life.
Article 2 of 3
How to maintain your health -
How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages.
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit, is the leading, new organization for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
_______________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering
& turns lives to victory *
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your name & email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
___________________________
This information is suitable advice for everyone 2 years or older
The Abbreviated (yet comprehensive) Guide for Healthy Lifestyle, Correct Nutrition & with a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
developed by STAF, Inc. (1) for the U.S. gov. use as a program in the new health care system as the tested solution to our overweight & obesity problems and to our rampant sickness level, also (2) to-be published as a how-to book for the worldwide market as STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life ©
This program is at the same time an automatic,
"Aaahh!Finally-the-results"© Weight loss program, no calorie counting, just follow the new program's instructions for easy, natural food preparing - nothing else to do. Nothing else to buy - no gimmicks, no "miracle" powders,
no pills, no new "discovery berries" from the world's jungles - just plain & simple correct, natural, real food combined with healthy habits meant originally for the human body & mind to stay beaming wit good health and leading to a healthy & longer life without further suffering.
Everyone can afford this program as we do not sell you food - we guide you to buy the ingredients in your own supermarket and prepare the food in your very own kitchen - based on all new, delicious recipes. As the result, your new, lasting healthwill cost less than ever before. See the amazingly low monthly food cost below in the article 2 of 2. The savings is "found money" - you invest it to become a millionaire (not a joke - that plan is part of this new program).
The full program has step-by-step guidance for "How to become financially independent, also potentially a (multi)millionaire, starting with $50 a month". Preliminary, brief investment info in this website, tab: credit & credit cards. Nothing like this never existed before - suitable for everyone nationwide and worldwide.
Below detailed info, for you and for your whole family, what to drink & eat for your improved health and for your longer life.
This guide is kept up with the latest research info - thus it is a good idea to study this again if you studied it sometimes in the even a close past.
Repetitio est mater studiorum (Latin)
(Repetition is the mother of study)
© Copyrights STAF, Inc. 2014
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Instructions for how to study
this Health Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide
Because this information can provide you excellent health leading to a longer, more enjoyable life, this guide may be the most important material for you and for your whole family.
This guide is fit for every family in the U.S. and for every family worldwide.
The purpose of this material is to guide you and your family
(1) to maintain your health and
(2) to restore your possible lost health due to an unhealthy lifestyle and to incorrect nutrition.
Every family member should be involved in this learning process.
To master the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition principles early in life could easily be the best gift you, as the parent(s), can give to your children for life.
Become a healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition inspirator for your children.
Your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Obtaining this information based on the natural health laws will save potentially plenty in (1) sickness care, (2) will eliminate pain and suffering (that have been based on a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition) and (3) provide for every family member a longer, more enjoyable life.
Even though this could be called "a-mini-guide" it has a substantial amount information, probably more than you expect. This guide has the basic healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles in a compact form, yet it is quite comprehensive.
Instructions: how to gain a healthy, meaningful life
It is important to follow the detailed instructions
(1) First read through the whole text in the article 1 (above) and in the article 2 (= this part in front of you is part 2).
During the first reading do NOT click any of the web links (basic text in black, the web links mostly in green , also in other color, with the preceding word click:) - read the full text in both articles 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 to get an idea what you and your family can expect to learn. Every family member should be involved and follow these instructions - as a group everyone learns better and sticks to the guidance to gain a better, healthier life and also all together building a million or more in the bank.
(2) When every family member has done the first reading, have a family meeting to decide together how you are going to proceed best as a family.
(3) During the 2nd reading, which is now the learning process, take notes, click every web link and study the link material as broadly as you see suitable.
In most links there are several pages to your interest. The better & wider job you do in learning, the better your health will be and the longer you will enjoy your life.
(4) Based on the guide instructions organize your weekly family learning meeting to discuss the material and deciding together how you are going to apply the material together in your family to build a better, healthier, richer & longer life for everyone.
(5) When your lives start improving let us at the STAF, Inc. know your success stories either by postal mail or via email. Contact info in this guide text and in
STAF, Inc.'s website, home page. Any questions via email.
e: [email protected]
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization,
needs & will appreciate your donations
Your donations will ease human suffering nation/worldwide
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
_____________
STAF, Inc. has developed a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program for the U.S. gov. use with the main title
STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Big Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
Will also be published as a book - all suitable for every country's needs worldwide.
This Internet seminar is abbreviated from the same material.
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This guide fits women, men & children (min. 2 years old)
The 2 starting statements
(1) About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle and wrong nutrition.
(2) Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed
and do not necessarily automatically become part of our golden years.
Introduction
In the past in our human history, people died mostly in pandemics.
A pandemic (from Greek pan "all" and demos "people") is click: an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.
(epidemic from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people")(throughout the text click green for further info)
Plague (Lat. plaga = wound) click: Plague - Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the
most notorious disease episodes in history.
The Black Death peaking in Europe in the years around 1350 CE. (CE = common era - also Current Era or Christian Era ) was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of 50 % oof the population an estimated 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1348–50 CE. click: Wikipedia
E.g., still in the World War One 1914 - 1918 many times more soldiers died because of the infections due to low sanitary safety than died in the actual war actions.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate (= winner of a Nobel prize) Alexander Fleming in 1928. click: Nobel
Penicillin antibiotics were among the first drugs to be effective against many previously serious diseases. E.g. The famous British Prime Minister Churchill saved his life with Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery, click: Sir Winston Churchill
When in comes to food & nutrition,
in the past generations people ate FOOD = REAL food, prepared in their own home kitchen using natural ingredients.
Today most people do not any more know what real food is - the results: sickness & suffering & early death.
E.g., based on study, click and read: Fast Food Hamburgers Could be as Little as 2% ACTUAL Meat - and many call it "food".
(Yes, you saw it correctly 2 (two) % - no misprint)
Real Food & Enzymes
Real food suitable for us human or suitable for our pets, IS NOT the modern food-like stuff that is processed, "fortified" with chemicals, poisonous for the human body and lacking in life preserving nutrients.
E.g. the enzymes, large biological molecules responsible for the thousands of metabolic processes that sustain life, die at the temperature of about 132 F = 55 C.
Yet, the chemicalized food processing industry uses even higher temperatures - the results:
very little (if any) life-sustaining enzymes left. Click: Pasteurization
Notice: Without enzymes, life, as we know it, would not exist.
At any given moment, all of the work being done inside any cell is being done by enzymes. Processed "food-like non-food" does not have enough healthy enzymes - that's why eating unhealthy food leads to sickness, suffering and to a shorter life.
Only real, NATURAL, unprocessed food can deliver proper enzymes to maintain the human health and the human life.
To help you to realize the truth in these 3 quotations they are repeated 'here and there'. Many people place them on their refrigerator door.
(1) "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, don't"
Click: Michael Pollan
(2) "To stay healthy and have a long life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(3) "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
"Flash-card" - REAL FOOD
Daily main parts - %-wise in this order:
(1) fresh, raw, unprocessed fruit, berries & vegetables,
(2) unprocessed, full grains,
(3) unprocessed fish or lean meat,
(4) tree-nuts, peanuts & seeds (not roasted, not salted) - if any allergy, replace daily with extra fresh fruit & fresh vegetables,
(5) cold pressed oils,
(6) enough water; coffee, tea counts as water (no diet or sugary sodas, no energy drinks) - in oz. the same amount of water as your normal weight (not overweight) is in lbs,
(7) exercise: physical (walk 25K steps daily) & mental, ease stress (meditation, yoga) - click: Inheriting Stress - If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 3/7/14.
(8) enough sleep (adults 7-8 h / teenagers 10 h / child 10 - 12 h / toddlers 12-15 h/ babies sleep almost 24 h - the life sustaining growth hormone develops in all humans when we sleep and the brains clean themselves from poisons while we sleep - click: Goodnight. Sleep Clean
If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 1/11/14.
This keeps you on the right road to your better health.
Click: All About Sleep; How many hours - Kids, Teens & Adults
Click: What Sleep Is and Why All Need It - Health - the stages of sleep - notice: even though the article title mentions only the kids, this article has info for all ages
All related, detailed instructions are in this compact guide.
Then there may be areas only your primary care physician can advice you to do
(because he/she knows you personally).
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Enzymes are the tools of nature.
Enzymes cut and paste products such as nutrients. They speed up all vital biological processes.
The enzymes in the stomach, for instance, ensure that food is cut into tiny particles that can be converted into energy in the body. Wherever one substance needs to be transformed into another, nature uses enzymes to speed up the process.
That's why eating enzyme-dead or enzyme-low, processed or fast food
(= bad food) causes overweight because there are not enough enzymes in the digestive system to break the food into tiny particles our body system could absorb. Then the partially digested food sits inside the body and in the weakened immune system & starts rotting. Next the harmful, deadly germs & bacteria attack our cells infecting our body finally leading to any disease. Overweight lbs are made of this poisonous stuff rutting in the body because the person kept eating enzyme-dead processed or fast-food (= bad-food). That's why even a minor overweight can lead to any sickness, suffering and to an early death. A major overweight & high obesity is a sure killer.
STAF, Inc.'s tested, new methods are the solutions to guide you and anyone back to good health leading to an enjoyable life without suffering.
WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE? Eat food or poison? Life or death?
If you are overweight more or less (75 % of the population is), study this compact healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition guide again and again until you do all it teaches. To apply the information can return & maintain your health & reduce suffering and even save your life.
When you succeed in your efforts, email us to STAF, Inc. your success story so you can further help other people get motivated to accept the same knowledge as the road to their new, healthy life.
(The e-mail & postal address in the home page).
For additional info click: What are enzymes?
Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. If you have metabolic syndrome or any of the components of metabolic syndrome,aggressive lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent the development of serious health problems.
This Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide in front of you is your solution to your and your family's good health.
Study well every detail in this guide, handle everything in your weekly family meeting and guide everyone in your family to apply the information.
Quotation: "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Give yourself, your spouse and your children the best gift in life: good health.
Your good health leads to a longer, healthier, financially richer & happier life.
When the enzyme molecules are gone in the modern food-killing process, is it then a wonder that worldwide a wide part of the population suffer of click: Metabolic Syndrome storing larger and larger amounts of toxins in every cell of the body and finally developing all possible killer sicknesses: cancer, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. - just name any sickness - it's endless.
Sickness care (wrongly called health care) costs go up, human suffering gets wider, early deaths become more common. We at the STAF guide you in health care: we guide you and everyone willing to learn to restore & keep the precious base element: health - and based on health have a long, happy life.
The industrial age with its chemicals brought us all these "innovations".
Still in the 1950' - 1960's the advertisements touted "Health through the modern chemicals". Smoking was glorified publicly and still in the 1950's, 1960's believed being healthy for us human. That wrong belief was because smoking raises the heart beating rate as does exercise so the logical "science" thinking was "smoking is healthy". Still in the 50's and early 60's the tobacco commercials had medical doctors smoking and stating "I, Dr. X smoke Life*) - it is for my health". *) "Life" was a cigarette brand.
Today the use of pesticides has destroyed the healthy ground. The land, air & water are polluted as the result of wide use of chemicals once defined as a life & health improving solution for everyone worldwide.
Today the animals grown for food are fed with harmful chemicals
& click: Antibiotics ending in the food chain in the humans, in our pets and in everything including polluting the oceans and all elements.
Greed & The Modern Cattle Care - a life danger in our world and in our food
Rampant, irresponsible greed has widely destroyed in our modern times the proper, humane care of the animals meant for the human food.
The wide overuse of click: Antibiotics to make the animals grow faster is endangering also the human health by ending in our drinking water and in us when eating the meat - we develop resistance and the antibiotics do not work when needed in an emergency situation. CDC - The U.S. Centers of Disease Control, states "it can be lethal".
Click: Antibiotics: Misuse puts you and others at risk - Mayo Clinic
Physical exercise in us humans makes us stronger by expelling toxins out from our body - we stay healthier. The immune system does not have a pump to get rid of the toxins - our physical movements work as its pump.
Yet, most of the animals used as the human food live in a small space where they cannot hardly move around. It is like living our whole human life in the economy class airplane seat - what would our human body condition be if that would be our destiny? What about our mental condition? Our whole lifetime would be painful torturing.
Yet, our legislation still accepts that the animals we eat in our human food chain
can be living their whole life in similar terrifying conditions without any possibility to exercise and pump out the toxic from their muscles.
Is that kind of an animal meat, filled with toxins, really healthy for us humans?
Every living creature has emotions in addition to the physical pain.
The emotional pain feeds additional toxic chemicals into the animal'' meat and we humans eat it.
In the past the cattle grew outside freely roaming happily around eating fresh grass and enjoying the nature.
Now we give them an airline economy seat to live their whole life inside and expect them staying healthy without much physical exercise to keep the body & mind healthy. This is the background for the overuse of the antibiotics in the animal industry.
Often the slaughterhouses process knowingly (greed) or unknowingly (ignorance) sick animals. Anyone would understand that meat from sick sources is not suitable for us humans and not suitable for our pets.
Quotation "For greed all nature is too little"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca click: Seneca
One example of class 1 meat recall - class 1 = high health risk
In this case Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds of beef because it processed diseased and
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. The huge amount of recalled meat was supposed to be extra healthy "Fancy grass-fed Beef".
Is this a greed based decision to process the contaminated meat or did they really not know that the animals were diseased and unsound. You be the judge.
click: Class 1 – High Risk Recall - click: Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef
What about milk and eggs if the cows and the chickens are not allowed to move around?
Cow's Milk
Is there pus in the cow's milk produced in the U.S. ?
Pus = dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
Pus is a sign the cow having an infection in the udder (= the baglike organ where the milk is). Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to click: epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness*) (= difficulties in walking) click: lameness in cows and mastitis (udder infections) click: Mastitis in dairy cows, are the two click: leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States.
*) Lameness is a clinical sign of a more severe disorder that results in a disturbance in the gait (= manner ow walking) and the ability to move the body about, typically in response to pain, injury, or abnormal anatomy
click: Bovine Growth Hormone (bovine = relating to cow & cattle)
There is also an agreement how much pus is allowed to be in the U.S.
The 2003 FDA click: Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) PDF (3.5MB) sets the maximum level of somatic cells allowed in Grade A milk at 750,000 cells per. milliliter - a level that has been in effect since at least 1999
Read the health-related facts in this article: click: How much pus is there in milk? | NutritionFacts.org
Then read this article - all necessary facts out together
click: The Dangers of Drinking Cow's Milk
The dairy products, when they are clean have beneficial nutrients - but remember: where does the cow get the nutrients? From eating the grass outside
(= "vegetable") or eating soy, corn, hay (dried "grass")*) - all vegetables. So will you get them from eating a variety of vegetables daily - eat a variety of fresh fruit daily also. Thus one can live healthy without dairy products. Some are allergic to dairy and live happily healthy when eating vegetables & fresh fruit. Cheese in moderation is a treat if you are not allergic to it. *)click Hay -
Milk has calcium is touted (= to convince) - so do vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts - without any side effects.
click: Top 10 Foods Highest in Calcium
People who are lactose intolerant have trouble digesting the milk sugar lactose. Lactase is an enzyme that splits the milk sugar lactose, to produce the sugars glucose and galactose. Often these individuals have no problems with goats milk.
Goat's Milk -
a healthier, more nutritious option for any age - also for your baby because goat’s milk is closest in structure to human milk = closest to the mother's breast milk
Goat's milk has more beneficial nutrients in a cleaner form than cow's milk does.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow's milk can enjoy goat's milk.
Goat's milk is also more suitable for a baby because goat’s milk is closest in its structure to human milk.
Your pediatrician should know these fact - if not, it's time to find a more knowledgeable baby doctor.
Goat milk industry is smaller and is not so corrupted with the use of hormones and other harmful chemicals/medicines as the cow milk industry is.
Goats are not standing in an economy class seat their whole life - they are moving & jumping around often year round as they can take any weather better than the cows. They eat healthie natural grass & leaves outside much more than the cows.
That's why the goats produce much cleaner, safer and nutrition wise more valuable milk.
click: The Health Benefits of Goat's Milk
One more article explaining the differences between goat's & cow's milk - it is good to compare different texts:
click: Goat's Milk vs. Cow's Milk
No one can deny that goat's milk is a safer, cleaner, more upscale & healthier product than cow's milk - STAF, Inc. endorses the use of goat milk at least
(1) for the babies and for (2) people who cannot tolerate cow's milk.
If you can afford the smallish price difference for the whole family, be blessed
& go for the goat!
click also this link: cow’s milk to see the facts why cow's milk is secondary to goat's milk.
Sheep's Milk
Then there is the sheep's milk - a small niche (= a specialty segment of a market) , more expensive and not everywhere available (except with the modern "same-day-next-day delivery" = gets more expensive, no need pay more - instead invest the saved money - use goat's milk - if you can afford sheep's milk, buy and use it in addition to using the goat's milk). Sheep's milk has little more nutrients than goat's milk and much more than cow's milk and is safe for your baby.
To look further click: Sheep 101
What milk for your newborn, your baby?
Mother's milk is the most perfect food - breastfeed as long as you can - minimum 6 months - up to 12 months if you can - talk to you baby doctor. Breastfeeding is healthier for the mother and healthier for the baby.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
The mutual mental-emotional benefits are more rewarding when breast-feeding. Any sickness in the mother? - Talk to you baby doctor. Any sickness in the baby? - A sick baby needs more mother's milk (because it is perfect food & healing), not less, is the principle, but talk to your baby doctor because all depends on "what sickness".
Click: The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov.
The health outcomes in the developed countries differ substantially who
formula feed compared with those who breastfeed.
If he mother has difficulties developing enough beast milk, breast milk can also be bought, but: warning - there may be health risks (contamination, the source is not always the healthiest & it is quite expensive) - talk to your baby doctor.
Goat's milk click: Goat's Milk for Babies and sheep's milk click: Sheep's Milk are both close to the mother's milk and suitable for the baby - talk to you baby doctor.
Whole FRESH food and the blender for your baby - prepare your own FRESH baby food
It saves your money, yet gives better quality food and secures better health for your baby.
To prepare your own baby food takes less time than you may think and gives you peace of mind because you know that you are doing the right thing when giving the healthiest food to your precious baby. AND: it costs much less, savings 50%+
Your baby deserves real fresh food, not commercial imitation or poisoned with added preservatives & other harmful chemicals.
In most cases the fine-blended (= use the blender - instructions in article 2 of 3 what kind) whole food can be added in milk or water earlier than many opinions state - talk to your baby doctor.
Fresh orange, apple, banana & berries blended fine can be given quite early.
Bananas are among the most common foods worldwide. By weight bananas are among the lowest priced foods and offer a high nutritional value.
Banana should be ripe (= the peel with brown spots or even darker is a ripe banana) - less ripe (harder) banana easily gives constipation, especially to your baby. Ripe banana can also be spoon-fed. Most people eat and feed their babies harder (= not ripe) bananas and then blame the banana for giving constipation and colic.
Fortunately, breast-fed babies are almost never constipated.
Bottle-fed babies, on the other hand, do get constipated. In the formula dilute the mix – Add one ounce of water or half an ounce of adult prune juice (organic is best), once or twice a day, directly to the formula.
Small amounts soft-steamed* potatoes & soft-steamed vegetables & soft-steamed lentils & beans & peas (can cause gas - give small amounts (teaspoonful) test what the baby can handle) can be given to the baby earlier than is common but talk to your baby doctor before you do. *) steaming keeps 30 - 50 % more more nutrients than boiling - adopt steaming also for your whole family needs.
The steamed potatoes, stemaea
NOTICE: Do not mix fruits and vegetables or other foods in the same bottle - can cause stomach ache, gas, constipation, crying and suffering - same with the adults.
Feed fresh fruit as their own category - feed potatoes & other vegetables as their own category - feed steamed/boiled beans as their own category - do not mix different categories - feed fresh fruit as their own category (all categories blended well
"Flash-Card" - How to find a pediatrician
Many baby doctors (and also many other older physicians, doctors, dentists, counselors) often do NOT have much (or enough) training in nutrition. Thus, asking an older pediatrician for guidance in nutrition may often be similar to asking for a street beggar's guidance for how to become a millionaire . However, she/he may know correctly your baby's development level for different common fruits, vegetables, berries & other food, or may not - you may be surprised. Except if the pediatrician is publicly well-known of being up-to-date with the modern science, double check the info you get from him/her. See what answers you'll find either on the internet or contact your local government sources.
You can always contact STAF, Inc. to get correct, up-to-date answers to tough questions.
Postal mail (why postal? - see below) your letter to the address at the very end of this internet seminar - include your email address & phone number in your letter. The mailing address is at the very end of this seminar after all sections. If you are in a rush, email your question to: [email protected] but you take a risk that we might not get your email - why is that?
Please realize, the postal mail is more reliable, because often the emails end to spam mail (we check the spam daily) or do not reach us at all because the email-provider's anti-spam systems can eliminate any email either by (1) a mistake or (2) because of the "baby poop talk" in the email.
When my wife and I had our first baby, the pediatrician had no knowledge in the modern nutritional sciences. Because I was trained in nutrition I could evaluate that almost all guidance my wife and I received was worthless and even dangerous. Once the same pediatrician broke the tip of the thermometer in our baby's anus. The baby had to be taken to the hospital following with months of pain to the baby to heal. Things can happen - do your research before you select your baby doctor. We learned this the hard way.
In addition, too many baby doctors still believe in commercially made "imitation-food" as a primary source of nutrition - it is not a wise attitude. Sometimes that is a brief, temporary choice , but should never be the first and the only choice if breastfeeding is possible and if the baby otherwise is a healthy baby. There are other natural food sources perfect and safe for your baby - the commercial imitation-"foods" with their negative side effects need not to be any choice.
Too many pediatricians with their medical school tens of years back, had no training in nutrition in those days. Still today some universities do not. This means, that unfortunately some pediatricians, with longer experience in their field, may still give as nutrition advice only their personal, family tradition opinions. Long-lived, used-to-be opinions do not always match the most recent science in our modern world with the environmental toxins. If you have a choice in your area, find your pediatrician among the younger generation with probably more relevant nutritional training based on the related up-to-date sciences.
Ask what kind of a training the pediatrician has in nutrition - however, you may risk an angry attitude. Before you ask and/or make your pediatrician choice, find the baby doctor's educational background, year of being licensed, age and other info on the internet. As needed, call your city/town/state for info how to find the educational & licensing records for every pediatricians (and other doctors, physicians, dentists, etc. as the needs comes up).
Click:
Licensing & Certification Needed to Become a Pediatrician | Chron ...
work.chron.com › Careers › Jobs in Education All physicians, including pediatricians, must meet state requirements for a license to practice medicine, which includes education and training. Pediatricians are ...
Click: Medical Care and Your Newborn
Eggs
The free-ranged chickens lay eggs that have much more healthy nutrients than the chickens kept in small boxes without any chance for moving around to exercise. California has a new legislation for healthier chicken to produce healthier eggs. The new CA law gives several times more space to all their chickens than most other states do. click: They Are Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens - The New York Times, March 3, 2014
The Past and The Present
In the past human history the infectious disease pandemics killed people, often a half or more of the population.
Today's pandemic
is the the way most people worldwide eat in a unhealthy manner stuff that has not much to do with food. Then they get sick, suffer and leave this life much too soon.
During the past worst pandemics about half of the population died.
The same thing now: over half of the population in the U.S. and worldwide is overweight or obese. Overweight & obesity kills by causing killer-sicknesses.
Today's pandemic is our wrong food which is not natural food and does not maintain the human health.
Snacking
Definition of snacking = a small amount of food eaten between meals; notice the three important words: (1+2) small amount, (3) food. You know what "small amount means" - the definition of "food" is in this quotation:
Quotation "If it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (click: Michael Pollan) and here is another as a warning:
Quotation "Keep snacking real food, not poison, or I keep nagging"
(Dr. Christian, author of this health-success guide, STAF, Inc.)
Food is something that comes from a plant - it is NOT made in a plant.
This means you will be snacking on - none of these from cans - all fresh:
(1) fresh fruit (not from cans filled with sugary syrup - that's pure poison), (2) fresh berries, (3) fresh vegetables, (4)variety of unsalted, unroasted nuts, (5) unroasted, unsalted peanuts (= peanuts are actually legumes; unpeeled = eat with the brown inner peel because they also have nutrients like all peels do - the outer shell is uneatable as raw - more about that in another occasion), (6) bread, snack only on full-grain bread. No soda (not even diet soda - it has harmful chemicals affecting your and your baby's health). Drink only plain water, coffee or tea. Drink water (coffee & tea counts) daily in liquid oz. the same amount as your normal weight (not overweight) would be in lbs.
Notice: Fresh above (as in "fresh fruit") means: not handled in any manner, not in cans with sugary syrup the same with any other snack "fresh, in their natural form with noting added. Eat apples (wash well with soap) with their peels - most nutritious part is inside under the peel.
It is good good to snack = to eat something little every couple of hours - it helps keep the body system balanced and helps even in weight loss. The modern problem is that there are too many unhealthy snacks on the market advertised being sooooo.... good and sooooo..... dishonestly healthy - ONLY REAL, natural food can be and is healthy for us humans and also for our pets.
Do NOT snack on these popular processed, factory-made items:
no energy drinks (dangerous chemicals), no energy bars (they are about the same as a candy-bar), no vitamin waters (they are nothing else than water + a vitamin pill - waste of your money), no chips (filled with unhealthy chemicals and waste of your money - and many other similar.
To see 10 energy drinks dangers click: Dangers
Snack on real food originating from a plant not on any imitation food that is made in a plant. How could "anything made in a plant" be food?
EAT real, clean FOOD, not any food-like processed killing stuff. If what you aim to eat is made in a plant, do NOT eat it - it kills, eat only what came from a plant and is not processed at all - all original & natural, nothing added, nothing taken out.
In addition
nowadays, the environmental pollution click: Environmental Pollution
is another challenge to our bodies
but: even that poison our immune system can eliminate when we give it a chance with
(1) a fully healthy lifestyle;
(2) feeding us with REAL food and correct nutrition;
(3) exercising enough (a fee-free, enjoyable solution: walk 25K steps daily
click Pedometer;
(4) no smoking/no drugs/no sugary drinks.
click: Environmental Pollution and Impacts on Public Health: - UNEP
To motivate you, the parents, and your children to walk & exercise
it is stated several times in this guide that
the immune system has no pump to pump out the garbage - your physical movements function as its pump.
Thus, sit less, stand up, exercise, do hatha *)yoga & walk more as instructed- 25K steps daily+ walk up the stairs (click: Pedometer). *) Hatha yoga is focusing on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures.
click: Hatha Yoga - Yoga Journal . Click: How Yoga Improves Health
Click: American Osteopathic Association - Benefits of Yoga
(Osteopathic = Greek: osteon = bone; Greek: pathos = disease)
STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-min. exercise program meant to be done among the first things in the morning before your breakfast. Contact STAF, Inc. to download it. It has similar health benefits as hatha yoga does. The program is called:
"This 7-minutes Yabbanetics© keeps you fit, healthy & attractive".
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Scientific Meditation In addition to our physical exercise you, I, and all of us, need to exercise our mind to teach it to calm down, unwind and to avoid mental stress. Stress is a killer as it affects the whole body, its immune system, its every organ, and its nervous system. In your family meeting take up the scientific meditation topic and guide every member of your family to learn it - takes only 15 min. a day to practice.
Learn more about scientific meditation click: Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress - Harvard www.health.harvard.edu. Harvard University
STAF, Inc. has also developed an effective scientific meditation method titled
Mplus™
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Physical exercise, walking, hatha yoga & meditation combined with correct nutrition and with overall healthy lifestyle will reduce stress. Stress
The shortest definition for stress can be "Stress is unfinished business".
Think about that statement. Stress is a killer as it weakens the immune system and can lead to diseases. E.g. certain life situations, challenges in relationships, financial matters, procrastination, etc. life difficulties can cause stress.
click: Inheriting Stress - If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 3/7/14.
Procrastination
creates stress. The majority of people are procrastinators
Procrastinating is the action of delaying or postponing something.
By undoing procrastination we have less stress. Do things now when you can, not "tomorrow". It may be in this aspect that "the tomorrow" never comes. That creates even more stress. Make a plan to clear any matter now and if not possible, make a plan immediately OR a flash-note to remember to make the plan. Keep your flash-notes always in the same place to later know where they are so you can handle them: when, what, how, whom you have to contact, and stick to the plan. Train your mind to handle things "now" or at the first proper moment/time, not "tomorrow".
Another stress builder is a common habit to say
"I'll try"
instead of stating "I will do this...'. Trying is not doing.
Take this test: Drop a pen on the floor and tell yourself "try to lift up that pen". If you lifted it up, you did not try, you did it - you lifted it up - doing and trying are two different things, not the same. Now throw the pen again on the floor and this time "try" to lift it up: try, yes try, try, try" - but do not lift just "try" to lift it and YOU CANNOT lift because you are 'trying' (not doing).
Have you noticed that most of the time when someone will say"I'll try ..." they never get it done". You invite someone to a party, the other person says
"I'll try to come" - and he/she never comes.
Trying and doing are two different things. Teach this to your children in your family meetings. The key is "what you say or think, your mind will listen and do what you say or think of doing". What you tell your mind, will manifest. You say "I will try..", the results are not there. Say "I will do "X" and finish doing it - the results will be there. To execute a plan is to make a plan and do what must be done to get the goal materialized. What you tell your mind is what the reality will be.
Quotation "What your mind can conceive, you can achieve" (Napoleon Hill)
Click: Napoleon Hill
That quotation is a good reminder when materializing your plans.
Your children do what they see you doing, not what you tell them to do. Thus, become a doer if you have been a "try-er" - and you will have less stress, you will also become & stay healthier and you will create much more financial freedom.
Again stress is a killer - you will get rid of it when you apply the above info.
Planning to have a baby?
Before getting pregnant read this article (the green link next below) - Your baby can inherit your stress. Meditation & yoga can ease stress.
Take the above guidance seriously and learn to get rid of your stress, give your baby the best start for life.
click: Inheriting Stress
If the link has expired search the New York Times with the title"Inheriting Stress" or search the internet for the same topic
It is said "We can have a long life and die healthy" - when we respect life and accept a healthy lifestyle, we can have a long, healthy life.
Quotation: "You respect you keep, you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To state it briefly: we are ready to move to heaven when the telomeres are "gone" - yes, the science may estimate when it is our time "to go" - when we probably drop dead.
(throughout the text click green for further info)
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. click: Telomere Wikipedia
To keep your telomeres for your healthier, longer life you need to accept and learn a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition. Start with this mini-fast-track 12 step guide and the continue to study & apply the complete STAF Plan at a later time
(see article 2 of 2).
The more effectively your immune system functions ,
the healthier you are and the less you will suffer. It is your choice based on how healthy your lifestyle is. This guide is a good starting point.
A suitable quotation as a reminder:
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Have mercy on yourself, your family & on your children,
and organize your life in such a manner that you all can learn to apply everything this compact guide teaches.
Give the best gift to yourself, to your family and to your children:
good, healthy, long, meaningful, financially rich life.
Help your immune system to stay clean(er)
by doing what these steps guide shows. Help your whole family, including your children, learn these health restoring & maintaining principles.
(1) Sleep enough (see below the needed hours) - everyone in your family, read the 7+ sleep articles kept in click: www.staf1org.weebly.com - there in the left hand side "blog" tab close to the tab's top; Hours to sleep: (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours, (4) adults 7-8 hours. Click: What Sleep Is and Why All Need It - Health - the stages of sleep
(2) Drink plain water portionally during the day in oz. the same amount as your normal weight is in lbs.; coffee & tea counts as water (no sugary or diet sodas).
Aim to drink the daily plain water mostly when your stomach is empty, otherwise it may dilute the natural digestive "chemicals" and can slow down the digestion.
Briefly: your stomach is "empty" in 30 min. after eating plain fresh fruit, in 90 min. after eating plain grains, in 180 min. after eating anything else.
When you start drinking more water be also prepared to urinate more often and more. Urinating more is a good thing because the water cleans your pipes and flushes out more toxic stuff, thus providing you (and your family) better health leading to less suffering, more enjoyable & longer life.
Carry a suitable-size plastic bottle with you to pee "secretly" in a "must-pee-now" situation. Night-time it would be a good idea to keep a capped container for each person next to the bed to avoid walking to the bathroom to pee. The walking takes us out from the proper sleep waves lowering the quality of our sleep. If you live in a house and have a garden, you can use the human urea as the garden fertilizer and in the composting process. Saves money - brings good, natural results without unnatural cancer causing chemicals.
click: Human Urine is shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer; Scientific American
click: Compost - Human urine can be used directly as fertilizer or can be put onto compost
Guide your children in the urine monitoring and related facts.
Monitor the color of your urine - it tells your health. The clearer the urine during daytime hours, the better chances you, your children and your family will have a enjoyable health. The darker the urine daytime color, the more your health is challenged. In the morning, just after you get up, the urine can be darker.
If your daytime urine is dark in color you MUST drink more water until it shows a clearer color. Teach your children to monitor their pee.
Eat as STAF, Inc. guides: The a,b,c:
(a) "if it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't, it kills",
(b) no fast food = bad-food,
(c) prepare your daily food in your own kitchen based on the STAF Plan
(3) Exercise enough (daily walking 25K steps will do)(click: Pedometer);
(4) Keep your mind clean - how? - Sleep enough, drink enough plain water,
eat healthy, walk & some other physical exercises as you wish - if you can afford, in addition to walking the 25K steps daily, hire a personal trainer to do also strength training. It is a type of click: physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance to induce click: muscular contraction which builds the click: strength, click: anaerobic endurance, click:size of click: skeletal muscles.
When we get older our muscles will shrink - a personal trainer can build them safely back to strengthen your health. Never use any drugs - use healthy food to feed your cells safely. STAF, Inc.'s Plans teach the healthy nutrition.
About the healthy sleep.
Most recent studies show that the brains clean themselves during steady, unfragmented sleep, thus making us more intelligent.
Study (you & your family) the sleep articles # 2 "Sleep - The Ultimate Brain Cleaner" and # 4 "Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth & Other Sicknesses" - both articles or articles links close to the beginning of the left-side hand blog in this website. It would be beneficial to study all sleep-related articles in the same location - over ten articles. Click
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Click to find the hours to sleep: All About Sleep - Kids, Teens & Adults.
Start your new healthier life from this free fast-track guide - fits for women, men & children (2 years +)
Study and apply the information in the article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
STAF, Inc. has develop a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program - info below in article 2 of 2
Quotation
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Fast-Track Guide
This is a shortened, compact fast-track guide.
Start your new life from this guide & apply the information in your and your family's life. Have your children involved - you give them the best gift for life.
Arrange regular weekly family meetings and handle then, as a family including the babies & the toddlers, the material you had together agreed to study that past week. Decide in the meeting how you all are going to apply the information in your daily life for your better health and success.
Click & study each web link in full and well, take notes, involve your.
The deeper you study and learn the info in all links the better your life.
This 12-step mini-guide alone is a treasure for your and your family's better life quality with less sickness risks.
This whole extensive website is another story - it would take 5 years to go through.
This website is world's # 1 advice website in all family matters, in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition topics and guides you to enter the good life.
STAF, Inc. has developed a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program called also "The STAF Plan". That's a full-size book long and originally took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
Below, in article 2 of 2 more information about the full-size STAF Plan.
To stay healthy physically & mentally follow the instruction in fast-track mini-guide as a whole family
* Realize: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition principles are NOT taught properly in most schools nationwide - worldwide. Yet, it is the most important topic for us humans -our health & life depend on the correct facts . We also need to know how to feed our pets - not taught in schools either - out pets are getting sicker & sicker as we humans are. All because of our lacking knowledge.
Only by teaching the correct eating skills we can lower our high sickness costs, avoid human suffering, stay healthy & fully enjoy our time on this earth.
STAF, Inc. is the new, nationwide & worldwide leading organization in these topics in addition to handling all family & life success topics. STAF, Inc. has developed effective teaching programs fit for every country, every school and for every individual.
About Water
Most people do not realize that water is a vital nutrient.
Vital nutrients are life-sustaining and necessary to the continuation of life.
Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water
in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda, sugary or diet).
Roll the water in your mouth to mix it with saliva - the digestive process starts always in your mouth, click: Saliva and Your Mouth
Saliva is an important part of a healthy body. It is mostly made of water, like our whole body is (70 %). Saliva also contains important substances that your body needs to digest food.
Water is essential for the human body to function and to perform virtually every metabolic process.
As said, the human body is about 70 % water.
Notice:
The web links in this fast-track guide give detailed info what sources have the nutrients our bodies need - what to eat to get all needed natural
(1) vitamins (the drug store vitamins have almost no nutritional value and they can be toxic),
(2) minerals (only the natural ones can be properly digested by the human body),
(3) essential & non-essential amino acids (web links below),
(4) protein (links below),
(5) carbohydrates (links below) and
(6) what else is needed to keep your body & mind healthy.
About Vitamins - About Minerals
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are 13 vitamins your body needs.
They are click: Vitamins: MedlinePlus
- click: Vitamins and Minerals: How to Get What You Need by American Academy of Family Physicians
- Also available in Spanish Vitaminas y minerales: cómo obtener lo que usted necesita clic: Spanish - por American Academy of Family Physicians
NOTICE:
The next link to Harvard School of Public Health
has all information (1) about everything you need to eat and (2) what sources will provide the most natural nutrients - study all and do it with your whole family.
On the website, on the left-hand side, is a topic list - click each topic on the list, study well and apply- a real treasure for your and your family's health - and for the good life.
About Amino Acids - About Protein
click: Protein | The Nutrition Source
Harvard School of Public Health
About Carbohydrates
click: Carbohydrates | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
Twenty-two essential and non-essential amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins. When taken up into the human body from the diet, the 22 standard amino acids either are used to synthesize
(= make) proteins and other biomolecules or are oxidized to urea and carbon dioxide as a source of energy.
9 of these 22 are called click: essential amino acids because the human body cannot synthesize them from other compounds at the level needed for normal growth, so they must be obtained from food.
Notice: in this same link you also see (1) the recommended daily amounts
and (2) the main food sources for the 9 essential amino acids - notice: listed there are also the two common, easy-to-get, low-priced sources that have all these nine essential amino acids: (1) soy beans and (2) eggs. In addition, e.g.
hemp & quinoa have all 9 amino acids - they may be less common and also more expensive - click: Hemp - click: Quinoa
STAF, Inc.'s advice: always buy the cheaper products (in this case the soy beans) to save more cash for investing and step-by-step becoming a (multi-)millionaire. STAF, Inc. has a program for it also.
One egg a day, no more, except in rare occasions; eat the whole egg, the egg white & the yellow yolk - they function together well as a perfect nutrition source.
As a click: food, the yellow yolks are a major source of click: vitamins and minerals click: minerals
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Steam the eggs in their shells for saving the most egg nutrients including vitamins & minerals.
The scrambled eggs may have some harmful bacteria left because the heating process is quite short. Steaming 20 min. makes the yolk hard and kills the possible harmful bacteria.
click: essential amino acids
As long as you consume adequate levels of
(1) protein and (2) carbohydrates each day,
your cells will either have or make enough non-essential amino acids to support tissue growth and repair, immune function, red blood cell formation and hormone synthesis. Both plant- and animal-based proteins are rich sources of non-essential amino acids, and, although you can manufacture the non-essential amino acids, including a variety of protein sources in your diet helps ensure you have all the starting materials you need to keep the process running smoothly if your diet ever runs low on this particular nutrient.
Question:
In what proportions to eat daily proteins, carbohydrates, oils and other nutrients?
The answer next below in "The Healthy Eating Plate"
Realize that, according to the Harvard University leading specialists, you do not have to eat animal meat if you do not want - you will get the proteins from other sources (see below, e.g.: soy beans & other beans, eggs, some vegetables, etc.).
The Healthy Eating Plate,
created by the nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health and by the editors at Harvard Health Publications, was designed to address deficiencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s MyPlate.
The Healthy Eating Plate provides detailed guidance, in a simple format, to help people make the best eating choices and see in what proportions to eat different food types
Click: Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health...www.hsph.harvard.edu
Then:
Click the next line to make The Healthy Eating Plate bigger and esier to study
click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
_______
Now click to see how the most recent
U.S. gov. "Food Plate" the previous "Food Pyramid" look click: Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler plate. Each 3 pictures you can enlarge by clicking the picture or clicking the "enlarge the image" note next to each picture -
All these pictures: (1) click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
and (2) The U.S. gov. Nutrition Plate .& the Food Pyramid
show (1) what and (2) in what proportions to eat
Start today - stay healthy tomorrow
* avoid sickness * live longer
__________
The Fast-Track Guide to a better-quality life
Continues
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen. Eat full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry or at least any poultry - cage-free can be more costly; very little or no red meat, no pork), one egg daily. Eat nuts, peanuts (with their thin inner brown peel - peanut is a legume click Beans & legumes). Eat all nuts & peanuts raw - not salted & not roasted. Eat berries, fruit, vegetables, olive oil (cold-pressed, virgin, 1 - 2 spoonfuls a day) and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle of this quotation:
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(Quotation by click: Michael Pollan).
The science of food combining is helpful in avoiding heartburn, stomach aches, and other digestive pain & suffering.
The food combining principles will be introduced in full in the full-size STAF Plan.
Briefly: (1) eat smaller amounts every 3 - 4 hours rather than 1 - 2 times a day, (2) proteins & vegetables combine well, (3) eat fresh fruit alone (combine with nothing else), (4) eat other carbohydrates alone.
The heartburn medicines can actually make the heartburn worse when used continuously. As a natural first aid eat fresh celery or fresh cucumber to still heart burn - no negative side effects.
Sleep on one side - test what side works for you - it can still the heartburn and you can fall asleep.
_____________
About fish
Fish oils come from fatty fish, also known as oily fish, specifically the tissue of fatty fish, such as trout, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, and salmon.
The bigger the fish in wild the more it can have sea/ocean/river pollutants
(= harmful industrial waste), mercury, etc., thus a smaller fatty fish can be safer to eat. Why has the bigger fish more mercury & other pollutants? Because the bigger fish eats smaller fish (the smaller fish, of course, also has mercury, etc.) and the big(ger) fish gets more and more mercury, etc. in its system.
Plankton & phytoplankton are a key food item in both click: aquaculture
& click: mariculture.
Little fish eat (phyto)plankton because they are the base of the food chain. Small fish eat (phyto)plankton, medium fish eat small fish, and big fish eat medium fish. Humans eat the big fish & fish of all sizes. That is the (phyto)plankton cycle.
click: Plankton
click: Phytoplankton
Farm raised fish is a good idea but the fish farms can be filthy affecting negatively the safety quality for human consumption.
Trout is not so common on the market and can be priced higher than their value. click: Trout
Pricewise the canned Alaskan salmon (wild caught) is a good source for nutrition click: Alaskan salmon
Also canned, wild caught mackerel (small) or jack-mackerel (bigger) or king-mackerel (biggest) - more than half of the salmon price in cans - no need to buy fresh files - too expensive. Canned Alaskan salmon and canned mackerel are acceptable. Mackerel is a good fish to eat. Buy the smallest size mackerel if available, otherwise buy any of the three. If available, stack up mostly with the smallest mackerel. (1) Alaskan salmon, (2) small mackerel & (3) sardines(see below) are the basic fish items to buy - as said: buy in cans (wild caught) - least expensive. click: Mackerel
In any food item, shop around for the lowest prices, see the weekly on-sale offers, stack up & save. Invest your savings as guided in this website in tab: more, sub-tab: credit & credit cards. Learn to become an active investor - a millionaire is then a realistic goal.
Avoid tuna or have small amounts because: The bigger the fish, the more mercury & other pollutants - because the more the big fish eats smaller fish that all have certain amounts of pollutants). click: Tuna
Sardines - the European sardines are the real sardines and can be expensive outside Europe (in Europe they are quite low-priced). As wild caught the sardines are oily, healthy and delicious. click: Sardines
The American/Canadian sardines are low-priced and good, oily fish
(less oily than salmon or mackerel) and they are small in size = less polluted. These are not really sardines. In the past an agreement was made that all American & Canadian small ocean fish will be called "sardines".
Once more: Alaskan salmon, mackerel & sardines (all wild caught - the sardine cans may not state "wild caught" because they are basically always wild caught) are the three most economical and health-wise acceptable fish items to buy - all in cans
(lowest price - stack up when on sale).
Notice: Eat only fish that has a backbone & scales (notice: & = and - not either one but both at the same time in the same fish) when it still swims in the ocean, river or lake (e.g., do not eat eel click: Eel and not catfish click: Catfish, etc. similar).
The other fish or seafood without backbone & scales are not the best for us humans because they are in the ocean ecology the poison eaters and can safely digest the poisonous material that can harm other sea/river/lake animals. The poison-eating sea/river/lake creatures keep the water clean for other water species. That's how the nature operates.
The seafood & fish without a backbone & scales are the cleaners of the waters.
The poison only these poison cleaners can digest will end as health-threatening poison in your system if you eat such a "cleaning lady".
The cleaning ladies you must not eat (to keep your health safely) are e.g. crayfish & crabs, lobsters, oysters & all sea, river, lake creatures including fish that have no back bone & no scales (both at the same time in the same creature).
Next two article links relating to fish:
(1) Mercury and (2) Sorting out the risks of fish
(the link next a few lines below after another link).
Realize: not all that swims in the water is meant for us humans to eat as is explained in the paragraph just next above ( if you do not remember what it states, please, for your, your children's and your family's safety, study the paragraph above again before reading the next article).
Eat only fish which has a backbone AND scales (when still swimming around, e.g. do not eat eel, not catfish, not lobsters, not crab, etc.). These two article links are placed for you to get more information about the mercury in fish. Pregnancy & mercury do not go together. Mercury is dangerous to everyone in every age.
A little mercury can be "OK" - thus, avoid big fish as they have more mercury and other pollutants because the bigger fish eats smaller fish and thus accumulates more toxins.
click: Mercury - March of Dimes
Next click: Sorting Out the Risks of Fish
About eggs
It is said that the egg is the perfect food. The eggs have all nine essential amino acids as do also soy beans - two excellent foods, available & low-price.
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Brown eggs vs. White eggs - any difference?
The color differences in eggs are simply from the breed of the hens they come from. Brown eggs are laid by larger red-feathered hens with red earlobes, and white-feathered hens with white earlobes produce white eggs. When it comes to the nutritional value, however, brown eggs are more or less the same as white eggs.
The healthiest way is to steam whole eggs in their full shell 15- 20 minutes (until the yellow part is hard). To scramble the eggs does not give enough time for the possible harmful bacteria in them to get neutralized. In a big enough a pan steam the eggs for every family member for the whole week to save time - they stay well in the refrigerator.
Steaming kills the bacteria more effectively AND saves more healthy nutrients in the shelled egg. The Cage free eggs are healthier, they have less pollution and they have more nutrients BUT they are also much more expensive. As money may be the issue in most families it is still better to buy the cheaper eggs as it is said that the egg is the most perfect food. Not too many, though, max. one egg a day.
Why is the age-free egg (and the cage free chicken meat) healthier, less polluted and has more nutrients?
Because a chicken in the cage cannot move so much and the digestive waste is not eliminated so well by the immune system but stays partially in the chicken body and goes then also into the egg.
The same in the human being: that is why the exercise movements help the immune system (which has no pump) throw out our digestive & other toxins more effectively.
If a human being is not physically moving much, the toxins stay in the body cells leading to multitudes of sicknesses and to an early death. Walking (see blow how much daily) is one of the easiest way to help our immune system to clean our insides and our cells well to keep us healthy and give us a long life.
About full grains
and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
Whole Grains and Fish Highly Protective against Childhood Asthma
According to the American Lung Association, almost 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, which is reported to be responsible for over 14 million lost school days in children, and an annual economic cost of more than $16.1 billion.
Increasing consumption of whole grains and fish could reduce the risk of childhood asthma by about 50%, suggests the International Study on Allergy and Asthma in Childhood (Tabak C, Wijga AH, Thorax). click: Diet and asthma
click: American Lung Association
What Is a Whole Grain? - All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
In the morning the healthy breakfast
is the 5-full-grain hot home-cooked hot cereal as instructed below.
This 5-grain cereal is real delicious - there is not one person who would not like it.
In addition, our bodies like it.
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In this case you and your body will like every morning the 5 -grain cereal.
Have everyone involved, including your children, in the weekly preparation (for the whole week) - then the children and everyone immediately like the new 5 hot cereal.
However, the first thing in the morning, before enjoying the cereal, is to drink (as instructed below in # 2) 15 min. after the hot water/lemon-lime drinking below in # (2) is the way to start your day - then the cereal 15 min. after drinking the water/lemon-lime.
The cereal is for every family member over 1 year old (for the age use your own judgement).
Eat only whole-grain bread - find the best deals. Stack up when on sale.
Prepare multi-grain hot cereal for your family. Cook more for several days. If you can manage to cook the breakfast full-multi-grain hot cereal once a week (weekend?) for the whole week it would save your time. Keep in your refrigerator(s) - stays well for one week.
This is the 5-grain hot cereal
Stack up the different ingredients when on sale - buy in big packages/sacks - store in a DRY place and cover well to:
(1) oats; steal-cut healthiest; click: Steel-cut oats & any rolled oats will do;
click: Rolled oats,
(2) par-boiled rice; par-boiled means "partially boiled" click: in the click: husk
(husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed) cooking time shortened, about 15-20 min. click: Parboiled rice,
(3) brown rice; brown rice is whole grain rice, cooking (=simmering) time about 2-3 h = brown rice has 30 % more nutrients than an other rice type,
click: Brown rice
(4) barley - click: Barley - The World's Healthiest Foods - there you can also find a brief guide
"How to select & buy barley"
Pearl barley (or pearled barley) is dehulled barley which has been steam processed further to remove the bran. click: Barley
(5) buckwheat. (Buckwheat is not really cereal but but can be combined with cereal - click: Buckwheat)
Buy all cereals when they are on sale (stack up), buy big sacks 20 lbs & up - store in dry place away from all pests (mice & rats, ants, etc.).
The proportions of the 5 cereals for cooking are, e.g.
(1) 5 lbs oats, (2) 4 lbs par-boiled rice, (3) 2 lbs brown rice, (4) 3 lbs barley
(5) 1 lb buckwheat
Keeping the pan covered while cooking helps to keep up to 25 % more of the nutrients in the cereal.
Each cereal has their own cooking time
Follow the cooking time instructions on the packages or study the internet.
Soak each grain overnight in cold water in their own pan and cook in the morning each in their own pan.
Save the soaking water for the cooking and add water as needed.
Hint: keep a separate pan for heating boiled water during the cooking period as you will need to add water. When you add boiling water the cooking process will not stop (as it would for a while if you added cold water) - it will save your time as you do not need to stand and watch all the time the pans to avoid spilling over or to avoid burning. Best is to keep every cereal simmering as it would also retain more nutrient & vitamins (keep the pan cover on) and would allow you to do other things also. Avoid any cereal getting burned in the pan by using good-quality steel pans (buy them when on sale). To use aluminum pans will easily burn the cereal and would take much more of your time for watching & cleaning. Do not use non-sticky pans as their surface will leak poisonous chemicals . Use only high-quality steel pans. (Buy them when on sale - often the saving can be 50 %.)
Cook every grain in their own pot as they each have a different cooking time and at the end, when they are all cooked, mix them in correct proportions together as one 5-cereal combination to keep in your refrigerator for the week's breakfasts.
The two important kitchen "tools" for your & your family's good health are:
(1) big refrigerators & (2) several good blenders.
The Crown Prince of the home blenders is Vitamix - click: Vitamix
The prince of the cheaper home blenders is Proctor Silex - Hamilton Beach (same company)
Click: Proctor Silex - there click: Kitchen Appliances / Blenders
Proctor Silex models are lower in price than Hamilton Beach products, yet are of good quality with a good warranty.
Buy the blenders Proctor Silex calls "Space Saving Blenders" - you need several in your kitchen to save your time. When you learn to use the blenders more, you can use several blenders at the same time. Keep always at least one new, unopened blender package in case some blender breaks. Study the warranty time 3, 6 or 12 months (with Proctor Silex) - the company sends a free blender to your house during the warranty time. Vitamix warranty is several years, some models up to seven years. If you can afford 1- 2 Vitamix blenders (they do a much finer job, helpful for your digestive system and thus good for your health) and then you add a few Proctor Silex blenders (each only about $25).
It is said "the blender is the key to our good health".
You need to learn to use the blender(s) for an easier digestive process - that equals to a healthier body & to a healthier mind.
Use the blenders as much as you can as the blended food will digest easier in your system, use less energy for digestion - the saved energy keeps your body functioning more effectively giving you a better health.
You can blend anything and take with you in thick glass or thick plastic bottles
and "drink" your lunch or dinner - but when eating/drinking mix it well with the saliva by rolling the "liquidized food" in your mouth, click: Saliva.
Avoid hot material in any plastic bottle as the heat will make harmful chemicals leak and enter your system.
STAF, Inc.'s full-size STAF Plan guides further in the blender use.
HAVE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE CEREAL PREPARATION - then everyone will eat and enjoy the delicious 5-grain hot cereal every morning.
Especially children are much more eager to eat "new" food when they are involved in the preparation & the cooking process.
Realize: children do/eat what they see their parents doing/eating, not what they are told to do/to eat.
If someone in your family has any allergies (e.g. gluten sensitivity, click: Gluten sensitivity) see your gluten specialist health care provider or otherwise, based on your reliable information, solve the situation in your family.
Before making any appointment, confirm that the Dr. is a gluten issues specialist OR call your insurance company to locate a specialist or call your city/town/village health office or Community Health Center for (free) guidance/information; do the same when dealing with any other health question. Not just any Dr. knows every topic.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda).
First in the morning (your stomach still empty) drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below). Guide your children and your toddlers do the same - the babies have a different agenda.
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money - the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Do not boil the lemon/lime, boil only the plain water first. Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be frozen. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma).
Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
About your mouth & teeth hygiene
Why here next to the stroke & heart attack topics? Because your mouth may have a direct link to your heart & brain health - and even broader: take care of your teeth and you whole body will benefit.
When your teeth are not in the best condition, the potentially destructive mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
Professor Nairn Wilson click: Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee states: "There are still many unknown elements in these matters, but one thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing (soft bristles) your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being." click: BDA (British Dental Association)
- Health and Science
We at STAF, Inc. purposely repeat this often: Have your children involved in learning this guide info & studying all given web links including the mouth & teeth hygiene facts. To give yourself and to your children the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition info for life is the best gift to have.Click: Healthy dental care toothbrushes - American Dental Association - ADA.org
Salt & Sugar & Honey
& Artificial Sweeteners
Salt
Click green for further info We all need salt in small amounts, much smaller than is commonly used.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA)1, click: sodium consumption should not exceed 1.5g per day(3.75g of salt), and that even includes healthy people without click: high blood pressure, click: diabetes or cardiovascular diseases click: Cardiovascular disease
Use only Iodized (or: Iodised) salt with added iodine click: Iodine。
Without iodine we humans tend to develop goiter click: Goiter and other sicknesses. Taking too much iodine can also cause problems
click: Iodine Deficiency & other facts
Sea salt is natural and has some iodine - click: WHO | Iodization of salt
NOTICE: Iodized salt is NOT the only source for the important iodine. Iodine is e.g. in these food sources: potatoes, beans, strawberries, cranberries, yogurt, saltwater fish, sea vegetables, seaweed including kelp, arame, hiziki, kombu, and wakame - click: Common Foods Rich in Iodine (in this link the word "organic“ is not the key - the key is to study the food item and its qualities).
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iodine is 150 micrograms daily for adults & everyone over the age of 14. The RDA for children ages 1-8 is 90/mcg every day, ages 9-13 is 120/mcg every day.
If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, it is recommended that you get 290/mcg every day (talk to your pediatrician or primary care physician - STAF, Inc. is notgiving medical advice in its seminars but info for educational & motivati0nal purposes).
E.g. 4 ounces of cranberries has 400 mcg of iodine (mcg=microgram) - 1 mcg: a unit of mass or weight equal to one millionth of a gram.
Salt is everywhere - that's why you need to know how to avoid its harmful effects. Most of the sodium we eat comes from packaged, processed, store-bought, and restaurants foods. Only a small amount comes from salt added during cooking and from being added at the table, and most Americans have already exceeded their daily limit of sodium before cooking or adding salt at the table. You can find out how much sodium you are eating by checking the labels on food products and adding up the milligrams of sodium. If at a restaurant, ask for nutritional information facts that include sodium.
click: Sodium and Food Sources
To stay healthy, to avoid sickness coming from unhealthy eating, to have less suffering and having more enjoyable, longer life, it is necessary to start preparing your food in your own kitchen based on the instructions you will get in STAF, Inc.'s educational programs.
Sugar
White sugar (or any sugar) - the sweetest poison of all - do not keep in your house - pure poison. Do not eat. Do not add in your home-made daily food. Do not add in your coffee, tea, do not drink sugary sodas (no diet soda - their chemicals harm you). Occasionally eating a sugary pastry or peace of sugary cake will not kill, but do not eat them daily.
Sugar & Pregnancy & Breastfeeding
Ladies: Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation*) can influence muscle force production in offspring *) lactation - formation of mother's milk in breastfeeding
click: 143 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health (with the reference to scientific studies)
Do this:
Get your sugar from fresh fruit (not canned, fresh), berries (berries can be fresh or frozen) & fresh vegetables - yes: vegetables have healthy sugars.
Full of fiber, antioxidants and other health improving phytochemicals
(phyto, Greek = plant) and flavonoids, fresh fruit, berries & vegetables are a great source of sustainable energy. Eat fruit & berries as such - (you can use the blender) but do NOT juice them. Whole fruit contains fiber and other nutrients, which allow the body to feel more full and to absorb the sugar slowly over time.
antioxidants, click: Wikipedia
phytochemicals, click: Wikipedia
flavonoids, click: Wikipedia
A variety of fresh fruit, berries & fresh or lightly steamed vegetables
is the most important part of our daily diet - use berries as you can afford - some little is better than none. Potato is a vegetable - steam or bake the potatoes - do not boil or fry them or any other vegetables: too much nutrients disappears in boiling or frying anything. Fruit, berries and vegetables you can eat fresh as such or use the blender. DO NOT juice anything because the pulp has 80 % of all the nutrients - juicing takes the fiber & the pulp away - the human body needs the fiber and the pulp. In addition, juicing makes the juice unnecessarily concentrated with sugar and can cause an unpleasant sugar high & low in.
Quotation:
The health angels say "the devil invented the juicing to ruin the people's health"© (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
There are tens of berries, fruits,vegetables, beans, nuts, etc. on the market. Click each 7 lists below and from each of them pick up those items you know what they are and keep variety of them in your pantry. Do not waste your money. Find the lowest priced items. The fancy ones are no better than the humble, common ones. Save your money, do not eat your money but save it to start investing with the goal of becoming a millonaire.
STAF, Inc. has a new seminar
"Start with $50 a month to become a (multi-)millionaire".
Find out some details for saving & investing in this website in tab: more..., there sub-tab "credit & credit cards".
Click each list next below and pick the items from each list you know
and eat a variety of them daily:
List of Fruits
List of Berries
List of Melons
List of Vegetables
List of Beans
List of Nuts
List of Seeds
Peanuts
About peanuts: when you click the above link, study the full article to know about peanuts' many use. E.g. Peanuts are used to help fight malnutrition. are high-protein, high-energy and high-nutrient peanut-based pastes developed to be used as a therapeutic food to aid in famine relief. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, Project Peanut Butter and Doctors Without Borders have used these products to help save malnourished children in developing countries.
Pick all items as natural, raw, no pre-cooked, no salted, no roasted, peanuts buywithout the outer shell with the inner, thin peel on.
From each list pick the cheapest and the one you know. It should up to over 20 different items eaten daily - all in small portions, some of them even counted between 1 - 5 daily (like nuts, berries, etc.)From each list choose items with different colors (if naturally available) and in the same color group the one(s) that have the deepest of that color. It is said: eat the rainbow every day. The rainbow colors are: red, orange, green, yellow, blue, indigo (darker) blue, violent - 7 colors. Eat every day 7 or more colors. The colors indicates different phytochemicals with different nutritional meaning. Basically, the deeper the color, the more beneficial the food item is for the human body & mind.
A few words about the science of food combining
Eat fruit mostly as plain fruit (= not combined with any other food types)
and when your stomach is empty because fruit needs much less digestive time than the other food category items need. If the fruit stays in your stomach together with protein or carbohydrates the results will easily lead to digestive difficulties.
This is because different foods (1) need different lengths of time in the stomach and
(2) need different digestive chemicals (alkaline or acid).
As a mess-up of different digestive chemical needs, a process of food rotting starts in the digestive system leading to toxins in the immune system and finally in every cell of the body.
Signs for this are bad breath (= a sign of rotting food items in the digestive system), heartburn, skin itching (because the body eliminates poisons also through the skin pores - our skin is our largest organ) and, as one sign, the lack of energy. The armpit smell has the same origin. When the body systems cannot handle the continuously growing toxic material, this situation will lead, sooner or later, to different sicknesses including to cancer.
It is not what we eat but what we digest and assimilate*) that adds to our health, strength and usefulness. *) to assimilate = to take in and utilize as nourishment & to absorb into the system.
For a good assimilation a proper application of food combining rules is a must. These facts just stated in the few above lines belong to the area of the food combining science. In this internet seminar we will not handle the food combining rules any further than to how to eat fruit (see above). The healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition book to be published will have a whole chapter about food combining facts. Meanwhile, eat all fruit when your stomach is empty and do not combine fruit with any other food category as explained above. Aim to eat sweat fruit and more sour fruit also as their own category not combining sweat and sour.
H0ney
Honey is a sugar, so use it sparingly. It has a high caloric value and will put you on a sugar high and low. Most honey is pasteurized - that process kills the most beneficial nutrients in honey. Raw, unpasteurized honey is available but for a higher price and may not be safe because of the transportation challenges.
If you are interested, have your own honey production - can be done in a city also - then you'll get fresh honey.
click: Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees
Many cities have an association for beekeeping - take their training. Search the web for contacts.
Do not feed honey to infants. Spores of Clostridium botulinum have been found in a small percentage of honey in North America. This is not dangerous to adults and older children, but infants can have a serious reaction of illness in the first year click: Infant botulism
Do not add honey to baby food or use as a soother to quiet a fussy or colicky baby.colic (noun), colicky (adj.) - colic = severe, often fluctuating pain in the abdomen caused by intestinal gas or obstruction in the intestines and suffered esp. by babies (also by adults) - somewhat similar to constipation.
Most colicky pain is caused by unhealthy food given to the baby (and an adult eating in an unhealthy manner - also some medication can cause colic ): bottle feeding & other commercial baby food instead of breast feeding, feeding bananas that are not ripe enough (ripe = the banana peel is dark) and some other food items too early. Consult your pediatrician as needed.
click: Colic Definition - Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinic
click: Colic in Adults
Artificial Sweeteners
Briefly: DO NOT use them - they are harmful chemicals leading to sickness.
click:
Artificial sweeteners: sugar-free, but at what cost? - Harvard University Health ...www.health.harvard.edu › Harvard Health Blog - Harvard University
After reading the Harvard University article you may want to study this link as the Harvard people also refer to metabolic syndrome
Click:
What Is Metabolic Syndrome? - NHLBI, NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Metabolic (met-ah-BOL-ik) syndrome is the name for a group of risk factors that raises ... In general, a person who has metabolic syndrome is twice as likely to ...Other Names for Metabolic ... - Diagnosis - NHLBI, NIH - What Causes Metabolic
Skin Care - Hair Care - Body Care - Showers
The less chemicals is used, the better.
Use simple soap (no fragrance, no deodorant soaps).
With our skin being our largest organ, we must be wise not to use products
that are full of petro-chemicals, parabens and other highly toxic ingredients.
However, women put, on a daily basis, an average of 515 TOXIC chemicals a day on their faces alone! That is 515 too many. That alone, has contributed to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women and to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age. Also many women start their monepouse earlier than normal. All signs of a shorter life span.
Click: Dangerous and cancer-causing petrochemical properties of products and
click there: reviews of related topics
Click: Petrochemical Click: Paraben
Hair
Most shampoos and other hair care products have too many harmful chemicals - the simpler the better. Hairsprays & other similar products can cause hair loss. Some wash their hair every day - if your work conditions do not demand daily washing, 2 (- 3) times a week is enough. Instead, daily, brush & comb your hair with a "heavy" comb to get rid of the dandruff (= dead skin cells on your scalp and hair). To wash your hair more often is to take the protective, natural "oil/fat" away and your hair loses its shine and strength; you risk to get bald faster than you otherwise would.
We humans have about -/+ 100 thousand hairs = men less, women more.
Every day we lose some of them. TEST: comb your hair & comb/rub your scalp with a heavy comb for 60 seconds. Dandruff (= dead scalp cells) drops and hairs drop. Count the hairs that came off after combing for 60 seconds.
Test answer: Less than 100 (hundred) hairs a day is safe and normal, more than 100(hundred) hairs a day = that's too much - also called click: Alopecia
In animals hair loss - you may need this info if you have pets or you have cattle click: Mange
We humans lose up to 100 hairs from our scalp every day. That's normal, and in most people, those hairs grow back. But many men -- and some women -- lose hair as they grow older. You can also lose your hair if you have certain
diseases, such as thyroid problems click: Thyroid, diabetes click: Diabetes or lupus, click: Lupus.
If you take certain medicines or have chemotherapy for cancer, you may also lose your hair. Other causes are stress, a low protein diet, a family history, or poor nutrition. Treatment for hair loss depends on the cause. In some cases, treating the underlying cause will correct the problem. Other treatments include medicines and hair restoration.
click: Hair loss
As needed, consult: (1) a dermatologist, click: Dermatology
OR consult (2) an Endocrinologist, click: Endocrinology
Deodorants
block the natural skin "breathing" by blocking the skin pores and keep toxins inside the body burdening the immune system, thus adding to sickness risks. Healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition eliminates unpleasant sweat odor - then you do not need any deodorants. The unpleasant sweat odor comes from eating unhealthy food, fast-f00d (= bad-food) and combining food items in an unnatural manner - then the bacteria relating to rutting causes the unpleasant odor - all signs for new disease.
Eat as instructed in this guide to avoid sickness - teach your children to do the same. Once more: children do what they see their parents doing not what the parents tell them to do.
There is no need to take the risk that deodorants may cause when you accept the healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in you daily life. One fact is for sure: they keep the toxins inside the body and that can & will cause sickness. Eliminate deodorant use when planning & being pregnant and as long as you are breastfeeding. The men can deliver higher quality sperm the less toxins there are in the male body.
Deodorants are toxic - that is a fact - they have toxins in them.
Eat real food, not imitation food, walk enough, sleep enough & learn to relax your mind - then your sweat does not smell and you forget the deodorants that are toxic no matter how we look at them.
click: Harmful ingredients in deodorants
click: Dangers of deodorant sprays
12 repeating points as a Flash Card
(1) As a family, apply everything you learn in this guide
(2) Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily
as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you in the STAF, Inc. seminar
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer) - if you are not able to walk that much or not at all, meet with your primary care physician and find out what other exercise options fit your situation to keep you physically in a good condition.
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 (seven) sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children reading those 7 articles.
To sleep better: (1) leave 3 hours between the dinner and your bedtime - otherwise the food digestion may disturb you, (2) avoid listening/ watching/ hearing negative news late in the evening and (3) in your bedroom the only 2 things you do are (1) making love & (2) sleep.
Keep electronics in some other room (including the TV) - Guide your children do the same - all according to the available space.It is estimated that in the U.S. sleep deprivation causes annually 63 billion dollars in lost productivity.
(1) Click: All About Sleep - Kids, Teens & Adults
(2) Click: What Sleep Is and Why All Need It - Health - the stages of sleep
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titled M+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success - have your children learning also - meditation eases stress - if you are aiming to get pregnant
click: Inheriting Stress - If the link has expired search the web with the title - article published in The New York Times 3/7/14
(9) Do (you and you children) basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9)
(10) Learn to keep a positive attitude leading to happiness - but how?
Running after the feeling of happiness is like trying to catch the rainbow.
The principle of how to pursue (= catch = get) & keep happiness is mostly misunderstood , tells the happiness science.
The pursuit of happiness click: pursuit of Happiness is in the click: United States Declaration of Independence, thus, especially the Americans think and believe that happiness is what everyone then should feel most of the time - otherwise we have failed in life. Not true at all.
Relax, STAF, Inc. will show you what real happiness is and how to get & keep it.
Let's see what the most recent happiness science states.
Quotation
"The Road to happiness is paved with struggle" (Dr. Russ Harris)
In this website STAF, Inc. has science articles relating to happiness.
Some main principles here - apply the information and you will have peace with the mystery of happiness.
Happiness is not always and continuously feeling good. That would be boring and make us feel strapped in the same routine day after day. Happiness is richness of life based on different events & different feelings. Life with endless forms and ventures is richness.
If we limit our life to one feeling only, feeling of happiness, we certainly will feel miserable - that would have nothing to do with happiness.
What makes us humans happy is to get results in solving our difficulties & struggles. Having a meaningful, steady work is one major source of life happiness. Getting results in any purposeful, significant goal, no matter how difficult, gives us happiness. E.g., relationships & parenthood gives us deep meaning & happiness and they always have difficult sides also.
Solving our struggle is the key to happiness
Old saying:
"When God wants to give us a gift, He always wraps it in a form of a problem"
When we solve the problem, we grow wiser & stronger and as the result feel peace & happiness. Thus, (1) do not curse difficulties, instead (2) be thankful for them and bless the challenges & struggling because they are an important part of our existence and the keys to a better, richer, happier life.
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 3 of 3 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more:
Have a weekly a whole family study meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discussing in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from this STAF, Inc.'s guidance website.
The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc.'s website is extensive and would take years to go through. It has tens of thousands of articles & article links and new information is being placed as new science research results come available.
It is the "world's #1 free advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
To learn and start investing with the goal of becoming a (multi-)millionaire is in STAF, Inc.'s website in tab "more...", there in sub-tab "Credit & Credit Cards"
Teach the principles to you children to start with their allowance money.
It is a realistic goal to become financially wealthy - start, follow the instructions, learn to invest and the results will be yours. Patience & durability are the keys.
Start with any amount (even $50/month) - to start is the first step, learn and grow in financial health in addition learning the good bodily health.
___________
When you now studied the healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition information presented above, study this WSJ article:
"Chefs and doctors are teaming up to create healthy dishes you might actually crave"
Click the green info 2 lines below - if it does not connect "Copy and paste" the entire address below into your web browser (next 2 lines):
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304704504579431133752897634-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwNzExNDcyWj
When the article is up, in addition to reading the text, click also in the 3rd picture from the top: click: Interactive: Culinary Rx or click: View graphics -
then: Click the red circle next to each item to see the written description
to study 24 food items and their benefits for the human health.
All these 24 food items have been mentioned in this STAF, Inc.guide. Study this article also with your whole family including with your children.
In case the link to the article has expired search the web with
(copy & paste the title on the next line):
"WSJ Health Food for Foodies - A Delicious Prescription"
If the article does not come up, email STAF, Inc. and request to have it emailed to you - e: [email protected]
The article was published in WSJ 3/15/2014 as:
"WSJ Health Food for Foodies - A Delicious Prescription"
_____________________________
Below, after the article 3 of 3 the links to:
The U.S. Government Food Pyramids and Plates: What Should You Really Eat?- Prepared by The Harvard School of Public Health & other sources.
WHY AT THE END?
Because
(1) above there is quite much information to digest, then
(2) it is more practical to study the new "Food Plate" and the old "Food Pyramid" info after you studied the above compact healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guide.
Then studying the additional "Plate" and "Pyramid" info is easier to understand and easier to adopt in your and your family's daily healthy lifestyle and healthy eating.
Study everything as a family - have the weekly family meetings as instructed above.
Additional questions email to STAF, Inc.: [email protected]
Email your success stories based on this life-quality improving material.
STAF, Inc. needs your donations to ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide.
Donation instructions in STAF, Inc.'s home page and below in the article 3 of 3
and at the very end of this seminar.
_____________
Article 3 of 3
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
That's like a free health insurance and better
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the most economical plan
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
We at STAF, Inc. want to know how you expect STAF, Inc. & this advice website, in a longer run, to improve your & your family's life, or how it already has improved your life.
Let us know in your donation letter.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
As instructed above
at the end of the article 1 of 2
STAF, Inc.'s editors placed these extensive web links above and once more here next below at the end of article 2 of 2 to give you
a chance to further study the details as they are the foundation for your and your family's future health
Click green below to study further info - study all details
Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health
Click:
Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/.../03plate.html
The New York Times
Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler guideline to promote healthy nutrition. ... Nutrition Plate Unveiled, Replacing Food Pyramid. Jim Watson/Agence ... The 1992 food guide pyramid. The new ...
__________________
The links below relate to # 10 ("Happiness") in the above guide.
Are you ready for more about 'how to have happiness' ?
click Dr Russ Harris
The Happiness Trap | Stop Struggling Start Living.www.thehappinesstrap.com/
Dr Russ Harris, author of 'The Happiness Trap' is Australia's foremost provider of training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - a powerful new ...
Resources - Book Shop - Happiness Trap Workshops - Mindfulness
click: The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A ...www.amazon.com › ... › Cognitive Psychology
Your opinion is valued at STAF, Inc.- let us know your opinion about Dr. Russ Harris' teachings. Amazon has his book for under 10 U.S. dollars
Email your opinions to STAF, Inc. to: [email protected]
Or mail to: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_________________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc.
will ease human suffering & turn lives to victory *
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
www.staf1org.weebly.com
__________________
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit,
is the nation/worldwide leading, new organization
for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
*Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering and turn lives to victory*
STAF, Inc. has also developed a "full-size" guide for the U.S. gov. use.
This abbreviated guide above is made of 2 basic elements: (1) written text and (2) added web referrals. Additionally, a free Q&A-service provided via email.
Even though this guide is abbreviated, it contains most major basic facts for a healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition.
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
& Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., as the author
The copyrighted Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide for The Good Life with related additional guides & information above is free of any charge worldwide for all personal use. It is also free for all educational purposes in seminars, schools, colleges & universities worldwide. Give your students STAF, Inc.'s web link and guide them to further study its extensive, scientifically reliable advice website for the good life. Urge your students to apply the information for their lasting health & longer life, for their family happiness & financially richer life including becoming a (multi-) millionaire starting with $50 dollars a month.
To everyone using this advice website for your improved life:
email to STAF, Inc. your success stories to: [email protected]
________
Find out what you have learned -
The 30-minute test
When you have studied in full every article above, STAF, Inc. invites you to test your level of mastery.
Instructions
(1) Click the green "Balance diet - Healthy lifestyle" link at the end of this test info.
(2) Read the link information to find out IF everything it states looks familiar to you. The test link has healthy lifestyle opinions from several nationwide &
worldwide leading organizations but in a compact form stating plain principles.
(3) Evaluate if you master all the basic principles and if almost nothing in that article is new info for you, then you are well on your way to a healthier, happier longer life with less or no suffering - as long as you apply the info daily in your life. Guide your children to apply the information in their lives every day.
Quotation "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(4) Email us at STAF, Inc. how you did in your test:
e-mail: [email protected]
Click this test link: Balanced diet - Healthy Lifestyle
As you may feel necessary anytime in the future, repeat-study this guide
to be sure you have adopted the healthy lifestyle information for your healthier, happier, longer and richer life.
________
Email us your success stories
how STAF, Inc.'s guidance has given you and your family a higher-quality life.
e-mail: [email protected]
_________
Want to get deeper knowledge &
become a professional ?
Public Health professionals are in demand because it's more widely
recognized that our good health and higher success in life
is possible through our own actions
A lifetime opportunity
Become a
Certified Healthy Lifestyle Coach© (CHLC)™
Earn full-time or part-time income (1) in your private practice and/or
(2) by leading STAF, Inc.'s public & corporate seminars in the U.S. nationwide or worldwide in any country.
As a public health professional you will ease human suffering, guide your clients to avoid sickness and have good health. As a CHLC™ -professional you will also show how to maintain a happy marriage, how to raise successful children and how to become financially successful, even a millionaire starting only with $50 a month.
When you teach these most important success elements in life you will yourself apply the principles more effectively in your own life and succeed higher than you ever expected.
STAF, Inc. will train & certify you - online or in major cities nationwide & worldwide.
Get more information of this great opportunity - send your brief resume or CV and basic info: (1) country & location(s) where you are available to run STAF, Inc.'s seminars, (2) in what language(s), (3) your education & work experience, (4) links to your online presence and (5) one recommendation letter of your suitability for teaching work (state the relation between you and your recommendation letter provider).
Include your (1) postal mailing address, (2) your email address & (3) phone #.
Write all material in English.
Mail to:
STAF, Inc.
Dept. CHLC ™ Program
P.O. Box 1555
New York, NY 10163-1555
USA
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs donations.
Perhaps you could include in your resume envelope a donation of a size suitable to you. Your donation will ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide. The U.S. paper notes preferred as donation but any currency paper notes are accepted.
STAF, Inc. will email to you a receipt for your donation.
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. is also in the process
of founding a new University
to provide high-quality education in the public health sciences and in all other STAF, Inc.'s work related science areas - which means: practically all areas of a successful life.
A few examples of the goals the new STAF, Inc.'s University will have.
STAF, Inc.'s goal and its new University's goal is to eliminate the modern killer-epidemics as overweight & obesity, widening smoking in developing countries & drug use worldwide and promote in a new manner nationwide & worldwide the importance of healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in fighting disease and human suffering.
Also strengthening nationwide & worldwide family ties & traditional marriages to provide a safe, nurturing & healthy atmosphere for our children to grow up, belongs to STAF, Inc.'s and its new University's goals. So do teaching and training every school child to know how to grow financially successful through investments starting only with $50 dollars a month. The financial equality nationwide & worldwide can be substantially leveled for everyone's best in our nation and in every nation worldwide. These are some examples of the new University's goals. The goal is to teach the world to have a better quality of life.
It can only be done when we all start sharing the abundance in knowledge & riches.
The results will be beneficial to the givers and to the receivers. We all share the same planet and its overall health or sickness will affect the rich & the poor, thus affecting us all.
In the new University all degree levels will be available:
Associate, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Quotation
"Education is the most powerful weapon
which you can choose to change the world"
Nelson Mandela Click
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
*to ease human suffering & turn lives to victory nationwide & worldwide*
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_______________________ Tuesday April 1, 2014 Fully updated BABY Internet Seminar
==============THE END========
=================================================================================
=============================================================================================================================================================================================================
__________________
This Internet Seminar has Monday 3/31/14 NOT THE LATEST ONE
Three parts - all based on the most recent science
(1) Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy (Article 1 of 3),
(2) Complete Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan for your pregnancy, for your baby, for the parents, and for the whole family (Article 2 of 3),
(3) Introduction to Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.'s nationwide-worldwide services to ease human suffering and search for the good life
(Article 3 of 3)
(4) At the end additional information for lifetime opportunities
________________________
Article 1 of 3
(Articles 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 next below)
Throughout all 3 articles click green for further info
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Founding President of STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
________________
Updated: March 30, 2014
Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy Internet Seminar
Foreword
This internet seminar is written for both parents.
When both parents are involved in every step of the pregnancy & monitoring the mother's and the baby's safety, the wife-husband bond and the parents - new child bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Also, this complete guide is written for your possible children. If you do not have children, read this foreword anyway for the future use for your children and take from this text the ideas that fit now for your present family situation. The study instructions are still the same for the two of you to do together now. Save this seminar for your future children and teach them a few years from now.
Have your children (of any age) living with you involved daily in every step of the pregnancy - then the whole family bond will get stronger and your children will learn valuable healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles. Your children would also learn early on how to have healthy babies when their own time comes. Handle and discuss this guide material in a weekly family meeting during the pregnancy months - anyone who can read should study this guide and prepare pre-agreed text parts for meetings. Have your children of any age present in the family meetings, even the toddlers. The more new words your child learns early in life, the better chances for higher success in the future. Go through the whole guide step by step together as a family.
(click: Your Toddler's & Child's Success = the article "Tips for your child's success" - see what else is there to your interest - the link has text, voice, videos - American Academy of Pediatrics)
In addition to the basic text, this internet seminar has plenty of web links. For proper learning every member of your family who can read will study also the web link articles. Some links may be sensitive and may need added parental guidance during the family meetings.
The weekly meetings can be done at home or (depending on the season) as a family pick-nick trip to your favorite park or to other outdoors place - the nature has plenty of fresh oxygen (good for the new mother and for everyone), it will be relaxing, refreshing, beautiful & healthy for the body & mind. Some outdoors locations may not have access to the internet - those links can be viewed at home. During the colder months you may have another inside destination with privacy to have pick-nick & your weekly family learning meeting.
The more different experiences your family has together also outside the home, the deeper the family bonds and the more successful your children will be in their adult lives. A weekly family meeting, no matter how small or big your family, will create miracles - you'll see. You and your children will value these weekly family outings and meetings for learning. You all will remember them forever as a pleasure. As the result your family bonds will be strong forever.
Guide your children to learn all what this internet seminar teaches. Your children will remember this as a well-appreciated gift given by their parents for life.
During the pregnancy it is especially important that the mother (1) eats healthy food & keeps herself away from all harmful ingredients, (2) keeps herself well hydrated with plain water, (3) keeps her body & mind in top-condition, (4) sleeps enough hours and (5) sees her pediatrician and/or her primary care physician as required. When the pregnant mother asks the other family members to help her remember what to do to stay healthy and the new baby to stay healthy, everyone learns at the same time.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
When you involve your children to help you to stay healthy, they will gladly do it, remind you enthusiastically and then they will easily copy what the mother and the father do. The children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do. With all these actions the family union gets healthier and stronger. Then your children can much easier resist the wrong models outside their loving home. That's an important benefit for everyone in your family. The earlier you involve your children to learn the health & success rules for life, the easier they can avoid harmful habits and the more successful they will become in life.
After the delivery it is as important as during the pregnancy to continue applying healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for the breastfeeding milk quality and for the mother's own health safety for life. Then your children see that healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition is not only for being pregnant but is the basic success principle for the whole life.
A big blessing for all of you.
As the whole family, apply all information in this seminar guide - then you give the gift of good health and successful, long life to all of you.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
One more final thing: Negotiate with your delivery doctor how to have your whole family best involved in the actual delivery process in the hospital. What does the mother want? Whom does the doctor & the hospital allow to be in the delivery room, etc.? The whole family being involved is best for everyone because it will be a learning process and will strengthen your family ties.
It's also important to realize that this internet seminar is not written to give you medical guidance - only your pediatrician or primary care physician who know you can do that. This seminar guides you in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition and is written for educational purposes. The web links are provided for additional detailed information.
When your new baby is safely in the family and you all have studied together this whole seminar, then, all of you in your family, keep applying the life-quality lifting healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for a better, richer and longer life.
Then next:
Let us at STAF, Inc. know how many family members (girls/boys plus their first name & age) are studying/studied this seminar "Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents"
A girl or a boy? Let us know your new baby's name & birthday & birth weight and please, mail us
a picture of your new baby. In an old-fashioned manner, mail us a postal letter and use our
NYC mailing address at the very end of this internet seminar. On the envelope write also
"New Baby". In your letter add your email address so we can email our suggestion for your next
STAF, Inc.'s Internet Seminar.
Make your weekend family meetings a permanent event. It is worth it.
STAF, Inc.'s postal mailing address is at the very end of this internet seminar.
____________
The Internet Seminar
A Well-Balanced Diet (1) Before & (2) During Pregnancy Will Lower The Risk of Preterm Delivery and (3) After Pregnancy Will Give More Nutrients in Your Baby's Breastfeeding & Improving Your Baby's Health for Life
Notice: The level of both parents' health at the time of
the conception will to a great extent affect the baby's future health.
A guide how to be fully prepared for your baby's best.
A well-balanced diet
means getting the right types & right amounts of food to supply nutrition & energy for maintaining body cells, tissues & organs, and for supporting normal growth & development, getting enough water for proper hydration and
giving the immune system strength to fight any disease.
(Throughout the text click green for further info)
The opposite:
An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases including (click each): high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal blood lipids*), overweight/obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and any other deadly disease. *) Lipids: Another word for "fats."
This seminar text continues below after the event with The Earth Day deadline
______________________________
Before we go forward in this seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
we place next a temporary text
Do this important thing before
April 22, 2014, The Earth Day:
(this matter also relates to your baby having a healthier life)
Sign online to demand The U.S. Congress
to take action to protect the human life
(Links & info below)
This April 22, 2014 topic concerns everyone and every family including YOUR family.
1st example: According to experts at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over 300 (three-hundred) toxic chemicals are showing up in our umbilical cords.
click: Umbilical cord care: Do's and don'ts for parents
click: Images for Umbilical cord
2nd example: Women put, on a daily basis, an average of 515 toxic chemicals on their faces alone. That is 515 too many.
That has contributed (1) to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women, (2) to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age and (3) to in growing numbers to adult women starting menopause 10-15 years earlier. These facts point to a shorter life span. click: Menopause
3rd example: Most of our daily food we all eat, no matter what the food origin, has hundreds harmful chemicals. The air, the water, the ground - they are all more or less polluted with environmental toxins. Not even the organic products are fully safe. Is it then a wonder that our modern lifestyle kills over half of the population at the half-life.
We can still clean up this earth - but we all must change our lifestyle.
The governments must create effective regulations (based on science, not on politics) leading to cleaning, not to more greed and not to additional environmental, killing toxins.
Latest on April 22, 2014, give your signature to fight back - that is for everyone's best.
Environmental toxins in pregnancy and in every day life
click: Wikipedia - Environmental toxins & Fetal Development
(with info how to avoid some of the toxins) - click: Fetus
click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC www.cdc.gov
click: Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals - CDC
click: Updated Tables - National Report on Human exposure
to environmental chemicals - CDC
Poisonous stuff
that can hurt our nervous systems, mess with our developing brains and lower our IQs. Really bad stuff that's also linked to cancer, birth defects and asthma.
Fight back - help to bring the U.S. Congress to its knees. You have the power to do so - to make them listen and take action.
It's time for the lawmakers to do something about all the bad chemicals out there. Because that stuff ends up in our babies, in hour homes, in all our bodies, we must have a real change in this very wrong situation creating human suffering, costing lives and endangering our future generations.
FIGHTTOXINS.COM will gather 100,000 signatures by Earth Day,
April 22, 2014, and force a discussion with the government to get protective legislation to save human lives.
Click: We the People - The White House petitions.whitehouse.gov
Take a swing at these dangerous chemicals,
visit (copy & paste) fighttoxins.com
& sign the petition latest on the Earth day, April 22, 2014
click: Earth Day
If you & your family lives in another country, you can be involved and sign the petition as this concerns the whole world - put your voice up - it matters.
As Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. is one important organization to help your family to a better life the U.S. or worldwide,
we would appreciate if you could send us a letter in an old-fashioned manner via the postal service and let us know (1) if you & your family(including your children), signed the 100,000 petition (how many in your family signed), (2) your opinion about this FIGHTTOXINS.COM petition to fight the chemicals and
(3) we would appreciate if you could enclose a donation (as paper money) to STAF, Inc. - we do need your donation as a not-for-profit organization.
Our extensive, "World's # 1 advice website in all family matters for the good life" has everything your family needs for healthier, financially richer life.
When you, based on our guidance, reach your new goals, we at STAF, Inc. would like to know your family's success story in a new letter.
Mailing address: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_____________The End of The Earth Day Event ______________
The Internet Seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
Continues:
*) Lipids: Another word for "fats." Lipids can be more formally defined as substances such as a fat, oil or wax that dissolves in alcohol but not in water.
Lipids contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen but have far less oxygen proportionally than carbohydrates click: Carbohydrates
Lipids are an important part of living cells. Together with carbohydrates and proteins, lipids are the main constituents of plant and animal cells.
Click: Cholesterol and click: triglycerides are lipids. Lipids are easily stored in the body. They serve as a source of fuel and are an important constituent of the structure of cells.
Etymology of the word lipid
Whereas the everyday term "fat" comes from the Old English (from "faett" meaning crammed = completely full), the more scientific term "lipid" comes from the Greek "lipos" which referred to animal fat or vegetable oil.
Increasing intake of healthy foods before & during pregnancy
is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, not only during the pregnancy but also important before conceiving and also important after the delivery because good breastfeeding can be based only on correct, healthy nutrition.
The breastfeeding should go on at least the first six months - the longer beyond 6 months the better - you want the best for your baby. Your baby gets the best nutrients in a correct combination and the best, lasting protection against sickness from your breastfeeding efforts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that breastfeeding continue for at least twelve (12) months.
click: American Academy of Pediatrics www.aap.org
If for some reason the mother cannot breastfeed, other safe, natural solutions are introduced in the Healthy Eating Plan below.
It is not recommended to use formula as several worldwide studies show they can cause serious dangers to the baby because they are man-made, factory products with non-natural ingredients.
A brief quote of one of the earliest formula study:
"Decades of bottle-feeding, formula babies may have left a costly legacy, in both human and financial terms, of a generation of adults at higher risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke than they should be, according to research published in the Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, establishes beyond doubt that breastfed babies become healthier adults."
This Lancet study was published already 20 years ago and even though tens of other studies after the Lancet have the same findings, the man-made formula is still widely & strongly pretending being suitable for a baby - it is not.
There are other safe choices.
Best is the breastfeeding , the 2nd best introduced below - the man-made formulas cannot have what the nature can provide.
The easy-to-remember truth for the adult, teenager, child, toddler & for the baby food is in this
Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(click: Michael Pollan)
The mother's milk is perfect food for the baby- it is made of what the mother eats. For the safety of the baby the mother needs to eat food that the nature has made - not the processed, factory made disguise.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
Below detailed information what not to and what to eat.
Any questions after studying all information below, ask free via email
(contact info below).
Click for the Lancet article: Bottle-fed babies 'face higher risks
One more important area of facts:
It is understandable that we all know that the mother's health condition
matters when planning for a pregnancy. But it is now known that the father's health condition also matters as well.
This first link has info for both of you - even though it states as the source:
Office of Women's Health - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services -
Click: Preconception health
Click: Future fathers: 10 ways to help her get pregnant
___________________
Definition
Preterm Delivery
By Mayo Clinic Staff
A preterm/premature birth is a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the baby is due — in other words, after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, which usually lasts about 40 weeks.
Premature birth gives the baby less time to develop in the womb. Premature babies, especially those born earliest, often have complicated medical problems.
Depending on how early a baby is born, he or she may be:
(1) Late preterm, born between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy
(2) Very preterm, born at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy
(3) Extremely preterm, born at less than 25 weeks of pregnancy
Most premature births occur in the late preterm stage.
_________
When you're pregnant, eating healthy foods is more important than ever.
You need more protein, iron, calcium, and click: folic acid than you did before
pregnancy.
Folic acid is a B vitamin. It helps the body make healthy new cells. Everyone needs folic acid. For women who may get pregnant, it is really important. Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can prevent major birth click: defects of the baby's brain or spine.
Foods with folic acid in them include
- Leafy green vegetables
- Fruits (fresh, not from a can)
- Dried beans, peas, peanuts & nuts (not roasted, no salt)
- Full grain breads, full grain, unprocessed cereals and other full grain products
You also need more calories. But "eating for two" doesn't mean eating twice as much. It means that the foods you eat are the main source of nutrients for your baby. Sensible, balanced meals will be best for you and your baby.You should gain weight gradually during your pregnancy, with most of the weight gained in the last trimester. Generally, doctors suggest women gain weight at the following rate:
- 2 to 4 pounds total during the first trimester
- 3 to 4 pounds per month for the second and third trimesters
Expectant mothers are often told to eat lots of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, and a new study adds to evidence that a healthy diet is linked to a reduced risk of premature birth.
Researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 66,000 pregnant women in Norway between 2002 and 2008. Premature birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) occurred in slightly more than 5 percent of the pregnancies.
Women who ate a "prudent" diet that included plenty of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and water had a much lower risk of preterm delivery, as did those with a traditional Norwegian diet of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables, the investigators found.
The study was published online March 4, 2014 in the journal BMJ (= British Medical Journal).
click: BMJ: Home
STAF, Inc.'s comment: The Western diet causes more health risks in the pregnant mother including diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Your baby needs healthy foods that are packed with nutrients - you also need the same healthy foods. When you breastfeed your baby the milk must be healthy - it can be healthy milk only if and when the mother has eaten healthy, natural food. Human milk is the most perfect food but must be clean and have no poisonous chemicals.
Thus, eat in the manner during your pregnancy that is safe for your baby and for you as the mother. All needed guidance is in this compact healthy lifestyle guide.
However, increasing consumption of healthy foods is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, the researchers said because every pregnant woman has sometimes unhealthy cravings and may forget to let them pass.
The findings also support advice given to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet that includes (more detailed 'what to eat' info in article 2 of 2):
(1) variety of fresh fruits (not from cans), (2) variety of fresh (or steamed) vegetables, (3) whole grains, fish (best: Atlantic salmon from Alaska, mackerel & sardines - these 3 fish types all can be from a can = low price & suitable as human food as long the label states: Wild Caught), (4) and drink enough plain water - enough is most likely more than you may be used to: drink daily fresh water the same amount in liquid oz. as your "normal healthy weight" is in lbs (not the overweight lbs). Drink no soda (no sugary, no diet - both with their chemicals harmful), no energy drinks (full of harmful chemicals), no energy bars (too sugary, partially processed, dead calories, they are candy bars in disguise), no chips (dead, processed calories, too salty with many other unhealthy ingredients).
AND: of course, during pregnancy: (1) no smoking, (2) no alcohol, no wine either, (3) avoid caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate have caffeine), (4) keep your
system hydrated = drink water daily as instructed a few lines above. Our human body is about 70 % made of water, blood and brains, both about 90+ % water - thus it is important to have enough water every day.
This Healthy Eating Guide gives all necessary details - apply the advice in every detail. You will be glad you did - the desired results will be there. These these same principles in full to your children - they will be glad you did. The weekly family meeting is the way to teach them as instructed in this guide.
However, although the study found an association between eating a healthy diet during pregnancy and a lower risk of preterm delivery, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study authors said premature birth can lead to major short- and long-term health problems, and it accounts for nearly 75 percent of all newborn deaths.
Healthy eating during pregnancy is always a good idea, according to an accompanying editorial by Lucilla Poston, of King's College London.
Poston said several studies have suggested that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent premature birth. "[Health professionals] would therefore be well advised to reinforce the message that pregnant women eat a healthy diet," she said.
There is more to study for your precious baby's best:
See the important 3 links next below as an important part of this Article 1 of 3
_____
Links to additional pregnancy topics
Both parents need to study these six (6) links below and together monitor that everything above and in these links is applied - give a safe start to your precious baby.
Notice:
When both parents care for the baby, before and after the baby's birth, the emotional parent-child bond and the wife-husband bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Click each:
(1) Getting pregnant
(2) Pregnancy week by week
(3) Labor & delivery, postpartum care
(LAT. post = after; partum = childbirth)
(4) Breastfeeding - American Academy of Pediatrics
Click: Breast-feeding twins
Click: Breast-feeding: Pumping tips
Click: More - several links
(5) Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for
Obesity: Study
Click: Infant development: Birth to 3 months
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics
SOURCES:
(1) BMJ (British Medical Journal), news release, March 4, 2014,
(2) NIH: National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements,
(3) Mayo Clinic,
(4) Medline,
(5) Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health,
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics,
(7) United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - www.cdc.gov
(8) STAF, Inc.
__________________
The next article 2 of 3 is for every member of your family - study & handle together in your weekly family meeting. Give your children the most precious gift: health for life.
Article 2 of 3
How to maintain your health -
How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages.
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit, is the leading, new organization for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
_______________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering
& turns lives to victory *
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your name & email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
___________________________
This information is suitable advice for everyone 2 years or older
The Abbreviated (yet comprehensive) Guide for Healthy Lifestyle, Correct Nutrition & with a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
developed by STAF, Inc. (1) for the U.S. gov. use as a program in the new health care system as the tested solution to our overweight & obesity problems and to our rampant sickness level, also (2) to-be published as a how-to book for the worldwide market as STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life ©
This program is at the same time an automatic,
"Aaahh!Finally-the-results"© Weight loss program, no calorie counting, just follow the new program's instructions for easy, natural food preparing - nothing else to do. Nothing else to buy - no gimmicks, no "miracle" powders,
no pills, no new "discovery berries" from the world's jungles - just plain & simple correct, natural, real food combined with healthy habits meant originally for the human body & mind to stay beaming wit good health and leading to a healthy & longer life without further suffering.
Everyone can afford this program as we do not sell you food - we guide you to buy the ingredients in your own supermarket and prepare the food in your very own kitchen - based on all new, delicious recipes. As the result, your new, lasting health will cost less than ever before. See the amazingly low monthly food cost below in the article 2 of 2. The savings is "found money" - you invest it to become a millionaire (not a joke - that plan is part of this new program).
The full program has step-by-step guidance for "How to become financially independent, also potentially a (multi)millionaire, starting with $50 a month". Preliminary, brief investment info in this website, tab: credit & credit cards. Nothing like this never existed before - suitable for everyone nationwide and worldwide.
Below detailed info, for you and for your whole family, what to drink & eat for your improved health and for your longer life.
This guide is kept up with the latest research info - thus it is a good idea to study this again if you studied it sometimes in the even a close past.
Repetitio est mater studiorum (Latin)
(Repetition is the mother of study)
© Copyrights STAF, Inc. 2014
_______________________
Instructions for how to study
this Health Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide
Because this information can provide you excellent health leading to a longer, more enjoyable life, this guide may be the most important material for you and for your whole family.
This guide is fit for every family in the U.S. and for every family worldwide.
The purpose of this material is to guide you and your family
(1) to maintain your health and
(2) to restore your possible lost health due to an unhealthy lifestyle and to incorrect nutrition.
Every family member should be involved in this learning process.
To master the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition principles early in life could easily be the best gift you, as the parent(s), can give to your children for life.
Become a healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition inspirator for your children.
Your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Obtaining this information based on the natural health laws will save potentially plenty in (1) sickness care, (2) will eliminate pain and suffering (that have been based on a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition) and (3) provide for every family member a longer, more enjoyable life.
Even though this could be called "a-mini-guide" it has a substantial amount information, probably more than you expect. This guide has the basic healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles in a compact form, yet it is quite comprehensive.
Instructions: how to gain a healthy, meaningful life
It is important to follow the detailed instructions
(1) First read through the whole text in the article 1 (above) and in the article 2 (= this part in front of you is part 2).
During the first reading do NOT click any of the web links (basic text in black, the web links mostly in green , also in other color, with the preceding word click:) - read the full text in both articles 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 to get an idea what you and your family can expect to learn. Every family member should be involved and follow these instructions - as a group everyone learns better and sticks to the guidance to gain a better, healthier life and also all together building a million or more in the bank.
(2) When every family member has done the first reading, have a family meeting to decide together how you are going to proceed best as a family.
(3) During the 2nd reading, which is now the learning process, take notes, click every web link and study the link material as broadly as you see suitable.
In most links there are several pages to your interest. The better & wider job you do in learning, the better your health will be and the longer you will enjoy your life.
(4) Based on the guide instructions organize your weekly family learning meeting to discuss the material and deciding together how you are going to apply the material together in your family to build a better, healthier, richer & longer life for everyone.
(5) When your lives start improving let us at the STAF, Inc. know your success stories either by postal mail or via email. Contact info in this guide text and in
STAF, Inc.'s website, home page. Any questions via email.
e: [email protected]
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization,
needs & will appreciate your donations
Your donations will ease human suffering nation/worldwide
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
_____________
STAF, Inc. has developed a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program for the U.S. gov. use with the main title
STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Big Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
Will also be published as a book - all suitable for every country's needs worldwide.
This Internet seminar is abbreviated from the same material.
_____________
This guide fits women, men & children (min. 2 years old)
The 2 starting statements
(1) About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle and wrong nutrition.
(2) Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed
and do not necessarily automatically become part of our golden years.
Introduction
In the past in our human history, people died mostly in pandemics.
A pandemic (from Greek pan "all" and demos "people") is click: an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.
(epidemic from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people")(throughout the text click green for further info)
Plague (Lat. plaga = wound) click: Plague - Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the
most notorious disease episodes in history.
The Black Death peaking in Europe in the years around 1350 CE. (CE = common era - also Current Era or Christian Era ) was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of 50 % oof the population an estimated 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1348–50 CE. click: Wikipedia
E.g., still in the World War One 1914 - 1918 many times more soldiers died because of the infections due to low sanitary safety than died in the actual war actions.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate (= winner of a Nobel prize) Alexander Fleming in 1928. click: Nobel
Penicillin antibiotics were among the first drugs to be effective against many previously serious diseases. E.g. The famous British Prime Minister Churchill saved his life with Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery, click: Sir Winston Churchill
When in comes to food & nutrition,
in the past generations people ate FOOD = REAL food, prepared in their own home kitchen using natural ingredients.
Today most people do not any more know what real food is - the results: sickness & suffering & early death.
E.g., based on study, click and read: Fast Food Hamburgers Could be as Little as 2% ACTUAL Meat - and many call it "food".
(Yes, you saw it correctly 2 (two) % - no misprint)
Real Food & Enzymes
Real food suitable for us human or suitable for our pets, IS NOT the modern food-like stuff that is processed, "fortified" with chemicals, poisonous for the human body and lacking in life preserving nutrients.
E.g. the enzymes, large biological molecules responsible for the thousands of metabolic processes that sustain life, die at the temperature of about 132 F = 55 C.
Yet, the chemicalized food processing industry uses even higher temperatures - the results:
very little (if any) life-sustaining enzymes left. Click: Pasteurization
Notice: Without enzymes, life, as we know it, would not exist.
At any given moment, all of the work being done inside any cell is being done by enzymes. Processed "food-like non-food" does not have enough healthy enzymes - that's why eating unhealthy food leads to sickness, suffering and to a shorter life.
Only real, NATURAL, unprocessed food can deliver proper enzymes to maintain the human health and the human life.
To help you to realize the truth in these 3 quotations they are repeated 'here and there'. Many people place them on their refrigerator door.
(1) "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, don't"
Click: Michael Pollan
(2) "To stay healthy and have a long life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(3) "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
"Flash-card" - REAL FOOD
Daily main parts - %-wise in this order:
(1) fresh, raw, unprocessed fruit, berries & vegetables,
(2) unprocessed, full grains,
(3) unprocessed fish or lean meat,
(4) tree-nuts, peanuts & seeds (not roasted, not salted) - if any allergy, replace daily with extra fresh fruit & fresh vegetables,
(5) cold pressed oils,
(6) enough water; coffee, tea counts as water (no diet or sugary sodas, no energy drinks) (in oz. the same amount of water as your normal weight (not overweight) is in lbs,
(7) physical & mental exercise (walk 25K steps daily) &
(8) enough sleep (adults 7-8 h / teenagers 10 h / child 10 - 12 h / toddlers 12-15 h/ babies sleep almost 24 h- the life sustaining growth hormone develops in all humans when we sleep and the brains clean themselves from poisons while we sleep - click: Goodnight. Sleep Clean
If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 1/11/14.
This keeps you on the right road to your better health.
All related, detailed instructions are in this compact guide.
Then there may be areas only your primary care physician can advice you to do
(because he/she knows you personally).
Enzymes are the tools of nature.
Enzymes cut and paste products such as nutrients. They speed up all vital biological processes.
The enzymes in the stomach, for instance, ensure that food is cut into tiny particles that can be converted into energy in the body. Wherever one substance needs to be transformed into another, nature uses enzymes to speed up the process.
That's why eating enzyme-dead or enzyme-low, processed or fast food
(= bad food) causes overweight because there are not enough enzymes in the digestive system to break the food into tiny particles our body system could absorb. Then the partially digested food sits inside the body and in the weakened immune system & starts rotting. Next the harmful, deadly germs & bacteria attack our cells infecting our body finally leading to any disease. Overweight lbs are made of this poisonous stuff rutting in the body because the person kept eating enzyme-dead processed or fast-food (= bad-food). That's why even a minor overweight can lead to any sickness, suffering and to an early death. A major overweight & high obesity is a sure killer.
STAF, Inc.'s tested, new methods are the solutions to guide you and anyone back to good health leading to an enjoyable life without suffering.
WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE? Eat food or poison? Life or death?
If you are overweight more or less (75 % of the population is), study this compact healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition guide again and again until you do all it teaches. To apply the information can return & maintain your health & reduce suffering and even save your life.
When you succeed in your efforts, email us to STAF, Inc. your success story so you can further help other people get motivated to accept the same knowledge as the road to their new, healthy life.
(The e-mail & postal address in the home page).
For additional info click: What are enzymes?
Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. If you have metabolic syndrome or any of the components of metabolic syndrome, aggressive lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent the development of serious health problems.
This Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide in front of you is your solution to your and your family's good health.
Study well every detail in this guide, handle everything in your weekly family meeting and guide everyone in your family to apply the information.
Quotation: "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Give yourself, your spouse and your children the best gift in life: good health.
Your good health leads to a longer, healthier, financially richer & happier life.
When the enzyme molecules are gone in the modern food-killing process, is it then a wonder that worldwide a wide part of the population suffer of click: Metabolic Syndrome storing larger and larger amounts of toxins in every cell of the body and finally developing all possible killer sicknesses: cancer, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. - just name any sickness - it's endless.
Sickness care (wrongly called health care) costs go up, human suffering gets wider, early deaths become more common. We at the STAF guide you in health care: we guide you and everyone willing to learn to restore & keep the precious base element: health - and based on health have a long, happy life.
The industrial age with its chemicals brought us all these "innovations".
Still in the 1950' - 1960's the advertisements touted "Health through the modern chemicals". Smoking was glorified publicly and still in the 1950's, 1960's believed being healthy for us human. That wrong belief was because smoking raises the heart beating rate as does exercise so the logical "science" thinking was "smoking is healthy". Still in the 50's and early 60's the tobacco commercials had medical doctors smoking and stating "I, Dr. X smoke Life*) - it is for my health". *) "Life" was a cigarette brand.
Today the use of pesticides has destroyed the healthy ground. The land, air & water are polluted as the result of wide use of chemicals once defined as a life & health improving solution for everyone worldwide.
Today the animals grown for food are fed with harmful chemicals
& click: Antibiotics ending in the food chain in the humans, in our pets and in everything including polluting the oceans and all elements.
Greed & The Modern Cattle Care - a life danger in our world and in our food
Rampant, irresponsible greed has widely destroyed in our modern times the proper, humane care of the animals meant for the human food.
The wide overuse of click: Antibiotics to make the animals grow faster is endangering also the human health by ending in our drinking water and in us when eating the meat - we develop resistance and the antibiotics do not work when needed in an emergency situation. CDC - The U.S. Centers of Disease Control, states "it can be lethal".
Click: Antibiotics: Misuse puts you and others at risk - Mayo Clinic
Physical exercise in us humans makes us stronger by expelling toxins out from our body - we stay healthier. The immune system does not have a pump to get rid of the toxins - our physical movements work as its pump.
Yet, most of the animals used as the human food live in a small space where they cannot hardly move around. It is like living our whole human life in the economy class airplane seat - what would our human body condition be if that would be our destiny? What about our mental condition? Our whole lifetime would be painful torturing.
Yet, our legislation still accepts that the animals we eat in our human food chain
can be living their whole life in similar terrifying conditions without any possibility to exercise and pump out the toxic from their muscles.
Is that kind of an animal meat, filled with toxins, really healthy for us humans?
Every living creature has emotions in addition to the physical pain.
The emotional pain feeds additional toxic chemicals into the animal'' meat and we humans eat it.
In the past the cattle grew outside freely roaming happily around eating fresh grass and enjoying the nature.
Now we give them an airline economy seat to live their whole life inside and expect them staying healthy without much physical exercise to keep the body & mind healthy. This is the background for the overuse of the antibiotics in the animal industry.
Often the slaughterhouses process knowingly (greed) or unknowingly (ignorance) sick animals. Anyone would understand that meat from sick sources is not suitable for us humans and not suitable for our pets.
Quotation "For greed all nature is too little"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca click: Seneca
One example of class 1 meat recall - class 1 = high health risk
In this case Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds of beef because it processed diseased and
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. The huge amount of recalled meat was supposed to be extra healthy "Fancy grass-fed Beef".
Is this a greed based decision to process the contaminated meat or did they really not know that the animals were diseased and unsound. You be the judge.
click: Class 1 – High Risk Recall - click: Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef
What about milk and eggs if the cows and the chickens are not allowed to move around?
Cow's Milk
Is there pus in the cow's milk produced in the U.S. ?
Pus = dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
Pus is a sign the cow having an infection in the udder (= the baglike organ where the milk is). Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to click: epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness*) (= difficulties in walking) click: lameness in cows and mastitis (udder infections) click: Mastitis in dairy cows, are the two click: leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States.
*) Lameness is a clinical sign of a more severe disorder that results in a disturbance in the gait (= manner ow walking) and the ability to move the body about, typically in response to pain, injury, or abnormal anatomy
click: Bovine Growth Hormone (bovine = relating to cow & cattle)
There is also an agreement how much pus is allowed to be in the U.S.
The 2003 FDA click: Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) PDF (3.5MB) sets the maximum level of somatic cells allowed in Grade A milk at 750,000 cells per. milliliter - a level that has been in effect since at least 1999
Read the health-related facts in this article: click: How much pus is there in milk? | NutritionFacts.org
Then read this article - all necessary facts out together
click: The Dangers of Drinking Cow's Milk
The dairy products, when they are clean have beneficial nutrients - but remember: where does the cow get the nutrients? From eating the grass outside
(= "vegetable") or eating soy, corn, hay (dried "grass")*) - all vegetables. So will you get them from eating a variety of vegetables daily - eat a variety of fresh fruit daily also. Thus one can live healthy without dairy products. Some are allergic to dairy and live happily healthy when eating vegetables & fresh fruit. Cheese in moderation is a treat if you are not allergic to it. *)click Hay -
Milk has calcium is touted (= to convince) - so do vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts - without any side effects.
click: Top 10 Foods Highest in Calcium
People who are lactose intolerant have trouble digesting the milk sugar lactose. Lactase is an enzyme that splits the milk sugar lactose, to produce the sugars glucose and galactose. Often these individuals have no problems with goats milk.
Goat's Milk -
a healthier, more nutritious option for any age - also for your baby because goat’s milk is closest in structure to human milk = closest to the mother's breast milk
Goat's milk has more beneficial nutrients in a cleaner form than cow's milk does.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow's milk can enjoy goat's milk.
Goat's milk is also more suitable for a baby because goat’s milk is closest in its structure to human milk.
Your pediatrician should know these fact - if not, it's time to find a more knowledgeable baby doctor.
Goat milk industry is smaller and is not so corrupted with the use of hormones and other harmful chemicals/medicines as the cow milk industry is.
Goats are not standing in an economy class seat their whole life - they are moving & jumping around often year round as they can take any weather better than the cows. They eat healthie natural grass & leaves outside much more than the cows.
That's why the goats produce much cleaner, safer and nutrition wise more valuable milk.
click: The Health Benefits of Goat's Milk
One more article explaining the differences between goat's & cow's milk - it is good to compare different texts:
click: Goat's Milk vs. Cow's Milk
No one can deny that goat's milk is a safer, cleaner, more upscale & healthier product than cow's milk - STAF, Inc. endorses the use of goat milk at least
(1) for the babies and for (2) people who cannot tolerate cow's milk.
If you can afford the smallish price difference for the whole family, be blessed
& go for the goat!
click also this link: cow’s milk to see the facts why cow's milk is secondary to goat's milk.
Sheep's Milk
Then there is the sheep's milk - a small niche (= a specialty segment of a market) , more expensive and not everywhere available (except with the modern "same-day-next-day delivery" = gets more expensive, no need pay more - instead invest the saved money - use goat's milk - if you can afford sheep's milk, buy and use it in addition to using the goat's milk). Sheep's milk has little more nutrients than goat's milk and much more than cow's milk and is safe for your baby.
To look further click: Sheep 101
What milk for your newborn, your baby?
Mother's milk is the most perfect food - breastfeed as long as you can - minimum 6 months - up to 12 months if you can - talk to you baby doctor. Breastfeeding is healthier for the mother and healthier for the baby.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
The mutual mental-emotional benefits are more rewarding when breast-feeding. Any sickness in the mother? - Talk to you baby doctor. Any sickness in the baby? - A sick baby needs more mother's milk (because it is perfect food & healing), not less, is the principle, but talk to your baby doctor because all depends on "what sickness".
Click: The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov.
The health outcomes in the developed countries differ substantially who
formula feed compared with those who breastfeed.
If he mother has difficulties developing enough beast milk, breast milk can also be bought, but: warning - there may be health risks (contamination, the source is not always the healthiest & it is quite expensive) - talk to your baby doctor.
Goat's milk click: Goat's Milk for Babies and sheep's milk click: Sheep's Milk are both close to the mother's milk and suitable for the baby - talk to you baby doctor.
Whole FRESH food and the blender for your baby - prepare your own FRESH baby food
It saves your money, yet gives better quality food and secures better health for your baby.
To prepare your own baby food takes less time than you may think and gives you peace of mind because you know that you are doing the right thing when giving the healthiest food to your precious baby.
Your baby deserves real fresh food, not commercial imitation or poisoned with added preservatives & other harmful chemicals.
In most cases the fine-blended (= use the blender - instructions in article 2 of 3 what kind) whole food can be added in milk or water earlier than many opinions state - talk to your baby doctor.
Fresh orange, apple, banana & berries blended fine can be given quite early.
Banana should be ripe (= the peel with brown spots or even darker is a ripe banana) - less ripe (harder) banana easily gives constipation, especially to your baby. Ripe banana can also be spoon-fed. Most people eat and feed their babies harder (= not ripe) bananas and then blame the banana for giving constipation.
Bananas are among the most common foods worldwide. By weight bananas are among the lowest priced foods and offer a high nutritional value.
Fine-blended soft-steamed*) potatoes & soft-steamed vegetables & soft-steamed beans can be given to the baby earlier than is common but talk to your baby doctor before you do. *) steaming keeps 30 - 50 % more more nutrients than boiling - adopt steaming also for your whole family needs.
NOTICE: Do not mix fruits and vegetables or other foods in the same bottle - can cause stomach ache, gas, constipation, crying and suffering - same with the adults.
Feed fresh fruit as their own category - feed potatoes & other vegetables as their own category - feed steamed/boiled beans as their own category - do not mix different categories.
Reminder: many baby doctors do NOT have much or even enough training in nutrition, thus asking a baby doctor guidance in nutrition is often similar to asking a street beggar guidance for how to become a milloinaire - but she/he knows your baby's development level for different common fruits, vegetables, berries & other food. In addition, still too many baby doctors believe in commercially made "food".
Eggs
The free-ranged chickens lay eggs that have much more healthy nutrients than the chickens kept in small boxes without any chance for moving around to exercise. California has a new legislation for healthier chicken to produce healthier eggs. The new CA law gives several times more space to all their chickens than most other states do. click: They Are Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens - The New York Times, March 3, 2014
The Past and The Present
In the past human history the infectious disease pandemics killed people, often a half or more of the population.
Today's pandemic
is the the way most people worldwide eat in a unhealthy manner stuff that has not much to do with food. Then they get sick, suffer and leave this life much too soon.
During the past worst pandemics about half of the population died.
The same thing now: over half of the population in the U.S. and worldwide is overweight or obese. Overweight & obesity kills by causing killer-sicknesses.
Today's pandemic is our wrong food which is not natural food and does not maintain the human health.
Snacking
Definition of snacking = a small amount of food eaten between meals; notice the three important words: (1+2) small amount, (3) food. You know what "small amount means" - the definition of "food" is in this quotation:
Quotation "If it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (click: Michael Pollan) and here is another as a warning:
Quotation "Keep snacking real food, not poison, or I keep nagging"
(Dr. Christian, author of this health-success guide, STAF, Inc.)
Food is something that comes from a plant - it is NOT made in a plant.
This means you will be snacking on - none of these from cans - all fresh:
(1) fresh fruit (not from cans filled with sugary syrup - that's pure poison), (2) fresh berries, (3) fresh vegetables, (4)variety of unsalted, unroasted nuts, (5) unroasted, unsalted peanuts (= peanuts are actually legumes; unpeeled = eat with the brown inner peel because they also have nutrients like all peels do - the outer shell is uneatable as raw - more about that in another occasion), (6) bread, snack only on full-grain bread. No soda (not even diet soda - it has harmful chemicals affecting your and your baby's health). Drink only plain water, coffee or tea. Drink water (coffee & tea counts) daily in liquid oz. the same amount as your normal weight (not overweight) would be in lbs.
Notice: Fresh above (as in "fresh fruit") means: not handled in any manner, not in cans with sugary syrup the same with any other snack "fresh, in their natural form with noting added. Eat apples (wash well with soap) with their peels - most nutritious part is inside under the peel.
It is good good to snack = to eat something little every couple of hours - it helps keep the body system balanced and helps even in weight loss. The modern problem is that there are too many unhealthy snacks on the market advertised being sooooo.... good and sooooo..... dishonestly healthy - ONLY REAL, natural food can be and is healthy for us humans and also for our pets.
Do NOT snack on these popular processed, factory-made items:
no energy drinks (dangerous chemicals), no energy bars (they are about the same as a candy-bar), no vitamin waters (they are nothing else than water + a vitamin pill - waste of your money), no chips (filled with unhealthy chemicals and waste of your money - and many other similar.
To see 10 energy drinks dangers click: Dangers
Snack on real food originating from a plant not on any imitation food that is made in a plant. How could "anything made in a plant" be food?
EAT real, clean FOOD, not any food-like processed killing stuff. If what you aim to eat is made in a plant, do NOT eat it - it kills, eat only what came from a plant and is not processed at all - all original & natural, nothing added, nothing taken out.
In addition
nowadays, the environmental pollution click: Environmental Pollution
is another challenge to our bodies
but: even that poison our immune system can eliminate when we give it a chance with
(1) a fully healthy lifestyle;
(2) feeding us with REAL food and correct nutrition;
(3) exercising enough (a fee-free, enjoyable solution: walk 25K steps daily
click Pedometer;
(4) no smoking/no drugs/no sugary drinks.
click: Environmental Pollution and Impacts on Public Health: - UNEP
To motivate you, the parents, and your children to walk & exercise
it is stated several times in this guide that
the immune system has no pump to pump out the garbage - your physical movements function as its pump.
Thus, sit less, stand up, exercise, do hatha *)yoga & walk more as instructed- 25K steps daily+ walk up the stairs (click: Pedometer). *) Hatha yoga is focusing on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures.
click: Hatha Yoga - Yoga Journal . Click: How Yoga Improves Health
Click: American Osteopathic Association - Benefits of Yoga
(Osteopathic = Greek: osteon = bone; Greek: pathos = disease)
STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-min. exercise program meant to be done among the first things in the morning before your breakfast. Contact STAF, Inc. to download it. It has similar health benefits as hatha yoga does. The program is called:
"This 7-minutes Yabbanetics© keeps you fit, healthy & attractive".
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Scientific Meditation In addition to our physical exercise you, I, and all of us, need to exercise our mind to teach it to calm down, unwind and to avoid mental stress. Stress is a killer as it affects the whole body, its immune system, its every organ, and its nervous system. In your family meeting take up the scientific meditation topic and guide every member of your family to learn it - takes only 15 min. a day to practice.
Learn more about scientific meditation click: Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress - Harvard www.health.harvard.edu. Harvard University
STAF, Inc. has also developed an effective scientific meditation method titled
Mplus™
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Physical exercise, walking, hatha yoga & meditation combined with correct nutrition and with overall healthy lifestyle will reduce stress. Stress
The shortest definition for stress can be "Stress is unfinished business".
Think about that statement. Stress is a killer as it weakens the immune system and can lead to diseases. E.g. certain life situations, challenges in relationships, financial matters, procrastination, etc. life difficulties can cause stress.
Procrastination
creates stress. The majority of people are procrastinators
Procrastinating is the action of delaying or postponing something.
By undoing procrastination we have less stress. Do things now when you can, not "tomorrow". It may be in this aspect that "the tomorrow" never comes. That creates even more stress. Make a plan to clear any matter now and if not possible, make a plan immediately OR a flash-note to remember to make the plan. Keep your flash-notes always in the same place to later know where they are so you can handle them: when, what, how, whom you have to contact, and stick to the plan. Train your mind to handle things "now" or at the first proper moment/time, not "tomorrow".
Another stress builder is a common habit to say
"I'll try"
instead of stating "I will do this...'. Trying is not doing.
Take this test: Drop a pen on the floor and tell yourself "try to lift up that pen". If you lifted it up, you did not try, you did it - you lifted it up - doing and trying are two different things, not the same. Now throw the pen again on the floor and this time "try" to lift it up: try, yes try, try, try" - but do not lift just "try" to lift it and YOU CANNOT lift because you are 'trying' (not doing).
Have you noticed that most of the time when someone will say"I'll try ..." they never get it done". You invite someone to a party, the other person says
"I'll try to come" - and he/she never comes.
Trying and doing are two different things. Teach this to your children in your family meetings. The key is "what you say or think, your mind will listen and do what you say or think of doing". What you tell your mind, will manifest. You say "I will try..", the results are not there. Say "I will do "X" and finish doing it - the results will be there. To execute a plan is to make a plan and do what must be done to get the goal materialized. What you tell your mind is what the reality will be.
Quotation "What your mind can conceive, you can achieve" (Napoleon Hill)
Click: Napoleon Hill
That quotation is a good reminder when materializing your plans.
Your children do what they see you doing, not what you tell them to do. Thus, become a doer if you have been a "try-er" - and you will have less stress, you will also become & stay healthier and you will create much more financial freedom.
Again stress is a killer - you will get rid of it when you apply the above info.
Planning to have a baby?
Before getting pregnant read this article (the green link next below) - Your baby can inherit your stress.
Take the above guidance seriously learn to get rid of your stress, give your baby the best start for life.
click: Inheriting Stress
If the link has expired search the New York Times with the title"Inheriting Stress" or search the internet for the same topic
It is said "We can have a long life and die healthy" - when we respect life and accept a healthy lifestyle, we can have a long, healthy life.
Quotation: "You respect you keep, you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To state it briefly: we are ready to move to heaven when the telomeres are "gone" - yes, the science may estimate when it is our time "to go" - when we probably drop dead.
(throughout the text click green for further info)
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. click: Telomere Wikipedia
To keep your telomeres for your healthier, longer life you need to accept and learn a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition. Start with this mini-fast-track 12 step guide and the continue to study & apply the complete STAF Plan at a later time
(see article 2 of 2).
The more effectively your immune system functions ,
the healthier you are and the less you will suffer. It is your choice based on how healthy your lifestyle is. This guide is a good starting point.
A suitable quotation as a reminder:
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Have mercy on yourself, your family & on your children,
and organize your life in such a manner that you all can learn to apply everything this compact guide teaches.
Give the best gift to yourself, to your family and to your children:
good, healthy, long, meaningful, financially rich life.
Help your immune system to stay clean(er)
by doing what this 12-step guide shows. Help your whole family, including your children, learn these health restoring & maintaining principles.
(1) Sleep enough (see below the needed hours) - everyone in your family, read the 7+ sleep articles kept in click: www.staf1org.weebly.com - there in the left hand side "blog" tab close to the tab's top; Hours to sleep: (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours, (4) adults 7-8 hours.
(2) Drink plain water portionally during the day in oz. the same amount as your normal weight is in lbs.; coffee & tea counts as water (no sugary or diet sodas).
Aim to drink the daily plain water mostly when your stomach is empty, otherwise it may dilute the natural digestive "chemicals" and can slow down the digestion.
Briefly: your stomach is "empty" in 30 min. after eating plain fresh fruit, in 90 min. after eating plain grains, in 180 min. after eating anything else.
When you start drinking more water be also prepared to urinate more often and more. Urinating more is a good thing because the water cleans your pipes and flushes out more toxic stuff, thus providing you (and your family) better health leading to less suffering, more enjoyable & longer life.
Carry a suitable-size plastic bottle with you to pee "secretly" in a "must-pee-now" situation. Night-time it would be a good idea to keep a capped container for each person next to the bed to avoid walking to the bathroom to pee. The walking takes us out from the proper sleep waves lowering the quality of our sleep. If you live in a house and have a garden, you can use the human urea as the garden fertilizer and in the composting process. Saves money - brings good, natural results without unnatural cancer causing chemicals.
click: Human Urine is shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer; Scientific American
click: Compost - Human urine can be used directly as fertilizer or can be put onto compost
Guide your children in the urine monitoring and related facts.
Monitor the color of your urine - it tells your health. The clearer the urine during daytime hours, the better chances you, your children and your family will have a enjoyable health. The darker the urine daytime color, the more your health is challenged. In the morning, just after you get up, the urine can be darker.
If your daytime urine is dark in color you MUST drink more water until it shows a clearer color. Teach your children to monitor their pee.
Eat as STAF, Inc. guides: The a,b,c:
(a) "if it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't, it kills",
(b) no fast food = bad-food,
(c) prepare your daily food in your own kitchen based on the STAF Plan
(3) Exercise enough (daily walking 25K steps will do)(click: Pedometer);
(4) Keep your mind clean - how? - Sleep enough, drink enough plain water,
eat healthy, walk & some other physical exercises as you wish - if you can afford, in addition to walking the 25K steps daily, hire a personal trainer to do also strength training. It is a type of click: physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance to induce click: muscular contraction which builds the click: strength, click: anaerobic endurance, click:size of click: skeletal muscles.
When we get older our muscles will shrink - a personal trainer can build them safely back to strengthen your health. Never use any drugs - use healthy food to feed your cells safely. STAF, Inc.'s Plans teach the healthy nutrition.
About the healthy sleep.
Most recent studies show that the brains clean themselves during steady, unfragmented sleep, thus making us more intelligent.
Study (you & your family) the sleep articles # 2 "Sleep - The Ultimate Brain Cleaner" and # 4 "Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth & Other Sicknesses" - both articles close to the beginning of the left-side hand blog in this website. It would be beneficial to study all sleep-related articles in the location - over ten
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free fast-track guide - fits for women, men & children (2 years +)
Study and apply the information in the article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
STAF, Inc. has develop a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program - info below in article 2 of 2
Quotation
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Fast-Track Guide
This is a shortened, compact fast-track guide.
Start your new life from this guide & apply the information in your and your family's life. Have your children involved - you give them the best gift for life.
Arrange regular weekly family meetings and handle then, as a family including the babies & the toddlers, the material you had together agreed to study that past week. Decide in the meeting how you all are going to apply the information in your daily life for your better health and success.
Click & study each web link in full and well, take notes, involve your.
The deeper you study and learn the info in all links the better your life.
This 12-step mini-guide alone is a treasure for your and your family's better life quality with less sickness risks.
This whole extensive website is another story - it would take 5 years to go through.
This website is world's # 1 advice website in all family matters, in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition topics and guides you to enter the good life.
STAF, Inc. has developed a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program called also "The STAF Plan". That's a full-size book long and originally took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
Below, in article 2 of 2 more information about the full-size STAF Plan.
To stay healthy physically & mentally follow the instruction in fast-track mini-guide as a whole family
* Realize: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition principles are NOT taught properly in most schools nationwide - worldwide. Yet, it is the most important topic for us humans -our health & life depend on the correct facts . We also need to know how to feed our pets - not taught in schools either - out pets are getting sicker & sicker as we humans are. All because of our lacking knowledge.
Only by teaching the correct eating skills we can lower our high sickness costs, avoid human suffering, stay healthy & fully enjoy our time on this earth.
STAF, Inc. is the new, nationwide & worldwide leading organization in these topics in addition to handling all family & life success topics. STAF, Inc. has developed effective teaching programs fit for every country, every school and for every individual.
About Water
Most people do not realize that water is a vital nutrient.
Vital nutrients are life-sustaining and necessary to the continuation of life.
Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water
in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda, sugary or diet).
Roll the water in your mouth to mix it with saliva - the digestive process starts always in your mouth, click: Saliva and Your Mouth
Saliva is an important part of a healthy body. It is mostly made of water, like our whole body is (70 %). Saliva also contains important substances that your body needs to digest food.
Water is essential for the human body to function and to perform virtually every metabolic process.
As said, the human body is about 70 % water.
Notice:
The web links in this fast-track guide give detailed info what sources have the nutrients our bodies need - what to eat to get all needed natural
(1) vitamins (the drug store vitamins have almost no nutritional value and they can be toxic),
(2) minerals (only the natural ones can be properly digested by the human body),
(3) essential & non-essential amino acids (web links below),
(4) protein (links below),
(5) carbohydrates (links below) and
(6) what else is needed to keep your body & mind healthy.
About Vitamins - About Minerals
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are 13 vitamins your body needs.
They are click: Vitamins: MedlinePlus
- click: Vitamins and Minerals: How to Get What You Need by American Academy of Family Physicians
- Also available in Spanish Vitaminas y minerales: cómo obtener lo que usted necesita clic: Spanish - por American Academy of Family Physicians
NOTICE:
The next link to Harvard School of Public Health
has all information (1) about everything you need to eat and (2) what sources will provide the most natural nutrients - study all and do it with your whole family.
On the website, on the left-hand side, is a topic list - click each topic on the list, study well and apply- a real treasure for your and your family's health - and for the good life.
About Amino Acids - About Protein
click: Protein | The Nutrition Source
Harvard School of Public Health
About Carbohydrates
click: Carbohydrates | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
Twenty-two essential and non-essential amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins. When taken up into the human body from the diet, the 22 standard amino acids either are used to synthesize
(= make) proteins and other biomolecules or are oxidized to urea and carbon dioxide as a source of energy.
9 of these 22 are called click: essential amino acids because the human body cannot synthesize them from other compounds at the level needed for normal growth, so they must be obtained from food.
Notice: in this same link you also see (1) the recommended daily amounts
and (2) the main food sources for the 9 essential amino acids - notice: listed there are also the two common, easy-to-get, low-priced sources that have all these nine essential amino acids: (1) soy beans and (2) eggs. In addition, e.g.
hemp & quinoa have all 9 amino acids - they may be less common and also more expensive - click: Hemp - click: Quinoa
STAF, Inc.'s advice: always buy the cheaper products (in this case the soy beans) to save more cash for investing and step-by-step becoming a (multi-)millionaire. STAF, Inc. has a program for it also.
One egg a day, no more, except in rare occasions; eat the whole egg, the egg white & the yellow yolk - they function together well as a perfect nutrition source.
As a click: food, the yellow yolks are a major source of click: vitamins and minerals click: minerals
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Steam the eggs in their shells for saving the most egg nutrients including vitamins & minerals.
The scrambled eggs may have some harmful bacteria left because the heating process is quite short. Steaming 20 min. makes the yolk hard and kills the possible harmful bacteria.
click: essential amino acids
As long as you consume adequate levels of
(1) protein and (2) carbohydrates each day,
your cells will either have or make enough non-essential amino acids to support tissue growth and repair, immune function, red blood cell formation and hormone synthesis. Both plant- and animal-based proteins are rich sources of non-essential amino acids, and, although you can manufacture the non-essential amino acids, including a variety of protein sources in your diet helps ensure you have all the starting materials you need to keep the process running smoothly if your diet ever runs low on this particular nutrient.
Question:
In what proportions to eat daily proteins, carbohydrates, oils and other nutrients?
The answer next below in "The Healthy Eating Plate"
Realize that, according to the Harvard University leading specialists, you do not have to eat animal meat if you do not want - you will get the proteins from other sources (see below, e.g.: soy beans & other beans, eggs, some vegetables, etc.).
The Healthy Eating Plate,
created by the nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health and by the editors at Harvard Health Publications, was designed to address deficiencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s MyPlate.
The Healthy Eating Plate provides detailed guidance, in a simple format, to help people make the best eating choices and see in what proportions to eat different food types
Click: Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health...www.hsph.harvard.edu
Then:
Click the next line to make The Healthy Eating Plate bigger and esier to study
click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
_______
Now click to see how the most recent
U.S. gov. "Food Plate" the previous "Food Pyramid" look click: Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler plate. Each 3 pictures you can enlarge by clicking the picture or clicking the "enlarge the image" note next to each picture -
All these pictures: (1) click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
and (2) The U.S. gov. Nutrition Plate .& the Food Pyramid
show (1) what and (2) in what proportions to eat
Start today - stay healthy tomorrow
* avoid sickness * live longer
__________
The Fast-Track Guide to a better-quality life
Continues
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen. Eat full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry or at least any poultry - cage-free can be more costly; very little or no red meat, no pork), one egg daily. Eat nuts, peanuts (with their thin inner brown peel - peanut is a legume click Beans & legumes). Eat all nuts & peanuts raw - not salted & not roasted. Eat berries, fruit, vegetables, olive oil (cold-pressed, virgin, 1 - 2 spoonfuls a day) and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle of this quotation:
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(Quotation by click: Michael Pollan).
The science of food combining is helpful in avoiding heartburn, stomach aches, and other digestive pain & suffering.
The food combining principles will be introduced in full in the full-size STAF Plan.
Briefly: (1) eat smaller amounts every 3 - 4 hours rather than 1 - 2 times a day, (2) proteins & vegetables combine well, (3) eat fresh fruit alone (combine with nothing else), (4) eat other carbohydrates alone.
The heartburn medicines can actually make the heartburn worse when used continuously. As a natural first aid eat fresh celery or fresh cucumber to still heart burn - no negative side effects.
Sleep on one side - test what side works for you - it can still the heartburn and you can fall asleep.
_____________
About fish
Fish oils come from fatty fish, also known as oily fish, specifically the tissue of fatty fish, such as trout, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, and salmon.
The bigger the fish in wild the more it can have sea/ocean/river pollutants
(= harmful industrial waste), mercury, etc., thus a smaller fatty fish can be safer to eat. Why has the bigger fish more mercury & other pollutants? Because the bigger fish eats smaller fish (the smaller fish, of course, also has mercury, etc.) and the big(ger) fish gets more and more mercury, etc. in its system.
Plankton & phytoplankton are a key food item in both click: aquaculture
& click: mariculture.
Little fish eat (phyto)plankton because they are the base of the food chain. Small fish eat (phyto)plankton, medium fish eat small fish, and big fish eat medium fish. Humans eat the big fish & fish of all sizes. That is the (phyto)plankton cycle.
click: Plankton
click: Phytoplankton
Farm raised fish is a good idea but the fish farms can be filthy affecting negatively the safety quality for human consumption.
Trout is not so common on the market and can be priced higher than their value. click: Trout
Pricewise the canned Alaskan salmon (wild caught) is a good source for nutrition click: Alaskan salmon
Also canned, wild caught mackerel (small) or jack-mackerel (bigger) or king-mackerel (biggest) - more than half of the salmon price in cans - no need to buy fresh files - too expensive. Canned Alaskan salmon and canned mackerel are acceptable. Mackerel is a good fish to eat. Buy the smallest size mackerel if available, otherwise buy any of the three. If available, stack up mostly with the smallest mackerel. (1) Alaskan salmon, (2) small mackerel & (3) sardines (see below) are the basic fish items to buy - as said: buy in cans (wild caught) - least expensive. click: Mackerel
In any food item, shop around for the lowest prices, see the weekly on-sale offers, stack up & save. Invest your savings as guided in this website in tab: more, sub-tab: credit & credit cards. Learn to become an active investor - a millionaire is then a realistic goal.
Avoid tuna or have small amounts because: The bigger the fish, the more mercury & other pollutants - because the more the big fish eats smaller fish that all have certain amounts of pollutants). click: Tuna
Sardines - the European sardines are the real sardines and can be expensive outside Europe (in Europe they are quite low-priced). As wild caught the sardines are oily, healthy and delicious. click: Sardines
The American/Canadian sardines are low-priced and good, oily fish
(less oily than salmon or mackerel) and they are small in size = less polluted. These are not really sardines. In the past an agreement was made that all American & Canadian small ocean fish will be called "sardines".
Once more: Alaskan salmon, mackerel & sardines (all wild caught - the sardine cans may not state "wild caught" because they are basically always wild caught) are the three most economical and health-wise acceptable fish items to buy - all in cans
(lowest price - stack up when on sale).
Notice: Eat only fish that has a backbone & scales (notice: & = and - not either one but both at the same time in the same fish) when it still swims in the ocean, river or lake (e.g., do not eat eel click: Eel and not catfish click: Catfish, etc. similar).
The other fish or seafood without backbone & scales are not the best for us humans because they are in the ocean ecology the poison eaters and can safely digest the poisonous material that can harm other sea/river/lake animals. The poison-eating sea/river/lake creatures keep the water clean for other water species. That's how the nature operates.
The seafood & fish without a backbone & scales are the cleaners of the waters.
The poison only these poison cleaners can digest will end as health-threatening poison in your system if you eat such a "cleaning lady".
The cleaning ladies you must not eat (to keep your health safely) are e.g. crayfish & crabs, lobsters, oysters & all sea, river, lake creatures including fish that have no back bone & no scales (both at the same time in the same creature).
Next two article links relating to fish:
(1) Mercury and (2) Sorting out the risks of fish
(the link next a few lines below after another link).
Realize: not all that swims in the water is meant for us humans to eat as is explained in the paragraph just next above ( if you do not remember what it states, please, for your, your children's and your family's safety, study the paragraph above again before reading the next article).
Eat only fish which has a backbone AND scales (when still swimming around, e.g. do not eat eel, not catfish, not lobsters, not crab, etc.). These two article links are placed for you to get more information about the mercury in fish. Pregnancy & mercury do not go together. Mercury is dangerous to everyone in every age.
A little mercury can be "OK" - thus, avoid big fish as they have more mercury and other pollutants because the bigger fish eats smaller fish and thus accumulates more toxins.
click: Mercury - March of Dimes
Next click: Sorting Out the Risks of Fish
About eggs
It is said that the egg is the perfect food. The eggs have all nine essential amino acids as do also soy beans - two excellent foods, available & low-price.
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Brown eggs vs. White eggs - any difference?
The color differences in eggs are simply from the breed of the hens they come from. Brown eggs are laid by larger red-feathered hens with red earlobes, and white-feathered hens with white earlobes produce white eggs. When it comes to the nutritional value, however, brown eggs are more or less the same as white eggs.
The healthiest way is to steam whole eggs in their full shell 15- 20 minutes (until the yellow part is hard). To scramble the eggs does not give enough time for the possible harmful bacteria in them to get neutralized. In a big enough a pan steam the eggs for every family member for the whole week to save time - they stay well in the refrigerator.
Steaming kills the bacteria more effectively AND saves more healthy nutrients in the shelled egg. The Cage free eggs are healthier, they have less pollution and they have more nutrients BUT they are also much more expensive. As money may be the issue in most families it is still better to buy the cheaper eggs as it is said that the egg is the most perfect food. Not too many, though, max. one egg a day.
Why is the age-free egg (and the cage free chicken meat) healthier, less polluted and has more nutrients?
Because a chicken in the cage cannot move so much and the digestive waste is not eliminated so well by the immune system but stays partially in the chicken body and goes then also into the egg.
The same in the human being: that is why the exercise movements help the immune system (which has no pump) throw out our digestive & other toxins more effectively.
If a human being is not physically moving much, the toxins stay in the body cells leading to multitudes of sicknesses and to an early death. Walking (see blow how much daily) is one of the easiest way to help our immune system to clean our insides and our cells well to keep us healthy and give us a long life.
About full grains
and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
Whole Grains and Fish Highly Protective against Childhood Asthma
According to the American Lung Association, almost 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, which is reported to be responsible for over 14 million lost school days in children, and an annual economic cost of more than $16.1 billion.
Increasing consumption of whole grains and fish could reduce the risk of childhood asthma by about 50%, suggests the International Study on Allergy and Asthma in Childhood (Tabak C, Wijga AH, Thorax). click: Diet and asthma
click: American Lung Association
What Is a Whole Grain? - All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
In the morning the healthy breakfast
is the 5-full-grain hot home-cooked hot cereal as instructed below.
This 5-grain cereal is real delicious - there is not one person who would not like it.
In addition, our bodies like it.
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In this case you and your body will like every morning the 5 -grain cereal.
Have everyone involved, including your children, in the weekly preparation (for the whole week) - then the children and everyone immediately like the new 5 hot cereal.
However, the first thing in the morning, before enjoying the cereal, is to drink (as instructed below in # 2) 15 min. after the hot water/lemon-lime drinking below in # (2) is the way to start your day - then the cereal 15 min. after drinking the water/lemon-lime.
The cereal is for every family member over 1 year old (for the age use your own judgement).
Eat only whole-grain bread - find the best deals. Stack up when on sale.
Prepare multi-grain hot cereal for your family. Cook more for several days. If you can manage to cook the breakfast full-multi-grain hot cereal once a week (weekend?) for the whole week it would save your time. Keep in your refrigerator(s) - stays well for one week.
This is the 5-grain hot cereal
Stack up the different ingredients when on sale - buy in big packages/sacks - store in a DRY place and cover well to:
(1) oats; steal-cut healthiest; click: Steel-cut oats & any rolled oats will do;
click: Rolled oats,
(2) par-boiled rice; par-boiled means "partially boiled" click: in the click: husk
(husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed) cooking time shortened, about 15-20 min. click: Parboiled rice,
(3) brown rice; brown rice is whole grain rice, cooking (=simmering) time about 2-3 h = brown rice has 30 % more nutrients than an other rice type,
click: Brown rice
(4) barley - click: Barley - The World's Healthiest Foods - there you can also find a brief guide
"How to select & buy barley"
Pearl barley (or pearled barley) is dehulled barley which has been steam processed further to remove the bran. click: Barley
(5) buckwheat. (Buckwheat is not really cereal but but can be combined with cereal - click: Buckwheat)
Buy all cereals when they are on sale (stack up), buy big sacks 20 lbs & up - store in dry place away from all pests (mice & rats, ants, etc.).
The proportions of the 5 cereals for cooking are, e.g.
(1) 5 lbs oats, (2) 4 lbs par-boiled rice, (3) 2 lbs brown rice, (4) 3 lbs barley
(5) 1 lb buckwheat
Keeping the pan covered while cooking helps to keep up to 25 % more of the nutrients in the cereal.
Each cereal has their own cooking time
Follow the cooking time instructions on the packages or study the internet.
Soak each grain overnight in cold water in their own pan and cook in the morning each in their own pan.
Save the soaking water for the cooking and add water as needed.
Hint: keep a separate pan for heating boiled water during the cooking period as you will need to add water. When you add boiling water the cooking process will not stop (as it would for a while if you added cold water) - it will save your time as you do not need to stand and watch all the time the pans to avoid spilling over or to avoid burning. Best is to keep every cereal simmering as it would also retain more nutrient & vitamins (keep the pan cover on) and would allow you to do other things also. Avoid any cereal getting burned in the pan by using good-quality steel pans (buy them when on sale). To use aluminum pans will easily burn the cereal and would take much more of your time for watching & cleaning. Do not use non-sticky pans as their surface will leak poisonous chemicals . Use only high-quality steel pans. (Buy them when on sale - often the saving can be 50 %.)
Cook every grain in their own pot as they each have a different cooking time and at the end, when they are all cooked, mix them in correct proportions together as one 5-cereal combination to keep in your refrigerator for the week's breakfasts.
The two important kitchen "tools" for your & your family's good health are:
(1) big refrigerators & (2) several good blenders.
The Crown Prince of the home blenders is Vitamix - click: Vitamix
The prince of the cheaper home blenders is Proctor Silex - Hamilton Beach (same company)
Click: Proctor Silex - there click: Kitchen Appliances / Blenders
Proctor Silex models are lower in price than Hamilton Beach products, yet are of good quality with a good warranty.
Buy the blenders Proctor Silex calls "Space Saving Blenders" - you need several in your kitchen to save your time. When you learn to use the blenders more, you can use several blenders at the same time. Keep always at least one new, unopened blender package in case some blender breaks. Study the warranty time 3, 6 or 12 months (with Proctor Silex) - the company sends a free blender to your house during the warranty time. Vitamix warranty is several years, some models up to seven years. If you can afford 1- 2 Vitamix blenders (they do a much finer job, helpful for your digestive system and thus good for your health) and then you add a few Proctor Silex blenders (each only about $25).
It is said "the blender is the key to our good health".
You need to learn to use the blender(s) for an easier digestive process - that equals to a healthier body & to a healthier mind.
Use the blenders as much as you can as the blended food will digest easier in your system, use less energy for digestion - the saved energy keeps your body functioning more effectively giving you a better health.
You can blend anything and take with you in thick glass or thick plastic bottles
and "drink" your lunch or dinner - but when eating/drinking mix it well with the saliva by rolling the "liquidized food" in your mouth, click: Saliva.
Avoid hot material in any plastic bottle as the heat will make harmful chemicals leak and enter your system.
STAF, Inc.'s full-size STAF Plan guides further in the blender use.
HAVE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE CEREAL PREPARATION - then everyone will eat and enjoy the delicious 5-grain hot cereal every morning.
Especially children are much more eager to eat "new" food when they are involved in the preparation & the cooking process.
Realize: children do/eat what they see their parents doing/eating, not what they are told to do/to eat.
If someone in your family has any allergies (e.g. gluten sensitivity, click: Gluten sensitivity) see your gluten specialist health care provider or otherwise, based on your reliable information, solve the situation in your family.
Before making any appointment, confirm that the Dr. is a gluten issues specialist OR call your insurance company to locate a specialist or call your city/town/village health office or Community Health Center for (free) guidance/information; do the same when dealing with any other health question. Not just any Dr. knows every topic.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda).
First in the morning (your stomach still empty) drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below). Guide your children and your toddlers do the same - the babies have a different agenda.
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money - the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Do not boil the lemon/lime, boil only the plain water first. Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be frozen. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma).
Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
About your mouth & teeth hygiene
Why here next to the stroke & heart attack topics? Because your mouth may have a direct link to your heart & brain health - and even broader: take care of your teeth and you whole body will benefit.
When your teeth are not in the best condition, the potentially destructive mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
Professor Nairn Wilson click: Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee states: "There are still many unknown elements in these matters, but one thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing (soft bristles) your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being." click: BDA (British Dental Association)
- Health and Science
We at STAF, Inc. purposely repeat this often: Have your children involved in learning this guide info & studying all given web links including the mouth & teeth hygiene facts. To give yourself and to your children the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition info for life is the best gift to have.Click: Healthy dental care toothbrushes - American Dental Association - ADA.org
Salt & Sugar & Honey
& Artificial Sweeteners
Salt
Click green for further info We all need salt in small amounts, much smaller than is commonly used.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA)1, click: sodium consumption should not exceed 1.5g per day(3.75g of salt), and that even includes healthy people without click: high blood pressure, click: diabetes or cardiovascular diseases click: Cardiovascular disease
Use only Iodized (or: Iodised) salt with added iodine click: Iodine。
Without iodine we humans tend to develop goiter click: Goiter and other sicknesses. Taking too much iodine can also cause problems
click: Iodine Deficiency & other facts
Sea salt is natural and has some iodine - click: WHO | Iodization of salt
NOTICE: Iodized salt is NOT the only source for the important iodine. Iodine is e.g. in these food sources: potatoes, beans, strawberries, cranberries, yogurt, saltwater fish, sea vegetables, seaweed including kelp, arame, hiziki, kombu, and wakame - click: Common Foods Rich in Iodine (in this link the word "organic“ is not the key - the key is to study the food item and its qualities).
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iodine is 150 micrograms daily for adults & everyone over the age of 14. The RDA for children ages 1-8 is 90/mcg every day, ages 9-13 is 120/mcg every day.
If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, it is recommended that you get 290/mcg every day (talk to your pediatrician or primary care physician - STAF, Inc. is not giving medical advice in its seminars but info for educational & motivati0nal purposes).
E.g. 4 ounces of cranberries has 400 mcg of iodine (mcg=microgram) - 1 mcg: a unit of mass or weight equal to one millionth of a gram.
Salt is everywhere - that's why you need to know how to avoid its harmful effects. Most of the sodium we eat comes from packaged, processed, store-bought, and restaurants foods. Only a small amount comes from salt added during cooking and from being added at the table, and most Americans have already exceeded their daily limit of sodium before cooking or adding salt at the table. You can find out how much sodium you are eating by checking the labels on food products and adding up the milligrams of sodium. If at a restaurant, ask for nutritional information facts that include sodium.
click: Sodium and Food Sources
To stay healthy, to avoid sickness coming from unhealthy eating, to have less suffering and having more enjoyable, longer life, it is necessary to start preparing your food in your own kitchen based on the instructions you will get in STAF, Inc.'s educational programs.
Sugar
White sugar (or any sugar) - the sweetest poison of all - do not keep in your house - pure poison. Do not eat. Do not add in your home-made daily food. Do not add in your coffee, tea, do not drink sugary sodas (no diet soda - their chemicals harm you). Occasionally eating a sugary pastry or peace of sugary cake will not kill, but do not eat them daily.
Sugar & Pregnancy & Breastfeeding
Ladies: Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation*) can influence muscle force production in offspring *) lactation - formation of mother's milk in breastfeeding
click: 143 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health (with the reference to scientific studies)
Do this:
Get your sugar from fresh fruit (not canned, fresh), berries (berries can be fresh or frozen) & fresh vegetables - yes: vegetables have healthy sugars.
Full of fiber, antioxidants and other health improving phytochemicals
(phyto, Greek = plant) and flavonoids, fresh fruit, berries & vegetables are a great source of sustainable energy. Eat fruit & berries as such - (you can use the blender) but do NOT juice them. Whole fruit contains fiber and other nutrients, which allow the body to feel more full and to absorb the sugar slowly over time.
antioxidants, click: Wikipedia
phytochemicals, click: Wikipedia
flavonoids, click: Wikipedia
A variety of fresh fruit, berries & fresh or lightly steamed vegetables
is the most important part of our daily diet - use berries as you can afford - some little is better than none. Potato is a vegetable - steam or bake the potatoes - do not boil or fry them or any other vegetables: too much nutrients disappears in boiling or frying anything. Fruit, berries and vegetables you can eat fresh as such or use the blender. DO NOT juice anything because the pulp has 80 % of all the nutrients - juicing takes the fiber & the pulp away - the human body needs the fiber and the pulp. In addition, juicing makes the juice unnecessarily concentrated with sugar and can cause an unpleasant sugar high & low in.
Quotation:
The health angels say "the devil invented the juicing to ruin the people's health"© (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
There are tens of berries, fruits,vegetables, beans, nuts, etc. on the market. Click each 7 lists below and from each of them pick up those items you know what they are and keep variety of them in your pantry. Do not waste your money. Find the lowest priced items. The fancy ones are no better than the humble, common ones. Save your money, do not eat your money but save it to start investing with the goal of becoming a millonaire.
STAF, Inc. has a new seminar
"Start with $50 a month to become a (multi-)millionaire".
Find out some details for saving & investing in this website in tab: more..., there sub-tab "credit & credit cards".
Click each list next below and pick the items from each list you know
and eat a variety of them daily:
List of Fruits
List of Berries
List of Melons
List of Vegetables
List of Beans
List of Nuts
Peanuts
About peanuts: when you click the above link, study the full article to know about peanuts' many use. E.g. Peanuts are used to help fight malnutrition. are high-protein, high-energy and high-nutrient peanut-based pastes developed to be used as a therapeutic food to aid in famine relief. The World Health Organization, UNICEF, Project Peanut Butter and Doctors Without Borders have used these products to help save malnourished children in developing countries.
Pick all items as natural, raw, no pre-cooked, no salted, no roasted, peanuts buy without the outer shell with the inner, thin peel on.
From each list pick the cheapest and the one you know. It should up to over 20 different items eaten daily - all in small portions, some of them even counted between 1 - 5 daily (like nuts, berries, etc.)From each list choose items with different colors (if naturally available) and in the same color group the one(s) that have the deepest of that color. It is said: eat the rainbow every day. The rainbow colors are: red, orange, green, yellow, blue, indigo (darker) blue, violent - 7 colors. Eat every day 7 or more colors. The colors indicates different phytochemicals with different nutritional meaning. Basically, the deeper the color, the more beneficial the food item is for the human body & mind.
A few words about the science of food combining
Eat fruit mostly as plain fruit (= not combined with any other food types)
and when your stomach is empty because fruit needs much less digestive time than the other food category items need. If the fruit stays in your stomach together with protein or carbohydrates the results will easily lead to digestive difficulties.
This is because different foods (1) need different lengths of time in the stomach and
(2) need different digestive chemicals (alkaline or acid).
As a mess-up of different digestive chemical needs, a process of food rotting starts in the digestive system leading to toxins in the immune system and finally in every cell of the body.
Signs for this are bad breath (= a sign of rotting food items in the digestive system), heartburn, skin itching (because the body eliminates poisons also through the skin pores - our skin is our largest organ) and, as one sign, the lack of energy. The armpit smell has the same origin. When the body systems cannot handle the continuously growing toxic material, this situation will lead, sooner or later, to different sicknesses including to cancer.
It is not what we eat but what we digest and assimilate*) that adds to our health, strength and usefulness. *) to assimilate = to take in and utilize as nourishment & to absorb into the system.
For a good assimilation a proper application of food combining rules is a must. These facts just stated in the few above lines belong to the area of the food combining science. In this internet seminar we will not handle the food combining rules any further than to how to eat fruit (see above). The healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition book to be published will have a whole chapter about food combining facts. Meanwhile, eat all fruit when your stomach is empty and do not combine fruit with any other food category as explained above. Aim to eat sweat fruit and more sour fruit also as their own category not combining sweat and sour.
H0ney
Honey is a sugar, so use it sparingly. It has a high caloric value and will put you on a sugar high and low. Most honey is pasteurized - that process kills the most beneficial nutrients in honey. Raw, unpasteurized honey is available but for a higher price and may not be safe because of the transportation challenges.
If you are interested, have your own honey production - can be done in a city also - then you'll get fresh honey.
click: Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees
Many cities have an association for beekeeping - take their training. Search the web for contacts.
Do not feed honey to infants. Spores of Clostridium botulinum have been found in a small percentage of honey in North America. This is not dangerous to adults and older children, but infants can have a serious reaction of illness in the first year click: Infant botulism
Do not add honey to baby food or use as a soother to quiet a fussy or colicky baby. colic (noun), colicky (adj.) - colic = severe, often fluctuating pain in the abdomen caused by intestinal gas or obstruction in the intestines and suffered esp. by babies (also by adults) - somewhat similar to constipation.
Most colicky pain is caused by unhealthy food given to the baby (and an adult eating in an unhealthy manner - also some medication can cause colic ): bottle feeding & other commercial baby food instead of breast feeding, feeding bananas that are not ripe enough (ripe = the banana peel is dark) and some other food items too early. Consult your pediatrician as needed.
click: Colic Definition - Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinic
click: Colic in Adults
Artificial Sweeteners
Briefly: DO NOT use them - they are harmful chemicals leading to sickness.
click:
Artificial sweeteners: sugar-free, but at what cost? - Harvard University Health ...www.health.harvard.edu › Harvard Health Blog - Harvard University
After reading the Harvard University article you may want to study this link as the Harvard people also refer to metabolic syndrome
Click:
What Is Metabolic Syndrome? - NHLBI, NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Metabolic (met-ah-BOL-ik) syndrome is the name for a group of risk factors that raises ... In general, a person who has metabolic syndrome is twice as likely to ...Other Names for Metabolic ... - Diagnosis - NHLBI, NIH - What Causes Metabolic
Skin Care - Hair Care - Body Care - Showers
The less chemicals is used, the better.
Use simple soap (no fragrance, no deodorant soaps).
With our skin being our largest organ, we must be wise not to use products
that are full of petro-chemicals, parabens and other highly toxic ingredients.
However, women put, on a daily basis, an average of 515 TOXIC chemicals a day on their faces alone! That is 515 too many. That alone, has contributed to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women and to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age. Also many women start their monepouse earlier than normal. All signs of a shorter life span.
Click: Dangerous and cancer-causing petrochemical properties of products and
click there: reviews of related topics
Click: Petrochemical Click: Paraben
Hair
Most shampoos and other hair care products have too many harmful chemicals - the simpler the better. Hairsprays & other similar products can cause hair loss. Some wash their hair every day - if your work conditions do not demand daily washing, 2 (- 3) times a week is enough. Instead, daily, brush & comb your hair with a "heavy" comb to get rid of the dandruff (= dead skin cells on your scalp and hair). To wash your hair more often is to take the protective, natural "oil/fat" away and your hair loses its shine and strength; you risk to get bald faster than you otherwise would.
We humans have about -/+ 100 thousand hairs = men less, women more.
Every day we lose some of them. TEST: comb your hair & comb/rub your scalp with a heavy comb for 60 seconds. Dandruff (= dead scalp cells) drops and hairs drop. Count the hairs that came off after combing for 60 seconds.
Test answer: Less than 100 (hundred) hairs a day is safe and normal, more than 100(hundred) hairs a day = that's too much - also called click: Alopecia
In animals hair loss - you may need this info if you have pets or you have cattle click: Mange
We humans lose up to 100 hairs from our scalp every day. That's normal, and in most people, those hairs grow back. But many men -- and some women -- lose hair as they grow older. You can also lose your hair if you have certain
diseases, such as thyroid problems click: Thyroid, diabetes click: Diabetes or lupus, click: Lupus.
If you take certain medicines or have chemotherapy for cancer, you may also lose your hair. Other causes are stress, a low protein diet, a family history, or poor nutrition. Treatment for hair loss depends on the cause. In some cases, treating the underlying cause will correct the problem. Other treatments include medicines and hair restoration.
click: Hair loss
As needed, consult: (1) a dermatologist, click: Dermatology
OR consult (2) an Endocrinologist, click: Endocrinology
Deodorants
block the natural skin "breathing" by blocking the skin pores and keep toxins inside the body burdening the immune system, thus adding to sickness risks. Healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition eliminates unpleasant sweat odor - then you do not need any deodorants. The unpleasant sweat odor comes from eating unhealthy food, fast-f00d (= bad-food) and combining food items in an unnatural manner - then the bacteria relating to rutting causes the unpleasant odor - all signs for new disease.
Eat as instructed in this guide to avoid sickness - teach your children to do the same. Once more: children do what they see their parents doing not what the parents tell them to do.
There is no need to take the risk that deodorants may cause when you accept the healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in you daily life. One fact is for sure: they keep the toxins inside the body and that can & will cause sickness. Eliminate deodorant use when planning & being pregnant and as long as you are breastfeeding. The men can deliver higher quality sperm the less toxins there are in the male body.
Deodorants are toxic - that is a fact - they have toxins in them.
Eat real food, not imitation food, walk enough, sleep enough & learn to relax your mind - then your sweat does not smell and you forget the deodorants that are toxic no matter how we look at them.
click: Harmful ingredients in deodorants
click: Dangers of deodorant sprays
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily
as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer) - if you are not able to walk that much or not at all, meet with your primary care physician and find out what other exercise options fit your situation to keep you physically in a good condition.
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 (seven) sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children reading those 7 articles.
To sleep better: (1) leave 3 hours between the dinner and your bedtime - otherwise the food digestion may disturb you, (2) avoid listening/ watching/ hearing negative news late in the evening and (3) in your bedroom the only 2 things you do are (1) making love & (2) sleep.
Keep electronics in some other room (including the TV) - Guide your children do the same - all according to the available space.It is estimated that in the U.S. sleep deprivation causes annually 63 billion dollars in lost productivity.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titled M+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success - have your children learning also,
(9) Do (you and you children) basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9)
(10) Learn to keep a positive attitude leading to happiness - but how?
Running after the feeling of happiness is like trying to catch the rainbow.
The principle of how to pursue (= catch = get) & keep happiness is mostly misunderstood , tells the happiness science.
The pursuit of happiness click: pursuit of Happiness is in the click: United States Declaration of Independence, thus, especially the Americans think and believe that happiness is what everyone then should feel most of the time - otherwise we have failed in life. Not true at all.
Relax, STAF, Inc. will show you what real happiness is and how to get & keep it.
Let's see what the most recent happiness science states.
Quotation
"The Road to happiness is paved with struggle" (Dr. Russ Harris)
In this website STAF, Inc. has science articles relating to happiness.
Some main principles here - apply the information and you will have peace with the mystery of happiness.
Happiness is not always and continuously feeling good. That would be boring and make us feel strapped in the same routine day after day. Happiness is richness of life based on different events & different feelings. Life with endless forms and ventures is richness.
If we limit our life to one feeling only, feeling of happiness, we certainly will feel miserable - that would have nothing to do with happiness.
What makes us humans happy is to get results in solving our difficulties & struggles. Having a meaningful, steady work is one major source of life happiness. Getting results in any purposeful, significant goal, no matter how difficult, gives us happiness. E.g., relationships & parenthood gives us deep meaning & happiness and they always have difficult sides also.
Solving our struggle is the key to happiness
Old saying:
"When God wants to give us a gift, He always wraps it in a form of a problem"
When we solve the problem, we grow wiser & stronger and as the result feel peace & happiness. Thus, (1) do not curse difficulties, instead (2) be thankful for them and bless the challenges & struggling because they are an important part of our existence and the keys to a better, richer, happier life.
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 3 of 3 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more:
Have a weekly a whole family study meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discussing in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from this STAF, Inc.'s guidance website.
The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links - it's a wide
encyclopedia of information.
It is the "world's #1 free advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
To learn and start investing with the goal of becoming a (multi-)millionaire is in STAF, Inc.'s website in tab "more...", there in sub-tab "Credit & Credit Cards"
Teach the principles to you children to start with their allowance money.
It is a realistic goal to become financially wealthy - start, follow the instructions, learn to invest and the results will be yours. Patience & durability are the keys.
Start with any amount (even $50/month) - to start is the first step, learn and grow in financial health in addition learning the good bodily health.
___________
When you now studied the healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition information presented above, study this WSJ article:
"Chefs and doctors are teaming up to create healthy dishes you might actually crave"
Click the green info 2 lines below - if it does not connect "Copy and paste" the entire address below into your web browser (next 2 lines):
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304704504579431133752897634-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwNzExNDcyWj
When the article is up, in addition to reading the text, click also in the 3rd picture from the top: click: Interactive: Culinary Rx or click: View graphics -
then: Click the red circle next to each item to see the written description
to study 24 food items and their benefits for the human health.
All these 24 food items have been mentioned in this STAF, Inc.guide. Study this article also with your whole family including with your children.
In case the link to the article has expired search the web with
(copy & paste the title on the next line):
"WSJ Health Food for Foodies - A Delicious Prescription"
If the article does not come up, email STAF, Inc. and request to have it emailed to you - e: [email protected]
The article was published in WSJ 3/15/2014 as:
"WSJ Health Food for Foodies - A Delicious Prescription"
_____________________________
Below, after the article 3 of 3 the links to:
The U.S. Government Food Pyramids and Plates: What Should You Really Eat?- Prepared by The Harvard School of Public Health & other sources.
WHY AT THE END?
Because
(1) above there is quite much information to digest, then
(2) it is more practical to study the new "Food Plate" and the old "Food Pyramid" info after you studied the above compact healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guide.
Then studying the additional "Plate" and "Pyramid" info is easier to understand and easier to adopt in your and your family's daily healthy lifestyle and healthy eating.
Study everything as a family - have the weekly family meetings as instructed above.
Additional questions email to STAF, Inc.: [email protected]
Email your success stories based on this life-quality improving material.
STAF, Inc. needs your donations to ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide.
Donation instructions in STAF, Inc.'s home page and below in the article 3 of 3
_____________
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
That's like a free health insurance and better
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the most economical plan
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
We at STAF, Inc. want to know how you expect STAF, Inc. & this advice website, in a longer run, to improve your & your family's life, or how it already has improved your life.
Let us know in your donation letter.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
As instructed above
at the end of the article 1 of 2
STAF, Inc.'s editors placed these extensive web links above and once more here next below at the end of article 2 of 2 to give you
a chance to further study the details as they are the foundation for your and your family's future health
Click green below to study further info - study all details
Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health
Click:
Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/.../03plate.html
The New York Times
Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler guideline to promote healthy nutrition. ... Nutrition Plate Unveiled, Replacing Food Pyramid. Jim Watson/Agence ... The 1992 food guide pyramid. The new ...
__________________
The links below relate to # 10 ("Happiness") in the above guide.
Are you ready for more about 'how to have happiness' ?
click Dr Russ Harris
The Happiness Trap | Stop Struggling Start Living.www.thehappinesstrap.com/
Dr Russ Harris, author of 'The Happiness Trap' is Australia's foremost provider of training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - a powerful new ...
Resources - Book Shop - Happiness Trap Workshops - Mindfulness
click: The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A ...www.amazon.com › ... › Cognitive Psychology
Your opinion is valued at STAF, Inc.- let us know your opinion about Dr. Russ Harris' teachings. Amazon has his book for under 10 U.S. dollars
Email your opinions to STAF, Inc. to: [email protected]
Or mail to: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_________________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc.
will ease human suffering & turn lives to victory *
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
www.staf1org.weebly.com
__________________
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit,
is the nation/worldwide leading, new organization
for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
*Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering and turn lives to victory*
STAF, Inc. has also developed a "full-size" guide for the U.S. gov. use.
This abbreviated guide above is made of 2 basic elements: (1) written text and (2) added web referrals. Additionally, a free Q&A-service provided via email.
Even though this guide is abbreviated, it contains most major basic facts for a healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition.
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
& Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., as the author
The copyrighted Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide for The Good Life with related additional guides & information above is free of any charge worldwide for all personal use. It is also free for all educational purposes in seminars, schools, colleges & universities worldwide. Give your students STAF, Inc.'s web link and guide them to further study its extensive, scientifically reliable advice website for the good life. Urge your students to apply the information for their lasting health & longer life, for their family happiness & financially richer life including becoming a (multi-) millionaire starting with $50 dollars a month.
To everyone using this advice website for your improved life:
email to STAF, Inc. your success stories to: [email protected]
________
Find out what you have learned -
The 30-minute test
When you have studied in full every article above, STAF, Inc. invites you to test your level of mastery.
Instructions
(1) Click the green "Balance diet - Healthy lifestyle" link at the end of this test info.
(2) Read the link information to find out IF everything it states looks familiar to you. The test link has healthy lifestyle opinions from several nationwide &
worldwide leading organizations but in a compact form stating plain principles.
(3) Evaluate if you master all the basic principles and if almost nothing in that article is new info for you, then you are well on your way to a healthier, happier longer life with less or no suffering - as long as you apply the info daily in your life. Guide your children to apply the information in their lives every day.
Quotation "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(4) Email us at STAF, Inc. how you did in your test:
e-mail: [email protected]
Click this test link: Balanced diet - Healthy Lifestyle
As you may feel necessary anytime in the future, repeat-study this guide
to be sure you have adopted the healthy lifestyle information for your healthier, happier, longer and richer life.
________
Email us your success stories
how STAF, Inc.'s guidance has given you and your family a higher-quality life.
e-mail: [email protected]
_________
Want to get deeper knowledge &
become a professional ?
Public Health professionals are in demand because it's more widely
recognized that our good health and higher success in life
is possible through our own actions
A lifetime opportunity
Become a
Certified Healthy Lifestyle Coach© (CHLC)™
Earn full-time or part-time income (1) in your private practice and/or
(2) by leading STAF, Inc.'s public & corporate seminars in the U.S. nationwide or worldwide in any country.
As a public health professional you will ease human suffering, guide your clients to avoid sickness and have good health. As a CHLC™ -professional you will also show how to maintain a happy marriage, how to raise successful children and how to become financially successful, even a millionaire starting only with $50 a month.
When you teach these most important success elements in life you will yourself apply the principles more effectively in your own life and succeed higher than you ever expected.
STAF, Inc. will train & certify you - online or in major cities nationwide & worldwide.
Get more information of this great opportunity - send your brief resume or CV and basic info: (1) country & location(s) where you are available to run STAF, Inc.'s seminars, (2) in what language(s), (3) your education & work experience, (4) links to your online presence and (5) one recommendation letter of your suitability for teaching work (state the relation between you and your recommendation letter provider).
Include your (1) postal mailing address, (2) your email address & (3) phone #.
Write all material in English.
Mail to:
STAF, Inc.
Dept. CHLC ™ Program
P.O. Box 1555
New York, NY 10163-1555
USA
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs donations.
Perhaps you could include in your resume envelope a donation of a size suitable to you. Your donation will ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide. The U.S. paper notes preferred as donation but any currency paper notes are accepted.
STAF, Inc. will email to you a receipt for your donation.
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. is also in the process
of founding a new University
to provide high-quality education in the public health sciences and in all other STAF, Inc.'s work related science areas - which means: practically all areas of a successful life.
A few examples of the goals the new STAF, Inc.'s University will have.
STAF, Inc.'s goal and its new University's goal is to eliminate the modern killer-epidemics as overweight & obesity, widening smoking in developing countries & drug use worldwide and promote in a new manner nationwide & worldwide the importance of healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in fighting disease and human suffering.
Also strengthening nationwide & worldwide family ties & traditional marriages to provide a safe, nurturing & healthy atmosphere for our children to grow up, belongs to STAF, Inc.'s and its new University's goals. So do teaching and training every school child to know how to grow financially successful through investments starting only with$50 dollars a month. The financial equality nationwide & worldwide can be substantially leveled for everyone's best in our nation and in every nation worldwide. These are some examples of the new University's goals. The goal is to teach the world to have a better quality of life.
It can only be done when we all start sharing the abundance in knowledge & riches.
The results will be beneficial to the givers and to the receivers. We all share the same planet and its overall health or sickness will affect the rich & the poor, thus affecting us all.
In the new University all degree levels will be available:
Associate, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Quotation
"Education is the most powerful weapon
which you can choose to change the world"
Nelson Mandela Click
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
*to ease human suffering & turn lives to victory nationwide & worldwide*
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_______________________
7 Foods Rich in Iodine - Global Healing Center
www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/iodine-foods/
by Edward Group
Jan 18, 2011 - Just 1/2 cup of these beans contain about 32/mcg of iodine.Beans aren't .... BUT it does have iodine in it so check your levels first! Massage ...Iodine Supplements - Probiotic Foods - Detoxadine - The Benefits of Himalayan Salt _______________________________________________________________________________________
New on the MedlinePlus Alcohol page:
Blogging
Fluorescent Dye May Help Spot Date-Rape Drug in Drinks
03/31/2014 12:00 PM EDT
Researchers say chemical changes color of drinks spiked with GHB
Source: HealthDay __________________________________________________________________________________
www.globalhealingcenter.com/natural-health/iodine-foods/
by Edward Group
Jan 18, 2011 - Just 1/2 cup of these beans contain about 32/mcg of iodine.Beans aren't .... BUT it does have iodine in it so check your levels first! Massage ...Iodine Supplements - Probiotic Foods - Detoxadine - The Benefits of Himalayan Salt _______________________________________________________________________________________
New on the MedlinePlus Alcohol page:
Blogging
Fluorescent Dye May Help Spot Date-Rape Drug in Drinks
03/31/2014 12:00 PM EDT
Researchers say chemical changes color of drinks spiked with GHB
Source: HealthDay __________________________________________________________________________________
Blogging Hands-Free Cellphones Don't Make Driving Safer, Review Shows But survey found 80 percent of drivers think they are less dangerous than hand-held versions
WEDNESDAY, April 2, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Hands-free cellphone use while driving is not risk-free driving, new research shows.
Eighty percent of U.S. drivers think hands-free smartphones are safer than hand-held ones when they are behind the wheel, the National Safety Council found. But the council's experts analyzed 30 studies and found using a hands-free device while driving is no safer than using a hand-held phone because both are a distraction.
"While many drivers honestly believe they are making the safe choice by using a hands-free device, it's just not true," David Teater, senior director of transportation initiatives at the National Safety Council, said in a news release. "The problem is the brain does not truly multitask. Just like you can't read a book and talk on the phone, you can't safely operate a vehicle and talk on the phone. With some state laws focusing on hand-held bans and carmakers putting hands-free technology in vehicles, no wonder people are confused."
Although 12 states and the District of Columbia have banned the use of hand-held cellphones while driving, hands-free devices have not been regulated by any state or municipality, according to the council.
A growing number of cars are being equipped with dashboard systems that allow drivers to make hands-free calls, send text messages, email and even update their social media statuses, the study authors noted.
The researchers found that 53 percent of those polled believe these devices are safe because they were installed by the car's manufacturer. Moreover, 70 percent of those surveyed said they use hands-free devices for safety reasons.
The National Safety Council has designated April as "Distracted Driving Awareness Month," to draw attention to the fact that hands-free cellphone use while driving carries its own risks.
SOURCE: The National Safety Council, news release, April 1, 2014
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on:Impaired DrivingMotor Vehicle SafetyRecent Health News
WEDNESDAY, April 2, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Hands-free cellphone use while driving is not risk-free driving, new research shows.
Eighty percent of U.S. drivers think hands-free smartphones are safer than hand-held ones when they are behind the wheel, the National Safety Council found. But the council's experts analyzed 30 studies and found using a hands-free device while driving is no safer than using a hand-held phone because both are a distraction.
"While many drivers honestly believe they are making the safe choice by using a hands-free device, it's just not true," David Teater, senior director of transportation initiatives at the National Safety Council, said in a news release. "The problem is the brain does not truly multitask. Just like you can't read a book and talk on the phone, you can't safely operate a vehicle and talk on the phone. With some state laws focusing on hand-held bans and carmakers putting hands-free technology in vehicles, no wonder people are confused."
Although 12 states and the District of Columbia have banned the use of hand-held cellphones while driving, hands-free devices have not been regulated by any state or municipality, according to the council.
A growing number of cars are being equipped with dashboard systems that allow drivers to make hands-free calls, send text messages, email and even update their social media statuses, the study authors noted.
The researchers found that 53 percent of those polled believe these devices are safe because they were installed by the car's manufacturer. Moreover, 70 percent of those surveyed said they use hands-free devices for safety reasons.
The National Safety Council has designated April as "Distracted Driving Awareness Month," to draw attention to the fact that hands-free cellphone use while driving carries its own risks.
SOURCE: The National Safety Council, news release, April 1, 2014
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on:Impaired DrivingMotor Vehicle SafetyRecent Health News
Blogging
Overweight Teens Don't Share in Life-Expectancy Gains: Study - Death before 50 more likely for those who were heavy during adolescence
FRIDAY, March 28, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Gains in life expectancy don't extend to adults who were overweight or obese as teens, according to a new study.
The average lifespan in the United States has increased by more than a decade since 1950, to nearly 79 years for someone born in 2011, the researchers said. But rising obesity rates may stall that progress, they said.
"In studying the rate of death among adults younger than age 50, we found that there was no improvement among men who were overweight or obese as teenagers," said Dr. Amir Tirosh, of the division of endocrinology (=deals with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases related to hormones) at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston click: Brigham
"The mortality rate among overweight and obese teenagers in the years 2000 to 2010 was as high as the rate observed in the 1960s and 1970s," he said.
The researchers analyzed long-term data from more than 2.1 million people in Israel who were born between 1950 and 1993 and evaluated for military service between ages 16 and 20.
Among those who were normal-weight teenagers, death rates were 41 percent lower for those born in the 1980s than those born 30 years earlier. But people who were overweight or obese as teens showed no significant improvement in their survival rate over four decades.
The researchers also found that overweight and obese teens were more likely to die before age 50 than normal-weight teens. Even teens who were near the upper end of the normal weight range had an increased risk of premature death, according to the study, which was published online March 6 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
The researchers said they did not know the causes of death among the study participants. They said, however, that obesity increases the risk of death from conditions such as heart disease and cancer.
"Public health officials have known all along that obesity contributes to chronic illness, but this study clearly illustrates that it can raise the risk of death in early adulthood," Tirosh said in a journal news release. "This has enormous implications for families, public health and society as a whole."
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, news release, March 26, 2014
__________________
*)
Overweight Teens Don't Share in Life-Expectancy Gains: Study - Death before 50 more likely for those who were heavy during adolescence
FRIDAY, March 28, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Gains in life expectancy don't extend to adults who were overweight or obese as teens, according to a new study.
The average lifespan in the United States has increased by more than a decade since 1950, to nearly 79 years for someone born in 2011, the researchers said. But rising obesity rates may stall that progress, they said.
"In studying the rate of death among adults younger than age 50, we found that there was no improvement among men who were overweight or obese as teenagers," said Dr. Amir Tirosh, of the division of endocrinology (=deals with the diagnosis and treatment of diseases related to hormones) at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston click: Brigham
"The mortality rate among overweight and obese teenagers in the years 2000 to 2010 was as high as the rate observed in the 1960s and 1970s," he said.
The researchers analyzed long-term data from more than 2.1 million people in Israel who were born between 1950 and 1993 and evaluated for military service between ages 16 and 20.
Among those who were normal-weight teenagers, death rates were 41 percent lower for those born in the 1980s than those born 30 years earlier. But people who were overweight or obese as teens showed no significant improvement in their survival rate over four decades.
The researchers also found that overweight and obese teens were more likely to die before age 50 than normal-weight teens. Even teens who were near the upper end of the normal weight range had an increased risk of premature death, according to the study, which was published online March 6 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
The researchers said they did not know the causes of death among the study participants. They said, however, that obesity increases the risk of death from conditions such as heart disease and cancer.
"Public health officials have known all along that obesity contributes to chronic illness, but this study clearly illustrates that it can raise the risk of death in early adulthood," Tirosh said in a journal news release. "This has enormous implications for families, public health and society as a whole."
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, news release, March 26, 2014
__________________
*)
Did America Just Elect Its First Woman President?
For Blogging
With a record number of women on-track to hold seats in the United States Senate in 2012 (20—or one out of every five Senators), the list of female faces in Washington reads like a who’s who of firsts. From Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay Senator to Mazie Hirono, the first Japanese-born Senator to Claire McCaskill’s historic win over conservative Todd Akin, there’s much to celebrate.
But read between the lines and a new question emerges: is the first female President of the United States among these championed names?
It is a well-worn Washington truism that every senator looks in the mirror and sees a potential president, but many of the 2013 class of female U.S. Senators have bigger supporters than themselves for any White House aspirations. A handful have already been bandied about as potential Vice Presidential and even Presidential picks by their parties in the election cycles ahead.
In Pictures: Which of the 20 Female Senators Could Be the First Woman President?
The dust has yet to settle completely, but by our count five new women will join the ranks of the U.S. Senate next year. Currently 17 women (a record in itself) serve in the chamber, but two of them—Republicans Olympia Snow (Maine) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas)—are retiring in the next calendar year. All told, a benchmark 20 women will serve in the Senate in 2013.
Policy advisor Lisa Maatz at the American Association of University Women reflects on this record number of women and sees nothing but positives. “I’m excited about it,” she says. “I believe for women’s issues, this is a really good day.”
With Hillary Clinton’s firm denial that she will not seek the highest office in 2016, among the names most commonly mentioned on a shortlist of candidates by varying sources are New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (first lauded by the New York Times in 2008 as a good choice for her appeal with Middle America), former Obama staffer Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Susan J. Carroll, senior scholar at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics would point out something else that those women have in common: party lines. They, like the vast majority of the 2013 class of female Senators, are staunch Democrats. “That’s one of the most interesting stories,” she says. Democratic women will play a huge role in moving towards party parity in both the Senate and the House.
“When you look at the Senators across gender, but for these women, the Democrats wouldn’t have been able to retain control,” says Maatz. “If you think the senior women—Barbara Boxer, Murray and Mikulski aren’t going to exercise that clout in the chamber, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you in Brooklyn.” Patty Murray, she notes, who was critical in recruiting many new Democratic women to run for office, will absolutely be pulling rank.
Murray and the female old-guard of the Senate may have the power in Chambers but they are notably absent among the names bandied about for possible presidential candidacy. The experts seem to agree that the first female president will not come from their (or Clinton’s) but from a younger, post-boomer pool of politicians.
Which Of the 20 Woman Senators Could Be The First Female President of the U.S.1 of 21
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Who Will Be The First Female President?With Hillary Clinton demurring from the 2016 election, watchers are looking to the current record class of U.S. Senators as a potential shortlist for candidates for the first female president. Click through to mee.
Therin lies the enthusiasm for Gillibrand. “I’ll say one thing,” Maatz says. “and that’s that Kirsten Gillibrand will be spending a lot of time in New Hampshire in the months to come. They now have the first all female congressional delegation, they have a female governor and their general assembly has more women than men. I don’t know what’s in the Kool-Aid in New Hampshire, but for Gillibrand it’s definitely looking tasty.”
There are in-state potential candidates as well, most attractively Jeanne Sheehan, who served three terms as the first female governor of the state before becoming the senior Senator in 2009. That the state is actively pushing women up the political pipeline is no secret.
Still, Gillibrand seems the most likely bet. Her recent address to the Iowa delegation during the Democratic Convention in September only added fuel to the rumors of her aspiration to higher office. “She’s a prodigious fundraiser, she telegenic and she’s smart,” Maatz says. “All of those things add up to a good candidate.”
But while there are plenty of attractive candidates bubbling up in the Senate, Maatz and other watchers of the 2016 cycle haven’t yet given up hope on Clinton. She may think she’s not going to run but they’re not convinced she’s truly decided. At any rate, they’re eager to see diversity on the tickets one way or another.
“I think we’re going to see a more diverse ticket from both parties both in terms of gender and ethnic and racial diversity,” says Maatz. “Women and minorities decided this election and will continue to do so going forward. Putting them on the ticket would be the smart—and the right—thing to do.”
In Pictures: Which of the 20 Female Senators Could Be the First Woman President?
For Blogging
With a record number of women on-track to hold seats in the United States Senate in 2012 (20—or one out of every five Senators), the list of female faces in Washington reads like a who’s who of firsts. From Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay Senator to Mazie Hirono, the first Japanese-born Senator to Claire McCaskill’s historic win over conservative Todd Akin, there’s much to celebrate.
But read between the lines and a new question emerges: is the first female President of the United States among these championed names?
It is a well-worn Washington truism that every senator looks in the mirror and sees a potential president, but many of the 2013 class of female U.S. Senators have bigger supporters than themselves for any White House aspirations. A handful have already been bandied about as potential Vice Presidential and even Presidential picks by their parties in the election cycles ahead.
In Pictures: Which of the 20 Female Senators Could Be the First Woman President?
The dust has yet to settle completely, but by our count five new women will join the ranks of the U.S. Senate next year. Currently 17 women (a record in itself) serve in the chamber, but two of them—Republicans Olympia Snow (Maine) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (Texas)—are retiring in the next calendar year. All told, a benchmark 20 women will serve in the Senate in 2013.
Policy advisor Lisa Maatz at the American Association of University Women reflects on this record number of women and sees nothing but positives. “I’m excited about it,” she says. “I believe for women’s issues, this is a really good day.”
With Hillary Clinton’s firm denial that she will not seek the highest office in 2016, among the names most commonly mentioned on a shortlist of candidates by varying sources are New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (first lauded by the New York Times in 2008 as a good choice for her appeal with Middle America), former Obama staffer Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.
Susan J. Carroll, senior scholar at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics would point out something else that those women have in common: party lines. They, like the vast majority of the 2013 class of female Senators, are staunch Democrats. “That’s one of the most interesting stories,” she says. Democratic women will play a huge role in moving towards party parity in both the Senate and the House.
“When you look at the Senators across gender, but for these women, the Democrats wouldn’t have been able to retain control,” says Maatz. “If you think the senior women—Barbara Boxer, Murray and Mikulski aren’t going to exercise that clout in the chamber, I’ve got a bridge I can sell you in Brooklyn.” Patty Murray, she notes, who was critical in recruiting many new Democratic women to run for office, will absolutely be pulling rank.
Murray and the female old-guard of the Senate may have the power in Chambers but they are notably absent among the names bandied about for possible presidential candidacy. The experts seem to agree that the first female president will not come from their (or Clinton’s) but from a younger, post-boomer pool of politicians.
Which Of the 20 Woman Senators Could Be The First Female President of the U.S.1 of 21
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Who Will Be The First Female President?With Hillary Clinton demurring from the 2016 election, watchers are looking to the current record class of U.S. Senators as a potential shortlist for candidates for the first female president. Click through to mee.
Therin lies the enthusiasm for Gillibrand. “I’ll say one thing,” Maatz says. “and that’s that Kirsten Gillibrand will be spending a lot of time in New Hampshire in the months to come. They now have the first all female congressional delegation, they have a female governor and their general assembly has more women than men. I don’t know what’s in the Kool-Aid in New Hampshire, but for Gillibrand it’s definitely looking tasty.”
There are in-state potential candidates as well, most attractively Jeanne Sheehan, who served three terms as the first female governor of the state before becoming the senior Senator in 2009. That the state is actively pushing women up the political pipeline is no secret.
Still, Gillibrand seems the most likely bet. Her recent address to the Iowa delegation during the Democratic Convention in September only added fuel to the rumors of her aspiration to higher office. “She’s a prodigious fundraiser, she telegenic and she’s smart,” Maatz says. “All of those things add up to a good candidate.”
But while there are plenty of attractive candidates bubbling up in the Senate, Maatz and other watchers of the 2016 cycle haven’t yet given up hope on Clinton. She may think she’s not going to run but they’re not convinced she’s truly decided. At any rate, they’re eager to see diversity on the tickets one way or another.
“I think we’re going to see a more diverse ticket from both parties both in terms of gender and ethnic and racial diversity,” says Maatz. “Women and minorities decided this election and will continue to do so going forward. Putting them on the ticket would be the smart—and the right—thing to do.”
In Pictures: Which of the 20 Female Senators Could Be the First Woman President?
For Blogging
NYC Joins National Trend
With Paid Sick Leave Bill
NEW YORK—Mayor Bill de Blasio signed his first bill Wednesday 3/19/14 at a converted factory in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. The bill expands the number of workers eligible to receive paid sick leave by 500,000.
The signing ceremony, and the bill, were a significant departure from a City Hall ruled for 12 years by de Blasio’s predecessor and oft adversary Michael Bloomberg.
Introduced in City Council three years ago, it was bent and weakened under the business-friendly guise of Bloomberg, frustrating advocates.
Upon taking office, de Blasio, who promised to undo the harm, saw an expanded and strengthened version rushed through the legislative process. Late last month the new council passed it by 46 voted to 5.
National Trend
With his signature, de Blasio, a progressive Democrat, has thrust New York City into a growing national trend of municipalities foregoing the federal government to extend paid sick leave benefits to their residents.
“In a perfect world, these are the kind of things our federal government would’ve taken on a long time ago,” de Blasio said. “We all know that that’s not possible right now. It’s a sad reality.
“So it has come to cities and states around the country to take action. And I have to say, I’m honored to say, on behalf of New York City, we’re acting. A lot of other localities around the state, around the country, have stepped up because they knew what their people needed, and they knew it was time for action.”
The first paid sick leave legislation was passed in California in 2002. Since then, Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey, Seattle in Washington state, as well as Washington, D.C., joined the trend. In 2012, Connecticut became the first state to provide paid sick leave.
Federal lawmakers followed through in 2014. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter introduced a federal bill, the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would provide paid sick leave to employees in companies with 50 or more employees.
“I think it’s a trend and I believe it will continue,” said Sharon Stiller, director of the employment law practice at Abrams Fensterman. “Society believes that people should be able to take sick time and they shouldn’t suffer as a result.”
The success of the paid sick leave bill in New York City is also likely to boost the trend nationwide. Stiller likened it to the indoor smoking ban, which, after being enacted shortly after Bloomberg became mayor, became a catalyst for a nationwide movement with many states following suit.
Paid sick leave laws did not have significant negative effects in the cities and states which have adopted them, a reassurance to business advocates who fear a worst case scenario. Research shows that the laws have little or no impact on profits, while boosting morale and lowering turnover.
Connecticut employers reported minimal impact on profits in a study conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research released this month. Only 6.5 percent reported that costs rose 5 percent or more.
NYC Workers
The paid sick leave law becomes effective in New York City on April 1. Employees in companies with five or more employees will begin accruing earned sick leave time on that day—one hour for every 30 worked. The law requires that employees work at the same company for four months before taking paid sick time off.
Businesses with 5 to 19 employees will not be subject to penalties until Oct. 1, giving them time to adjust and comply.
The Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) is implementing and enforcing the law. The agency, which had minimal information for employers or employees three days ago, has alleviated concerns by posting a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions and answers, mandatory employee notices, and other materials on its website.
DCA officials said that complaints can be filed online or by calling 311. The agency will focus on mediating complaints with a goal to secure back pay for employees, according to Alba Pico, the deputy in charge of DCA before de Blasio appoints a new commissioner.
Steve’s Ice Cream, housed on the fourth floor of the building where de Blasio signed the bill, already provides paid sick leave to its employees. The small-batch ice cream maker depends on a loyal workforce both for quality and for creativity, said David Stein, the chief executive officer of Steve’s Ice Cream.
“This ice cream is hard to make. It’s made by people who know what they’re doing and we rely on them to get better and better over time. You can’t do that by turning people over and retraining from scratch,” Stein said. “We don’t succeed without them, they don’t succeed without us.”
The mayor sampled four flavors on his way out from the signing ceremony: Brooklyn Blackout, cold-brewed cinnamon coffee, vanilla burnt-sugar, and salty caramel. De Blasio stuck with a pint of vanilla burnt sugar, a dairy-free ice cream made with coconut cream, vanilla beans, and swirled with “burnt sugar shards”—a combo the mayor found pleasing to the palate and to the ear.
De Blasio was surprised that his pick was nondairy, but disappointed to find it wasn’t a low-calorie product. Stein said that Steve’s ice creams are more about “spiritual and emotional health.”
“I’m having a lot of emotional and spiritual health right now,” de Blasio said.
City Joins National Trend With Paid Sick Leave Bill
The Epoch Times - by Ivan Pentchoukov - 3 hours ago
The success of the paid sick leave bill in New York City is also likely to boost the trend nationwide. Stiller likened it to the indoor smoking ban, ...
Source: The Epoch Times
_____________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
NYC Joins National Trend
With Paid Sick Leave Bill
NEW YORK—Mayor Bill de Blasio signed his first bill Wednesday 3/19/14 at a converted factory in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. The bill expands the number of workers eligible to receive paid sick leave by 500,000.
The signing ceremony, and the bill, were a significant departure from a City Hall ruled for 12 years by de Blasio’s predecessor and oft adversary Michael Bloomberg.
Introduced in City Council three years ago, it was bent and weakened under the business-friendly guise of Bloomberg, frustrating advocates.
Upon taking office, de Blasio, who promised to undo the harm, saw an expanded and strengthened version rushed through the legislative process. Late last month the new council passed it by 46 voted to 5.
National Trend
With his signature, de Blasio, a progressive Democrat, has thrust New York City into a growing national trend of municipalities foregoing the federal government to extend paid sick leave benefits to their residents.
“In a perfect world, these are the kind of things our federal government would’ve taken on a long time ago,” de Blasio said. “We all know that that’s not possible right now. It’s a sad reality.
“So it has come to cities and states around the country to take action. And I have to say, I’m honored to say, on behalf of New York City, we’re acting. A lot of other localities around the state, around the country, have stepped up because they knew what their people needed, and they knew it was time for action.”
The first paid sick leave legislation was passed in California in 2002. Since then, Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey, Seattle in Washington state, as well as Washington, D.C., joined the trend. In 2012, Connecticut became the first state to provide paid sick leave.
Federal lawmakers followed through in 2014. New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Louise Slaughter introduced a federal bill, the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act, which would provide paid sick leave to employees in companies with 50 or more employees.
“I think it’s a trend and I believe it will continue,” said Sharon Stiller, director of the employment law practice at Abrams Fensterman. “Society believes that people should be able to take sick time and they shouldn’t suffer as a result.”
The success of the paid sick leave bill in New York City is also likely to boost the trend nationwide. Stiller likened it to the indoor smoking ban, which, after being enacted shortly after Bloomberg became mayor, became a catalyst for a nationwide movement with many states following suit.
Paid sick leave laws did not have significant negative effects in the cities and states which have adopted them, a reassurance to business advocates who fear a worst case scenario. Research shows that the laws have little or no impact on profits, while boosting morale and lowering turnover.
Connecticut employers reported minimal impact on profits in a study conducted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research released this month. Only 6.5 percent reported that costs rose 5 percent or more.
NYC Workers
The paid sick leave law becomes effective in New York City on April 1. Employees in companies with five or more employees will begin accruing earned sick leave time on that day—one hour for every 30 worked. The law requires that employees work at the same company for four months before taking paid sick time off.
Businesses with 5 to 19 employees will not be subject to penalties until Oct. 1, giving them time to adjust and comply.
The Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) is implementing and enforcing the law. The agency, which had minimal information for employers or employees three days ago, has alleviated concerns by posting a comprehensive list of frequently asked questions and answers, mandatory employee notices, and other materials on its website.
DCA officials said that complaints can be filed online or by calling 311. The agency will focus on mediating complaints with a goal to secure back pay for employees, according to Alba Pico, the deputy in charge of DCA before de Blasio appoints a new commissioner.
Steve’s Ice Cream, housed on the fourth floor of the building where de Blasio signed the bill, already provides paid sick leave to its employees. The small-batch ice cream maker depends on a loyal workforce both for quality and for creativity, said David Stein, the chief executive officer of Steve’s Ice Cream.
“This ice cream is hard to make. It’s made by people who know what they’re doing and we rely on them to get better and better over time. You can’t do that by turning people over and retraining from scratch,” Stein said. “We don’t succeed without them, they don’t succeed without us.”
The mayor sampled four flavors on his way out from the signing ceremony: Brooklyn Blackout, cold-brewed cinnamon coffee, vanilla burnt-sugar, and salty caramel. De Blasio stuck with a pint of vanilla burnt sugar, a dairy-free ice cream made with coconut cream, vanilla beans, and swirled with “burnt sugar shards”—a combo the mayor found pleasing to the palate and to the ear.
De Blasio was surprised that his pick was nondairy, but disappointed to find it wasn’t a low-calorie product. Stein said that Steve’s ice creams are more about “spiritual and emotional health.”
“I’m having a lot of emotional and spiritual health right now,” de Blasio said.
City Joins National Trend With Paid Sick Leave Bill
The Epoch Times - by Ivan Pentchoukov - 3 hours ago
The success of the paid sick leave bill in New York City is also likely to boost the trend nationwide. Stiller likened it to the indoor smoking ban, ...
Source: The Epoch Times
_____________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________
The Opinion Pages|OP-ED COLUMNIST
FOR BLOGGING
Article 1 of 2
From Putin, a Blessing in Disguise
There are a lot of people who seem intent on restarting the Cold War — in both Moscow and Washington. I am not one of them. But if we’re going to have a new Cold War, then I have one condition: I want a new moonshot.
The Space Race and the technologies it produced weren’t purely an offshoot of the U.S.-Soviet missile competition, but they were certainly energized by that competition. Well, if we’re going to go at it again, this time I want an Earth Race.
I want America to lead in developing an energy policy that will weaken the oil-and-gas-autocracy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and, as a byproduct, produce the technologies that will mitigate climate change, make America a global technology and moral leader and ensure that the next generation can thrive here on Earth.
And as opposed to the stimulus/deficit debate, in the energy case, there really is now the raw material for a “Grand Bargain” between Democrats and Republicans — if President Obama wants to try to forge it. Such an energy grand strategy would be a first. It’s shocking how devoid of strategic intent U.S. energy policy has been. Both political parties have repeatedly let our economy be hostage to Middle Eastern and Latin American oil despots and to energy booms and busts.
The key ingredients for a new U.S. energy strategy, argues Hal Harvey, the C.E.O. of Energy Innovation, is, first, “to optimize affordability, reliability and clean together, rather than one at the expense of the other.” Second to “take advantage of new technology, we finally have the capacity to build an energy system we can be proud of, and by choosing this future, we will stimulate even more technologies that deliver energy that is indeed affordable, reliable and clean.” And, third, to “ensure that our natural gas bonanza actually ushers in a truly clean future.”
Here’s the deal Obama should offer oil-patch Republicans and Democrats. “You really want to open up the country to the exploration of natural gas? You really want to be free to export oil and gas to global markets — so long as it’s consistent with our national interests — and affect global markets in ways that could weaken Putinism? You really want the Keystone pipeline? Fine, I’ll give you all of it. And in return you’ll give me a bridge to a secure, clean-energy future for America.”
Harvey argues that such a deal should include the following: First, to ensure that natural gas is a boon rather than a curse, the oil and gas industry — and the lawmakers they control — have to accept national rules for extracting natural gas based on known best practices, including strategies that eliminate the leakage of methane, which is so much more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Second, we need to set a national clean energy standard for electricity. One popular approach is to require utilities to raise the fraction of their electricity from zero-carbon sources — such as wind, solar or nuclear — by, say, 2 percent per year. Such a standard creates a market for renewables, which drives down costs, and helps ensure that natural gas is a transition fuel that replaces coal, not solar, wind and other clean power sources. Thirty states have some variant of this, and it has been hugely successful in stimulating development of new technology.
Third, we have to accelerate energy efficiency and clean power technologies by building up our research and development programs to the levels they merit, probably triple today’s levels. This is the source of our long-term
There are a lot of people who seem intent on restarting the Cold War — in both Moscow and Washington. I am not one of them. But if we’re going to have a new Cold War, then I have one condition: I want a new moonshot.
The Space Race and the technologies it produced weren’t purely an offshoot of the U.S.-Soviet missile competition, but they were certainly energized by that competition. Well, if we’re going to go at it again, this time I want an Earth Race. I want America to lead in developing an energy policy that will weaken the oil-and-gas-autocracy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and, as a byproduct, produce the technologies that will mitigate climate change, make America a global technology and moral leader and ensure that the next generation can thrive here on Earth.
And as opposed to the stimulus/deficit debate, in the energy case, there really is now the raw material for a “Grand Bargain” between Democrats and Republicans — if President Obama wants to try to forge it. Such an energy grand strategy would be a first. It’s shocking how devoid of strategic intent U.S. energy policy has been. Both political parties have repeatedly let our economy be hostage to Middle Eastern and Latin American oil despots and to energy booms and busts.
The key ingredients for a new U.S. energy strategy, argues Hal Harvey, the C.E.O. of Energy Innovation, is, first, “to optimize affordability, reliability and clean together, rather than one at the expense of the other.” Second to “take advantage of new technology, we finally have the capacity to build an energy system we can be proud of, and by choosing this future, we will stimulate even more technologies that deliver energy that is indeed affordable, reliable and clean.” And, third, to “ensure that our natural gas bonanza actually ushers in a truly clean future.”
Here’s the deal Obama should offer oil-patch Republicans and Democrats. “You really want to open up the country to the exploration of natural gas? You really want to be free to export oil and gas to global markets — so long as it’s consistent with our national interests — and affect global markets in ways that could weaken Putinism? You really want the Keystone pipeline? Fine, I’ll give you all of it. And in return you’ll give me a bridge to a secure, clean-energy future for America.”
Harvey argues that such a deal should include the following: First, to ensure that natural gas is a boon rather than a curse, the oil and gas industry — and the lawmakers they control — have to accept national rules for extracting natural gas based on known best practices, including strategies that eliminate the leakage of methane, which is so much more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Second, we need to set a national clean energy standard for electricity. One popular approach is to require utilities to raise the fraction of their electricity from zero-carbon sources — such as wind, solar or nuclear — by, say, 2 percent per year. Such a standard creates a market for renewables, which drives down costs, and helps ensure that natural gas is a transition fuel that replaces coal, not solar, wind and other clean power sources. Thirty states have some variant of this, and it has been hugely successful in stimulating development of new technology.
Third, we have to accelerate energy efficiency and clean power technologies by building up our research and development programs to the levels they merit, probably triple today’s levels. This is the source of our long-term advantage.Fourth, we have to impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax — a Republican idea, championed by one of America’s most respected statesmen, Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz — that would replace payroll and corporate taxes.
Weakening Russian Oil is a noble goal, so is better energy infrastructure but stopping the damage to all of us not just child asthmatics...
This administration is anti-fossil fuel. There is very little chance they will promote fracking in Europe. Fracking would put a big chill on...
The fossil fuel and transportation industry, and those they own, will do everything to pretend they can to stop/stall this while pretending...
I don’t like Keystone. Extracting oil from tar sands leads to even higher carbon emissions than drilling and devastates the landscape. But, if approval is the price for a truly transformational clean energy policy, I’m in. You’re not going to move the vested interests without a trade, but it has to be a smart trade.
This is a grand bargain on energy that would advance our growth, national security and climate policy. If paired with similar efforts by our NATO allies, it would, in time, sharply reduce Putin’s ability to blackmail his neighbors, using energy. It would also protect Americans from price shocks, as both the sun and the wind are free, make our farmers, our coastal cities and our public health system much more resilient and tilt our energy policy toward exploiting our advantage — technology — rather than oil.
Nader Mousavizadeh, the co-founder of Macro Advisory Partners, recently recalled for me what a U.S. energy company executive once told him: “The one thing we’re never going to run out of is technology.” We need to play to our strength.
I would hate to see Obama spend the next two and a half years just counting healthcare.gov sign-ups. He needs to recognize that Putin’s Crimea adventure has created the opportunity for a legacy project of moving America into a clean energy future — a move that would make us stronger, Putin weaker and the world safer.
advantage.From Putin, a Blessing in Disguise
New York Times - 2 days ago
There are a lot of people who seem intent on restarting the Cold War — in both Moscow and Washington. I am not one of them. But if we're ...
Article 2 of 2
Vladimir's Not-Excellent Adventure
Putin promised stability for Russia but is delivering the opposite
With his speech annexing Crimea and saying Russia had no more territorial ambitions, the markets breathed a sigh of relief. But don't get your hopes up in the long run. Vladimir Putinneeds conflict with the outside world, specifically the United States.
He has lived a more dangerous political life than is appreciated. His first two elections were manipulated but not entirely unfree. He felt obliged to honor the Russian constitution to step down in 2008, though he managed to install a flunky in the presidency and then win the office back in a 2012 election widely seen as fraudulent, bringing thousands of protesters into the street.
At any point had these machinations gone wrong, he would have been out and the sine qua non of legitimacy for any successor government almost certainly would have been to bring him up on murder charges, the most serious involving the 1999 apartment bombings that killed nearly 300 ordinary Russians, blamed at the time on Chechen terrorists. Few believe that story anymore.
Mr. Putin long ago gave up the option of happy retirement from politics.
Which brings us to the oligarchs. Mikhail Prokhorov owns the Brooklyn Nets. Alexey Mordashov owns a Pennsylvania coal mine and steel mills in Michigan and Mississippi. Vagit Alekperov and Leonid Fedun own the LUKoil chain of U.S. gas stations. Dmitry Rybolovlev owns Donald Trump's former palace in Miami.
Russia's oligarchs own even more property in Europe, from London mansions to European football clubs to large industrial complexes and airlines, not to mention yachts and personal aircraft and bank accounts. These assets are also assets for Western leaders looking to corral Mr. Putin, but they are wasting assets given the direction Russia is heading.
Mr. Putin is using the Ukrainian crisis to crack down on the last of the independent media at home. He has jailed or intimidated dissenters and potential political rivals. He sent out word years ago to his entourage to reduce their overseas holdings to reduce foreign leverage over his regime.
If the West wants to do more than just go along for the ride—the policy of the past 15 years—the time to act is now while some semblance of an independent elite still exists. Block Russia's energy exports. Freeze its overseas holdings. Piecemeal actions just play into Mr. Putin's hands, giving him a cost-free Great Satan to justify his deepening dictatorship.
Forgive a Hitler analogy. In November 1941, engineer Fritz Todt, whom Hitler greatly admired, told the führer the war no longer could be won militarily and must be ended politically. As Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw tells it, Hitler listened carefully and then answered: "I can scarcely still see a way of coming politically to an end."
Hitler meant he could scarcely see a political solution that wouldn't be an end to Hitler. Luckily for Hitler, by the time Todt spoke, German society was fully militarized. The secret police were everywhere. All media were under Nazi control. The only elite left were an elite fully compromised by their own participation in Nazi crimes.
As far as we know Hitler has not been reincarnated in Vladimir Putin. Indeed, part of Mr. Putin's dialogue with the West has been a sotto voce claim to be a bulwark against a greater evil. In his press conference the other day, he might have been speaking of Russia, not Ukraine, when he warned-slash-pleaded: "This kind of chaos is the worst possible thing for countries with a shaky economy and unstable political system. You never know what kind of people events will bring to the fore. . . . Some upstart nationalist or semi-fascist lot [will] sprout up."
But look for the ride to get increasingly bumpy from here on. Mr. Putin faces election in 2018—and it's hard to believe he won't try to avoid it. Too many indicators are headed the wrong way: decline in Russia's energy clout, capital flight, failure to create a modern economy welcoming to global investors. He will also likely try to negate the constitution that would end his rule in 2024.
He can't kid himself that the apartment-bombing mystery will not at some point reignite, despite the murder or disappearance of Russian officials and dissidents who insisted on investigating an alleged ex-KGB role. And don't overinvest in talk of Russia's "legitimate interests." Russia's regime has interests but those interests are dictated by the nature of its regime. Its neighbors would not clamor for NATO membership if Russia were not ruled by an unpredictable kleptocracy. Mr. Putin would not fear his neighbors becoming prosperous and modern if he didn't fear his own citizens' demands for the same.
Even the most hard-headed (and forgiving) realist by now must suspect that Mr. Putin is destined to become increasingly a source of instability rather than of stability.
Vladimir's Not-Excellent Adventure
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
In The Wall Street Journal, Business World columnist Holman Jenkins writes that Putin promised stability but is delivering the opposite.
_____________________________________________
Blogging
Are You Disabled? Your Boss Needs to Know
New Regulations Require Federal Contractors to Ask Employees if They Have a Disability
Nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce will soon have to answer a personal question from the boss: Are you disabled?
U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing Co. BA -0.09% , Dell Inc. and AT&T Inc.,T +0.89% among some 40,000 others—ask their employees if they have a disability.
Those that don't employ a minimum of 7% disabled workers, or can't prove they are taking steps to achieve that goal, could face penalties and, in the most extreme cases, the loss of their contracts, according to a government official. The target applies to contractors with 50 or more employees or more than $50,000 in government work.
The Labor Department issued the rules as part of an effort to reduce the high jobless rate among people with disabilities; a similar initiative calls for an 8% hiring target for military veterans. Government officials say the targets are "aspirational" and not rigid quotas.
Employees aren't required to disclose their specific impairment.
Still, the rules have left contractors anxious about stepping on legal minefields. The Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, forbids companies to gather information on a worker's disability status, since the disclosures could lead to discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made an exception so that federal contractors can comply with the new rules.
Now, these companies face a dilemma. If not enough workers come forward to self-identify as disabled, company recruiters will need to retool their hiring practices to show they are trying to meet the targets. But employees may be uneasy disclosing health-related information to their bosses.
"The word disability means you're not able to do something. People don't want to be perceived that way," said Joe Gavigan, a 37-year-old engineer at contractor GE Aviation. Mr. Gavigan was paralyzed in 1999 while a student at the U.S. Air Force Academy and later co-founded an employee resource group for individuals with disabilities at the General Electric Co. GE +1.19% unit.
"You don't want your boss to see you as being limited in your capability," he said.
A 2008 amendment to the ADA expands the definition of disability. Alongside long-recognized impairments like blindness, the list now includes conditions such as cancer, diabetes, major depression, epilepsy and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Under that broader definition, many large companies may meet or surpass the 7% target already, said Daniel Yager, president of the HR Policy Association.
The number of disabled workers will be accurately captured only if employees are willing to raise their hands and be counted.
"A lot of employees don't see those issues as being properly categorized as disabilities. They see it as something they've learned to live with," said Chris Miller, vice president of employee relations at electric-power utilitySouthern Co. SO +0.86% , an Atlanta-based contractor with 26,000 workers.
At Intuitive Research and Technology Corp. in Huntsville, Ala., an engineering firm with contracts from the Department of Defense, 19% of workers have disabilities, said Juanita Phillips, director of human resources. Intuitive recruits and sponsors classes and lecture series at the nearby Redstone Arsenal, a U.S. Army post. The partnership helps Intuitive meet two compliance goals at once by hiring veterans, some of whom have disabilities because of military service-related injuries.
Still, Ms. Phillips said, "We have people who are visibly handicapped that choose not to self-identify as such."
The new guidelines were pushed in part by disability advocates, who say that previous government rules were ineffective at finding jobs for veterans and victims of illness or accident, even while technology has expanded the categories of jobs they are able to perform.
Individuals with disabilities had an unemployment rate of 14.3% in February, nearly twice that of the nondisabled population. They are more than three times less likely than other workers to be in the labor force at all, a figure that has hardly changed over the last five years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But even some of the rule's proponents admit that a groundswell of hiring from that pool is unlikely to occur if employers are able to prove that enough disabled workers are already on the payroll.
"Why have the target in there if it's not encouraging the hiring of people with disabilities?" asked Mike Aitken, vice president of government affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management.
Employers are gearing up now to implement the survey. Pharmaceutical giant MerckMRK -0.52% & Co., subject to the new rules because of supply contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies, plans to use its internal newsletters to address the changes with its 29,000 U.S. workers.
"We're putting our toe in the water on this and right now we're vetting" the materials, said David Gonzales, chief diversity officer. "Our focus is to make sure it's done in a very safe, private and confidential manner," he said, declining to provide further details.
While acknowledging that collecting the data is no easy task, Labor Department officials say the challenge itself will make workplaces more accommodating.
"It is a cultural change," said Patricia Shiu, director of the office that issued and oversees the rules. "Part of this is about creating an environment where people feel safe identifying that they are a person with a disability, that they won't be retaliated against if they ask for reasonable accommodations."
As a model, employers could look to their programs aimed at gays and lesbians, since sexual orientation, like most disabilities, isn't apparent without some form of self-disclosure, said Jill Houghton, executive director of the U.S. Business Leadership Network, a nonprofit group that assists companies with hiring people with disabilities.
The government has also established language for the self-identification surveys, which includes examples of qualified disabilities that workers may not realize fall under the ADA, such as cancer and major depression.
The three options: "yes," "no," and "I don't wish to answer."
Are You Disabled? Your Boss Needs to Know
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing and Dell, among ...
_________________________________________
FOR BLOGGING
Article 1 of 2
From Putin, a Blessing in Disguise
There are a lot of people who seem intent on restarting the Cold War — in both Moscow and Washington. I am not one of them. But if we’re going to have a new Cold War, then I have one condition: I want a new moonshot.
The Space Race and the technologies it produced weren’t purely an offshoot of the U.S.-Soviet missile competition, but they were certainly energized by that competition. Well, if we’re going to go at it again, this time I want an Earth Race.
I want America to lead in developing an energy policy that will weaken the oil-and-gas-autocracy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and, as a byproduct, produce the technologies that will mitigate climate change, make America a global technology and moral leader and ensure that the next generation can thrive here on Earth.
And as opposed to the stimulus/deficit debate, in the energy case, there really is now the raw material for a “Grand Bargain” between Democrats and Republicans — if President Obama wants to try to forge it. Such an energy grand strategy would be a first. It’s shocking how devoid of strategic intent U.S. energy policy has been. Both political parties have repeatedly let our economy be hostage to Middle Eastern and Latin American oil despots and to energy booms and busts.
The key ingredients for a new U.S. energy strategy, argues Hal Harvey, the C.E.O. of Energy Innovation, is, first, “to optimize affordability, reliability and clean together, rather than one at the expense of the other.” Second to “take advantage of new technology, we finally have the capacity to build an energy system we can be proud of, and by choosing this future, we will stimulate even more technologies that deliver energy that is indeed affordable, reliable and clean.” And, third, to “ensure that our natural gas bonanza actually ushers in a truly clean future.”
Here’s the deal Obama should offer oil-patch Republicans and Democrats. “You really want to open up the country to the exploration of natural gas? You really want to be free to export oil and gas to global markets — so long as it’s consistent with our national interests — and affect global markets in ways that could weaken Putinism? You really want the Keystone pipeline? Fine, I’ll give you all of it. And in return you’ll give me a bridge to a secure, clean-energy future for America.”
Harvey argues that such a deal should include the following: First, to ensure that natural gas is a boon rather than a curse, the oil and gas industry — and the lawmakers they control — have to accept national rules for extracting natural gas based on known best practices, including strategies that eliminate the leakage of methane, which is so much more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Second, we need to set a national clean energy standard for electricity. One popular approach is to require utilities to raise the fraction of their electricity from zero-carbon sources — such as wind, solar or nuclear — by, say, 2 percent per year. Such a standard creates a market for renewables, which drives down costs, and helps ensure that natural gas is a transition fuel that replaces coal, not solar, wind and other clean power sources. Thirty states have some variant of this, and it has been hugely successful in stimulating development of new technology.
Third, we have to accelerate energy efficiency and clean power technologies by building up our research and development programs to the levels they merit, probably triple today’s levels. This is the source of our long-term
There are a lot of people who seem intent on restarting the Cold War — in both Moscow and Washington. I am not one of them. But if we’re going to have a new Cold War, then I have one condition: I want a new moonshot.
The Space Race and the technologies it produced weren’t purely an offshoot of the U.S.-Soviet missile competition, but they were certainly energized by that competition. Well, if we’re going to go at it again, this time I want an Earth Race. I want America to lead in developing an energy policy that will weaken the oil-and-gas-autocracy of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and, as a byproduct, produce the technologies that will mitigate climate change, make America a global technology and moral leader and ensure that the next generation can thrive here on Earth.
And as opposed to the stimulus/deficit debate, in the energy case, there really is now the raw material for a “Grand Bargain” between Democrats and Republicans — if President Obama wants to try to forge it. Such an energy grand strategy would be a first. It’s shocking how devoid of strategic intent U.S. energy policy has been. Both political parties have repeatedly let our economy be hostage to Middle Eastern and Latin American oil despots and to energy booms and busts.
The key ingredients for a new U.S. energy strategy, argues Hal Harvey, the C.E.O. of Energy Innovation, is, first, “to optimize affordability, reliability and clean together, rather than one at the expense of the other.” Second to “take advantage of new technology, we finally have the capacity to build an energy system we can be proud of, and by choosing this future, we will stimulate even more technologies that deliver energy that is indeed affordable, reliable and clean.” And, third, to “ensure that our natural gas bonanza actually ushers in a truly clean future.”
Here’s the deal Obama should offer oil-patch Republicans and Democrats. “You really want to open up the country to the exploration of natural gas? You really want to be free to export oil and gas to global markets — so long as it’s consistent with our national interests — and affect global markets in ways that could weaken Putinism? You really want the Keystone pipeline? Fine, I’ll give you all of it. And in return you’ll give me a bridge to a secure, clean-energy future for America.”
Harvey argues that such a deal should include the following: First, to ensure that natural gas is a boon rather than a curse, the oil and gas industry — and the lawmakers they control — have to accept national rules for extracting natural gas based on known best practices, including strategies that eliminate the leakage of methane, which is so much more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
Second, we need to set a national clean energy standard for electricity. One popular approach is to require utilities to raise the fraction of their electricity from zero-carbon sources — such as wind, solar or nuclear — by, say, 2 percent per year. Such a standard creates a market for renewables, which drives down costs, and helps ensure that natural gas is a transition fuel that replaces coal, not solar, wind and other clean power sources. Thirty states have some variant of this, and it has been hugely successful in stimulating development of new technology.
Third, we have to accelerate energy efficiency and clean power technologies by building up our research and development programs to the levels they merit, probably triple today’s levels. This is the source of our long-term advantage.Fourth, we have to impose a revenue-neutral carbon tax — a Republican idea, championed by one of America’s most respected statesmen, Reagan’s secretary of state, George Shultz — that would replace payroll and corporate taxes.
Weakening Russian Oil is a noble goal, so is better energy infrastructure but stopping the damage to all of us not just child asthmatics...
This administration is anti-fossil fuel. There is very little chance they will promote fracking in Europe. Fracking would put a big chill on...
The fossil fuel and transportation industry, and those they own, will do everything to pretend they can to stop/stall this while pretending...
I don’t like Keystone. Extracting oil from tar sands leads to even higher carbon emissions than drilling and devastates the landscape. But, if approval is the price for a truly transformational clean energy policy, I’m in. You’re not going to move the vested interests without a trade, but it has to be a smart trade.
This is a grand bargain on energy that would advance our growth, national security and climate policy. If paired with similar efforts by our NATO allies, it would, in time, sharply reduce Putin’s ability to blackmail his neighbors, using energy. It would also protect Americans from price shocks, as both the sun and the wind are free, make our farmers, our coastal cities and our public health system much more resilient and tilt our energy policy toward exploiting our advantage — technology — rather than oil.
Nader Mousavizadeh, the co-founder of Macro Advisory Partners, recently recalled for me what a U.S. energy company executive once told him: “The one thing we’re never going to run out of is technology.” We need to play to our strength.
I would hate to see Obama spend the next two and a half years just counting healthcare.gov sign-ups. He needs to recognize that Putin’s Crimea adventure has created the opportunity for a legacy project of moving America into a clean energy future — a move that would make us stronger, Putin weaker and the world safer.
advantage.From Putin, a Blessing in Disguise
New York Times - 2 days ago
There are a lot of people who seem intent on restarting the Cold War — in both Moscow and Washington. I am not one of them. But if we're ...
Article 2 of 2
Vladimir's Not-Excellent Adventure
Putin promised stability for Russia but is delivering the opposite
With his speech annexing Crimea and saying Russia had no more territorial ambitions, the markets breathed a sigh of relief. But don't get your hopes up in the long run. Vladimir Putinneeds conflict with the outside world, specifically the United States.
He has lived a more dangerous political life than is appreciated. His first two elections were manipulated but not entirely unfree. He felt obliged to honor the Russian constitution to step down in 2008, though he managed to install a flunky in the presidency and then win the office back in a 2012 election widely seen as fraudulent, bringing thousands of protesters into the street.
At any point had these machinations gone wrong, he would have been out and the sine qua non of legitimacy for any successor government almost certainly would have been to bring him up on murder charges, the most serious involving the 1999 apartment bombings that killed nearly 300 ordinary Russians, blamed at the time on Chechen terrorists. Few believe that story anymore.
Mr. Putin long ago gave up the option of happy retirement from politics.
Which brings us to the oligarchs. Mikhail Prokhorov owns the Brooklyn Nets. Alexey Mordashov owns a Pennsylvania coal mine and steel mills in Michigan and Mississippi. Vagit Alekperov and Leonid Fedun own the LUKoil chain of U.S. gas stations. Dmitry Rybolovlev owns Donald Trump's former palace in Miami.
Russia's oligarchs own even more property in Europe, from London mansions to European football clubs to large industrial complexes and airlines, not to mention yachts and personal aircraft and bank accounts. These assets are also assets for Western leaders looking to corral Mr. Putin, but they are wasting assets given the direction Russia is heading.
Mr. Putin is using the Ukrainian crisis to crack down on the last of the independent media at home. He has jailed or intimidated dissenters and potential political rivals. He sent out word years ago to his entourage to reduce their overseas holdings to reduce foreign leverage over his regime.
If the West wants to do more than just go along for the ride—the policy of the past 15 years—the time to act is now while some semblance of an independent elite still exists. Block Russia's energy exports. Freeze its overseas holdings. Piecemeal actions just play into Mr. Putin's hands, giving him a cost-free Great Satan to justify his deepening dictatorship.
Forgive a Hitler analogy. In November 1941, engineer Fritz Todt, whom Hitler greatly admired, told the führer the war no longer could be won militarily and must be ended politically. As Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw tells it, Hitler listened carefully and then answered: "I can scarcely still see a way of coming politically to an end."
Hitler meant he could scarcely see a political solution that wouldn't be an end to Hitler. Luckily for Hitler, by the time Todt spoke, German society was fully militarized. The secret police were everywhere. All media were under Nazi control. The only elite left were an elite fully compromised by their own participation in Nazi crimes.
As far as we know Hitler has not been reincarnated in Vladimir Putin. Indeed, part of Mr. Putin's dialogue with the West has been a sotto voce claim to be a bulwark against a greater evil. In his press conference the other day, he might have been speaking of Russia, not Ukraine, when he warned-slash-pleaded: "This kind of chaos is the worst possible thing for countries with a shaky economy and unstable political system. You never know what kind of people events will bring to the fore. . . . Some upstart nationalist or semi-fascist lot [will] sprout up."
But look for the ride to get increasingly bumpy from here on. Mr. Putin faces election in 2018—and it's hard to believe he won't try to avoid it. Too many indicators are headed the wrong way: decline in Russia's energy clout, capital flight, failure to create a modern economy welcoming to global investors. He will also likely try to negate the constitution that would end his rule in 2024.
He can't kid himself that the apartment-bombing mystery will not at some point reignite, despite the murder or disappearance of Russian officials and dissidents who insisted on investigating an alleged ex-KGB role. And don't overinvest in talk of Russia's "legitimate interests." Russia's regime has interests but those interests are dictated by the nature of its regime. Its neighbors would not clamor for NATO membership if Russia were not ruled by an unpredictable kleptocracy. Mr. Putin would not fear his neighbors becoming prosperous and modern if he didn't fear his own citizens' demands for the same.
Even the most hard-headed (and forgiving) realist by now must suspect that Mr. Putin is destined to become increasingly a source of instability rather than of stability.
Vladimir's Not-Excellent Adventure
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
In The Wall Street Journal, Business World columnist Holman Jenkins writes that Putin promised stability but is delivering the opposite.
_____________________________________________
Blogging
Are You Disabled? Your Boss Needs to Know
New Regulations Require Federal Contractors to Ask Employees if They Have a Disability
Nearly a quarter of the U.S. workforce will soon have to answer a personal question from the boss: Are you disabled?
U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing Co. BA -0.09% , Dell Inc. and AT&T Inc.,T +0.89% among some 40,000 others—ask their employees if they have a disability.
Those that don't employ a minimum of 7% disabled workers, or can't prove they are taking steps to achieve that goal, could face penalties and, in the most extreme cases, the loss of their contracts, according to a government official. The target applies to contractors with 50 or more employees or more than $50,000 in government work.
The Labor Department issued the rules as part of an effort to reduce the high jobless rate among people with disabilities; a similar initiative calls for an 8% hiring target for military veterans. Government officials say the targets are "aspirational" and not rigid quotas.
Employees aren't required to disclose their specific impairment.
Still, the rules have left contractors anxious about stepping on legal minefields. The Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, forbids companies to gather information on a worker's disability status, since the disclosures could lead to discrimination. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made an exception so that federal contractors can comply with the new rules.
Now, these companies face a dilemma. If not enough workers come forward to self-identify as disabled, company recruiters will need to retool their hiring practices to show they are trying to meet the targets. But employees may be uneasy disclosing health-related information to their bosses.
"The word disability means you're not able to do something. People don't want to be perceived that way," said Joe Gavigan, a 37-year-old engineer at contractor GE Aviation. Mr. Gavigan was paralyzed in 1999 while a student at the U.S. Air Force Academy and later co-founded an employee resource group for individuals with disabilities at the General Electric Co. GE +1.19% unit.
"You don't want your boss to see you as being limited in your capability," he said.
A 2008 amendment to the ADA expands the definition of disability. Alongside long-recognized impairments like blindness, the list now includes conditions such as cancer, diabetes, major depression, epilepsy and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Under that broader definition, many large companies may meet or surpass the 7% target already, said Daniel Yager, president of the HR Policy Association.
The number of disabled workers will be accurately captured only if employees are willing to raise their hands and be counted.
"A lot of employees don't see those issues as being properly categorized as disabilities. They see it as something they've learned to live with," said Chris Miller, vice president of employee relations at electric-power utilitySouthern Co. SO +0.86% , an Atlanta-based contractor with 26,000 workers.
At Intuitive Research and Technology Corp. in Huntsville, Ala., an engineering firm with contracts from the Department of Defense, 19% of workers have disabilities, said Juanita Phillips, director of human resources. Intuitive recruits and sponsors classes and lecture series at the nearby Redstone Arsenal, a U.S. Army post. The partnership helps Intuitive meet two compliance goals at once by hiring veterans, some of whom have disabilities because of military service-related injuries.
Still, Ms. Phillips said, "We have people who are visibly handicapped that choose not to self-identify as such."
The new guidelines were pushed in part by disability advocates, who say that previous government rules were ineffective at finding jobs for veterans and victims of illness or accident, even while technology has expanded the categories of jobs they are able to perform.
Individuals with disabilities had an unemployment rate of 14.3% in February, nearly twice that of the nondisabled population. They are more than three times less likely than other workers to be in the labor force at all, a figure that has hardly changed over the last five years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But even some of the rule's proponents admit that a groundswell of hiring from that pool is unlikely to occur if employers are able to prove that enough disabled workers are already on the payroll.
"Why have the target in there if it's not encouraging the hiring of people with disabilities?" asked Mike Aitken, vice president of government affairs at the Society for Human Resource Management.
Employers are gearing up now to implement the survey. Pharmaceutical giant MerckMRK -0.52% & Co., subject to the new rules because of supply contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies, plans to use its internal newsletters to address the changes with its 29,000 U.S. workers.
"We're putting our toe in the water on this and right now we're vetting" the materials, said David Gonzales, chief diversity officer. "Our focus is to make sure it's done in a very safe, private and confidential manner," he said, declining to provide further details.
While acknowledging that collecting the data is no easy task, Labor Department officials say the challenge itself will make workplaces more accommodating.
"It is a cultural change," said Patricia Shiu, director of the office that issued and oversees the rules. "Part of this is about creating an environment where people feel safe identifying that they are a person with a disability, that they won't be retaliated against if they ask for reasonable accommodations."
As a model, employers could look to their programs aimed at gays and lesbians, since sexual orientation, like most disabilities, isn't apparent without some form of self-disclosure, said Jill Houghton, executive director of the U.S. Business Leadership Network, a nonprofit group that assists companies with hiring people with disabilities.
The government has also established language for the self-identification surveys, which includes examples of qualified disabilities that workers may not realize fall under the ADA, such as cancer and major depression.
The three options: "yes," "no," and "I don't wish to answer."
Are You Disabled? Your Boss Needs to Know
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
U.S. regulations going into effect next week require for the first time that federal contractors—a group that includes Boeing and Dell, among ...
_________________________________________
Blogging
At These Prisons, Inmates Stage
Their Own Dog Day Afternoons
Canines Go to Clink for Remedial Training, Boarders Pad In, Too; Pax's Lap of Luxury
GIG HARBOR, Wash.— The penitentiary here holds more souls than it was ever designed for. Some of the residents are loud and "mouthy," needing lots of one-on-one attention; a few just can't keep still.
Others just want a good tummy rub.
Home to female offenders, including murderers, Gig Harbor is one of several prisons across the country that welcome dogs with a bad rap.
The Washington Corrections Center for Women here pioneered the concept of matching abandoned, abused and neglected dogs with offenders, many of whom come from backgrounds almost as dire.
Launched in 1981, the program has blossomed into a plethora of nonprofits bearing names like Colorado Cell Dogs, Death Row Dogs and New Leash on Life—all of which rescue dogs from crowded shelters. From there, they get straightened out by prisoners.
With repetition, rehabilitation blooms into skill sets a dog can really be proud of. From fetching tennis balls con-canines learn to pick up house keys for the wheelchair bound. Starting with leash-tugging exercises, a dog may learn to help fallen humans to their feet.
Offenders here earn their way into the dog program by remaining infraction-free during their incarceration. They also earn $1.41 an hour—a good wage in an institution where kitchen jobs or swinging a mop pays less than a third of that.
"This is what gets me through," says Alvinita Stuart, a convicted murderer whose sentence ends in 2016.
Some also get the benefit of canine therapy, learning to talk out their problems with a psychologist while stroking a well-mannered pooch at their sides.
Ms. Stuart, 49, says she becomes "synchronized" with each dog in her care.
"One taught me how to control myself," she says. "I learned I had to be fair. I couldn't be inconsistent."
She says the best part is having a dog to take back to her unit each night. Recently, she was paired with Zuma, a Lab-Pit Bull mix, whom she is training to be a service dog.
At Gig Harbor, the dogs, just like the inmates, are given the chance to redeem themselves.
Take Pax. An exuberant Golden Retriever, he flunked out of a Wisconsin prison program after being branded as incorrigible. Former corrections officer Teresa Crutchfield remembers the day last year when Pax first loped into her unit at Gig Harbor. "He'd grab everything with his mouth and wouldn't let go," she recalls.
But after being matched with a convicted murderer, Pax got care and attention around the clock. He graduated at the top of his class five months ago and is out of the disciplinary doghouse. A Catholic nun, Sister Pauline Quinn, hired Pax to replace her retiring Doberman as "spokes-dog" for her Bridges and Pathways of Courage program, which pairs problem pooches with the convicts who train them.
Dogs with exceptional aptitude like Pax can graduate to become service dogs for the disabled. Some are companions to elderly shut-ins, while others aid children with autism. A few find work within prison walls, sniffing out contraband narcotics.
Two Gig Harbor alumni have more exotic assignments. They now work for the University of Washington's Conservation Canines—a corps of high-energy dogs who enjoy nothing more than bounding through the wilderness sniffing for the droppings of endangered species.
This joint also takes in "civilians"—pets from nearby households whose owners prefer placing them in a prison rather than the confinement of a traditional kennel.
Gig Harbor's commercial unit lets locals lodge dogs for $19 a day, cheaper than at any private kennel nearby. For a fee of $25 to $80 per dog, the facility offers spa services, too: a bath, blowout, nail grooming and even a specialty cut. Grooming clerk Amanda Shockey, 45, says owners request special puffball styles (for their poodles), or sometimes a "faux hawk"—a fake mohawk to crown the head.
"Having the exposure to the animals gives you a connectivity you wouldn't have," says Ms. Shockey, a convicted murderer who won't be eligible for release for nearly two more decades. "Seeing them get a second chance and being part of that second chance gives me greater hope for my future as well as theirs."
Retired educator Don Weitz of nearby Fox Island, Wash., recently dropped off three-year old Arrow, a Greyhound, for his latest stay. "The first time he came he was so whiny, from the separation and all," recalls Mr. Weitz. "We heard he stayed with an offender, which calmed him down."
He says both dog and master like that Arrow shacks up with a human, instead of being left alone in a cage. "They treat him so well," he says. "Plus we know he'll never escape."
At some prisons, offenders even train dogs for local pet owners. The Friends for Folks program at the Lexington Correctional Center south of Oklahoma City takes in civilians' dogs for remedial courses.
"The owner brings the dog, brings the dog food. It's basic obedience but we might offer a little extra. Like trick training, or Frisbee dog," program coordinator Lee Fairchild explains. "Let's say they chase a cat. We get them out of that."
The program, which accepts donations, has a two-year waiting list. Most people give $100 for a month of training.
But bargains aren't all that bind prison programs to their communities. It's the bridges that form between two worlds that rarely merge.
"The minute we get to the parking lot at the prison, he knows where we are," says John Sharp, a construction manager who is owner of a Shih Tzu named Baxter. "He typically spends all his time with the inmates."
"Baxter is very high maintenance," says Yolanda Pouncey, a convicted burglar who isn't due to be released until 2026. The 39-year-old cuddles Baxter in her sleep, wrapping strong tattooed arms around her tiny charge.
The inmate brushes back a tear as she explains how she feels having a dog that adores her, too.
"They're so loving, so understanding," she says. "There are days when I come in all down on myself. But the minute that dog looks up and smiles at me, it just takes that all away."
At These Prisons, Inmates Stage Their Own Dog Day Afternoons.
The Wall Street Journal
Prison programs match abandoned, abused and neglected dogs with offenders, many of whom come from backgrounds almost as dire, ...
___________________________________
At These Prisons, Inmates Stage
Their Own Dog Day Afternoons
Canines Go to Clink for Remedial Training, Boarders Pad In, Too; Pax's Lap of Luxury
GIG HARBOR, Wash.— The penitentiary here holds more souls than it was ever designed for. Some of the residents are loud and "mouthy," needing lots of one-on-one attention; a few just can't keep still.
Others just want a good tummy rub.
Home to female offenders, including murderers, Gig Harbor is one of several prisons across the country that welcome dogs with a bad rap.
The Washington Corrections Center for Women here pioneered the concept of matching abandoned, abused and neglected dogs with offenders, many of whom come from backgrounds almost as dire.
Launched in 1981, the program has blossomed into a plethora of nonprofits bearing names like Colorado Cell Dogs, Death Row Dogs and New Leash on Life—all of which rescue dogs from crowded shelters. From there, they get straightened out by prisoners.
With repetition, rehabilitation blooms into skill sets a dog can really be proud of. From fetching tennis balls con-canines learn to pick up house keys for the wheelchair bound. Starting with leash-tugging exercises, a dog may learn to help fallen humans to their feet.
Offenders here earn their way into the dog program by remaining infraction-free during their incarceration. They also earn $1.41 an hour—a good wage in an institution where kitchen jobs or swinging a mop pays less than a third of that.
"This is what gets me through," says Alvinita Stuart, a convicted murderer whose sentence ends in 2016.
Some also get the benefit of canine therapy, learning to talk out their problems with a psychologist while stroking a well-mannered pooch at their sides.
Ms. Stuart, 49, says she becomes "synchronized" with each dog in her care.
"One taught me how to control myself," she says. "I learned I had to be fair. I couldn't be inconsistent."
She says the best part is having a dog to take back to her unit each night. Recently, she was paired with Zuma, a Lab-Pit Bull mix, whom she is training to be a service dog.
At Gig Harbor, the dogs, just like the inmates, are given the chance to redeem themselves.
Take Pax. An exuberant Golden Retriever, he flunked out of a Wisconsin prison program after being branded as incorrigible. Former corrections officer Teresa Crutchfield remembers the day last year when Pax first loped into her unit at Gig Harbor. "He'd grab everything with his mouth and wouldn't let go," she recalls.
But after being matched with a convicted murderer, Pax got care and attention around the clock. He graduated at the top of his class five months ago and is out of the disciplinary doghouse. A Catholic nun, Sister Pauline Quinn, hired Pax to replace her retiring Doberman as "spokes-dog" for her Bridges and Pathways of Courage program, which pairs problem pooches with the convicts who train them.
Dogs with exceptional aptitude like Pax can graduate to become service dogs for the disabled. Some are companions to elderly shut-ins, while others aid children with autism. A few find work within prison walls, sniffing out contraband narcotics.
Two Gig Harbor alumni have more exotic assignments. They now work for the University of Washington's Conservation Canines—a corps of high-energy dogs who enjoy nothing more than bounding through the wilderness sniffing for the droppings of endangered species.
This joint also takes in "civilians"—pets from nearby households whose owners prefer placing them in a prison rather than the confinement of a traditional kennel.
Gig Harbor's commercial unit lets locals lodge dogs for $19 a day, cheaper than at any private kennel nearby. For a fee of $25 to $80 per dog, the facility offers spa services, too: a bath, blowout, nail grooming and even a specialty cut. Grooming clerk Amanda Shockey, 45, says owners request special puffball styles (for their poodles), or sometimes a "faux hawk"—a fake mohawk to crown the head.
"Having the exposure to the animals gives you a connectivity you wouldn't have," says Ms. Shockey, a convicted murderer who won't be eligible for release for nearly two more decades. "Seeing them get a second chance and being part of that second chance gives me greater hope for my future as well as theirs."
Retired educator Don Weitz of nearby Fox Island, Wash., recently dropped off three-year old Arrow, a Greyhound, for his latest stay. "The first time he came he was so whiny, from the separation and all," recalls Mr. Weitz. "We heard he stayed with an offender, which calmed him down."
He says both dog and master like that Arrow shacks up with a human, instead of being left alone in a cage. "They treat him so well," he says. "Plus we know he'll never escape."
At some prisons, offenders even train dogs for local pet owners. The Friends for Folks program at the Lexington Correctional Center south of Oklahoma City takes in civilians' dogs for remedial courses.
"The owner brings the dog, brings the dog food. It's basic obedience but we might offer a little extra. Like trick training, or Frisbee dog," program coordinator Lee Fairchild explains. "Let's say they chase a cat. We get them out of that."
The program, which accepts donations, has a two-year waiting list. Most people give $100 for a month of training.
But bargains aren't all that bind prison programs to their communities. It's the bridges that form between two worlds that rarely merge.
"The minute we get to the parking lot at the prison, he knows where we are," says John Sharp, a construction manager who is owner of a Shih Tzu named Baxter. "He typically spends all his time with the inmates."
"Baxter is very high maintenance," says Yolanda Pouncey, a convicted burglar who isn't due to be released until 2026. The 39-year-old cuddles Baxter in her sleep, wrapping strong tattooed arms around her tiny charge.
The inmate brushes back a tear as she explains how she feels having a dog that adores her, too.
"They're so loving, so understanding," she says. "There are days when I come in all down on myself. But the minute that dog looks up and smiles at me, it just takes that all away."
At These Prisons, Inmates Stage Their Own Dog Day Afternoons.
The Wall Street Journal
Prison programs match abandoned, abused and neglected dogs with offenders, many of whom come from backgrounds almost as dire, ...
___________________________________
Important info for every person to study & apply
To guide us all to succeed better,
next, close to the beginning of this tab,
the editors of STAF, Inc. have placed less known but important information
about sleep
- Seven (7) articles next below -
________________
The proper sleep information is the key for keeping your health,
having more creative brainpower & succeeding higher in life
also in financial matters
Introduction
(Articles 1 - 7 of 7 below)
Sleep & sleeping enough hours is much more important than most of us know for keeping our good health, for our good, creative brain functioning & thus for our life success financially, for our life happiness and of course, for our longer life.
Not sleeping enough, called sleep deprivation, will cause sicknesses and suffering. Sleep deprivation is a good technique in war time torturing and is also used by terrorists as the victim loses his/her will power sooner or later.
The majority of people in the developed countries do NOT sleep enough and keep harmful technology next or close to their beds sending sickening radiation to the body system. Lack of proper hours of sleep will cause weight gain, overweight & obesity - all these leading to the rampant sickness level in the U.S. and worldwide. Why? Because when we do not sleep enough and/or sleep next to harmful elements, we have more & more accumulation of toxic materials in our body causing slowly but surely just any type of disease.
It is estimated that in the U.S. sleep deprivation causes annually 63 billion dollars in lost productivity.
STAF, Inc. urges you to apply the information given below in these sleep articles for your health, wealth & success.
In the same way STAF, Inc. urges you to apply the information in any article you study in this extensive website.
Quotation
" Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
___________________
To guide us all to succeed better,
next, close to the beginning of this tab,
the editors of STAF, Inc. have placed less known but important information
about sleep
- Seven (7) articles next below -
________________
The proper sleep information is the key for keeping your health,
having more creative brainpower & succeeding higher in life
also in financial matters
Introduction
(Articles 1 - 7 of 7 below)
Sleep & sleeping enough hours is much more important than most of us know for keeping our good health, for our good, creative brain functioning & thus for our life success financially, for our life happiness and of course, for our longer life.
Not sleeping enough, called sleep deprivation, will cause sicknesses and suffering. Sleep deprivation is a good technique in war time torturing and is also used by terrorists as the victim loses his/her will power sooner or later.
The majority of people in the developed countries do NOT sleep enough and keep harmful technology next or close to their beds sending sickening radiation to the body system. Lack of proper hours of sleep will cause weight gain, overweight & obesity - all these leading to the rampant sickness level in the U.S. and worldwide. Why? Because when we do not sleep enough and/or sleep next to harmful elements, we have more & more accumulation of toxic materials in our body causing slowly but surely just any type of disease.
It is estimated that in the U.S. sleep deprivation causes annually 63 billion dollars in lost productivity.
STAF, Inc. urges you to apply the information given below in these sleep articles for your health, wealth & success.
In the same way STAF, Inc. urges you to apply the information in any article you study in this extensive website.
Quotation
" Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
___________________
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Handle your sleep as wisely as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
See the facts below
in 6 articles
Questions about sleep
Sleep Article 1 of 7
(Articles 2 - 6 of 7 next below)
If you are not getting enough sleep (see below what is enough), you have thrown your metabolism out of order.
Then excessive, unhealthy amounts of toxic residues stay in your immune system & in your cells leading to any type of sickness: cancer, diabetes, cancer, asthma, allergies, arthritis with painful inflammation and stiffness of the joints,
etc., and, after much suffering, finally to an early death. What is your choice? Success or failure?
When you sleep enough then also your brain cells stay clean leading you to wiser decisions and to a higher intelligence. There is an article below informing you how the brain cleans itself during your sleep - but fully only when you sleep enough.
With the cleaner brain you can much easier become financially successful including becoming a (multi-millonaire.
The investment program for your financial freedom can be started with only $50 a month.
With STAF, Inc.'s guidance & programs you have a real chance for success - it starts from learning to master the healthy lifestyle.
STAF, Inc. is the leading, new organization in all these matters nationwide & worldwide.
Send your donation to STAF, Inc.
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help. Donation instructions in the Home page.
To delay may mean to forget.
* Your donation will ease human suffering and turn lives to victory, including yours. *
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains working & become financially rich, even a millionaire?
A: The answer in the next 6 (six) line below
Most people in the developed world do not sleep enough. A baby sleeps close to 24 h because the growth hormone that helps the body stay healthy develops during the sleep.
The same way, the growth hormone develops also in every human being, in every adult no matter what the chronological age. The growth hormone is the key to a healthy body, to a healthy mind & to a longer, healthier life.
(1) A toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) an older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenagers about 10 hours and (4) the adults about 7 - 8 hours.
The most recent science has found out how the brain cleans all clutter & poisonous stuff away from the brain during our sleep. If we do not sleep enough, the dirt stays in the brain and makes us less effective in all we do and finally makes us sick. The the leftover toxic dirt goes to the immune system and from there step-by step allover in our body in every cell finally causing slowly but surely any disease.
Sleeping enough can make us all also financially richer because in our cleaner brains we have more brain power to figure out how. See below the next science article giving you more details about the brain cleaning during sleep.
It also matters that your sleeping area is quiet, dark and not surrounded with modern technology - they are a source for harmful radiation causing diseases.
The only 2 things you do in your bedroom as an adult are (1) you make love and (2) you sleep.
Watch the TV, the movies and listen to the radio in some other room. Teach your children to keep their technology as far from their beds as they just can. Monitor your children that they sleep and do not play with the technology in their beds.
Because sleeping enough in a peaceful bedroom is so very important for the human health & success in life we place the sleep information at the beginning of this tab to benefit us all.
STAF, Inc. has an investment guidance program how you and your family can become a millionaire family. But first learn to sleep enough in order to have your brains co-operating with your good life plans to stay healthy and to become a millionaire.
AND: guide your children to learn and to do the same .
For investment guidance information
email: [email protected]
call: 203-788-1876
Q. Is it best to sleep on your back, side or stomach?
A. “This mainly matters if you have sleep apnea, which is often worse on your back,” said Dr. Carl W. Bazil, director of the division of epilepsy and sleep at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. “Snoring is often worse as well, as many bed partners can attest.”
click: Sleep apnea
click: What Is Sleep Apnea? - NHLBI, NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/.../sleepapnea/
Otherwise, for adults, it is much more important what position is most comfortable, Dr. Bazil said. Even in a favored position, though, nerve compression can occur if you do not move during sleep. That explains why you sometimes awaken with a bit of numbness for a few minutes. Fortunately, the body tends to reposition itself naturally.
For infants, the advice is different. Since 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said that
click: babies should sleep on their backs, even if being put down for a short nap.
Although causality has not been shown, sleeping on the stomach is one of the known risk factors associated with sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, along with general stress, exposure to tobacco smoke and overheating.
After the academy’s widely publicized “Back to Sleep” campaign was begun in 1994, a 1998 study found that the prevalence of infants placed on their stomachs declined by 66 percent, and the rate of SIDS fell about 38 percent.
Click green:
Safe to Sleep® Public Education Campaign - NICHDwww.nichd.nih.gov/sts/Pages/default.aspxEunice Kennedy Shriver...
Safe to Sleep® started in 1994 as the Back to Sleep campaign, with the goal of educating parents, caregivers, and health care providers about ways to reduce ...
Click green below for hundreds of Q & A Science Columns
(Article 2 of 7 next below)
____________________________
Handle your sleep as wisely as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
See the facts below
in 6 articles
Questions about sleep
Sleep Article 1 of 7
(Articles 2 - 6 of 7 next below)
If you are not getting enough sleep (see below what is enough), you have thrown your metabolism out of order.
Then excessive, unhealthy amounts of toxic residues stay in your immune system & in your cells leading to any type of sickness: cancer, diabetes, cancer, asthma, allergies, arthritis with painful inflammation and stiffness of the joints,
etc., and, after much suffering, finally to an early death. What is your choice? Success or failure?
When you sleep enough then also your brain cells stay clean leading you to wiser decisions and to a higher intelligence. There is an article below informing you how the brain cleans itself during your sleep - but fully only when you sleep enough.
With the cleaner brain you can much easier become financially successful including becoming a (multi-millonaire.
The investment program for your financial freedom can be started with only $50 a month.
With STAF, Inc.'s guidance & programs you have a real chance for success - it starts from learning to master the healthy lifestyle.
STAF, Inc. is the leading, new organization in all these matters nationwide & worldwide.
Send your donation to STAF, Inc.
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help. Donation instructions in the Home page.
To delay may mean to forget.
* Your donation will ease human suffering and turn lives to victory, including yours. *
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains working & become financially rich, even a millionaire?
A: The answer in the next 6 (six) line below
Most people in the developed world do not sleep enough. A baby sleeps close to 24 h because the growth hormone that helps the body stay healthy develops during the sleep.
The same way, the growth hormone develops also in every human being, in every adult no matter what the chronological age. The growth hormone is the key to a healthy body, to a healthy mind & to a longer, healthier life.
(1) A toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) an older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenagers about 10 hours and (4) the adults about 7 - 8 hours.
The most recent science has found out how the brain cleans all clutter & poisonous stuff away from the brain during our sleep. If we do not sleep enough, the dirt stays in the brain and makes us less effective in all we do and finally makes us sick. The the leftover toxic dirt goes to the immune system and from there step-by step allover in our body in every cell finally causing slowly but surely any disease.
Sleeping enough can make us all also financially richer because in our cleaner brains we have more brain power to figure out how. See below the next science article giving you more details about the brain cleaning during sleep.
It also matters that your sleeping area is quiet, dark and not surrounded with modern technology - they are a source for harmful radiation causing diseases.
The only 2 things you do in your bedroom as an adult are (1) you make love and (2) you sleep.
Watch the TV, the movies and listen to the radio in some other room. Teach your children to keep their technology as far from their beds as they just can. Monitor your children that they sleep and do not play with the technology in their beds.
Because sleeping enough in a peaceful bedroom is so very important for the human health & success in life we place the sleep information at the beginning of this tab to benefit us all.
STAF, Inc. has an investment guidance program how you and your family can become a millionaire family. But first learn to sleep enough in order to have your brains co-operating with your good life plans to stay healthy and to become a millionaire.
AND: guide your children to learn and to do the same .
For investment guidance information
email: [email protected]
call: 203-788-1876
Q. Is it best to sleep on your back, side or stomach?
A. “This mainly matters if you have sleep apnea, which is often worse on your back,” said Dr. Carl W. Bazil, director of the division of epilepsy and sleep at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. “Snoring is often worse as well, as many bed partners can attest.”
click: Sleep apnea
click: What Is Sleep Apnea? - NHLBI, NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/.../sleepapnea/
Otherwise, for adults, it is much more important what position is most comfortable, Dr. Bazil said. Even in a favored position, though, nerve compression can occur if you do not move during sleep. That explains why you sometimes awaken with a bit of numbness for a few minutes. Fortunately, the body tends to reposition itself naturally.
For infants, the advice is different. Since 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said that
click: babies should sleep on their backs, even if being put down for a short nap.
Although causality has not been shown, sleeping on the stomach is one of the known risk factors associated with sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, along with general stress, exposure to tobacco smoke and overheating.
After the academy’s widely publicized “Back to Sleep” campaign was begun in 1994, a 1998 study found that the prevalence of infants placed on their stomachs declined by 66 percent, and the rate of SIDS fell about 38 percent.
Click green:
Safe to Sleep® Public Education Campaign - NICHDwww.nichd.nih.gov/sts/Pages/default.aspxEunice Kennedy Shriver...
Safe to Sleep® started in 1994 as the Back to Sleep campaign, with the goal of educating parents, caregivers, and health care providers about ways to reduce ...
Click green below for hundreds of Q & A Science Columns
(Article 2 of 7 next below)
____________________________
click: All About Sleep
Sleep Article 2 of 7
(Article 1 of 7 next above)
An important article for every person to study
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Sleep - The Ultimate Brainwasher?
Published in Journal Science - Date: 17 October 2013
Not sleeping enough can also cause weight gain, lead to overweight & obesity
causing other sicknesses & leading to more suffering & give a shorter life
________________
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains
working & become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 7 above
and here:
(1) baby: almost 24 h, (2) toddler: 12-15 h, (3) older child 10 to 11 - 12 h, (4) teenager about 10 h and
(5) adult about 7 - 8 hours
_________________
Click: Sleep: The Ultimate Brainwasher? | Science/AAAS | Newsnews.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/.../sleep-ultimate-brainwashe...Science
Oct 17, 2013 - Scientists show that our brains clean themselves while we slumber.
Brainwashing When mice sleep, fluid-filled channels (pale blue) between neurons expand & flush out waste
Click Sleep
Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself.
Most physiologists agree that sleep has come to serve many different purposes, ranging from memory consolidation to the regulation of metabolism and the immune system. While the "core" purposes of biological functions such as breathing and eating are easy to understand, however, scientists have never agreed on any such original purpose for sleeping. The new study, by Maiken Nedergaard and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York, provides what Charles Czeisler, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston, calls the “first direct experimental evidence at the molecular level” for what could be sleep’s basic purpose: click: It clears the brain of toxic metabolic byproducts.
The new work, published online in Science click: Journals - Science, “fits with a long-standing view that sleep is for recovery—that something is paid back or cleaned out,” says David Dinges, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. It builds on Nedergaard's recent discovery, described in Science Translational Medicine, of a network of microscopic,
click: fluid-filled channels that clears toxins from the brain, much as the lymphatic system clears out metabolic waste products from the rest of the body. Instead of carrying lymph, this system transports waste-laden cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Before the discovery of this "glymphatic system," as Nedergaard has dubbed it, the brain's only known method for disposing of cellular trash was to break down and recycle it within individual cells, she says.
click: Cerebrospinal fluid
In the original work, Nedergaard’s group showed that glia, the brain's non-neuronal cells, control the flow of CSF through channels in their cell membranes. click: Neuroglia
"If we delete the channels in glial cells, the flow almost stops," Nedergaard says. Because the transport of fluid across cell membranes requires a lot of energy, Nedergaard and her team had a hunch that the brain would not be able to both clean and process sensory information at the same time and decided to test whether the activity of the glymphatic system*) changed during sleep. Lulu Xie, the new study's first author, spent the next 2 years training mice to relax and fall asleep on a two-photon microscope, which can image the movement of dye through living tissue. *) click: Glymphatic system
Once Xie was sure the mice were asleep, based on their EEG brain activity, she injected a green dye into their CSF through a catheterlike device in their necks. After half an hour, she awakened them by touching their tails and injected a red dye that the two-photon microscope could easily distinguish from the green. By tracking the movements of red and green dye throughout the brain, the team found that large amounts of CSF flowed into the brain during sleep, but not during the awake state, Nedergaard says. (CSF) = cerebrospinal fluid
A comparison of the volume of space between nerve cells while the mice were awake and asleep revealed that the glial channels carrying CSF*) expanded by 60% when the mice were asleep. The team also injected labeled β amyloid proteins into the brains of sleeping mice and awake mice and found that during sleep, CSF cleared away this "dirt" outside of the cells twice as quickly—"like a dishwasher," Nedergaard says. Such proteins can aggregate as pathogenic plaques inside cells and are associated with Alzheimer’s disease, she says. *) click: Cerebrospinal fluid
Many neurological diseases—from Alzheimer's disease to stroke and dementia—are associated with sleep disturbances, Nedergaard notes. The study suggests that lack of sleep could have a causal role, by allowing the byproducts to build up and cause brain damage. "This could open a lot of debate for shift workers, who work during the nighttime,” Nedergaard predicts. "You probably develop damage if you don’t get your sleep."
One unknown, however, is whether the need to remove waste products actively regulates sleep—whether, for example, the buildup of metabolic byproducts makes us sleepy. Researchers also wonder how the fluid-filled channels change shape during sleep, and whether clearing waste actually improves the function of neurons.
Nor are other researchers certain that cleansing is sleep’s sole core function. No one function of sleep necessarily rules them all, says sleep scientist Derk-Jan Dijk of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. “Sleep probably has many functions,” he says, just as the weekend is variously for shopping, socializing, and cleaning the house.
But now that Nedergaard and her colleagues have identified this nightly brainwashing in mice, Czeisler says, scientists can investigate whether it occurs in all species, and to what extent. “One could imagine that different species have evolved different additional functions of sleep to suit their different habitats, … but this will help resolve if there is some shared function of sleep across species,” he concludes.
POSTED IN:
Click BRAIN & BEHAVIOR
Source: click: Journals - Science
(Article 3 of 7 next below)
_______________________________________
Sleep Article 2 of 7
(Article 1 of 7 next above)
An important article for every person to study
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Sleep - The Ultimate Brainwasher?
Published in Journal Science - Date: 17 October 2013
Not sleeping enough can also cause weight gain, lead to overweight & obesity
causing other sicknesses & leading to more suffering & give a shorter life
________________
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains
working & become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 7 above
and here:
(1) baby: almost 24 h, (2) toddler: 12-15 h, (3) older child 10 to 11 - 12 h, (4) teenager about 10 h and
(5) adult about 7 - 8 hours
_________________
Click: Sleep: The Ultimate Brainwasher? | Science/AAAS | Newsnews.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/.../sleep-ultimate-brainwashe...Science
Oct 17, 2013 - Scientists show that our brains clean themselves while we slumber.
Brainwashing When mice sleep, fluid-filled channels (pale blue) between neurons expand & flush out waste
Click Sleep
Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself.
Most physiologists agree that sleep has come to serve many different purposes, ranging from memory consolidation to the regulation of metabolism and the immune system. While the "core" purposes of biological functions such as breathing and eating are easy to understand, however, scientists have never agreed on any such original purpose for sleeping. The new study, by Maiken Nedergaard and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York, provides what Charles Czeisler, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston, calls the “first direct experimental evidence at the molecular level” for what could be sleep’s basic purpose: click: It clears the brain of toxic metabolic byproducts.
The new work, published online in Science click: Journals - Science, “fits with a long-standing view that sleep is for recovery—that something is paid back or cleaned out,” says David Dinges, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. It builds on Nedergaard's recent discovery, described in Science Translational Medicine, of a network of microscopic,
click: fluid-filled channels that clears toxins from the brain, much as the lymphatic system clears out metabolic waste products from the rest of the body. Instead of carrying lymph, this system transports waste-laden cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Before the discovery of this "glymphatic system," as Nedergaard has dubbed it, the brain's only known method for disposing of cellular trash was to break down and recycle it within individual cells, she says.
click: Cerebrospinal fluid
In the original work, Nedergaard’s group showed that glia, the brain's non-neuronal cells, control the flow of CSF through channels in their cell membranes. click: Neuroglia
"If we delete the channels in glial cells, the flow almost stops," Nedergaard says. Because the transport of fluid across cell membranes requires a lot of energy, Nedergaard and her team had a hunch that the brain would not be able to both clean and process sensory information at the same time and decided to test whether the activity of the glymphatic system*) changed during sleep. Lulu Xie, the new study's first author, spent the next 2 years training mice to relax and fall asleep on a two-photon microscope, which can image the movement of dye through living tissue. *) click: Glymphatic system
Once Xie was sure the mice were asleep, based on their EEG brain activity, she injected a green dye into their CSF through a catheterlike device in their necks. After half an hour, she awakened them by touching their tails and injected a red dye that the two-photon microscope could easily distinguish from the green. By tracking the movements of red and green dye throughout the brain, the team found that large amounts of CSF flowed into the brain during sleep, but not during the awake state, Nedergaard says. (CSF) = cerebrospinal fluid
A comparison of the volume of space between nerve cells while the mice were awake and asleep revealed that the glial channels carrying CSF*) expanded by 60% when the mice were asleep. The team also injected labeled β amyloid proteins into the brains of sleeping mice and awake mice and found that during sleep, CSF cleared away this "dirt" outside of the cells twice as quickly—"like a dishwasher," Nedergaard says. Such proteins can aggregate as pathogenic plaques inside cells and are associated with Alzheimer’s disease, she says. *) click: Cerebrospinal fluid
Many neurological diseases—from Alzheimer's disease to stroke and dementia—are associated with sleep disturbances, Nedergaard notes. The study suggests that lack of sleep could have a causal role, by allowing the byproducts to build up and cause brain damage. "This could open a lot of debate for shift workers, who work during the nighttime,” Nedergaard predicts. "You probably develop damage if you don’t get your sleep."
One unknown, however, is whether the need to remove waste products actively regulates sleep—whether, for example, the buildup of metabolic byproducts makes us sleepy. Researchers also wonder how the fluid-filled channels change shape during sleep, and whether clearing waste actually improves the function of neurons.
Nor are other researchers certain that cleansing is sleep’s sole core function. No one function of sleep necessarily rules them all, says sleep scientist Derk-Jan Dijk of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. “Sleep probably has many functions,” he says, just as the weekend is variously for shopping, socializing, and cleaning the house.
But now that Nedergaard and her colleagues have identified this nightly brainwashing in mice, Czeisler says, scientists can investigate whether it occurs in all species, and to what extent. “One could imagine that different species have evolved different additional functions of sleep to suit their different habitats, … but this will help resolve if there is some shared function of sleep across species,” he concludes.
POSTED IN:
Click BRAIN & BEHAVIOR
Source: click: Journals - Science
(Article 3 of 7 next below)
_______________________________________
Important info for every person to study & apply
The Role of Sleep
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
________________
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains working
& become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 6 above
_________________
Sleep Article 3 of 7
(Articles 1 - 2 of 7 next above)
Sleep was once thought to be a relatively passive process of decreased brain activity. More-recent data indicates that sleep, like consciousness, is an active process characterized by a myriad of complex electrical and neuroendocrine brain activities.
The benefits of healthy sleep are profound as are the drawbacks of deprivation. Every system of the body is affected by sleep, including physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Sleep promotes healing and recovery from illness, improved stamina, and the ability to learn and remember new skills.
Healthy sleep usually includes dreaming (even when it isn’t remembered), which also appears to play a powerful role in psychological and emotional health, well-being, memory, and the ability to learn new tasks.
Healthy sleep is still somewhat of a mystery since it is only partially understood and has never been artificially duplicated. While medications mimic the appearance of sleep, they do not reproduce the quality or restorative, integrative functions of sleep.
In most cases, medications used to promote sleep eventually backfire and erode it, making the condition dependent on escalating doses of drugs and more resistant to treatment.
Deep sleep has anti-inflammatory benefits. It helps restore hormonal balances, provides rest, and clears the mind like rebooting a computer.
Sleep deprivation causes significant physical and emotional effects, including changes in cardiovascular function, glucose metabolism, insulin resistance, and elevations of blood pressure, blood sugar, and cortisol.
Long-term effects of deprivation are linked to increased risk of developing many chronic diseases, including cancer, premature aging, depression, and gastrointestinal disorders.
Sleep deprivation is an effective method of persuasion, with a history of use in times of war and in indoctrination programs, including military and medical- residency training. Deprivation affects sanity, impairs vigilance, and erodes physical endurance.
Deprivation makes for more-compliant subjects who think less, concentrate poorly, and rely on automatic behaviors. Deprivation alters brain chemistry and interferes with a sense of reality, eventually disturbing mental and emotional stability.
Passage into sleep requires a gentle lapse of consciousness and awareness, coinciding with internal and external environmental supports to sustain it. In cases of chronic insomnia, the body actually looses its innate ability to relax, lapse into and sustain healthy sleep.
Sleep is an unconscious process that relies on an elegant network of biologic, chemical, hormonal, and neuroendocrine pathways collectively working together as biorhythms or circadian rhythms. When these circadian rhythms are allowed to function unhindered, they reproduce the same biochemical patterns on a daily basis.
The body relies on this system like an internal clock to efficiently manage the sleep-wake cycle. Unless it is tampered or interfered with, these internal rhythms help maintain a healthy mental, physical, and emotional balance through sleep.
When the circadian pattern is regular and uninterrupted, day after day, week after week, and year after year, the physical and emotional body learns to anticipate and depend on the pattern, preparing for these cycles many hours in advance.
Breaking the biorhythm in an irregular or unpredictable manner disrupts the intricate chemical network of hormones and neurotransmitters and forces the body to readapt, sometimes in midstream.
The body adjusts readily enough in youth, but as it ages, it is less able to change as quickly. Sometimes even simple changes in routine can lead to large disruptions of sleep and wakefulness. This is one reason why advancing age is associated with a greater number of sleep disturbances.
Source: The Epoch Times STAF, Inc. endorses the Epoch Times Click: The Epoch Times
(Article 4 of 7 next below)
____________________
Important info for every person to study & apply
Sleep Article 4 of 7
(Articles 1 - 3 of 7 next above)
Fragmented sleep
accelerates cancer growth
Date: January 27, 2014
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate
that about 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems
Handle your sleep as wisely as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
See the facts in these 6 sleep articles
________________
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains working
& become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 6 above
_________________
Click: Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
United States Centers for...
The CDC maintains several departments concerned with occupational safety and health, such as the Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the National ...
Source:
University of Chicago Medical Center
click: University of Chicago Medical Centerwww.uchospitals.edu/ The University of Chicago Medicine is both a world-class research institute and a neighborhood health care provider.
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Handle your sleep as wisely as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
See the facts in these 6 sleep articles
Poor-quality sleep marked by frequent awakenings can speed cancer growth, increase tumor aggressiveness and dampen the immune system's ability to control or eradicate early cancers, according to a new study published online January 21, 2014, in the journal Cancer Research
The study is the first to demonstrate, in an animal model, the direct effects of fragmented sleep on tumor growth and invasiveness (= marked by the tendency to spread, especially into healthy tissue), and it points to a biological mechanism that could serve as a potential target for therapy.
"It's not the tumor, it's the immune system," said study director David Gozal, MD, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital. "Fragmented sleep changes how the immune system deals with cancer in ways that make the disease more aggressive."
"Fortunately, our study also points to a potential drug target," he said. "Toll-like receptor 4, a biological messenger, helps control activation of the innate immune system. It appears to be a lynchpin for the cancer-promoting effects of sleep loss. The effects of fragmented sleep that we focused on were not seen in mice that lacked this protein."
Gozal, an authority on the consequences of sleep apnea click: Sleep apnea , was struck by two recent studies linking apnea to increased cancer mortality. So he and colleagues from the University of Chicago and the University of Louisville devised a series of experiments to measure the effects of disrupted sleep on cancer.
They used mice, housed in small groups. During the day -- when mice normally sleep -- a quiet, motorized brush moved through half of the cages every two minutes, forcing those mice to wake up and then go back to sleep. The rest of the mice were not disturbed.
After seven days in this setting, both groups of mice were injected with cells from one of two tumor types (TC-1 or 3LLC). All mice developed palpable tumors within 9 to 12 days. Four weeks after inoculation the researchers evaluated the tumors.
They found that tumors from mice with fragmented sleep were twice as large, for both tumor types, as those from mice that had slept normally. A follow-up experiment found that when tumor cells were implanted in the thigh muscle, which should help contain growth, the tumors were much more aggressive and invaded surrounding tissues in mice with disrupted sleep.
"In that setting, tumors are usually encased by a capsule of surrounding tissue, like a scar," Gozal said. "They form little spheres, with nice demarcation between cancerous and normal tissue. But in the fragmented-sleep mice, the tumors were much more invasive. They pushed through the capsule. They went into the muscle, into the bone. It was a mess."
The difference appeared to be driven by cells from the immune system, called tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), which cluster at the site of tumors. TAMs are a hallmark of the immune system's response to cancer, but they can respond in a variety of ways, depending on chemical signals they receive. Some, labelled M1, promote a strong immune response and can eliminate tumors cells. Others, known as M2, suppress the immune response and instead promote the growth of new blood vessels -- which encourages tumor growth.
Well-rested mice had primarily M1-type TAMs, concentrated in the core of the tumors. Sleep-fragmented mice had primarily M2-type TAMs. These were abundant, especially around the periphery of the tumors. The sleep-disrupted mice also had high levels of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4).
Three key molecules are part of the signaling pathway that appeared to be tilting macrophages toward M2: TLR4 and two downstream signals called MYD88 and TRIF. So the researchers injected tumor cells into a series of mice that were unable to produce one of these three proteins and subjected them to fragmented sleep. Tumor growth was slightly reduced in mice lacking MYD88 or TRIF, but in mice lacking TLR4, tumor growth was no greater than in mice with undisturbed sleep.
Taking TLR4 out of the picture resulted in major curtailment of tumor growth. "When we injected tumor cells into mice that lacked TLR4," Gozal said, "the differences between undisturbed and sleep-fragmented mice disappeared."
"This study offers biological plausibility to the epidemiological associations between perturbed sleep and cancer outcomes," Gozal said. "The take home message is to take care of your sleep quality and quantity like you take care of your bank account."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems. "Considering the high prevalence of both sleep disorders and cancer in middle age or older populations," the authors wrote, "there are far-reaching implications." Their next step is to determine whether sleep affects metastasis or resistance to cancer chemotherapy.
Source:
The above article is based on click: materials provided by click: University of Chicago Medical Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
First Published in Journal click: Cancer Researchcancerres.aacrjournals.org
The most highly cited cancer journal in the world. Cancer Research is the top venue for articles of the broadest significance in the field .Impact Factor - (The) Journal of Cancer ... - Table of Contents - OnlineFirst
(Article 5 of 7 next below)
__________________________
Sleep Article 4 of 7
(Articles 1 - 3 of 7 next above)
Fragmented sleep
accelerates cancer growth
Date: January 27, 2014
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate
that about 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems
Handle your sleep as wisely as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
See the facts in these 6 sleep articles
________________
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains working
& become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 6 above
_________________
Click: Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
United States Centers for...
The CDC maintains several departments concerned with occupational safety and health, such as the Center for Injury Prevention and Control, and the National ...
Source:
University of Chicago Medical Center
click: University of Chicago Medical Centerwww.uchospitals.edu/ The University of Chicago Medicine is both a world-class research institute and a neighborhood health care provider.
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Handle your sleep as wisely as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
See the facts in these 6 sleep articles
Poor-quality sleep marked by frequent awakenings can speed cancer growth, increase tumor aggressiveness and dampen the immune system's ability to control or eradicate early cancers, according to a new study published online January 21, 2014, in the journal Cancer Research
The study is the first to demonstrate, in an animal model, the direct effects of fragmented sleep on tumor growth and invasiveness (= marked by the tendency to spread, especially into healthy tissue), and it points to a biological mechanism that could serve as a potential target for therapy.
"It's not the tumor, it's the immune system," said study director David Gozal, MD, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital. "Fragmented sleep changes how the immune system deals with cancer in ways that make the disease more aggressive."
"Fortunately, our study also points to a potential drug target," he said. "Toll-like receptor 4, a biological messenger, helps control activation of the innate immune system. It appears to be a lynchpin for the cancer-promoting effects of sleep loss. The effects of fragmented sleep that we focused on were not seen in mice that lacked this protein."
Gozal, an authority on the consequences of sleep apnea click: Sleep apnea , was struck by two recent studies linking apnea to increased cancer mortality. So he and colleagues from the University of Chicago and the University of Louisville devised a series of experiments to measure the effects of disrupted sleep on cancer.
They used mice, housed in small groups. During the day -- when mice normally sleep -- a quiet, motorized brush moved through half of the cages every two minutes, forcing those mice to wake up and then go back to sleep. The rest of the mice were not disturbed.
After seven days in this setting, both groups of mice were injected with cells from one of two tumor types (TC-1 or 3LLC). All mice developed palpable tumors within 9 to 12 days. Four weeks after inoculation the researchers evaluated the tumors.
They found that tumors from mice with fragmented sleep were twice as large, for both tumor types, as those from mice that had slept normally. A follow-up experiment found that when tumor cells were implanted in the thigh muscle, which should help contain growth, the tumors were much more aggressive and invaded surrounding tissues in mice with disrupted sleep.
"In that setting, tumors are usually encased by a capsule of surrounding tissue, like a scar," Gozal said. "They form little spheres, with nice demarcation between cancerous and normal tissue. But in the fragmented-sleep mice, the tumors were much more invasive. They pushed through the capsule. They went into the muscle, into the bone. It was a mess."
The difference appeared to be driven by cells from the immune system, called tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), which cluster at the site of tumors. TAMs are a hallmark of the immune system's response to cancer, but they can respond in a variety of ways, depending on chemical signals they receive. Some, labelled M1, promote a strong immune response and can eliminate tumors cells. Others, known as M2, suppress the immune response and instead promote the growth of new blood vessels -- which encourages tumor growth.
Well-rested mice had primarily M1-type TAMs, concentrated in the core of the tumors. Sleep-fragmented mice had primarily M2-type TAMs. These were abundant, especially around the periphery of the tumors. The sleep-disrupted mice also had high levels of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4).
Three key molecules are part of the signaling pathway that appeared to be tilting macrophages toward M2: TLR4 and two downstream signals called MYD88 and TRIF. So the researchers injected tumor cells into a series of mice that were unable to produce one of these three proteins and subjected them to fragmented sleep. Tumor growth was slightly reduced in mice lacking MYD88 or TRIF, but in mice lacking TLR4, tumor growth was no greater than in mice with undisturbed sleep.
Taking TLR4 out of the picture resulted in major curtailment of tumor growth. "When we injected tumor cells into mice that lacked TLR4," Gozal said, "the differences between undisturbed and sleep-fragmented mice disappeared."
"This study offers biological plausibility to the epidemiological associations between perturbed sleep and cancer outcomes," Gozal said. "The take home message is to take care of your sleep quality and quantity like you take care of your bank account."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that about 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems. "Considering the high prevalence of both sleep disorders and cancer in middle age or older populations," the authors wrote, "there are far-reaching implications." Their next step is to determine whether sleep affects metastasis or resistance to cancer chemotherapy.
Source:
The above article is based on click: materials provided by click: University of Chicago Medical Center. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
First Published in Journal click: Cancer Researchcancerres.aacrjournals.org
The most highly cited cancer journal in the world. Cancer Research is the top venue for articles of the broadest significance in the field .Impact Factor - (The) Journal of Cancer ... - Table of Contents - OnlineFirst
(Article 5 of 7 next below)
__________________________
Article 5 of 7
(Sections A, B, C)
(Articles 1 - 4 of 7 next above)
Governments must make better use of
(1) preventative public health policies and (2) vaccines
in the fight against cancer as treatment alone cannot stem the disease,
a World Health Organization (WHO) agency said on Monday, February 3, 2014
click: World Health Organization: WHO
_________________
Start prevention with sleep - sleep enough hours: Adults 7 - 8 hours
Children (depending on age: see above the sleep article 1 of 6)
Handle your sleep like your bank account because those 2 things are related
_________________
Section A
The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said cancer was growing "at an alarming pace" worldwide and new strategies were needed to curb the sometimes fatal and often costly disease.
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than
40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization
"It's untenable to think we can treat our way out of the cancer problem. That alone will not be a sufficient response - Prevention is the key."
Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014, told reporters at a London briefing.
(The Summary below in Section C - The Press Release in article 6 of 6 below)
"More commitment to prevention and early detection is desperately needed... to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in the cancer burden globally."
The World Cancer Report, which is only produced roughly once every five years, involved a collaboration of around 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would significantly cut death rates, even in places where health-care services are less well developed.
The spiraling costs of cancer are hurting the economies of even the richest countries and are often way beyond the reach of poorer nations. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated at around $1.16 trillion.
Yet around half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters.
Sharp Rise in Cases Expected
The report said that in 2012 - the latest year for which data are available - new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year, a figure expected to grow to 22 million within the next two decades.
Over the same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million a year to 13 million per year.
The data mean that at current rates, one in five men and one in six women worldwide will develop cancer before they reach 75 years old, while one in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease.
In 2012, the most common cancers diagnosed were lung, breast and colon or bowel cancers, while the most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
As populations across the world are both growing and ageing, IARC said developing countries were disproportionately affected by the increasing numbers of cancers.
"Behind each one of these numbers, there's an individual and a family faced with a tragic situation," Wild said.
More than 60 percent of the world's total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths, it said. The situation is made worse in poorer countries by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
"Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programs, which are an investment rather than a cost," said Bernard Stewart, another co-editor of the report.
The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines to prevent infections that cause cervical and liver cancers and policies aimed at bringing down rates of obesity as key areas in which more should be done.
"Adequate legislation can encourage healthier behavior," said Stewart.
Section B
Cancer cases worldwide could hit 22 million a year within the next two decades, according to the World Health Organization.
The agency’s World Cancer Report 2014 estimated that the cancer burden for 2012 was 14 million new cases a year, but said the rate was expected to jump much higher over the next 20 years as the number of elderly people worldwide increases.
Developing countries will see the brunt of the growing cancer rate because of population growth, according to the report. Some 60% of the world’s cancer sufferers are in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. These same countries make up 70% of cancer deaths worldwide.
The report said improvements in early detection and access to treatment could bring the number down. The report says that greater access to vaccines for diseases like hepatitis B virus click: CDC DVH - Hepatitis B
and human papillomavirus (HPV) click: CDC - Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
could greatly lower cancers in the liver and cervix (= from the Latin cervix uteri, meaning "neck of the womb") is the inferior, narrow portion of the click: uterus where it joins with the superior end of the click: vagina) click: Cervix Disorders
Tobacco-prevention efforts could also play a major role in lowering the high levels of lung cancer. According to 2012 data, the most common cancers were lung, breast and large bowel. The most common deaths from cancer were for diseases of the lung, liver and stomach.
STAF, Inc.'s comment: in most cases all these fatal sicknesses would be preventable with a healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition - STAF, Inc. has such a program, took 26 years to create - the program can be regarded as the best result-bringing program in addition to the fact that everyone working or getting government assistance help can afford it).
“Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programmes, which are an investment rather than a cost,” says report co-author Bernard W. Stewart click: in a statement.The distribution of cancer in the community is largely due to the impact of environmental factors and wrong lifestyle and unhealthy food . Research is directed toward assessing the impact of lifestyle factors (including tobacco smoking), occupational exposures and the impact of pollution as means of preventing cancer. Immediate research concerns include risk communication and medico-legal approaches to limiting the impact of environmental carcinogens. Addressing community concern in relation to cancer clusters, and the provision of usable information about presumed hazards are the focus of current research.
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than
40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organizationclick: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
Section C
World Cancer Report 2014
For further details click green above
Summary
This book from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, provides a unique global view of cancer, including cancer patterns, causes, and prevention. The World Cancer Report series is recognized as an authoritative source of global perspective and information on cancer. The first volume appeared in 2003 and the second in 2008. This third volume in the series encompasses both established knowledge and recent research achievement.
World Cancer Report provides a professional, multidisciplinary assessment of all aspects of the geographical distribution, biology, etiology, prevention, and control of cancer, predicated on research. The concise nature of the text and the high graphic content (hundreds of colour maps, diagrams, and photographs) make the publication accessible to a broad readership. World Cancer Report is designed to provide non-specialist health professionals and policy-makers with a balanced understanding of cancer control and to provide established cancer professionals with insights about recent development.
The book includes chapters in which distinguished scientists from around the world provide a broad overview of established knowledge and then emphasize research activity and progress. In addition, text boxes distributed throughout the book provide short, in-depth discussions of selected questions or topics. A new feature of this volume is the inclusion of Perspectives considering the future development of different aspects of cancer research, written by those whose record of outstanding achievement qualifies them as individuals having unique vision.
Includes more than 60 chapters with contributions from more than 150 distinguished scientists from around the world, with information on:
. Cancer Worldwide
. Cancer Etiology
. Cancer Biology
. Cancer Prevention
. Cancer by Organ Site
. Cancer Control
Also available: Print + online version (EPUB): World Cancer Report 2014 print + Online (EPUB) version
Online version (EPUB): World Cancer Report 2014 Online (EPUB) version
________________________
Click: We can't beat cancer with drugs alone; prevention crucial: WHO
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would... about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters. ... The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines ..
(Article 6 of 7 next below)
_____________________________
(Sections A, B, C)
(Articles 1 - 4 of 7 next above)
Governments must make better use of
(1) preventative public health policies and (2) vaccines
in the fight against cancer as treatment alone cannot stem the disease,
a World Health Organization (WHO) agency said on Monday, February 3, 2014
click: World Health Organization: WHO
_________________
Start prevention with sleep - sleep enough hours: Adults 7 - 8 hours
Children (depending on age: see above the sleep article 1 of 6)
Handle your sleep like your bank account because those 2 things are related
_________________
Section A
The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said cancer was growing "at an alarming pace" worldwide and new strategies were needed to curb the sometimes fatal and often costly disease.
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than
40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization
"It's untenable to think we can treat our way out of the cancer problem. That alone will not be a sufficient response - Prevention is the key."
Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014, told reporters at a London briefing.
(The Summary below in Section C - The Press Release in article 6 of 6 below)
"More commitment to prevention and early detection is desperately needed... to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in the cancer burden globally."
The World Cancer Report, which is only produced roughly once every five years, involved a collaboration of around 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would significantly cut death rates, even in places where health-care services are less well developed.
The spiraling costs of cancer are hurting the economies of even the richest countries and are often way beyond the reach of poorer nations. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated at around $1.16 trillion.
Yet around half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters.
Sharp Rise in Cases Expected
The report said that in 2012 - the latest year for which data are available - new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year, a figure expected to grow to 22 million within the next two decades.
Over the same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million a year to 13 million per year.
The data mean that at current rates, one in five men and one in six women worldwide will develop cancer before they reach 75 years old, while one in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease.
In 2012, the most common cancers diagnosed were lung, breast and colon or bowel cancers, while the most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
As populations across the world are both growing and ageing, IARC said developing countries were disproportionately affected by the increasing numbers of cancers.
"Behind each one of these numbers, there's an individual and a family faced with a tragic situation," Wild said.
More than 60 percent of the world's total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths, it said. The situation is made worse in poorer countries by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
"Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programs, which are an investment rather than a cost," said Bernard Stewart, another co-editor of the report.
The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines to prevent infections that cause cervical and liver cancers and policies aimed at bringing down rates of obesity as key areas in which more should be done.
"Adequate legislation can encourage healthier behavior," said Stewart.
Section B
Cancer cases worldwide could hit 22 million a year within the next two decades, according to the World Health Organization.
The agency’s World Cancer Report 2014 estimated that the cancer burden for 2012 was 14 million new cases a year, but said the rate was expected to jump much higher over the next 20 years as the number of elderly people worldwide increases.
Developing countries will see the brunt of the growing cancer rate because of population growth, according to the report. Some 60% of the world’s cancer sufferers are in Africa, Asia and Central and South America. These same countries make up 70% of cancer deaths worldwide.
The report said improvements in early detection and access to treatment could bring the number down. The report says that greater access to vaccines for diseases like hepatitis B virus click: CDC DVH - Hepatitis B
and human papillomavirus (HPV) click: CDC - Human Papillomavirus (HPV)
could greatly lower cancers in the liver and cervix (= from the Latin cervix uteri, meaning "neck of the womb") is the inferior, narrow portion of the click: uterus where it joins with the superior end of the click: vagina) click: Cervix Disorders
Tobacco-prevention efforts could also play a major role in lowering the high levels of lung cancer. According to 2012 data, the most common cancers were lung, breast and large bowel. The most common deaths from cancer were for diseases of the lung, liver and stomach.
STAF, Inc.'s comment: in most cases all these fatal sicknesses would be preventable with a healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition - STAF, Inc. has such a program, took 26 years to create - the program can be regarded as the best result-bringing program in addition to the fact that everyone working or getting government assistance help can afford it).
“Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programmes, which are an investment rather than a cost,” says report co-author Bernard W. Stewart click: in a statement.The distribution of cancer in the community is largely due to the impact of environmental factors and wrong lifestyle and unhealthy food . Research is directed toward assessing the impact of lifestyle factors (including tobacco smoking), occupational exposures and the impact of pollution as means of preventing cancer. Immediate research concerns include risk communication and medico-legal approaches to limiting the impact of environmental carcinogens. Addressing community concern in relation to cancer clusters, and the provision of usable information about presumed hazards are the focus of current research.
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than
40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organizationclick: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
Section C
World Cancer Report 2014
For further details click green above
Summary
This book from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization, provides a unique global view of cancer, including cancer patterns, causes, and prevention. The World Cancer Report series is recognized as an authoritative source of global perspective and information on cancer. The first volume appeared in 2003 and the second in 2008. This third volume in the series encompasses both established knowledge and recent research achievement.
World Cancer Report provides a professional, multidisciplinary assessment of all aspects of the geographical distribution, biology, etiology, prevention, and control of cancer, predicated on research. The concise nature of the text and the high graphic content (hundreds of colour maps, diagrams, and photographs) make the publication accessible to a broad readership. World Cancer Report is designed to provide non-specialist health professionals and policy-makers with a balanced understanding of cancer control and to provide established cancer professionals with insights about recent development.
The book includes chapters in which distinguished scientists from around the world provide a broad overview of established knowledge and then emphasize research activity and progress. In addition, text boxes distributed throughout the book provide short, in-depth discussions of selected questions or topics. A new feature of this volume is the inclusion of Perspectives considering the future development of different aspects of cancer research, written by those whose record of outstanding achievement qualifies them as individuals having unique vision.
Includes more than 60 chapters with contributions from more than 150 distinguished scientists from around the world, with information on:
. Cancer Worldwide
. Cancer Etiology
. Cancer Biology
. Cancer Prevention
. Cancer by Organ Site
. Cancer Control
Also available: Print + online version (EPUB): World Cancer Report 2014 print + Online (EPUB) version
Online version (EPUB): World Cancer Report 2014 Online (EPUB) version
________________________
Click: We can't beat cancer with drugs alone; prevention crucial: WHO
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would... about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters. ... The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines ..
(Article 6 of 7 next below)
_____________________________
Article 6 of 7
(Articles 1-5 of 7 next above)
Start prevention with sleeping enough hours - adults: 7 - 8 hours
Teenagers, children, toddlers depending on age: see the sleep article 1 of 6 above
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Handle your sleep as wisely
as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
____________
PRESS RELEASE
Global battle against cancer
won’t be won with treatment alone
Effective prevention measures urgently needed to prevent cancer crisis
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than
40 countries.
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
PRESS RELEASE
N° 224
Lyon/London, 3 February 2014
“The rise of cancer worldwide is a major obstacle to human development and well-being. These new figures and projections send a strong signal that immediate action is needed to confront this human disaster, which touches every community worldwide, without exception,” stresses WHO
Global battle against cancer won’t be won with treatment alone
Effective prevention measures urgently needed to prevent cancer crisis
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World
Health Organization, is today launching World Cancer Report 2014, a collaboration of over 250 leading
scientists from more than 40 countries, describing multiple aspects of cancer research and control.
Based on the latest statistics on trends in cancer incidence and mortality worldwide, this new book reveals
how the cancer burden is growing at an alarming pace and emphasizes the need for urgent
implementation of efficient prevention strategies to curb the disease.
“Despite exciting advances, this Report shows that we cannot treat our way out of the cancer problem,”
states Dr Christopher Wild, Director of IARC and co-editor of the book. “More commitment to prevention
and early detection is desperately needed in order to complement improved treatments and address the
alarming rise in cancer burden globally.”
Increasing global burden of cancer
In 2012, the worldwide burden of cancer rose to an estimated 14 million new cases per year, a figure
expected to rise to 22 million annually within the next two decades. Over the same period, cancer deaths
are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million annually to 13 million per year. Globally, in 2012 the
most common cancers diagnosed were those of the lung (1.8 million cases, 13.0% of the total), breast
(1.7 million, 11.9%), and large bowel (1.4 million, 9.7%). The most common causes of cancer death were
cancers of the lung (1.6 million, 19.4% of the total), liver (0.8 million, 9.1%), and stomach (0.7 million,
8.8%).
The cancer divide
As a consequence of growing and ageing populations, developing countries are disproportionately affected
by the increasing numbers of cancers. More than 60% of the world’s total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and
Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70% of the world’s cancer deaths, a
situation that is made worse by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
Avoidable deaths
Access to effective and affordable cancer treatments in developing countries, including for childhood cancers,
would significantly reduce mortality, even in settings where health-care services are less well developed.
However, the spiralling costs of the cancer burden are damaging the economies of even the richest countries
and are way beyond the reach of developing countries, as well as placing impossible strains on health-care
systems. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated to reach approximately
US$ 1.16 trillion. Yet about half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge was adequately
implemented.
Effective vaccination campaigns and health promotion
Many developing countries continue to be disproportionately affected by the double burden of high
infection-related cancers (including those of the cervix, liver, and stomach) and the rising incidence of
cancers (such as those of the lung, breast, and large bowel) associated with industrialized lifestyles.
“The rise of cancer worldwide is a major obstacle to human development and well-being. These new figures and projections send a strong signal that immediate action is needed to confront this human disaster, which touches every community worldwide, without exception,” stresses Dr. Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014.
End statement by STAF, Inc.'s end statement
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
"STAF, Inc. has the preventive solution every country can afford - the new program Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition also called The STAF PLAN. It took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
(Article 7 of 7 next below)
_____________________________
(Articles 1-5 of 7 next above)
Start prevention with sleeping enough hours - adults: 7 - 8 hours
Teenagers, children, toddlers depending on age: see the sleep article 1 of 6 above
Avoid disease, have better brain functioning & succeed well financially
Handle your sleep as wisely
as you handle your bank account
These two are directly connected
____________
PRESS RELEASE
Global battle against cancer
won’t be won with treatment alone
Effective prevention measures urgently needed to prevent cancer crisis
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than
40 countries.
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
PRESS RELEASE
N° 224
Lyon/London, 3 February 2014
“The rise of cancer worldwide is a major obstacle to human development and well-being. These new figures and projections send a strong signal that immediate action is needed to confront this human disaster, which touches every community worldwide, without exception,” stresses WHO
Global battle against cancer won’t be won with treatment alone
Effective prevention measures urgently needed to prevent cancer crisis
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World
Health Organization, is today launching World Cancer Report 2014, a collaboration of over 250 leading
scientists from more than 40 countries, describing multiple aspects of cancer research and control.
Based on the latest statistics on trends in cancer incidence and mortality worldwide, this new book reveals
how the cancer burden is growing at an alarming pace and emphasizes the need for urgent
implementation of efficient prevention strategies to curb the disease.
“Despite exciting advances, this Report shows that we cannot treat our way out of the cancer problem,”
states Dr Christopher Wild, Director of IARC and co-editor of the book. “More commitment to prevention
and early detection is desperately needed in order to complement improved treatments and address the
alarming rise in cancer burden globally.”
Increasing global burden of cancer
In 2012, the worldwide burden of cancer rose to an estimated 14 million new cases per year, a figure
expected to rise to 22 million annually within the next two decades. Over the same period, cancer deaths
are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million annually to 13 million per year. Globally, in 2012 the
most common cancers diagnosed were those of the lung (1.8 million cases, 13.0% of the total), breast
(1.7 million, 11.9%), and large bowel (1.4 million, 9.7%). The most common causes of cancer death were
cancers of the lung (1.6 million, 19.4% of the total), liver (0.8 million, 9.1%), and stomach (0.7 million,
8.8%).
The cancer divide
As a consequence of growing and ageing populations, developing countries are disproportionately affected
by the increasing numbers of cancers. More than 60% of the world’s total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and
Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70% of the world’s cancer deaths, a
situation that is made worse by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
Avoidable deaths
Access to effective and affordable cancer treatments in developing countries, including for childhood cancers,
would significantly reduce mortality, even in settings where health-care services are less well developed.
However, the spiralling costs of the cancer burden are damaging the economies of even the richest countries
and are way beyond the reach of developing countries, as well as placing impossible strains on health-care
systems. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated to reach approximately
US$ 1.16 trillion. Yet about half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge was adequately
implemented.
Effective vaccination campaigns and health promotion
Many developing countries continue to be disproportionately affected by the double burden of high
infection-related cancers (including those of the cervix, liver, and stomach) and the rising incidence of
cancers (such as those of the lung, breast, and large bowel) associated with industrialized lifestyles.
“The rise of cancer worldwide is a major obstacle to human development and well-being. These new figures and projections send a strong signal that immediate action is needed to confront this human disaster, which touches every community worldwide, without exception,” stresses Dr. Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014.
- Dr Christopher P. Wild, IARC Director - International Agency for ...www.iarc.fr › ... › Director and his Team
International Agency for R...Dr Christopher P. Wild, IARC Director. The Director is responsible for the leadership within the Agency by providing: the framework for attainment of the Agency's ... - Office of the Director - Director and his Teamwww.iarc.fr › ... › Office of the Director
International Agency for R...
Director, Dr Christopher P. Wild, Email: com@iarc.fr. Personal Assistant, Ms Margot Geesink. Secretary, Ms Laurence Marnat. Visiting Scientist, Dr John ...
End statement by STAF, Inc.'s end statement
by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
"STAF, Inc. has the preventive solution every country can afford - the new program Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition also called The STAF PLAN. It took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
(Article 7 of 7 next below)
_____________________________
Article 7 of 7 (Articles 1- 6 of 7 next above)
Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the G.D.P.
Inadequate sleep can lead to costly decisions,
not to mention a lot of mindless web surfing - and much more -
Sleep deprivation causes cancer, and just any sickness
and leads to suffering and to an early death
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains
working & become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 7 above
and here:
(1) baby: almost 24 h, (2) toddler: 12-15 h, (3) older child 10 to 11 - 12 h, (4) teenager about 10 h and
(5) adult about 7 - 8 hours
_________________
January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year’s resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.
But a more important question may involve a resolution that so many of us fail to make. It involves a commodity that nearly everybody needs more of, and our failure to address it arguably has as much impact on our well-being as inadequate exercise and unhealthy eating.
The problem is very simple: Many of us need more sleep - 70 millions in the U.S. and
worldwide number is in billions
Here’s an alarming statistic: A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
click: Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
found that one in 25 people admitted to having fallen asleep while driving during the previous month. To put that in perspective, mathematical models based on this data imply that an estimated 15 to 33 percent of all fatal crashes in the United States might involve a drowsy driver. But even that may be an underestimate, as some people who fall asleep at the wheel may be sheepish about acknowledging as much in a survey.
What does sleep have to do with economics? Doesn’t it sit squarely in the realm of physiology?
First, the economic consequences of inadequate sleep are surely huge. There may be more sleepy workers than drivers. In one month in 2008, a poll showed that 29 percent of workers had fallen asleep or had been very sleepy at work.
The effects can add up: one click: study in Australia calculated the cost of sleeplessness at 0.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Yet even that number, which emphasizes the physical and medical consequences of inadequate sleep, omits the biggest potential impact on the G.D.P. Most of today’s workers rely on their mental and social skills. And if those workers don’t get enough sleep, their lethargy, crankiness and poor decision-making will hurt the economy in assorted and significant ways.
For example, one study has shown that “cyberloafing” -- wasting time on the web — increases on the day after the start of daylight saving time, when people are short an hour of sleep. Other research shows how cognitive performance deteriorates when sleep is inadequate: We have less capacity to remember, to learn or to be creative, and we become less optimistic and less sociable. And these consequences aren’t reserved for extreme sleep loss: Studies show that two weeks of sleeping only six hours a night can have the same impact as one or two nights of total sleep deprivation.
There is an odd divide here. Ask why one person had an unproductive day at work, and lack of sleep often seems an obvious answer. But ask why national productivity has fallen, and reduced sleep can appear to be a frivolous answer. Yet what is total output but the sum of all individuals’ work?
Sleep deserves serious study by behavioral economists for another important reason. Some struggle with medical issues — like insomnia — that make sleep hard. But for many of us, the quantity and quality of sleep come down to a matter of choice. Still, only a few enterprising economists have looked closely at this, and generally those have assumed that we choose our hours of sleep optimally. The idea is that we thoughtfully trade the use of an hour of sleep for an hour spent doing something else. But it is worth questioning the assumption that these are rational and optimal choices. Judge for yourself. Was watching that extra episode of “Game of Thrones” last night worth the sluggishness you’re feeling right now?
We also need to ask another question: Why do we neglect our sleep? It’s not as if the ill effects of fatigue are a surprise. If for no reason other than self-interest, we are vigilant about our children’s sleep, so it’s hard to understand why we are so cavalier about our own. This puzzle is even more pointed because the benefits of sleep are immediate. Eat better or work out more, and you’ll see the benefits weeks, months or years down the road. Sleep more and you’ll see the benefits tomorrow.
The research on this question is sparse, so we must speculate.
Part of the problem may stem from a misunderstanding of physiology. We may overestimate our ability to overcome the effects of sleep deprivation. Have you ever told yourself, “I’ll be tired but I’ll just tough it out”? It’s easy to think that willpower will make us alert. Or we may believe that caffeine compensates for lost sleep. While it can make us more alert, as shown in a study on Navy SEALs, it does not restore all mental function. And it makes sleeping well even harder.
The problem is aggravated by a common belief that lost sleep can be made up for, that we can manage our “sleep debt.” But why should we be any better with this debt than we are with money? When the time comes for a payback, there always seems to be something more appealing for our money or time.
Whatever the reasons, the problem appears to be spreading. One careful study found that the number of “short sleepers” — those who got fewer than six hours of sleep a night — rose 22 percent from 1975 to 2006, a trend that was most pronounced and significant among full-time workers.
Technology is an obvious culprit here. Web searching and cellphone use both flourish in the wee hours. Before the dawn of the web, I would stay up watching television. But there is something soporific about television: I would often nod off. Not so when I’m online. As technologies expand, these problems may only worsen.
We can do something about this in our own lives. It’s not too late to add a resolution for this still-young year: to partake more in what Shakespeare called the “chief nourisher in life’s feast.” A good night’s sleep has immediate effects on our productivity, and, best of all, it can even help us keep our other resolutions.
By SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN is a professor of economics at Harvard.
__________________
Click: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Definition | Investopedia
Definition of 'Gross Domestic Product - GDP'
The monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period, though GDP is usually calculated on an annual basis. It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports less imports that occur within a defined territory.
GDP = C + G + I + NX
where:
"C" is equal to all private consumption, or consumer spending, in a nation's economy
"G" is the sum of government spending
"I" is the sum of all the country's businesses spending on capital
"NX" is the nation's total net exports, calculated as total exports minus total imports. (NX = Exports - Imports)
Investopedia explains 'Gross Domestic Product - GDP'
GDP is commonly used as an indicator of the economic health of a country, as well as to gauge a country's standard of living. Critics of using GDP as an economic measure say the statistic does not take into account the underground economy - transactions that, for whatever reason, are not reported to the government. Others say that GDP is not intended to gauge material well-being, but serves as a measure of a nation's productivity, which is unrelated.
To know more about GDP, please read Economic Indicators: Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Click: Five Chart Patterns you need to know…
Click: Gross domestic product - Wikipedia
_____________
Cover Article source:
Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the GDP
New York Times (click green title above)
Americans' lack of sleep isn't just making them cranky, sick & suffer - It's also hurting productivity, and thus the wider economy
Comments by STAF, Inc.
NOTICE:
Below more sleep-related articles, important for you and for everyone
________________________________________________
Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the G.D.P.
Inadequate sleep can lead to costly decisions,
not to mention a lot of mindless web surfing - and much more -
Sleep deprivation causes cancer, and just any sickness
and leads to suffering and to an early death
Q: How many hours do we have to sleep peacefully in order to stay healthy & have our brains
working & become financially rich, even a millionaire
A: The answer in the beginning of the sleep article 1 of 7 above
and here:
(1) baby: almost 24 h, (2) toddler: 12-15 h, (3) older child 10 to 11 - 12 h, (4) teenager about 10 h and
(5) adult about 7 - 8 hours
_________________
January is always a good month for behavioral economics: Few things illustrate self-control as vividly as New Year’s resolutions. February is even better, though, because it lets us study why so many of those resolutions are broken.
But a more important question may involve a resolution that so many of us fail to make. It involves a commodity that nearly everybody needs more of, and our failure to address it arguably has as much impact on our well-being as inadequate exercise and unhealthy eating.
The problem is very simple: Many of us need more sleep - 70 millions in the U.S. and
worldwide number is in billions
Here’s an alarming statistic: A survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
click: Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov/
found that one in 25 people admitted to having fallen asleep while driving during the previous month. To put that in perspective, mathematical models based on this data imply that an estimated 15 to 33 percent of all fatal crashes in the United States might involve a drowsy driver. But even that may be an underestimate, as some people who fall asleep at the wheel may be sheepish about acknowledging as much in a survey.
What does sleep have to do with economics? Doesn’t it sit squarely in the realm of physiology?
First, the economic consequences of inadequate sleep are surely huge. There may be more sleepy workers than drivers. In one month in 2008, a poll showed that 29 percent of workers had fallen asleep or had been very sleepy at work.
The effects can add up: one click: study in Australia calculated the cost of sleeplessness at 0.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Yet even that number, which emphasizes the physical and medical consequences of inadequate sleep, omits the biggest potential impact on the G.D.P. Most of today’s workers rely on their mental and social skills. And if those workers don’t get enough sleep, their lethargy, crankiness and poor decision-making will hurt the economy in assorted and significant ways.
For example, one study has shown that “cyberloafing” -- wasting time on the web — increases on the day after the start of daylight saving time, when people are short an hour of sleep. Other research shows how cognitive performance deteriorates when sleep is inadequate: We have less capacity to remember, to learn or to be creative, and we become less optimistic and less sociable. And these consequences aren’t reserved for extreme sleep loss: Studies show that two weeks of sleeping only six hours a night can have the same impact as one or two nights of total sleep deprivation.
There is an odd divide here. Ask why one person had an unproductive day at work, and lack of sleep often seems an obvious answer. But ask why national productivity has fallen, and reduced sleep can appear to be a frivolous answer. Yet what is total output but the sum of all individuals’ work?
Sleep deserves serious study by behavioral economists for another important reason. Some struggle with medical issues — like insomnia — that make sleep hard. But for many of us, the quantity and quality of sleep come down to a matter of choice. Still, only a few enterprising economists have looked closely at this, and generally those have assumed that we choose our hours of sleep optimally. The idea is that we thoughtfully trade the use of an hour of sleep for an hour spent doing something else. But it is worth questioning the assumption that these are rational and optimal choices. Judge for yourself. Was watching that extra episode of “Game of Thrones” last night worth the sluggishness you’re feeling right now?
We also need to ask another question: Why do we neglect our sleep? It’s not as if the ill effects of fatigue are a surprise. If for no reason other than self-interest, we are vigilant about our children’s sleep, so it’s hard to understand why we are so cavalier about our own. This puzzle is even more pointed because the benefits of sleep are immediate. Eat better or work out more, and you’ll see the benefits weeks, months or years down the road. Sleep more and you’ll see the benefits tomorrow.
The research on this question is sparse, so we must speculate.
Part of the problem may stem from a misunderstanding of physiology. We may overestimate our ability to overcome the effects of sleep deprivation. Have you ever told yourself, “I’ll be tired but I’ll just tough it out”? It’s easy to think that willpower will make us alert. Or we may believe that caffeine compensates for lost sleep. While it can make us more alert, as shown in a study on Navy SEALs, it does not restore all mental function. And it makes sleeping well even harder.
The problem is aggravated by a common belief that lost sleep can be made up for, that we can manage our “sleep debt.” But why should we be any better with this debt than we are with money? When the time comes for a payback, there always seems to be something more appealing for our money or time.
Whatever the reasons, the problem appears to be spreading. One careful study found that the number of “short sleepers” — those who got fewer than six hours of sleep a night — rose 22 percent from 1975 to 2006, a trend that was most pronounced and significant among full-time workers.
Technology is an obvious culprit here. Web searching and cellphone use both flourish in the wee hours. Before the dawn of the web, I would stay up watching television. But there is something soporific about television: I would often nod off. Not so when I’m online. As technologies expand, these problems may only worsen.
We can do something about this in our own lives. It’s not too late to add a resolution for this still-young year: to partake more in what Shakespeare called the “chief nourisher in life’s feast.” A good night’s sleep has immediate effects on our productivity, and, best of all, it can even help us keep our other resolutions.
By SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN is a professor of economics at Harvard.
__________________
Click: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Definition | Investopedia
Definition of 'Gross Domestic Product - GDP'
The monetary value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country's borders in a specific time period, though GDP is usually calculated on an annual basis. It includes all of private and public consumption, government outlays, investments and exports less imports that occur within a defined territory.
GDP = C + G + I + NX
where:
"C" is equal to all private consumption, or consumer spending, in a nation's economy
"G" is the sum of government spending
"I" is the sum of all the country's businesses spending on capital
"NX" is the nation's total net exports, calculated as total exports minus total imports. (NX = Exports - Imports)
Investopedia explains 'Gross Domestic Product - GDP'
GDP is commonly used as an indicator of the economic health of a country, as well as to gauge a country's standard of living. Critics of using GDP as an economic measure say the statistic does not take into account the underground economy - transactions that, for whatever reason, are not reported to the government. Others say that GDP is not intended to gauge material well-being, but serves as a measure of a nation's productivity, which is unrelated.
To know more about GDP, please read Economic Indicators: Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Click: Five Chart Patterns you need to know…
Click: Gross domestic product - Wikipedia
_____________
Cover Article source:
Get Some Sleep, and Wake Up the GDP
New York Times (click green title above)
Americans' lack of sleep isn't just making them cranky, sick & suffer - It's also hurting productivity, and thus the wider economy
Comments by STAF, Inc.
NOTICE:
Below more sleep-related articles, important for you and for everyone
________________________________________________
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describes
sleep deprivation as a "public health epidemic"
linked to a wide range of medical issues, including hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity and cancer. Yet, the demands of modern society increasingly can shorten the time for rest, speakers said 11 March at AAAS.
Adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night, according to the National Sleep Foundation, but a CDC survey found that some 50 to 70 million U.S. adults suffer chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders. More than 35 percent of nearly 75,000 survey respondents reported getting less than seven hours of sleep, on average, each night. The National Department of Transportation estimates that drowsy driving causes 1,550 fatalities and 40,00 nonfatal injuries every year in the United States.
"It's a big problem," said Michael J. Twery, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Most recently, he noted, researchers reported in Science that sleep functions as a kind of "sewer system" for the brain, at least in mice, by flushing beta-amyloid, which is known to accumulate in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
Twery was one of three speakers who took part in a public program at AAAS on what neuroscience tells us about sleep, sleep disorders and dreams. The event was the first of the 2014 series on Neuroscience and Society, organized by AAAS and the Dana Foundation.
Clifford B. Saper, professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Harvard Medical School and chair of the Department of Neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said that "99 percent of scientists agree — a loss of sleep is deleterious." Saper and his colleagues have been studying the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, which resets our daily circadian clock, and the genes that control wakefulness. The work is shedding light on why many older people may have more trouble falling and staying asleep.
Why do we dream? Sigmund Freud thought that dreams were a form of wish fulfillment. But according to Deirdre Leigh Barrett, assistant clinical professor of psychology in the psychiatry department at the Harvard Medical School, "Research is converging on the idea that dreams are simply thinking in another biochemical state." Dreams often seem to be a way of working through emotional and personal issues, she added, although they may sometimes offer creative inspiration to artists.
Sleep apnea and other medical disorders are often the cause of sleep deprivation, Twery noted.
Click: What Is Sleep Apnea?
Yet, he added, too many of us are missing out on sleep by choice: "We choose to be awake," he said. "We choose to maximize our lives through wakefulness." Late-night eating should be avoided, Saper said. The National Sleep Foundation also suggests sticking to the same bedtime and wake-up routine every day, avoiding naps, and doing daily exercise, among other healthy sleep habits.
Click: Healthy sleep habits
_____________________________________________
sleep deprivation as a "public health epidemic"
linked to a wide range of medical issues, including hypertension, diabetes, depression, obesity and cancer. Yet, the demands of modern society increasingly can shorten the time for rest, speakers said 11 March at AAAS.
Adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night, according to the National Sleep Foundation, but a CDC survey found that some 50 to 70 million U.S. adults suffer chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders. More than 35 percent of nearly 75,000 survey respondents reported getting less than seven hours of sleep, on average, each night. The National Department of Transportation estimates that drowsy driving causes 1,550 fatalities and 40,00 nonfatal injuries every year in the United States.
"It's a big problem," said Michael J. Twery, director of the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Most recently, he noted, researchers reported in Science that sleep functions as a kind of "sewer system" for the brain, at least in mice, by flushing beta-amyloid, which is known to accumulate in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease.
Twery was one of three speakers who took part in a public program at AAAS on what neuroscience tells us about sleep, sleep disorders and dreams. The event was the first of the 2014 series on Neuroscience and Society, organized by AAAS and the Dana Foundation.
Clifford B. Saper, professor of neurology and neuroscience at the Harvard Medical School and chair of the Department of Neurology at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center said that "99 percent of scientists agree — a loss of sleep is deleterious." Saper and his colleagues have been studying the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus, or SCN, which resets our daily circadian clock, and the genes that control wakefulness. The work is shedding light on why many older people may have more trouble falling and staying asleep.
Why do we dream? Sigmund Freud thought that dreams were a form of wish fulfillment. But according to Deirdre Leigh Barrett, assistant clinical professor of psychology in the psychiatry department at the Harvard Medical School, "Research is converging on the idea that dreams are simply thinking in another biochemical state." Dreams often seem to be a way of working through emotional and personal issues, she added, although they may sometimes offer creative inspiration to artists.
Sleep apnea and other medical disorders are often the cause of sleep deprivation, Twery noted.
Click: What Is Sleep Apnea?
Yet, he added, too many of us are missing out on sleep by choice: "We choose to be awake," he said. "We choose to maximize our lives through wakefulness." Late-night eating should be avoided, Saper said. The National Sleep Foundation also suggests sticking to the same bedtime and wake-up routine every day, avoiding naps, and doing daily exercise, among other healthy sleep habits.
Click: Healthy sleep habits
_____________________________________________
Important sleep info for everyone
Sleep deprivation leads to weight gain - sleeping enough leads to weight loss
sleep deprivation = not sleeping enough
Sleep More, Weigh Less:
the Link Between Sleep and Weight Loss
"There are over two dozen studies that suggest that people who sleep less tend to weigh more," says Sanjay Patel, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. click: Case Western Reserve University - One of the nation's top ...
One such study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine click: Archives of internal medicine, examined approximately 1,000 people, and found a link between weight and time spent in bed. On average, people who were overweight slept 16 minutes less per day than normal weight people -- a small, but significant difference. Recent research led by Patel followed 68,183 women, all part of the Nurses' Health Study, for 16 years. The results: Those who slept 5 hours or less a night were nearly a third more likely to gain 30 pounds or more than women who slept 7 hours per night. Some reliable studies have showed that if you sleep less than 6 hours or more than 8-1/2 you tend to gain weight.
There are several different ways losing sleep can thwart your weight loss efforts. Research from the University of Chicago suggests that sleep deprivation may lead to a change in how our bodies regulate appetite, leading us to crave more food. "You may start not only eating more, but eating unhealthy foods -- those high in fat and carbohydrates," says Patel. "Another possibility is that because people who are sleep-deprived feel more fatigued, they exercise less. Sleep deprivation can also change your basal metabolic rate, slowing down how many calories you burn just doing basic life-sustaining activities, like breathing and maintaining body temperature."
Don't skimp on hours. Most people need 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night, but the best way to tell if you're getting enough sleep is to see how you feel during the day, says Patel. Are you tired or sleepy in the afternoon or evening? And in the morning, are you ready to go, or does your body crave another hour in bed? Constant napping is a clear sign of sleep deprivation, he says. Once you've determined the hours you need, make sleep a priority by counting back from the time you get up in the morning to find out when to hit the sack, says Gerard T. Lombardo, MD, director of the Sleep Center at Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, and co-author of Sleep to Save Your Life: The Complete Guide to Living Longer and Healthier Through Restorative Sleep. click: Sleep to Save Your Life: The Complete Guide to ... - Amazon.com
Explore medical causes. The most common reason people feel sleepy is that they're not getting enough sleep - there could be a medical cause as well. There are over 75 different disorders that can disrupt sleep, says Lawrence J. Epstein, MD, instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, regional medical director for the Harvard-affiliated Sleep Health Centers, and co-author of The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep, click: The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep ...www.amazon.com › ... › Sleep Disorders
The most common disorders are sleep apnea (web link at the end) , a sleep and breathing problem; restless legs syndrome (web link at the end), where pain and discomfort disrupt sleep; and insomnia, which can include trouble getting to sleep initially, as well as waking up and having trouble getting back to sleep. Other potential sleep-disrupters include chronic pain from conditions like arthritis, and disorders that make it hard to breathe lying down, such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and heart failure. Talk to your physician if you suspect your fatigue has a medical cause.
Web links:
(1) click: What Is Sleep Apnea? - NHLBI,NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health.../sleepapne...National Heart, Lung, and...Sleep apnea usually is a chronic (ongoing) condition that disrupts your sleep. When your breathing pauses or becomes shallow, you'll often move out of deep ...Other Names for Sleep Apnea - Signs & Symptoms - What Causes Sleep Apnea?
(2) click: Restless Legs Syndrome Fact Sheet: National Institute of ...www.ninds.nih.gov/.../restless_legs/detail_re...
National Institute of Neuro... Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological disorder characterized by throbbing, pulling, creeping, or other unpleasant sensations in the legs and an ..
(3) click: Emphysema Definition - Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinicwww.mayoclinic.org/diseases.../emphysema/.../con-
Emphysema occurs when the air sacs in your lungs are gradually destroyed, making you progressively more short of breath. Emphysema is one of several ...
Source: (1) Archives of Internal Medicine, click: Archives of internal medicine, (2) STAF, Inc.
________________________________________________
Sleep deprivation leads to weight gain - sleeping enough leads to weight loss
sleep deprivation = not sleeping enough
Sleep More, Weigh Less:
the Link Between Sleep and Weight Loss
"There are over two dozen studies that suggest that people who sleep less tend to weigh more," says Sanjay Patel, MD, assistant professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University, in Cleveland, Ohio. click: Case Western Reserve University - One of the nation's top ...
One such study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine click: Archives of internal medicine, examined approximately 1,000 people, and found a link between weight and time spent in bed. On average, people who were overweight slept 16 minutes less per day than normal weight people -- a small, but significant difference. Recent research led by Patel followed 68,183 women, all part of the Nurses' Health Study, for 16 years. The results: Those who slept 5 hours or less a night were nearly a third more likely to gain 30 pounds or more than women who slept 7 hours per night. Some reliable studies have showed that if you sleep less than 6 hours or more than 8-1/2 you tend to gain weight.
There are several different ways losing sleep can thwart your weight loss efforts. Research from the University of Chicago suggests that sleep deprivation may lead to a change in how our bodies regulate appetite, leading us to crave more food. "You may start not only eating more, but eating unhealthy foods -- those high in fat and carbohydrates," says Patel. "Another possibility is that because people who are sleep-deprived feel more fatigued, they exercise less. Sleep deprivation can also change your basal metabolic rate, slowing down how many calories you burn just doing basic life-sustaining activities, like breathing and maintaining body temperature."
Don't skimp on hours. Most people need 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night, but the best way to tell if you're getting enough sleep is to see how you feel during the day, says Patel. Are you tired or sleepy in the afternoon or evening? And in the morning, are you ready to go, or does your body crave another hour in bed? Constant napping is a clear sign of sleep deprivation, he says. Once you've determined the hours you need, make sleep a priority by counting back from the time you get up in the morning to find out when to hit the sack, says Gerard T. Lombardo, MD, director of the Sleep Center at Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn, and co-author of Sleep to Save Your Life: The Complete Guide to Living Longer and Healthier Through Restorative Sleep. click: Sleep to Save Your Life: The Complete Guide to ... - Amazon.com
Explore medical causes. The most common reason people feel sleepy is that they're not getting enough sleep - there could be a medical cause as well. There are over 75 different disorders that can disrupt sleep, says Lawrence J. Epstein, MD, instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, regional medical director for the Harvard-affiliated Sleep Health Centers, and co-author of The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep, click: The Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep ...www.amazon.com › ... › Sleep Disorders
The most common disorders are sleep apnea (web link at the end) , a sleep and breathing problem; restless legs syndrome (web link at the end), where pain and discomfort disrupt sleep; and insomnia, which can include trouble getting to sleep initially, as well as waking up and having trouble getting back to sleep. Other potential sleep-disrupters include chronic pain from conditions like arthritis, and disorders that make it hard to breathe lying down, such as emphysema, chronic bronchitis, and heart failure. Talk to your physician if you suspect your fatigue has a medical cause.
Web links:
(1) click: What Is Sleep Apnea? - NHLBI,NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health.../sleepapne...National Heart, Lung, and...Sleep apnea usually is a chronic (ongoing) condition that disrupts your sleep. When your breathing pauses or becomes shallow, you'll often move out of deep ...Other Names for Sleep Apnea - Signs & Symptoms - What Causes Sleep Apnea?
(2) click: Restless Legs Syndrome Fact Sheet: National Institute of ...www.ninds.nih.gov/.../restless_legs/detail_re...
National Institute of Neuro... Restless legs syndrome (RLS) is a neurological disorder characterized by throbbing, pulling, creeping, or other unpleasant sensations in the legs and an ..
(3) click: Emphysema Definition - Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinicwww.mayoclinic.org/diseases.../emphysema/.../con-
Emphysema occurs when the air sacs in your lungs are gradually destroyed, making you progressively more short of breath. Emphysema is one of several ...
Source: (1) Archives of Internal Medicine, click: Archives of internal medicine, (2) STAF, Inc.
________________________________________________
Tapping Into a Goodnight Sleep-
Sleep-Tracking Apps Can Help You Make it Through the Night
Date: March 5, 2014
Click green for further info
Insomnia is always a miserable experience, but at least it used to be an eclectic one. On long nights, a sleepless soul had options: toss and turn, pour a drink, smoke a cigarette, organize shoes, watch TV, count sheep, look out the window. Evelyn Waugh sipped a mixture of bromide and crème de menthe; William Styron stared straight ahead into the darkness.
Now, the restless can reach for their smartphones and browse until the sun rises or sleep descends, mesmerized by something that provides stimulation without strain, distraction without effort. And it’s right there on the bedside table.
In late 2012, the American Medical Association issued a policy stating that “exposure to excessive light at night, including extended use of various electronic media, can disrupt sleep or exacerbate sleep disorders.” But even without the association’s corroboration, most of us understand intuitively that playing with our phones is about as sleep-conducive as bulldozing a plate of cookies. How, then, to explain the recent explosion of sleep-related apps?
Browse the iTunes store or Google Play and you’ll find them by the dozen: offerings with names like SleepBot and eSleep, represented by icons of placid sheep or glowing moons. The offerings fall into two basic categories. One tracks sleep patterns through the smartphone’s accelerometer (the doodad that recognizes when your phone is upside-down), giving users a blueprint of their time in bed. The second promises to lull users to sleep with music, hypnosis or guided meditation.
If you’re the data-driven type, a sleep-tracking app surely appeals. By placing the phone next to you in bed and tapping a button, you record your movements and a sleep chart is created. But according to Dr. Clete Kushida, the medical director of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center, these apps are hardly precise.
“Without EEG — brain wave activity — it’s very hard to tell different stages of sleep apart,” Dr. Kushida said. “People can stay still and the device will think the person’s asleep.” Still, “the advantage of these devices is that they can help individuals become more aware of a potential sleep problem,” Dr. Kushida said.
This is because we are not good at monitoring our own sleep habits, with or without a phone. “The reality of sleep is often at variance with the perception of sleep,” said Russell Sanna, the executive director of the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine. “When you ask people how well they slept after they’ve been in a sleep lab, they’ll give you an answer that’s often not a 1-to-1 correlation with the results.”
It doesn’t help that the pressure to maintain virtuous sleep habits has never been higher. A 2011 study published in Sleep, the journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, suggested that the annual cost in lost productivity from insomnia is $63.2 billion in the United States, while a more recent finding published in Science magazine suggests that sleep cleans the brain of toxic proteins “like a dishwasher,” as one of the study’s authors put it. A recent Fast Company article called “Secrets of the Most Productive People” reported the long hours of slumber logged by Tory Burch, Pharrell Williams, Anthony Bourdain and other paragons of achievement.
Those stressed out by such standards may want to download programs like Deep Sleep With Andrew Johnson, which combines tinkly (= like the short high ringing sound of a small bell) music with meditation directed by the host, with a Sean Connery accent.
click: The Official Website of Sir Sean Connerywww.seanconnery.com/Official site with a biography, filmography and a gallery featuring the art of the actor's wife Micheline.
Sleep Fan produces white noise, while Sleep Pillow Sounds offers a more comprehensive menu of noises, including “luxury car ride,” “mother’s heartbeat,” “cold drink with ice” and four varieties of wind chime.
Tips offered by other apps include sniffing lavender oil click:
lavender oil lavender oil click: Lavender oil, counting backward from 100, eating a banana, writing down problems, watching a slide show of nature-themed stock photos, replaying events from the day and pretending to float. When it comes to sedatives, there’s no one-size-fits-all.
But the chaotic range of advice may also point to a basic lack of awareness about sleep hygiene. “In my preschool years, we had a designated nap time, but nobody ever explained why it was important to take the nap,” Dr. Sanna said.
“If sleep were a priority, we’d be teaching it to children in elementary school the same way we teach them about the food pyramid and the importance of recess.”
Tapping Into a Goodnight
New York Times - 23 hours ago
Tapping Into a Goodnight -Sleep-tracking apps can ... A recent Fast Company article called “Secrets of the Most Productive People” reported the long hours of slumber ...
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
____________________________________
Sleep-Tracking Apps Can Help You Make it Through the Night
Date: March 5, 2014
Click green for further info
Insomnia is always a miserable experience, but at least it used to be an eclectic one. On long nights, a sleepless soul had options: toss and turn, pour a drink, smoke a cigarette, organize shoes, watch TV, count sheep, look out the window. Evelyn Waugh sipped a mixture of bromide and crème de menthe; William Styron stared straight ahead into the darkness.
Now, the restless can reach for their smartphones and browse until the sun rises or sleep descends, mesmerized by something that provides stimulation without strain, distraction without effort. And it’s right there on the bedside table.
In late 2012, the American Medical Association issued a policy stating that “exposure to excessive light at night, including extended use of various electronic media, can disrupt sleep or exacerbate sleep disorders.” But even without the association’s corroboration, most of us understand intuitively that playing with our phones is about as sleep-conducive as bulldozing a plate of cookies. How, then, to explain the recent explosion of sleep-related apps?
Browse the iTunes store or Google Play and you’ll find them by the dozen: offerings with names like SleepBot and eSleep, represented by icons of placid sheep or glowing moons. The offerings fall into two basic categories. One tracks sleep patterns through the smartphone’s accelerometer (the doodad that recognizes when your phone is upside-down), giving users a blueprint of their time in bed. The second promises to lull users to sleep with music, hypnosis or guided meditation.
If you’re the data-driven type, a sleep-tracking app surely appeals. By placing the phone next to you in bed and tapping a button, you record your movements and a sleep chart is created. But according to Dr. Clete Kushida, the medical director of the Stanford Sleep Medicine Center, these apps are hardly precise.
“Without EEG — brain wave activity — it’s very hard to tell different stages of sleep apart,” Dr. Kushida said. “People can stay still and the device will think the person’s asleep.” Still, “the advantage of these devices is that they can help individuals become more aware of a potential sleep problem,” Dr. Kushida said.
This is because we are not good at monitoring our own sleep habits, with or without a phone. “The reality of sleep is often at variance with the perception of sleep,” said Russell Sanna, the executive director of the Harvard Medical School Division of Sleep Medicine. “When you ask people how well they slept after they’ve been in a sleep lab, they’ll give you an answer that’s often not a 1-to-1 correlation with the results.”
It doesn’t help that the pressure to maintain virtuous sleep habits has never been higher. A 2011 study published in Sleep, the journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, suggested that the annual cost in lost productivity from insomnia is $63.2 billion in the United States, while a more recent finding published in Science magazine suggests that sleep cleans the brain of toxic proteins “like a dishwasher,” as one of the study’s authors put it. A recent Fast Company article called “Secrets of the Most Productive People” reported the long hours of slumber logged by Tory Burch, Pharrell Williams, Anthony Bourdain and other paragons of achievement.
Those stressed out by such standards may want to download programs like Deep Sleep With Andrew Johnson, which combines tinkly (= like the short high ringing sound of a small bell) music with meditation directed by the host, with a Sean Connery accent.
click: The Official Website of Sir Sean Connerywww.seanconnery.com/Official site with a biography, filmography and a gallery featuring the art of the actor's wife Micheline.
Sleep Fan produces white noise, while Sleep Pillow Sounds offers a more comprehensive menu of noises, including “luxury car ride,” “mother’s heartbeat,” “cold drink with ice” and four varieties of wind chime.
Tips offered by other apps include sniffing lavender oil click:
lavender oil lavender oil click: Lavender oil, counting backward from 100, eating a banana, writing down problems, watching a slide show of nature-themed stock photos, replaying events from the day and pretending to float. When it comes to sedatives, there’s no one-size-fits-all.
But the chaotic range of advice may also point to a basic lack of awareness about sleep hygiene. “In my preschool years, we had a designated nap time, but nobody ever explained why it was important to take the nap,” Dr. Sanna said.
“If sleep were a priority, we’d be teaching it to children in elementary school the same way we teach them about the food pyramid and the importance of recess.”
Tapping Into a Goodnight
New York Times - 23 hours ago
Tapping Into a Goodnight -Sleep-tracking apps can ... A recent Fast Company article called “Secrets of the Most Productive People” reported the long hours of slumber ...
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
____________________________________
Health News, Good to Know
Important for everyone worldwide
Feeling Sleepy?
Maybe Your Brain’s Too Full
New sleep theory proposes that we sleep so our brains can optimize learning & memory
Click green for further info
Sleep is an essential state of the brain but why do animals risk the vulnerability that comes with not being conscious for hours? What happens in the brain during sleep that’s so vital for life?
Numerous theories for why we sleep have been proposed, and they all agree that sleep plays an important restorative function. But rather than being a passive state as previously thought, we now know sleep is a very active and dynamic process.
Since that realisation, theories about the function of sleep describe its role differently – to consolidate memories perhaps, or to flush out toxins and waste matter, or generally reorganise the vast amount of information gathered throughout wakefulness to filter out irrelevant information.
The mechanics of sleep
There are two processes that regulate the cycle of sleep and wakefulness. The first relates to the timing of when you sleep and are awake. It uses the brain region known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothelamus, which acts as a “master clock”.
The other relates to the build-up of sleep need (sleep pressure), which depends on the amount of time you’ve been awake. This keeps your body functioning in sync with the external world (driven by sunlight), and allows you to sleep during the night and be awake during the day.
Generally, as we reach late evening, the pressure to sleep becomes high enough for the brain to initiate sleep through various brain regions including the hypothalamus. Together, these brain regions initiate sleep through molecular messengers called neurotransmitters.
Once you’re asleep, the brain becomes relatively disconnected from the external environment (and this is why sleep is so mysterious in evolutionary terms, because we are completely vulnerable during these hours).
Based on electrical brain activity, sleep is divided into two states: (1) rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and (2) non-REM sleep. These cycle roughly every 90 minutes, with four or more cycles per night.
Non-REM sleep is divided into (1) light stages of sleep (stage one and two) and (2) deeper or slow-wave sleep (stage three and four). REM sleep is the stage of sleep during which we dream.
Sleep and brain plasticity
When you’re awake, your brain has to constantly deal with incoming information from the ever-changing environment and respond appropriately to different situations.
Due to the incredible flexibility, learning, and memory capacity of our brains (brain plasticity), we quickly learn things that are important to daily function, while filtering out redundant information.
Brain plasticity is the result of a variety of processes that broadly lead to increases or decreases in the number and strength of the connections between brain cells (neurons). It also results from the establishment of new connections between neural circuits shaped by learning and memory experiences of wakefulness.
Although REM sleep is associated with dreaming and has been linked with memory consolidation, the details of its functional role and significance are unclear.
In recent years, the slow-wave sleep that occurs during non-REM sleep has received a lot of research attention because it’s thought to play an important role in brain plasticity, learning, and memory.
And it’s this kind of sleep that forms the basis of an elegant theory of sleep function called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. The core point of the theory, according to the researchers who proposed it is that sleep is “the price we pay for plasticity”.
A new theory
According to the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, brain plasticity mostly takes place when we’re awake and taking in new information from the environment. Functionally important information that’s relevant to our daily function and survival prompts brain changes that lead to an overall increase in the strength and number of neural connections (synapses) in the brain as a whole.
But this increase cannot be sustained forever because higher synaptic strength requires lots of energy, cellular resources, and space. So the system becomes inefficient and signalling between neurons becomes more erratic, reducing the capacity for learning and memory.
This is where sleep comes in – it puts the brain into an “offline” state during which the synaptic strength accumulated during wakefulness can be surveyed through spontaneous electrical activity. And it ensures the process is uninterrupted by the external environment.
The process returns the system back to a more sustainable, baseline level while, at the same time, keeping a trace of important learning and memory information.
The hypothesis says slow-wave sleep plays a major role in achieving synaptic homeostasis or “renormalisation” by creating an environment that facilitates returning synaptic strength to a normal level.
Criticism and strength
The synaptic homeostasis hypothesis theory is supported by a growing amount of research evidence including molecular, cellular, genetic, animal and human studies.
Its critics says the theory may be too simplistic because it fails to offer more detailed neural mechanisms by which the described brain effects are achieved. But this lack of focus on detailed mechanisms also makes the theory attractive because it suggests a more universal and general function for sleep.
This function is to maintain neuronal balance by returning synaptic strength accumulated through wakefulness to inefficient levels, back to normal levels so your brain can optimise learning and memory capacity when you’re awake.
Source: (1) Andrew Vakulin receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. T
his article was originally published on The Conversation - Academic rigour, journalistic flair).
Read the click: original article (it is the same as above)
University of Sydney, Australia | February 22, 2014
click: The University of Sydney sydney.edu.au/ Australia's leading higher education and research University
Dr Andrew Vakulin - Sydney Medical School - The University of ...sydney.edu.au › ... › Dr Andrew Vakulin
University of Sydney - Honorary Associate Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Central Clinical School. T: 02 9114 0443. F: 02 9114 0013. E: andrew.vakulin@sydney.edu.au ...
(2) STAF, Inc.
__________________________________________
Important for everyone worldwide
Feeling Sleepy?
Maybe Your Brain’s Too Full
New sleep theory proposes that we sleep so our brains can optimize learning & memory
Click green for further info
Sleep is an essential state of the brain but why do animals risk the vulnerability that comes with not being conscious for hours? What happens in the brain during sleep that’s so vital for life?
Numerous theories for why we sleep have been proposed, and they all agree that sleep plays an important restorative function. But rather than being a passive state as previously thought, we now know sleep is a very active and dynamic process.
Since that realisation, theories about the function of sleep describe its role differently – to consolidate memories perhaps, or to flush out toxins and waste matter, or generally reorganise the vast amount of information gathered throughout wakefulness to filter out irrelevant information.
The mechanics of sleep
There are two processes that regulate the cycle of sleep and wakefulness. The first relates to the timing of when you sleep and are awake. It uses the brain region known as the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothelamus, which acts as a “master clock”.
The other relates to the build-up of sleep need (sleep pressure), which depends on the amount of time you’ve been awake. This keeps your body functioning in sync with the external world (driven by sunlight), and allows you to sleep during the night and be awake during the day.
Generally, as we reach late evening, the pressure to sleep becomes high enough for the brain to initiate sleep through various brain regions including the hypothalamus. Together, these brain regions initiate sleep through molecular messengers called neurotransmitters.
Once you’re asleep, the brain becomes relatively disconnected from the external environment (and this is why sleep is so mysterious in evolutionary terms, because we are completely vulnerable during these hours).
Based on electrical brain activity, sleep is divided into two states: (1) rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and (2) non-REM sleep. These cycle roughly every 90 minutes, with four or more cycles per night.
Non-REM sleep is divided into (1) light stages of sleep (stage one and two) and (2) deeper or slow-wave sleep (stage three and four). REM sleep is the stage of sleep during which we dream.
Sleep and brain plasticity
When you’re awake, your brain has to constantly deal with incoming information from the ever-changing environment and respond appropriately to different situations.
Due to the incredible flexibility, learning, and memory capacity of our brains (brain plasticity), we quickly learn things that are important to daily function, while filtering out redundant information.
Brain plasticity is the result of a variety of processes that broadly lead to increases or decreases in the number and strength of the connections between brain cells (neurons). It also results from the establishment of new connections between neural circuits shaped by learning and memory experiences of wakefulness.
Although REM sleep is associated with dreaming and has been linked with memory consolidation, the details of its functional role and significance are unclear.
In recent years, the slow-wave sleep that occurs during non-REM sleep has received a lot of research attention because it’s thought to play an important role in brain plasticity, learning, and memory.
And it’s this kind of sleep that forms the basis of an elegant theory of sleep function called the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis. The core point of the theory, according to the researchers who proposed it is that sleep is “the price we pay for plasticity”.
A new theory
According to the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, brain plasticity mostly takes place when we’re awake and taking in new information from the environment. Functionally important information that’s relevant to our daily function and survival prompts brain changes that lead to an overall increase in the strength and number of neural connections (synapses) in the brain as a whole.
But this increase cannot be sustained forever because higher synaptic strength requires lots of energy, cellular resources, and space. So the system becomes inefficient and signalling between neurons becomes more erratic, reducing the capacity for learning and memory.
This is where sleep comes in – it puts the brain into an “offline” state during which the synaptic strength accumulated during wakefulness can be surveyed through spontaneous electrical activity. And it ensures the process is uninterrupted by the external environment.
The process returns the system back to a more sustainable, baseline level while, at the same time, keeping a trace of important learning and memory information.
The hypothesis says slow-wave sleep plays a major role in achieving synaptic homeostasis or “renormalisation” by creating an environment that facilitates returning synaptic strength to a normal level.
Criticism and strength
The synaptic homeostasis hypothesis theory is supported by a growing amount of research evidence including molecular, cellular, genetic, animal and human studies.
Its critics says the theory may be too simplistic because it fails to offer more detailed neural mechanisms by which the described brain effects are achieved. But this lack of focus on detailed mechanisms also makes the theory attractive because it suggests a more universal and general function for sleep.
This function is to maintain neuronal balance by returning synaptic strength accumulated through wakefulness to inefficient levels, back to normal levels so your brain can optimise learning and memory capacity when you’re awake.
Source: (1) Andrew Vakulin receives funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia. T
his article was originally published on The Conversation - Academic rigour, journalistic flair).
Read the click: original article (it is the same as above)
University of Sydney, Australia | February 22, 2014
click: The University of Sydney sydney.edu.au/ Australia's leading higher education and research University
Dr Andrew Vakulin - Sydney Medical School - The University of ...sydney.edu.au › ... › Dr Andrew Vakulin
University of Sydney - Honorary Associate Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, Central Clinical School. T: 02 9114 0443. F: 02 9114 0013. E: andrew.vakulin@sydney.edu.au ...
(2) STAF, Inc.
__________________________________________
Acupressure for Babies & Children
for a Good Night’s Sleep
Notice: This is NOT acupuncture - no needles
The caretaker's gentle, soft hands do the acu-massage& the acu-pressure
Regardless of parenting style and sleep philosophy, all families can utilize these simple and easy-to-implement strategies to improve their baby’s sleep. It just takes a little time and attention, and the result can be a better night's sleep for the baby or the child and for the parents
The range of advice may also point to a basic lack of awareness about sleep hygiene. In my preschool years, we had a designated nap time, but nobody ever explained why it was important to take the nap.
If sleep were a priority, we’d be teaching it to children in elementary school the same way we teach them about the food pyramid and the importance of recess.
Modern pediatric sleep advice is an incredibly contentious subject as any trip to the bookstore will demonstrate. There are books on the many different behavioral modification methods, from the cry-it-out approaches to the attachment-parenting styles. And if you go to any online parenting discussion board, there will be heated discussions among parents who defend their choice of sleep method for babies.
Regardless of parenting style and culture, Chinese medicine techniques can help improve sleep because they alter the energetics of sleep and focus on physiology rather than behavior.
While a reliable sleep routine will be enough for most babies to establish a healthy sleep pattern, others may need additional support. This is when Chinese medicine and its attention to individual energetics can come to the rescue.
Causes of Poor Sleep
In Chinese medicine, there are many different patterns of sleep disturbance, each with their own unique treatment. With babies, it is usually an excess of yang energy (fire) and a deficiency of yin energy (water), but it could also be due to a weak spleen (earth) and an excess liver (wood) or other elemental imbalance.
Balancing these energies with acupressure can be done easily and effectively with the use of a good acupressure reference guide or the recommendations of a pediatric acupuncturist.
Better Digestion
In Chinese medicine, the source of sound sleep is good digestion. A visit to a pediatric acupuncturist to treat sleep disturbances will always begin with an analysis of digestion. There can’t be good sleep if there is gas, bloating, constipation, or diarrhea. Regular abdominal massage can be incredibly beneficial to regulating the digestive processes.
To help digestion, you can massage in circles with medium pressure around the belly button, going counter-clockwise (against the flow of the intestines) to treat diarrhea and clockwise (with the course of the intestines) to treat gas, bloating, and constipation.
To do a well-baby treatment, begin with 50 circles against the flow of the intestines and then finish with 50 circles going with the flow of the intestines. This is guaranteed to ease tummy troubles that interfere with good sleep.
Teething and Sleep Trouble
Teething pain can disrupt even the best sleepers. Massaging acupressure points that have an energetic relationship to the gums helps to relieve the pain, heat, and swelling that accompany teething. In Chinese medicine, the primary channels that intersect the gums are the stomach and large-intestine meridians.
To help ease teething discomfort, massage the point on the thumb-side of the index finger from the corner of the nail base to the nail tip (large intestine point), and the web between the second and third toe (stomach point) for two minutes per point as often as needed. This is very effective for improving sleep.
Deeper Relaxation
Massaging between your baby’s eyes can also greatly improve sleep. This very relaxing acupressure point can induce sleep in even the most reluctant sleeper. This point is located above the bridge of the nose between the eyes. You can massage upward with medium strokes until the baby drifts off to dreamland. It is good for adults too.
Daily Massages
A daily acupressure massage can also be used to promote good baby sleep. The entire body is crossed with energy channels that correspond to the internal organs. There are six channels that traverse the arms and six channels that traverse the legs. Regular massage along these energetic pathways will keep a baby’s immune system strong, improve digestion, and assist with good growth and development.
For an easy massage that will benefit the whole body, begin by massaging one finger and follow that line all the way up to the shoulder. Continue with each finger until you’ve done the both hands and both sides of the body.
Then do the same on the lower body by starting at each toe and massaging up each leg. Do both sides. Then continue with circular massage on the abdomen like the one to promote good digestion: Do 100–200 clockwise circles.
Finish with a series of nine upward strokes on the back. Start these strokes at the base of the spine and finish them at the neck. Babies will love the attention and their health will benefit as a result of this tender care.
Parents should be persistent with their use of baby acupressure. Babies respond amazingly quickly to acupressure treatments, but if their parents’ efforts are not enough to work through sleep challenges, then a consultation with a pediatric acupuncturist may be necessary. They can do a more thorough evaluation and plan a comprehensive treatment strategy to put the baby on a better sleep track.
Babies benefit immensely from Chinese medicine’s unique perspective on pediatric sleep and its gentle and effective acupressure solutions. Regardless of parenting style and sleep philosophy, all families can utilize these simple and easy-to-implement strategies to improve their baby’s sleep. It just takes a little time and attention, and the result can be a better night’s sleep for both the baby and the parents.
Source: (1) Jennifer Taveras, L.Ac., has an acupuncture practice at Triangle Wellness in New York City and is also the creator of the Holistic Baby Acupressure System, which educates parents internationally on pediatric acupressure protocols.
Her instructional book and DVD are available at HolisticBabyAcupressureSystem.com.
(2) STAF, Inc. has not tested the book & DVD Ms. Jennifer Tavera offers. However, STAF,Inc. recommends using acu-pressure (not acu-puncture to children of any age).
___________________________________
Click next line to see the pictures
Best White Noise Machine for Babies | Sound Machines for
baby-sound-machine-review.toptenreviews.com/
by Karina Fabian - in 76 Google+ circles
Find the best baby sound machine and the best white noise machine forbabies. Sound machines for babies can help your baby sleep longer and better.
Click next line to see the pictures
Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk
New York Times
Devices that create soothing sounds used to help infants fall asleep... Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk ... Credit Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times.... Six parents interviewed for this article said they used them nightly, and all through the night, for their children.
Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume
Reported as Hearing Risk
Devices that produce soothing sounds in order to lull infants to sleep can be loud enough at maximum volume to damage their hearing, researchers reported Monday.
Infant sleep machines emit white noise or nature sounds to drown out everyday disturbances to a baby’s sleep. The machines, sometimes embedded in cuddly stuffed animals, are popular gifts at baby showers and routinely recommended by parenting books and websites.
Some sleep experts advise parents to use these noisemakers all night, every night, to ensure the best rest for a newborn. Many parents say their babies become so used to the sounds of rainfall or birds that they will not nap without them.
Researchers at the University of Torontoevaluated 14 popular sleep machines at maximum volume and found they produced between 68.8 to 92.9 decibels at 30 centimeters, about the distance one might be placed from an infant’s head. Three exceeded 85 decibels, the workplace safety limit for adults on an eight-hour shift for accumulated exposure as determined by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. One machine was so loud that two hours of use would exceed workplace noise limits.
At 100 centimeters, all the machines tested were louder than the 50-decibel limit averaged over an hour set for hospital nurseries in 1999 by an expert panel concerned with improving newborn sleep and their speech intelligibility.
“These machines are capable of delivering noise that we think is unsafe for full-grown adults in mines,” said Dr. Blake Papsin, the senior author of the paper and the chief otolaryngologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. Dr. Papsin got the idea for this study after a parent brought a portable white noise machine to the hospital that sounded as roaring as a carwash.
“Unless parents are adequately warned of the danger, or the design of the machines by manufacturers is changed to be safer, then the potential for harm exists, and parents need to know about it,” said Dr. Gordon B. Hughes, the program director of clinical trials for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who was not involved in the study.
Safe use is possible, the study’s authors suggest. “Farther away is less dangerous, a lower volume is better and shorter durations of time, all things that deliver less sound pressure to the baby,” Dr. Papsin said.
Yet some models are designed to be affixed to the crib, like Homedics’ SoundSpa Glow Giraffe and Baby Einstein’s Sea Dreams Soother.
The findings are bound to surprise many parents.
After finding a recommendation for white noise in “Happiest Baby on the Block,” Naomi Tucker, 39, bought a machine so that her daughter, Chiara, 15 months, could fall asleep nightly to ocean waves. The device masks sirens and household noise in the family’s two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.
A fan outside her door is “an extra barrier of sound, so we don’t have to tiptoe,” said Ms. Tucker, a family therapist. For naps in the stroller or the car, she and her husband use a white noise app on an old cellphone.
“It’s surprising because I hadn’t thought of it, but I can see why that would be the case,” Ms. Tucker said of the study finding. Her daughter’s Graco device is set to maximum volume, but it is still not all that loud, she said. It is also five feet from the crib.
Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a pediatrician and author of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” said parents could still use the machines, with new precautions.
“If it’s too close or it’s too loud, this might not be healthy for your baby,” he said. But “a quiet machine that’s far away may cause no harm whatsoever.”
The study authors recommended that manufacturers limit the maximum noise level of infant sleep machines.
Michelle Landesman, the customer care director at Marpac, said that the company’s Dohmie sound conditioner for babies has a decibel range of 50 to 75. “Our measurements are only taken six inches away from the machine, and that’s obviously much closer than we’d recommend,” she said.
Ashley Mowrey, a spokeswoman for Graco, declined to specify the loudest output for its Sweet Slumber Sound Machine.
Brian J. Fligor, an audiologist and a spokesman for the American Academy of Audiology, said that the new study may have overestimated the sound exposure to infants by roughly seven decibels. Dr. Fligor questioned the authors’ way of accounting for the differences between the ear canals of adults and newborns.
“I don’t see these results as a call for drastic reduction in use,” he said.
A concern, briefly raised in the Pediatrics study, is whether listening to white noise can be detrimental to auditory development. A 2003 study published in the journal Science found continuous white noise delayed development of the brain’s hearing center in newborn rats.
In humans, the brain of a newborn is learning to differentiate sounds at different pitches even during sleep, said Lisa L. Hunter, scientific director of research in the division of audiology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
“If you’ve conditioned them to white noise, there’s every indication that they might not be as responsive as they otherwise should be to soft speech,” she said.
The new study did not ask parents how these machines were used in households. Six parents interviewed for this article said they used them nightly, and all through the night, for their children.
Lauren Toner Perry, 32, a senior kindergarten teacher at Hutchison School in Memphis was given an infant sleep machine at her baby shower. She has used it to mask the clattering of dishes in the kitchen while her 4-month-old daughter sleeps.
Now she is reconsidering, even though it is pretty quiet. Still, Mrs. Perry said, “It’s kind of next to her crib.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk.
_______________________________
Best White Noise Machine for Babies | Sound Machines for
baby-sound-machine-review.toptenreviews.com/
by Karina Fabian - in 76 Google+ circles
Find the best baby sound machine and the best white noise machine forbabies. Sound machines for babies can help your baby sleep longer and better.
Click next line to see the pictures
Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk
New York Times
Devices that create soothing sounds used to help infants fall asleep... Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk ... Credit Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times.... Six parents interviewed for this article said they used them nightly, and all through the night, for their children.
Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume
Reported as Hearing Risk
Devices that produce soothing sounds in order to lull infants to sleep can be loud enough at maximum volume to damage their hearing, researchers reported Monday.
Infant sleep machines emit white noise or nature sounds to drown out everyday disturbances to a baby’s sleep. The machines, sometimes embedded in cuddly stuffed animals, are popular gifts at baby showers and routinely recommended by parenting books and websites.
Some sleep experts advise parents to use these noisemakers all night, every night, to ensure the best rest for a newborn. Many parents say their babies become so used to the sounds of rainfall or birds that they will not nap without them.
Researchers at the University of Torontoevaluated 14 popular sleep machines at maximum volume and found they produced between 68.8 to 92.9 decibels at 30 centimeters, about the distance one might be placed from an infant’s head. Three exceeded 85 decibels, the workplace safety limit for adults on an eight-hour shift for accumulated exposure as determined by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. One machine was so loud that two hours of use would exceed workplace noise limits.
At 100 centimeters, all the machines tested were louder than the 50-decibel limit averaged over an hour set for hospital nurseries in 1999 by an expert panel concerned with improving newborn sleep and their speech intelligibility.
“These machines are capable of delivering noise that we think is unsafe for full-grown adults in mines,” said Dr. Blake Papsin, the senior author of the paper and the chief otolaryngologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. Dr. Papsin got the idea for this study after a parent brought a portable white noise machine to the hospital that sounded as roaring as a carwash.
“Unless parents are adequately warned of the danger, or the design of the machines by manufacturers is changed to be safer, then the potential for harm exists, and parents need to know about it,” said Dr. Gordon B. Hughes, the program director of clinical trials for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who was not involved in the study.
Safe use is possible, the study’s authors suggest. “Farther away is less dangerous, a lower volume is better and shorter durations of time, all things that deliver less sound pressure to the baby,” Dr. Papsin said.
Yet some models are designed to be affixed to the crib, like Homedics’ SoundSpa Glow Giraffe and Baby Einstein’s Sea Dreams Soother.
The findings are bound to surprise many parents.
After finding a recommendation for white noise in “Happiest Baby on the Block,” Naomi Tucker, 39, bought a machine so that her daughter, Chiara, 15 months, could fall asleep nightly to ocean waves. The device masks sirens and household noise in the family’s two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.
A fan outside her door is “an extra barrier of sound, so we don’t have to tiptoe,” said Ms. Tucker, a family therapist. For naps in the stroller or the car, she and her husband use a white noise app on an old cellphone.
“It’s surprising because I hadn’t thought of it, but I can see why that would be the case,” Ms. Tucker said of the study finding. Her daughter’s Graco device is set to maximum volume, but it is still not all that loud, she said. It is also five feet from the crib.
Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a pediatrician and author of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” said parents could still use the machines, with new precautions.
“If it’s too close or it’s too loud, this might not be healthy for your baby,” he said. But “a quiet machine that’s far away may cause no harm whatsoever.”
The study authors recommended that manufacturers limit the maximum noise level of infant sleep machines.
Michelle Landesman, the customer care director at Marpac, said that the company’s Dohmie sound conditioner for babies has a decibel range of 50 to 75. “Our measurements are only taken six inches away from the machine, and that’s obviously much closer than we’d recommend,” she said.
Ashley Mowrey, a spokeswoman for Graco, declined to specify the loudest output for its Sweet Slumber Sound Machine.
Brian J. Fligor, an audiologist and a spokesman for the American Academy of Audiology, said that the new study may have overestimated the sound exposure to infants by roughly seven decibels. Dr. Fligor questioned the authors’ way of accounting for the differences between the ear canals of adults and newborns.
“I don’t see these results as a call for drastic reduction in use,” he said.
A concern, briefly raised in the Pediatrics study, is whether listening to white noise can be detrimental to auditory development. A 2003 study published in the journal Science found continuous white noise delayed development of the brain’s hearing center in newborn rats.
In humans, the brain of a newborn is learning to differentiate sounds at different pitches even during sleep, said Lisa L. Hunter, scientific director of research in the division of audiology at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
“If you’ve conditioned them to white noise, there’s every indication that they might not be as responsive as they otherwise should be to soft speech,” she said.
The new study did not ask parents how these machines were used in households. Six parents interviewed for this article said they used them nightly, and all through the night, for their children.
Lauren Toner Perry, 32, a senior kindergarten teacher at Hutchison School in Memphis was given an infant sleep machine at her baby shower. She has used it to mask the clattering of dishes in the kitchen while her 4-month-old daughter sleeps.
Now she is reconsidering, even though it is pretty quiet. Still, Mrs. Perry said, “It’s kind of next to her crib.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk.
_______________________________
Little lighter relating to sleeping:
Q. Why don't we sneeze when we are asleep?
A. Nobody has specifically studied this aspect of sneezing, said Dr. Gillian Shepherd, an allergist at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, but there are logical reasons that would explain why people do not sneeze overnight.
''The reason people sneeze is that the inside of the nose swells up, much like blowing up a balloon,'' Dr. Shepherd explained, ''and when a windblown particle of anything, an allergen or just a particle of dust, impacts the swollen lining, a sneeze results.'' When the wind blows or a door opens or a strong odor wafts in, a sneeze is likely to be set off.
However, in most bedrooms, there is no airflow at night, not even anyone walking around stirring up dust, so no particles blast the nose. Many people complain of sneezing attacks when they first wake up, throw off the covers, open closets and stir up particles that settled overnight.
The nose lining actually tends to be even more swollen when people are lying down, but the lack of a breeze protects against a sneeze. Even with air-conditioning, Dr. Shepherd said, there is generally a filter, so particles get stirred up only if the unit is turned off for a while in a dusty room. In that case, the first blast of air may throw particles at the nose.
''An allergic person by a window in pollen season will sneeze his head off all night,'' Dr. Shepherd said, but in that case, the person would probably not be asleep.
click: Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City - click: Gillian M. Shepherd, MD
_________________________
Q. Why don't we sneeze when we are asleep?
A. Nobody has specifically studied this aspect of sneezing, said Dr. Gillian Shepherd, an allergist at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center, but there are logical reasons that would explain why people do not sneeze overnight.
''The reason people sneeze is that the inside of the nose swells up, much like blowing up a balloon,'' Dr. Shepherd explained, ''and when a windblown particle of anything, an allergen or just a particle of dust, impacts the swollen lining, a sneeze results.'' When the wind blows or a door opens or a strong odor wafts in, a sneeze is likely to be set off.
However, in most bedrooms, there is no airflow at night, not even anyone walking around stirring up dust, so no particles blast the nose. Many people complain of sneezing attacks when they first wake up, throw off the covers, open closets and stir up particles that settled overnight.
The nose lining actually tends to be even more swollen when people are lying down, but the lack of a breeze protects against a sneeze. Even with air-conditioning, Dr. Shepherd said, there is generally a filter, so particles get stirred up only if the unit is turned off for a while in a dusty room. In that case, the first blast of air may throw particles at the nose.
''An allergic person by a window in pollen season will sneeze his head off all night,'' Dr. Shepherd said, but in that case, the person would probably not be asleep.
click: Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City - click: Gillian M. Shepherd, MD
_________________________
click: Results of Wrong Food Combinations
(talk to your pediatrician or primary care physician - STAF, Inc. is not giving medical advice in its seminars but info for educational & motivati0nal purposes).
===========================================================
BLOGGING
THIS gun article uses CT Adam but also other (Colorado) - more suitable for several articles
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
"Why someone is capable of doing so horrible as the recent mass shootings?" no one seems to know "Why?" Yet, there is a one clear answer to "Why?"
Practically all mass shooters have two things in common: (1) they are victims of a divorce & (2) they are all males.
A growing boy needs especially his father's continuous presence and guidance, more so than his mother's. The moral in our marriages has gone close to a zero. The children grow up disturbed & misled. In addition, the violent video games & violent movies are replacing the parental love & healthy attention - the children get a wrong picture about being a human being. The young mass killers suffer from the Broken Marriage Syndrome™.
In a family separation & divorce both spouses will experience (1) health challenges leading to a shorter life span and (2) to added financial difficulties. Any traditionally done marriage turned dysfunctional can be healed. Giving up as the first solution is not reasonable for anyone. A separation and a divorce are serious child abuse.
Every child experiencing a parental divorce faces serious life threatening disasters - the most important listed here: (1) overall increased risks to health & welfare; (2) 5 times more likely to commit suicide; (3) 32 times more likely to run away; (4) 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders; (5) 14 times more likely to commit rape; (6) 9 times more likely to drop out of school; (7) 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs; (8) 20 times more likely to end up in prison; (9) increased learning difficulties; (10) increased risk of divorce when grown; (11) increased out of wedlock pregnancies; (12) Latest discovery by the researchers: highly increased risk of having a stroke during his/her life time.
In every recent case all these above reasons were present. The CT mass shooter Adam Lanza hated his mother (killed her first) because she had initiated the divorce and took his father away.
He hated his father because (as any child would wrongly feel) Adam believed his father did not love him any longer and had abandoned him. Any child specialist would know this reason. Adam's possible autism is not the reason for a violent behavior. But uncontrolled jealousy and denied love are - some of the reasons for the mass shooters' behavior. E.g., in many cultures (not that it is right) going after the other lover was widely (and still is) admired and even permitted.
The long-term solution is to start educating the whole nation how to heal the American Family & our homes where our children are growing up. In the U.S. marriage happiness & child raising education for every family & every teenager in our schools (and colleges) is fully missing today but is present in most other developed countries in their school curricula.
In a happy home with both parents present the children grow up healthy - no Broken Marriage Syndrome™ and no reason to go to punish the world by killing everyone around.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a fully new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency, and to be named its first federal director. New legislation and training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
Visit STAF,Inc.'s extensive websites. To find the correct website, use STAF, Inc.'s Radio Show title - lower & upper keys as is here: "DrDrCanYouHelpMe" in the internet search. Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
________________________________________
ARTICLE B
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-The CT Sandy Hook Elementary School Mass Shooting
In the discussions in the public forum "Why someone is capable doing so horrible?" no one seems to know "Why?" Yet, there is a one clear answer to "Why?"
Almost all mass shooters have one thing in common: they themselves are victims of a divorced parents family. The moral in our marriage situation has gone close to zero. The children grow up disturbed & misled. In addition, the violent video games & violent movies are replacing the parental love - the children get a wrong picture about being a human being.
Our schools, Colleges & Universities in the U.S. provide almost no training for the most important human relationships:
marriage, child care & healthy child raising. STAF, Inc., the new leading organization in all family matters has developed programs for our schools.
Most marriage counselors fail in their effort because the College training they receive is not up-to-date relating to "the modern days".
Most people have no clue what a separation or a divorce does to the children. Every child experiencing a parental divorce faces serious life threatening disasters - here are the most serious 13.
This CT case is a typical situation: first the 20-year old killed and disfigured his mother in her home. He hated his mother because he believed she was the reason for the separation and he could not stay with his father.
Then the youngster went to kill children because in his belief he deserves the same happiness as the other children have (in his opinion), happiness he himself he does not have.
Then he kills himself to get rid of his pain coming from the parental divorce.
The primary solution is not in the gun laws. The guns will be found no matter how many restrictions. Yes, STAF, Inc. supports certain important restrictions mainly for preventing mass shooting. We Americans have the right to defend ourselves. However, we should close the loopholes for online gun sales and gun shows. We should fast have a ban on assault rifles and large ammo magazines. These weapons and ammunition can be used to kill large numbers of people quickly, and regulating them certainly falls within the bounds of the Second Amendment.
When a child grows up in a healthy, loving home with 2 loving parents, the child has a good chance to become a healthy-minded teenager & adult. The he/she has no need to find the guns to revenge his own Broken Family Syndrome™
The solution is to start educating the whole nation how to heal the American Family & our homes where our children are growing up. That education must start from the 1st grade and continues still in our colleges. Most people have no knowledge of the terrible life-destroying
The country has hundreds of thousands of family counselors - not many of them seem to fully comprehend what our international, leading specialists at The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit- have figured out.
These and many related reasons for our stable nation, including the matters relating to our healthy nutrition, to our high overweight & obesity level causing multitudes of deadly sicknesses - all mostly avoidable with a healthy lifestyle. STAF, Inc. has developed a new program for the U.S. gov. use as the solution for all these challenges in our nation. The new program will be introduced in D.C. in a televised event.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning to seek a seat in D.C. to provide the necessary legislation and training for all these matters handled in this brief response.
Listen to our Radio Shows and study our website for all answers in every area of a successful life.
All details on our extensive website: www.staf1org.weebly.com
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
______________________________________________________
(talk to your pediatrician or primary care physician - STAF, Inc. is not giving medical advice in its seminars but info for educational & motivati0nal purposes).
===========================================================
BLOGGING
THIS gun article uses CT Adam but also other (Colorado) - more suitable for several articles
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
"Why someone is capable of doing so horrible as the recent mass shootings?" no one seems to know "Why?" Yet, there is a one clear answer to "Why?"
Practically all mass shooters have two things in common: (1) they are victims of a divorce & (2) they are all males.
A growing boy needs especially his father's continuous presence and guidance, more so than his mother's. The moral in our marriages has gone close to a zero. The children grow up disturbed & misled. In addition, the violent video games & violent movies are replacing the parental love & healthy attention - the children get a wrong picture about being a human being. The young mass killers suffer from the Broken Marriage Syndrome™.
In a family separation & divorce both spouses will experience (1) health challenges leading to a shorter life span and (2) to added financial difficulties. Any traditionally done marriage turned dysfunctional can be healed. Giving up as the first solution is not reasonable for anyone. A separation and a divorce are serious child abuse.
Every child experiencing a parental divorce faces serious life threatening disasters - the most important listed here: (1) overall increased risks to health & welfare; (2) 5 times more likely to commit suicide; (3) 32 times more likely to run away; (4) 20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders; (5) 14 times more likely to commit rape; (6) 9 times more likely to drop out of school; (7) 10 times more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs; (8) 20 times more likely to end up in prison; (9) increased learning difficulties; (10) increased risk of divorce when grown; (11) increased out of wedlock pregnancies; (12) Latest discovery by the researchers: highly increased risk of having a stroke during his/her life time.
In every recent case all these above reasons were present. The CT mass shooter Adam Lanza hated his mother (killed her first) because she had initiated the divorce and took his father away.
He hated his father because (as any child would wrongly feel) Adam believed his father did not love him any longer and had abandoned him. Any child specialist would know this reason. Adam's possible autism is not the reason for a violent behavior. But uncontrolled jealousy and denied love are - some of the reasons for the mass shooters' behavior. E.g., in many cultures (not that it is right) going after the other lover was widely (and still is) admired and even permitted.
The long-term solution is to start educating the whole nation how to heal the American Family & our homes where our children are growing up. In the U.S. marriage happiness & child raising education for every family & every teenager in our schools (and colleges) is fully missing today but is present in most other developed countries in their school curricula.
In a happy home with both parents present the children grow up healthy - no Broken Marriage Syndrome™ and no reason to go to punish the world by killing everyone around.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a fully new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency, and to be named its first federal director. New legislation and training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
Visit STAF,Inc.'s extensive websites. To find the correct website, use STAF, Inc.'s Radio Show title - lower & upper keys as is here: "DrDrCanYouHelpMe" in the internet search. Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Show - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits.
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
________________________________________
ARTICLE B
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-The CT Sandy Hook Elementary School Mass Shooting
In the discussions in the public forum "Why someone is capable doing so horrible?" no one seems to know "Why?" Yet, there is a one clear answer to "Why?"
Almost all mass shooters have one thing in common: they themselves are victims of a divorced parents family. The moral in our marriage situation has gone close to zero. The children grow up disturbed & misled. In addition, the violent video games & violent movies are replacing the parental love - the children get a wrong picture about being a human being.
Our schools, Colleges & Universities in the U.S. provide almost no training for the most important human relationships:
marriage, child care & healthy child raising. STAF, Inc., the new leading organization in all family matters has developed programs for our schools.
Most marriage counselors fail in their effort because the College training they receive is not up-to-date relating to "the modern days".
Most people have no clue what a separation or a divorce does to the children. Every child experiencing a parental divorce faces serious life threatening disasters - here are the most serious 13.
This CT case is a typical situation: first the 20-year old killed and disfigured his mother in her home. He hated his mother because he believed she was the reason for the separation and he could not stay with his father.
Then the youngster went to kill children because in his belief he deserves the same happiness as the other children have (in his opinion), happiness he himself he does not have.
Then he kills himself to get rid of his pain coming from the parental divorce.
The primary solution is not in the gun laws. The guns will be found no matter how many restrictions. Yes, STAF, Inc. supports certain important restrictions mainly for preventing mass shooting. We Americans have the right to defend ourselves. However, we should close the loopholes for online gun sales and gun shows. We should fast have a ban on assault rifles and large ammo magazines. These weapons and ammunition can be used to kill large numbers of people quickly, and regulating them certainly falls within the bounds of the Second Amendment.
When a child grows up in a healthy, loving home with 2 loving parents, the child has a good chance to become a healthy-minded teenager & adult. The he/she has no need to find the guns to revenge his own Broken Family Syndrome™
The solution is to start educating the whole nation how to heal the American Family & our homes where our children are growing up. That education must start from the 1st grade and continues still in our colleges. Most people have no knowledge of the terrible life-destroying
The country has hundreds of thousands of family counselors - not many of them seem to fully comprehend what our international, leading specialists at The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit- have figured out.
These and many related reasons for our stable nation, including the matters relating to our healthy nutrition, to our high overweight & obesity level causing multitudes of deadly sicknesses - all mostly avoidable with a healthy lifestyle. STAF, Inc. has developed a new program for the U.S. gov. use as the solution for all these challenges in our nation. The new program will be introduced in D.C. in a televised event.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning to seek a seat in D.C. to provide the necessary legislation and training for all these matters handled in this brief response.
Listen to our Radio Shows and study our website for all answers in every area of a successful life.
All details on our extensive website: www.staf1org.weebly.com
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
______________________________________________________
Mr. Bieber
SAME as is published on 5/7/13 (Tuesday)
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D
Our not-for-profit organization has 10 private services (listed in our website)
with STAF, Inc.'s unique lifetime result-guarantee.
Mr. Bieber will not last very long with his childish, cocky attitudes - the audience will leave him if he continues in this disrespectful manner. Does he think he is something so special that the laws do not apply to him?
He is going to fail if he is not learning to understand how to create real success = have the public appreciating his God-given talents. He did not himself create his talents - they are a gift from life. Does he treat his gift in a respectful manner?
Quotation: "You respect you keep - you don't you loose" (Dr. Christian)
What is then the solution?
STAF, Inc. has one of the leading professionals giving a new life to any troubled celebrity
with the same unique lifetime result guarantee.
STAF, Inc. will invite Mr. Bieber to accept STAF,Inc.'s new techniques to bring him out of the deep troubles & shame he has caused. STAF, Inc. will get the desired results for Mr. Bieber. We accept celebrities ONLY after their treatments with other professionals have fully failed.
E.g., in the same manner we will now finally also accept Ms. Lindsay Lohan to enter our training & counseling to have a real, successful life.
Go to our website (the link below) to see on the home page our by-invitation-only celebrity list.
Our leading expert is the founder of a new science "Successology" (Reg. U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
and the developer of several counseling methods (fully different from the failing counselors' & rehab methods).
STAF, Inc.'s leading success counselor for the celebrities has a long experience bringing lasting results when many other professionals may have failed.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
On STAF, Inc.'s website page tops is a link to study the original STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to: STAF, Inc., GPO 339, New York, NY 10116-0339, USA. In the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you a tax deductible confirmation receipt.100 % of donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide. To visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website, search the internet with: "Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF. Inc.'s founding President
Christian Christophers.PhD ([email protected])
______________________
SAME as is published on 5/7/13 (Tuesday)
Comment by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit-
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D
Our not-for-profit organization has 10 private services (listed in our website)
with STAF, Inc.'s unique lifetime result-guarantee.
Mr. Bieber will not last very long with his childish, cocky attitudes - the audience will leave him if he continues in this disrespectful manner. Does he think he is something so special that the laws do not apply to him?
He is going to fail if he is not learning to understand how to create real success = have the public appreciating his God-given talents. He did not himself create his talents - they are a gift from life. Does he treat his gift in a respectful manner?
Quotation: "You respect you keep - you don't you loose" (Dr. Christian)
What is then the solution?
STAF, Inc. has one of the leading professionals giving a new life to any troubled celebrity
with the same unique lifetime result guarantee.
STAF, Inc. will invite Mr. Bieber to accept STAF,Inc.'s new techniques to bring him out of the deep troubles & shame he has caused. STAF, Inc. will get the desired results for Mr. Bieber. We accept celebrities ONLY after their treatments with other professionals have fully failed.
E.g., in the same manner we will now finally also accept Ms. Lindsay Lohan to enter our training & counseling to have a real, successful life.
Go to our website (the link below) to see on the home page our by-invitation-only celebrity list.
Our leading expert is the founder of a new science "Successology" (Reg. U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
and the developer of several counseling methods (fully different from the failing counselors' & rehab methods).
STAF, Inc.'s leading success counselor for the celebrities has a long experience bringing lasting results when many other professionals may have failed.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
On STAF, Inc.'s website page tops is a link to study the original STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to: STAF, Inc., GPO 339, New York, NY 10116-0339, USA. In the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you a tax deductible confirmation receipt.100 % of donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide. To visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website, search the internet with: "Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D.
STAF. Inc.'s founding President
Christian Christophers.PhD ([email protected])
______________________
New on the MedlinePlus Health Statistics page:
NEW FOR blogging (3/17/14)
(1) Overdoses, Cellphone-Linked Car Crashes Among Top Causes of Fatal Injury in U.S.
03/13/2014
National Safety Council report also cites increasing numbers of falls among elderly
Source: HealthDay
(2) Most Alcohol-Linked Deaths Occur Among Working-Age Adults
03/13/2014
States lose thousands of people in their prime years, report finds
NEW FOR blogging (3/17/14)
(1) Overdoses, Cellphone-Linked Car Crashes Among Top Causes of Fatal Injury in U.S.
03/13/2014
National Safety Council report also cites increasing numbers of falls among elderly
Source: HealthDay
(2) Most Alcohol-Linked Deaths Occur Among Working-Age Adults
03/13/2014
States lose thousands of people in their prime years, report finds
Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - Florence Nightingale She was known as "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night - she is considered the foundational philosopher of modern nursing, statistician, and social reformer - born May 12, 1820, Florence, Italy—died August 13, 1910, London, England- The click: Nightingale Pledge taken by new nurses was named in her honor, and the annual click: International Nurses Day is celebrated around the world on her birthday.
Click colored areas below for further info In medical school, as one of only 10 female students, I ignored click: Florence Nightingale assiduously (= constantly & with persistence). I didn’t want to play any of the roles I thought she modeled for women — obedient wife, caring sister, modest daughter. It wasn’t until I was practicing medicine in an old-fashioned hospital in San Francisco and learned that its comfortable open wards were “Nightingale wards” that I started to take an interest. Why were they called that? What I learned is that after the click: Crimean War from 1853 to 1856 (history repeats itself, in 2014 Russia still has similar demands in the Ukrainian situation), in which thousands of British soldiers died from infections, Nightingale visited almost every hospital in Europe, analyzed them and then wrote up her findings in “Notes on Hospitals,” which became the guide to hospital architecture for the next century.
Its first sentences changed my idea of Florence Nightingale forever: “It may seem a strange principle to enunciate as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle.”
Photo To see the photos click: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - if the link has expired search the web with "NYT article Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp, March 14, 2014"
Florence Nightingale Credit Associated Press As true today as it was 150 years ago — acerbic, witty and clear.Then I got to the end of the book, where Nightingale lays out one of the first sets of hospital mortality statistics collected. Statistics had recently been applied to social phenomena by Adolphe Quetelet, and Nightingale was taken by them. “To understand God’s thought, we must study statistics,” she wrote. And to display her evidence, she came up with the polar pie chart, a visual way of understanding data we still use. It was that appendix which gave me the first inkling that this was a brilliant woman. How did I get her so wrong?
So I began to read. There are more than 300 Nightingale biographies and 16 volumes of her writings. Her life (1820-1910) spanned the 19th century, that bridge between the premodern and modern worlds, and she stood with a foot in each, with premodern feelings and modern ideas.
When she was born there was no anesthesia and no antisepsis, hardly a thermometer, and no oxygen, IVs*) or antibiotics. The best surgeon was whoever could amputate a leg in less than 90 seconds; appendicitis often meant death. *) by injection into a vein = IV = intravenous; an intravenous injection; an intravenous solution; intravenous feeding
By the time she died there was germ theory, the laboratory and vaccines against cholera, typhoid and plague. So she lived through a revolution in health care.
Her family was wealthy in a “Downton Abbey” sort of way, with cooks, butlers and maids. Her father educated her at home; she learned Greek, Latin, French, German and Italian, history and music.
Then she turned 17, and it was time to get a husband. She rebelled. She didn’t want to marry; she wanted to work in hospitals as a nurse, taking care of the sick poor. In 1837 this was unheard-of. Nursing was done by servants, and her family looked upon her idea, she wrote, as if she’d “gone to be a maid of all work.”
They fought it out for 15 years. She turned down every suitor; she took every opportunity for training as a nurse, and eventually she won. Her father granted her an annuity, and she took over a hospital on Harley Street where she put her ideas into practice.
Then came the Crimean War. It was the first war with correspondents at the front, and they reported on the thousands of soldiers dying at hospitals from typhoid fever, cholera and dysentery. Nightingale, whose work was well known by then, was asked to go to the Crimean Peninsula.
Photo To see the photos click: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - if the link has expired search the web with "NYT article Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp, March 14, 2014"
. Florence Nightingale championed the use of statistics, developed the polar pie chart to illustrate mortality causes in the Crimean War.What she saw there — the filth, the lack of food, bandages, even latrines — stunned her, scarred her and energized her for the rest of her life. In that uncaring chaos, she had a vision of its opposite, of how things could be — shining hospitals with professional nurses and medical care for everyone, especially the poor, “who, when they are sick, become our brothers.”
She spent the rest of her life making that vision a reality.
She wrote “Notes on Nursing,” which became a best seller and made her financially independent. She reorganized Britain’s army hospitals and reformed the nursing in workhouses. She founded the first real school for nurses, and its graduates — “Nightingales”— carried her reformation throughout the world. She wrote on public health, sanitation, India and prostitution, and for 50 years she was behind most of the health-related legislation in England. All this even though she was bedridden from chronic brucellosis, an infection she’d contracted in Crimea.
In her lifetime, she was esteemed. Queen Victoria wished aloud that she had Nightingale in her cabinet; babies, buildings and streets were named after her. When she died, burial in Westminster Abbey was offered, though her family, respecting her wishes, turned it down.
So much of what she fought for we take for granted today — our beautiful hospitals, the honored nursing profession, data-driven research.
What would she have thought of the Affordable Care Act? She would have liked its emphasis on public health, on data and on adequate care for everyone. There’s just one thing she would have missed — her belief that caring for the sick is not a business but a calling.
She didn’t mean “calling” in a religious sense. She meant having a kind of feeling for one’s work — an inner sense of what is right, which she termed “enthusiasm,” from the Greek entheos, having a god within. The opposite of a “calling” was “telling” — that is, rewards, punishments and threats — and she observed that without a calling, no amount of telling would satisfy. Which is what would have worried her about the Affordable Care Act. It relies on telling, on thousands of new regulations, rules and laws. There’s no calling in it.
Now, Nightingale understood the different goals of doctor, nurse, lawyer and economist. From her study of hospitals she’d concluded that patients get the best care when no single power is ascendant, rather when there is the “perpetual rub” between doctor, nurse and administrator.
What would have worried her about the health care act is that its balance is off: It gives too much power to the telling of economists and lawyers and too little to the calling of doctors and nurses.
Nightingale, however, was an optimist. God wants us to make mistakes, she believed; mistakes are the basis of evolution. She was also a fighter, so I imagine she would have seen the health care law as a work in progress, and what we have still to learn from her, even so long after her death, is her willingness to fight and her determination to get it right. She didn’t accept being told in her own life, and she wouldn’t have wanted us to accept it in ours.
Victoria Sweet, a physician in San Francisco, is the author of “God’s Hotel: A Doctor, a Hospital and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine.”
To see the photos click: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp - if the link has expired search the web with "NYT article Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp, March 14, 2014" Source: (1) A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 2014, on page D3 of the New York edition with the headline: Far More Than a Lady With a Lamp. Far More than a lady with a lamp- Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC was a celebrated British social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence while serving as a nurse during the Crimean War, where she tended to wounded soldiers. Wikipedia
- Born: May 12, 1820, Florence, Italy
- Died: August 13, 1910, Park Lane, London, United Kingdom
- Full name: Florence Nightingale
- Education: King's College London Click: Florence Nightingale - Wikipedia _____________________________________
When Even the Starting Line Is Out of Reach
A boy's story illuminates how we can build opportunity for all
POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — To see the picture click the Starting Line
click: Point Pleasant, West Virginia - population: 4500
JOHNNY WEETHEE, a beautiful and beaming child who at the age of 3 still struggles to speak, encapsulates the shortcomings of our approach to poverty.
As an infant, Johnny was deaf but no one noticed or got him the timely medical care he needed to restore his hearing. He lives in a trailer here in the hills of rural Appalachia with a mom who loves him and tries to support him but is also juggling bills, frozen pipes and a broken car that she can’t afford to fix.
“We weren’t aware of his hearing problems,” said his mother, Truffles Weethee. It was Save the Children, the aid group, that discovered Johnny’s deafness in a screening when he was 18 months old. That led to medical treatment that restored most of his hearing, but after such a long period of deafness in infancy, it’s unclear if he will fully recover his ability to communicate.
Johnny is a happy, friendly child, and it’s infuriating that lapses in infancy may hold him back for the rest of his life — but that’s often how disadvantage works.
One reason American antipoverty efforts over the last half-century haven’t been more effective is that they mostly treat symptoms, not causes. To put it another way, we don’t invest nearly enough in helping children in the first few years of life as their brains are developing. If we miss that window, then adult interventions like higher minimum wages can never be fully effective.
Almost one-fifth of children here in West Virginia are born with drugs or alcohol in their systems,
click: one study found. Those kids may never reach their potential as a result.
What would make a difference? We need an integrated set of early interventions, starting with family planning to help women and girls avoid unwanted pregnancy (four out of five births to teenagers are unplanned or unwanted). We need outreach efforts to help pregnant women curb use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, as well as free at-home help for new moms who want to breast-feed.
Let’s push for home visitation programs that encourage parents to speak to children and read to them; many low-income homes don’t have a single kid’s book. We also need initiatives to reduce exposure to lead and other toxins. Finally, how about screenings for problems like hearing and visual impairment — all followed by a good prekindergarten.
Rigorous evidence suggests that these kinds of interventions save money because the costs of failure are so great. Yet most kids don’t get such help.
Johnny’s deafness may have been congenital. But there are also preventable causes of hearing loss. Most low-income moms here would like to breast-feed, but only one-third do so — partly because there is no free help available when they run into troubles, according to Tonya Bonecutter, a local Save the Children caseworker. Research suggests that formula-fed babies are 70 percent more likely to get ear infections, and that’s a special concern for low-income families with only haphazard access to medical care.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, a Columbia University professor who is president of the Children’s Health Fund, notes that untreated ear infections can lead to deafness. This comes on top of a well-known finding that low-income children hear 30 million fewer words by the age of 3 than the children of professionals.
click: Columbia University in the City of New York www.columbia.edu/Columbia University Founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the State of New York. click: Irwin Redlener | Our Faculty | Mailman School of Public Healthwww.mailman.columbia.edu/...Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
Dr. Irwin Redlener is a recognized national leader in disaster preparedness and the public health ramifications of terrorism and large-scale catastrophic events.
“Poor kids are already at a disadvantage,” Dr. Redlener said. “Add chronic, untreated ear infections and you have extreme risk of insufficient language development — inevitably leading to increased rates of learning challenges and school failure.”
Dr. Redlener says that all young children should have a primary care physician who screens them for eight barriers to learning: vision problems, hearing deficits, undertreated asthma, anemia, dental pain, hunger, lead exposure and behavioral problems.
Poverty isn’t just a lack of money, but sometimes a complex web of challenges that keep children from ever reaching the starting line. One home I visited was a trailer jammed with eight people, and some nights it has double that. None of the adults has a job, and most are former drug addicts or alcoholics whose addictions began when they were children. Two are convicted felons, which makes job-hunting difficult. Several dropped out of school. Only one can drive.
They have lofty dreams for their children, but those kids face struggles that middle-class children don’t. Breaking the cycle of poverty means helping those kids get a solid start.
Johnny’s fortunes were transformed by the screening, and now that he can hear again he’s trying to speak. I watched him attend his first day of preschool. Johnny dashed around the classroom, giddily playing with toys and books, trying to repeat words. He beamed.
Let’s broaden the conversation about opportunity, to build not just safety nets for those who stumble but also to help all American kids achieve lift-off.
A boy's story illuminates how we can build opportunity for all
POINT PLEASANT, W.Va. — To see the picture click the Starting Line
click: Point Pleasant, West Virginia - population: 4500
JOHNNY WEETHEE, a beautiful and beaming child who at the age of 3 still struggles to speak, encapsulates the shortcomings of our approach to poverty.
As an infant, Johnny was deaf but no one noticed or got him the timely medical care he needed to restore his hearing. He lives in a trailer here in the hills of rural Appalachia with a mom who loves him and tries to support him but is also juggling bills, frozen pipes and a broken car that she can’t afford to fix.
“We weren’t aware of his hearing problems,” said his mother, Truffles Weethee. It was Save the Children, the aid group, that discovered Johnny’s deafness in a screening when he was 18 months old. That led to medical treatment that restored most of his hearing, but after such a long period of deafness in infancy, it’s unclear if he will fully recover his ability to communicate.
Johnny is a happy, friendly child, and it’s infuriating that lapses in infancy may hold him back for the rest of his life — but that’s often how disadvantage works.
One reason American antipoverty efforts over the last half-century haven’t been more effective is that they mostly treat symptoms, not causes. To put it another way, we don’t invest nearly enough in helping children in the first few years of life as their brains are developing. If we miss that window, then adult interventions like higher minimum wages can never be fully effective.
Almost one-fifth of children here in West Virginia are born with drugs or alcohol in their systems,
click: one study found. Those kids may never reach their potential as a result.
What would make a difference? We need an integrated set of early interventions, starting with family planning to help women and girls avoid unwanted pregnancy (four out of five births to teenagers are unplanned or unwanted). We need outreach efforts to help pregnant women curb use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco, as well as free at-home help for new moms who want to breast-feed.
Let’s push for home visitation programs that encourage parents to speak to children and read to them; many low-income homes don’t have a single kid’s book. We also need initiatives to reduce exposure to lead and other toxins. Finally, how about screenings for problems like hearing and visual impairment — all followed by a good prekindergarten.
Rigorous evidence suggests that these kinds of interventions save money because the costs of failure are so great. Yet most kids don’t get such help.
Johnny’s deafness may have been congenital. But there are also preventable causes of hearing loss. Most low-income moms here would like to breast-feed, but only one-third do so — partly because there is no free help available when they run into troubles, according to Tonya Bonecutter, a local Save the Children caseworker. Research suggests that formula-fed babies are 70 percent more likely to get ear infections, and that’s a special concern for low-income families with only haphazard access to medical care.
Dr. Irwin Redlener, a Columbia University professor who is president of the Children’s Health Fund, notes that untreated ear infections can lead to deafness. This comes on top of a well-known finding that low-income children hear 30 million fewer words by the age of 3 than the children of professionals.
click: Columbia University in the City of New York www.columbia.edu/Columbia University Founded in 1754 as King's College by royal charter, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the State of New York. click: Irwin Redlener | Our Faculty | Mailman School of Public Healthwww.mailman.columbia.edu/...Columbia Mailman School of Public Health
Dr. Irwin Redlener is a recognized national leader in disaster preparedness and the public health ramifications of terrorism and large-scale catastrophic events.
“Poor kids are already at a disadvantage,” Dr. Redlener said. “Add chronic, untreated ear infections and you have extreme risk of insufficient language development — inevitably leading to increased rates of learning challenges and school failure.”
Dr. Redlener says that all young children should have a primary care physician who screens them for eight barriers to learning: vision problems, hearing deficits, undertreated asthma, anemia, dental pain, hunger, lead exposure and behavioral problems.
Poverty isn’t just a lack of money, but sometimes a complex web of challenges that keep children from ever reaching the starting line. One home I visited was a trailer jammed with eight people, and some nights it has double that. None of the adults has a job, and most are former drug addicts or alcoholics whose addictions began when they were children. Two are convicted felons, which makes job-hunting difficult. Several dropped out of school. Only one can drive.
They have lofty dreams for their children, but those kids face struggles that middle-class children don’t. Breaking the cycle of poverty means helping those kids get a solid start.
Johnny’s fortunes were transformed by the screening, and now that he can hear again he’s trying to speak. I watched him attend his first day of preschool. Johnny dashed around the classroom, giddily playing with toys and books, trying to repeat words. He beamed.
Let’s broaden the conversation about opportunity, to build not just safety nets for those who stumble but also to help all American kids achieve lift-off.
- When Even the Starting Line Is Out of Reach - NYTimes.com
by Nicholas Kristof
Feb 22, 2014 - One little boy's story illuminates how we can build opportunity for all. ________________________________________________________________________________
Important article - will save your life - everyone worldwide must read this article
Sugar linked to heart disease deaths in national study;
most eat too much & soda's a culprit
RS-DR: Sun 2/9/14
E.g.: One 12-ounce can of non-diet soda contains has about 9 teaspoons of sugar or about 140 calories; cinnamon rolls have about 13 teaspoons of sugar; one scoop of chocolate ice cream has about 5 teaspoons
Drink no soda, sugary or diet (both life-threatening)
Some more examples of the sugar content in these websites:
(1) Click: How Sweet Is It? | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
(2) Click: How much sugar is in your food? - Medical News Today
(3) Click: Sugar is 'the new tobacco': Health chiefs tell food giants to slash ...CHICAGO (AP) -- Could too much sugar be deadly? The biggest study of its kind suggests the answer is yes, at least when it comes to fatal heart problems. The #3 has additional info relating to this title article
It doesn't take all that much extra sugar, hidden in many processed foods, to substantially raise the risk, the researchers found, and most Americans eat more than the safest amount.
Having a cinnamon roll with your morning coffee, a super-sized sugary soda at lunch and a scoop of ice cream after dinner would put you in the highest risk category in the study. That means your chance of dying prematurely from heart problems is nearly three times greater than for people who eat only foods with little added sugar.
For someone who normally eats 2,000 calories daily, even consuming two 12-ounce cans of soda substantially increases the risk. For most American adults, sodas and other sugary drinks are the main source of added sugar.
Lead author Quanhe Yang of the U.S. Centers of Disease Control and Prevention called the results sobering and said it's the first nationally representative study to examine the issue.
Scientists aren't certain exactly how sugar may contribute to deadly heart problems, but it has been shown to increase blood pressure and levels of unhealthy cholesterol and triglycerides; and also may increase signs of inflammation linked with heart disease, said Rachel Johnson, head of the American Heart Association's nutrition committee and a University of Vermont nutrition professor.
Yang and colleagues analyzed national health surveys between 1988 and 2010 that included questions about people's diets. The authors used national death data to calculate risks of dying during 15 years of follow-up.
Overall, more than 30,000 American adults aged 44 on average were involved.
Previous studies have linked diets high in sugar with increased risks for non-fatal heart problems, and with obesity, which can also lead to heart trouble. But in the new study, obesity didn't explain the link between sugary diets and death. That link was found even in normal-weight people who ate lots of added sugar.
"Too much sugar does not just make us fat; it can also make us sick," said Laura Schmidt, a health policy specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. She wrote an editorial accompanying the study in Monday's JAMA Internal Medicine.
The researchers focused on sugar added to processed foods or drinks, or sprinkled in coffee or cereal. Even foods that don't taste sweet have added sugar, including many brands of packaged bread, tomato sauce and salad dressing. Naturally occurring sugar, in fruit and some other foods, wasn't counted.
Most health experts agree that too much sugar isn't healthy, but there is no universal consensus on how much is too much.
U.S government dietary guidelines issued in 2010 say "empty" calories including those from added sugars should account for no more than 15 percent of total daily calories.
The average number of daily calories from added sugar among U.S. adults was about 15 percent toward the end of the study, slightly lower than in previous years.
The authors divided participants into five categories based on sugar intake, from less than 10 percent of daily calories — the safest amount — to more than 25 percent.
Most adults exceed the safest level; and for 1 in 10 adults, added sugar accounts for at least 25 percent of daily calories, the researchers said.
The researchers had death data on almost 12,000 adults, including 831 who died from heart disease during the 15-year follow-up. They took into account other factors known to contribute to heart problems, including smoking, inactivity and excess weight, and still found risks for sugar.
As sugar intake increased, risks climbed steeply.
Adults who got at least 25 percent of their calories from added sugar were almost three times more likely to die of heart problems than those who consumed the least — less than 10 percent.
For those who got more than 15 percent — or the equivalent of about two cans of sugary soda out of 2,000 calories daily — the risk was almost 20 percent higher than the safest level.
Sugar calories quickly add up: One teaspoon has about 16 calories; one 12-ounce can of non-diet soda contains has about 9 teaspoons of sugar or about 140 calories; many cinnamon rolls have about 13 teaspoons of sugar; one scoop of chocolate ice cream has about 5 teaspoons of sugar.
Dr. Jonathan Purnell, a professor - Click: Contact Wellness | Jonathan Q. Purnell, MD
at Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cardiovascular Institute
Click: OHSU Knight Cardiology - ohsu.eduwww.ohsu.edu/heart-care - 1 (503) 494 1775 Oregon's Leading Cardiovascular Institute. ,
said while the research doesn't prove "sugar can cause you to die of a heart attack", it adds to a growing body of circumstantial evidence suggesting that limiting sugar intake can lead to healthier, longer lives.
Source: (1) AP News, (2) STAF, Inc., (3) Internet
___________________________________________________
Wishing They All Could Be California Hens
Hens in California are living the good life
Many can now lay their eggs in oversize enclosures roomy enough to stand up, lie down
— even extend their wings fully without touching another bird.
Article 1 of 2
(Article 2 of 2 next below)
Hens in most other states don’t have it so good. Their conditions, as the head of California’s egg trade group explained, are “like you sitting in an airplane seat in the economy section all your life.” click: California egg farmers form trade association
So if you’re a hen, you want to live in California. Short of that, you want California-size leg room. And that’s precisely what lawmakers in California are demanding of out-of-state farmers who sell eggs in California — setting off a feud over interstate commerce that has spilled over into the farmyard at large.
The Missouri attorney general has filed a lawsuit to block the California egg rules, and at least three other states are considering doing the same. The beef and pork lobbies are also lining up against the California rules in an effort to prevent any new restrictions on raising livestock.
New rules require egg layers to have more capacious cages.“This is bigger than a case about egg production and bigger than a case simply about agriculture,” said Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster. “These laws raise an important commerce clause question that affects many, many industries nationally, and I believe the courts need to respond.”
California voters set new standards for hen housing in 2008 when they approved a ballot measure that imposed more generous living conditions for egg layers in their state. When producers complained that the measure created a competitive disadvantage, the Legislature tacked on a law that mandated imported eggs be produced under the same standards.
Those provisions, as well as similar laws going into effect in Michigan, Oregon and Washington State and under consideration elsewhere, inspired a national proposal to require more space for laying hens across the country, but Congress dropped it from the recently passed farm bill. Lawmakers and some companies have been responding to consumer pressure (including from several colleges) for better treatment of animals raised for food.
The state’s egg producers have already spent millions of dollars installing “colony cages,” like those in two of the six barns at JS West & Companies’ Dwight Bell Ranch here. On a recent visit, white leghorn hens craned their necks out of the cages to stare and cluck at strangers, then withdrew to the safety of perches or the privacy of the laying nest, neither of which is available in conventional cages. There are about 60 hens in each cage.
The colony cages are about the size of a Ford F-150 pickup truck’s flatbed, while about 90 percent of the nation’s roughly 280 million laying hens are still in battery cages about as big as a filing-cabinet drawer. California’s egg producers have interpreted their state’s laws, which go into effect Jan. 1 next year, to require 116 square inches per bird, compared to the industry standard 67 square inches.
Some of the country’s largest egg-producing states are opposed to a rule in California that requires roomier cages for hens that lay eggs that are sold there, even if they come from another state.
JS West & Companies, a family-owned business that features a “Hens Live” camera feed on its website so customers can view their birds’ living conditions, has spent more than $6 million installing the new cages. Jill Benson, senior vice president, said she believed eventually all chickens across the country would be raised in such conditions. “For us, it was a decision to invest in the future,” said Ms. Benson, whose great-grandfather, James Stewart West, founded the company. “We looked at moving production out of the state or even out of the country, but in the end decided that this is where the market is heading.”
Missouri, however, contends that California is trying to force the market in that direction, and at least three other states — Nebraska, Arkansas and the nation’s largest egg producer, Iowa — are considering supporting its lawsuit, according to representatives of their attorneys general.
Egg producers are warning that Californians, who consumed an estimated nine billion eggs last year, will almost certainly face higher prices as a result of the rules’ import restrictions and effect on in-state producers. “Come Jan. 1, I’m fairly convinced there is going to be a fairly large shortage of eggs in California,” said David Cisneros, chief operating officer of Dakota Layers, a large egg production company headquartered in South Dakota.
Mr. Cisneros, who is based in Los Angeles where the company has its cage-free and other specialty egg business, previously worked for MoArk, the egg division of Land O’ Lakes, which has closed down its California facilities. He said smaller egg farms were closing their doors because they could not afford the new housing systems.
Larger California producers also are reducing their flocks. JS West, for instance, is reducing its flock to 1.4 million birds from 1.8 million, which will cut production to 12 million eggs from 19 million.
I praise the voters of California who passed the referendum on this issue. The state appears to lead the nation on issues relating to...
California continues to over-regulate everything they touch, from bogus definitions of chemicals that cause skin irritation to chickens in a...
Today, there are roughly 26 million laying hens in the state, about 12 million fewer than it needs to meet demand — which is why it imports eggs from states like Missouri. According to Attorney General Koster’s lawsuit, about 540 million of the state’s approximately 1.5 billion eggs end up in California.
Already, Arnie Riebli, head of the Association of California Egg Farmers, and other producers, said retailers insisted on pricing eggs from hens living in colony cages as if they were cage-free and specialty eggs, even though the new systems are estimated to add only about a penny to the cost of producing an egg — the hens eat more but are slightly more productive and have a somewhat lower mortality rate.
“We have no influence over what they charge, but if more eggs are produced this way, then the price is going to come down,” Mr. Riebli said. “It’s simple supply and demand.”
He is pulling conventional cages out of the barns at Sunrise Farms in Petaluma where he is a partner, and either replacing them with colony cages or simply converting the barns into housing for cage-free and organically raised hens, which are becoming a bigger part of his business.
He fought the new standards initially but had a change of heart after inviting people into his barns to see conditions there first hand. “I brought people in for tours and showed them what we did — and women would break down sobbing,” Mr. Riebli said. “The producers in other states don’t want to hear about animal welfare, but they’re ignoring what’s going on among the public.”
He noted that federal courts in California in general have ruled in favor of animal welfare advocates in other cases challenging state laws aimed at the humane treatment of livestock. Most recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a California law prohibiting sale in the state of any foie gras produced by force-feeding birds, which was challenged as a violation of the interstate commerce clause by Hudson Valley Foie Gras L.L.C. and a group of Canadian producers.
But Mr. Koster is undaunted by those precedents. “I recognize that the California district courts and the Ninth Circuit have not been particularly friendly to this sort of assertion we’re making here, but I also have confidence that will not be the last word on this analysis,” he said. “The U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to allow a state to put this type of trade barrier in place in the agricultural arena or any other arena.”
Click to see the pictures and the statistics
Wishing They All Could Be California Hens
New York Times - March 4, 2014
California voters in 2008 approved a measure requiring more generous living conditions for hens, but the state's decision to require imported ...
Additional egg information -U.S. statistics and other details
click: American Egg Board | Egg Product Production Statistics
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc. (Article 2 of 2 next below)
_________________________________
Hens in California are living the good life
Many can now lay their eggs in oversize enclosures roomy enough to stand up, lie down
— even extend their wings fully without touching another bird.
Article 1 of 2
(Article 2 of 2 next below)
Hens in most other states don’t have it so good. Their conditions, as the head of California’s egg trade group explained, are “like you sitting in an airplane seat in the economy section all your life.” click: California egg farmers form trade association
So if you’re a hen, you want to live in California. Short of that, you want California-size leg room. And that’s precisely what lawmakers in California are demanding of out-of-state farmers who sell eggs in California — setting off a feud over interstate commerce that has spilled over into the farmyard at large.
The Missouri attorney general has filed a lawsuit to block the California egg rules, and at least three other states are considering doing the same. The beef and pork lobbies are also lining up against the California rules in an effort to prevent any new restrictions on raising livestock.
New rules require egg layers to have more capacious cages.“This is bigger than a case about egg production and bigger than a case simply about agriculture,” said Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster. “These laws raise an important commerce clause question that affects many, many industries nationally, and I believe the courts need to respond.”
California voters set new standards for hen housing in 2008 when they approved a ballot measure that imposed more generous living conditions for egg layers in their state. When producers complained that the measure created a competitive disadvantage, the Legislature tacked on a law that mandated imported eggs be produced under the same standards.
Those provisions, as well as similar laws going into effect in Michigan, Oregon and Washington State and under consideration elsewhere, inspired a national proposal to require more space for laying hens across the country, but Congress dropped it from the recently passed farm bill. Lawmakers and some companies have been responding to consumer pressure (including from several colleges) for better treatment of animals raised for food.
The state’s egg producers have already spent millions of dollars installing “colony cages,” like those in two of the six barns at JS West & Companies’ Dwight Bell Ranch here. On a recent visit, white leghorn hens craned their necks out of the cages to stare and cluck at strangers, then withdrew to the safety of perches or the privacy of the laying nest, neither of which is available in conventional cages. There are about 60 hens in each cage.
The colony cages are about the size of a Ford F-150 pickup truck’s flatbed, while about 90 percent of the nation’s roughly 280 million laying hens are still in battery cages about as big as a filing-cabinet drawer. California’s egg producers have interpreted their state’s laws, which go into effect Jan. 1 next year, to require 116 square inches per bird, compared to the industry standard 67 square inches.
Some of the country’s largest egg-producing states are opposed to a rule in California that requires roomier cages for hens that lay eggs that are sold there, even if they come from another state.
JS West & Companies, a family-owned business that features a “Hens Live” camera feed on its website so customers can view their birds’ living conditions, has spent more than $6 million installing the new cages. Jill Benson, senior vice president, said she believed eventually all chickens across the country would be raised in such conditions. “For us, it was a decision to invest in the future,” said Ms. Benson, whose great-grandfather, James Stewart West, founded the company. “We looked at moving production out of the state or even out of the country, but in the end decided that this is where the market is heading.”
Missouri, however, contends that California is trying to force the market in that direction, and at least three other states — Nebraska, Arkansas and the nation’s largest egg producer, Iowa — are considering supporting its lawsuit, according to representatives of their attorneys general.
Egg producers are warning that Californians, who consumed an estimated nine billion eggs last year, will almost certainly face higher prices as a result of the rules’ import restrictions and effect on in-state producers. “Come Jan. 1, I’m fairly convinced there is going to be a fairly large shortage of eggs in California,” said David Cisneros, chief operating officer of Dakota Layers, a large egg production company headquartered in South Dakota.
Mr. Cisneros, who is based in Los Angeles where the company has its cage-free and other specialty egg business, previously worked for MoArk, the egg division of Land O’ Lakes, which has closed down its California facilities. He said smaller egg farms were closing their doors because they could not afford the new housing systems.
Larger California producers also are reducing their flocks. JS West, for instance, is reducing its flock to 1.4 million birds from 1.8 million, which will cut production to 12 million eggs from 19 million.
I praise the voters of California who passed the referendum on this issue. The state appears to lead the nation on issues relating to...
California continues to over-regulate everything they touch, from bogus definitions of chemicals that cause skin irritation to chickens in a...
Today, there are roughly 26 million laying hens in the state, about 12 million fewer than it needs to meet demand — which is why it imports eggs from states like Missouri. According to Attorney General Koster’s lawsuit, about 540 million of the state’s approximately 1.5 billion eggs end up in California.
Already, Arnie Riebli, head of the Association of California Egg Farmers, and other producers, said retailers insisted on pricing eggs from hens living in colony cages as if they were cage-free and specialty eggs, even though the new systems are estimated to add only about a penny to the cost of producing an egg — the hens eat more but are slightly more productive and have a somewhat lower mortality rate.
“We have no influence over what they charge, but if more eggs are produced this way, then the price is going to come down,” Mr. Riebli said. “It’s simple supply and demand.”
He is pulling conventional cages out of the barns at Sunrise Farms in Petaluma where he is a partner, and either replacing them with colony cages or simply converting the barns into housing for cage-free and organically raised hens, which are becoming a bigger part of his business.
He fought the new standards initially but had a change of heart after inviting people into his barns to see conditions there first hand. “I brought people in for tours and showed them what we did — and women would break down sobbing,” Mr. Riebli said. “The producers in other states don’t want to hear about animal welfare, but they’re ignoring what’s going on among the public.”
He noted that federal courts in California in general have ruled in favor of animal welfare advocates in other cases challenging state laws aimed at the humane treatment of livestock. Most recently, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a California law prohibiting sale in the state of any foie gras produced by force-feeding birds, which was challenged as a violation of the interstate commerce clause by Hudson Valley Foie Gras L.L.C. and a group of Canadian producers.
But Mr. Koster is undaunted by those precedents. “I recognize that the California district courts and the Ninth Circuit have not been particularly friendly to this sort of assertion we’re making here, but I also have confidence that will not be the last word on this analysis,” he said. “The U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to allow a state to put this type of trade barrier in place in the agricultural arena or any other arena.”
Click to see the pictures and the statistics
Wishing They All Could Be California Hens
New York Times - March 4, 2014
California voters in 2008 approved a measure requiring more generous living conditions for hens, but the state's decision to require imported ...
Additional egg information -U.S. statistics and other details
click: American Egg Board | Egg Product Production Statistics
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc. (Article 2 of 2 next below)
_________________________________
Article 2 of 2
(Article 1 of 2 next above)
California’s Smart Egg Rules
California voters and lawmakers have decided that, starting next year, all eggs sold in that state must come from hens that can stand up, lie down and extend their wings fully without touching another bird. This is a perfectly reasonable effort to improve, at least for one creature, the deplorable conditions associated with modern industrial farming. It could also improve public health. Astonishingly, the attorney general of Missouri, Chris Koster, has decided to sue to overturn the rule in federal court. The court should dismiss the case. Wishing They All Could Be California Hens MARCH 3, 2014
Mr. Koster argues that the rules violate the commerce clause of the Constitution by imposing regulations on businesses in other states. But courts have long held that states can enact food, safety and other regulations in the public interest, as long as they do not discriminate against businesses in other states. California’s egg-production rules clearly meet the nondiscrimination standard, because all egg producers who want to sell their products in the state must abide by them.
Moreover, the regulations, which go into effect next year, can provide benefits to consumers by improving the health and lives of hens and, as a result, the quality of eggs. Under the new rules, egg-laying hens — most of which are currently housed in “battery” cages that are about the size of filing-cabinet drawers — will be required to have at least 116 square inches of space each, up from 67 square inches. While giving hens more space costs about a penny more per egg, chickens treated in this more humane way tend to live longer and be more productive.
Egg growers and some agricultural scientists say there is not enough evidence that eggs from hens that are given more space are safer than eggs from hens kept in battery cages. But several European studies have found that farms that pack hens in smaller spaces are more likely to test positive for salmonella than farms where hens have more room to move around. (The European Union banned the use of battery cages starting in 2012.)
Several states like Michigan, Washington and Oregon have also adopted rules that give hens more space. Ideally, Congress would adopt one federal standard, but a proposal to do so was left out of the recently passed farm bill. Inaction in Washington, D.C., though, should not hold back states from doing what they think is right.
California has long led the country in raising standards in many areas, like food safety and the fuel efficiency of cars. Federal courts have generally upheld the state’s rules, even when they have affected businesses elsewhere in the country. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of a California law that banned the sale of any foie gras products made by force-feeding birds. Courts have also upheld the state’s auto standards, which have encouraged automakers to build more fuel-efficient cars.
Because California is the country’s most populous state and its largest market, the state’s policies often have a national and even global impact. This scares and annoys industry officials and lawmakers elsewhere in the country. But it often benefits consumers, especially since policy making in Washington has been paralyzed by Republican obstructionism*) in recent years.
*) obstructionism the practice of deliberately impeding or delaying the course of legal, legislative, or other procedures
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
California's Smart Egg Rules New York Times MARCH 8, 2014 ... California's egg-production rules clearly meet the nondiscrimination standard, because all egg ...
Additional egg information -U.S. statistics and other details
click: American Egg Board | Egg Product Production Statistics
______________________
(Article 1 of 2 next above)
California’s Smart Egg Rules
California voters and lawmakers have decided that, starting next year, all eggs sold in that state must come from hens that can stand up, lie down and extend their wings fully without touching another bird. This is a perfectly reasonable effort to improve, at least for one creature, the deplorable conditions associated with modern industrial farming. It could also improve public health. Astonishingly, the attorney general of Missouri, Chris Koster, has decided to sue to overturn the rule in federal court. The court should dismiss the case. Wishing They All Could Be California Hens MARCH 3, 2014
Mr. Koster argues that the rules violate the commerce clause of the Constitution by imposing regulations on businesses in other states. But courts have long held that states can enact food, safety and other regulations in the public interest, as long as they do not discriminate against businesses in other states. California’s egg-production rules clearly meet the nondiscrimination standard, because all egg producers who want to sell their products in the state must abide by them.
Moreover, the regulations, which go into effect next year, can provide benefits to consumers by improving the health and lives of hens and, as a result, the quality of eggs. Under the new rules, egg-laying hens — most of which are currently housed in “battery” cages that are about the size of filing-cabinet drawers — will be required to have at least 116 square inches of space each, up from 67 square inches. While giving hens more space costs about a penny more per egg, chickens treated in this more humane way tend to live longer and be more productive.
Egg growers and some agricultural scientists say there is not enough evidence that eggs from hens that are given more space are safer than eggs from hens kept in battery cages. But several European studies have found that farms that pack hens in smaller spaces are more likely to test positive for salmonella than farms where hens have more room to move around. (The European Union banned the use of battery cages starting in 2012.)
Several states like Michigan, Washington and Oregon have also adopted rules that give hens more space. Ideally, Congress would adopt one federal standard, but a proposal to do so was left out of the recently passed farm bill. Inaction in Washington, D.C., though, should not hold back states from doing what they think is right.
California has long led the country in raising standards in many areas, like food safety and the fuel efficiency of cars. Federal courts have generally upheld the state’s rules, even when they have affected businesses elsewhere in the country. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of a California law that banned the sale of any foie gras products made by force-feeding birds. Courts have also upheld the state’s auto standards, which have encouraged automakers to build more fuel-efficient cars.
Because California is the country’s most populous state and its largest market, the state’s policies often have a national and even global impact. This scares and annoys industry officials and lawmakers elsewhere in the country. But it often benefits consumers, especially since policy making in Washington has been paralyzed by Republican obstructionism*) in recent years.
*) obstructionism the practice of deliberately impeding or delaying the course of legal, legislative, or other procedures
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
California's Smart Egg Rules New York Times MARCH 8, 2014 ... California's egg-production rules clearly meet the nondiscrimination standard, because all egg ...
Additional egg information -U.S. statistics and other details
click: American Egg Board | Egg Product Production Statistics
______________________
What Makes an Aggressive Dog,
and How You Can Spot One
Study suggests it's not so much the breed
as the gender, training, origin and owner's age
You see a Rottweiler standing next to a poodle and a Chihuahua. Which dog is most likely to bite you?
click: Rottweiler
click: Chihuahua Dogs| Chihuahua Dog Breed Info & Pictures | petMDclick: Chihuahua (dog) - Wikipedia
First discovered in Mexico,Chihuahua is best known for being the smallest dog breed in the world.
The Chihuahua’s coat can be long with soft and straight hair, smooth with glossy and soft hair, or wavy with fringed ears. Its graceful body is compact and small, although slightly long in proportion to its height. The Chihuahua also bears a resemblance to the terrier in its alertness, attitude and lively expression. As far as its appearance, the breed can be found in solid black, solid white, with spots, or in a variety of patterns and colors.
The Chihuahua is known for its varied temperament. For example, while the Chihuahua is reserved towards strangers, it is friendly with pets and other household dogs. The dog may also try to act protective, but this boldness is generally displayed as barking and is, therefore, not very effective as a guard dog. However, this sassy dog has become a favorite among toy dog lovers, especially for its extreme devotion to its master.
The Chihuahua, which has an average lifespan of 14 and 18 years.
To answer the question how to spot an aggressive dog, don't look at the dog, British researchers say. Instead, look at the owner standing beside it.
A dog's breed is only one of many factors that influence its capacity for aggression, according to a new study published recently in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
click: Applied Animal Behaviour Science - Homewww.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/
Applied Animal Behaviour Science is the official journal of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE). Applied Animal Behaviour Science publishes ...
More telling clues to aggression might be the age of the owner, the training the dog has received, the place the dog was obtained and the gender of the dog, the researchers found.
In addition, dogs that are aggressive in one situation likely will not be aggressive in other situations. For example, a dog that might lash out on the street could be perfectly peaceful in its own back yard.
"Aggression is incredibly complex. It's going to be both situation-dependent and dependent on the history of both the people and the dog," said Stephen Zawistowski, science adviser to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). "You can't just pick the breed of the dog and say somehow that will be predictive of whether the dog will be aggressive."
Zawistowski, who is also an adjunct professor of anthrozoology at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., was not involved with the new study.
For the study, Rachel Casey, of the University of Bristol's School of Veterinary Sciences, and colleagues distributed about 15,000 questionnaires to dog owners regarding dog aggression toward people. About 4,000 were returned.
The researchers found that owners reported dog aggression toward unfamiliar people more often than aggression to family members.
Nearly 7 percent of owners said their dog barked, lunged, growled or actually bit unfamiliar people who came to their house. Meanwhile, 5 percent reported these aggressive behaviors when meeting people while out on walks. By comparison, only 3 percent of owners reported aggression toward family members.
The results showed that a majority of dogs were aggressive only in one of these three situations. A dog that would lunge at a strange person on the street was not likely to lunge when a strange person approached their house.
In breaking down factors associated with dog aggression, the researchers found much more than the dog's breed at work. For instance:
A lot of dog aggression is spurred by fear and anxiety, Zawistowski said. To avoid having an aggressive dog, he said, owners should properly socialize their pups by doing the following:
If you're worried that an unfamiliar dog might become aggressive toward you, you should pay attention to its body language, Burch said.
"Some pre-aggression behaviors are a direct stare, stiff posture, hackles up, ears or lips pulled back, baring teeth, growling, barking, lunging and snapping," she said. "Barking alone should not always be defined as aggressive behavior."
Burch criticized the British study for including barking as an aggressive behavior.
"It can be problematic for barking to be considered 'aggression' because barking can have multiple functions," she said, noting that dogs also bark to alert owners or to signal that they need something. "In my opinion, this overly broad definition, which includes barking, skews the data to show that there is an aggression problem in the U.K."
SOURCES: Stephen Zawistowski, science adviser to the ASPCA, and adjunct professor of anthrozoology, Canisius College, Buffalo, N.Y.; Mary Burch, Canine Good Citizen director, American Kennel Club; December 2013, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on:Animal BitesPet HealthRecent Health News
________________________________________
and How You Can Spot One
Study suggests it's not so much the breed
as the gender, training, origin and owner's age
You see a Rottweiler standing next to a poodle and a Chihuahua. Which dog is most likely to bite you?
click: Rottweiler
click: Chihuahua Dogs| Chihuahua Dog Breed Info & Pictures | petMDclick: Chihuahua (dog) - Wikipedia
First discovered in Mexico,Chihuahua is best known for being the smallest dog breed in the world.
The Chihuahua’s coat can be long with soft and straight hair, smooth with glossy and soft hair, or wavy with fringed ears. Its graceful body is compact and small, although slightly long in proportion to its height. The Chihuahua also bears a resemblance to the terrier in its alertness, attitude and lively expression. As far as its appearance, the breed can be found in solid black, solid white, with spots, or in a variety of patterns and colors.
The Chihuahua is known for its varied temperament. For example, while the Chihuahua is reserved towards strangers, it is friendly with pets and other household dogs. The dog may also try to act protective, but this boldness is generally displayed as barking and is, therefore, not very effective as a guard dog. However, this sassy dog has become a favorite among toy dog lovers, especially for its extreme devotion to its master.
The Chihuahua, which has an average lifespan of 14 and 18 years.
To answer the question how to spot an aggressive dog, don't look at the dog, British researchers say. Instead, look at the owner standing beside it.
A dog's breed is only one of many factors that influence its capacity for aggression, according to a new study published recently in the journal Applied Animal Behaviour Science.
click: Applied Animal Behaviour Science - Homewww.appliedanimalbehaviour.com/
Applied Animal Behaviour Science is the official journal of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE). Applied Animal Behaviour Science publishes ...
More telling clues to aggression might be the age of the owner, the training the dog has received, the place the dog was obtained and the gender of the dog, the researchers found.
In addition, dogs that are aggressive in one situation likely will not be aggressive in other situations. For example, a dog that might lash out on the street could be perfectly peaceful in its own back yard.
"Aggression is incredibly complex. It's going to be both situation-dependent and dependent on the history of both the people and the dog," said Stephen Zawistowski, science adviser to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). "You can't just pick the breed of the dog and say somehow that will be predictive of whether the dog will be aggressive."
Zawistowski, who is also an adjunct professor of anthrozoology at Canisius College in Buffalo, N.Y., was not involved with the new study.
For the study, Rachel Casey, of the University of Bristol's School of Veterinary Sciences, and colleagues distributed about 15,000 questionnaires to dog owners regarding dog aggression toward people. About 4,000 were returned.
The researchers found that owners reported dog aggression toward unfamiliar people more often than aggression to family members.
Nearly 7 percent of owners said their dog barked, lunged, growled or actually bit unfamiliar people who came to their house. Meanwhile, 5 percent reported these aggressive behaviors when meeting people while out on walks. By comparison, only 3 percent of owners reported aggression toward family members.
The results showed that a majority of dogs were aggressive only in one of these three situations. A dog that would lunge at a strange person on the street was not likely to lunge when a strange person approached their house.
In breaking down factors associated with dog aggression, the researchers found much more than the dog's breed at work. For instance:
- Dogs owned by people younger than 25 were nearly twice as likely to be aggressive than those owned by people older than 40.
- Neutered male dogs were twice as likely to be aggressive as neutered female dogs. However, there was no significant difference in aggression risk between neutered and non-neutered males.
- Dogs who attended puppy-training classes were about one and a half times less likely to be aggressive to strangers.
- Dogs trained using punishment and negative reinforcement, however, were twice as likely to be aggressive to strangers and three times as likely to be aggressive to family members.
- Dogs obtained from animal rescue and other sources were much more likely to be aggressive than those bought from a breeder.
A lot of dog aggression is spurred by fear and anxiety, Zawistowski said. To avoid having an aggressive dog, he said, owners should properly socialize their pups by doing the following:
- Leaving puppies with their litter until 8 weeks old, so they learn how to be social with other dogs.
- Taking them to puppy kindergarten classes before 16 weeks old, so they become comfortable with other people and dogs.
- Engaging them in positive-reinforcement training that teaches them things such as not jumping on people or pulling on a leash.
If you're worried that an unfamiliar dog might become aggressive toward you, you should pay attention to its body language, Burch said.
"Some pre-aggression behaviors are a direct stare, stiff posture, hackles up, ears or lips pulled back, baring teeth, growling, barking, lunging and snapping," she said. "Barking alone should not always be defined as aggressive behavior."
Burch criticized the British study for including barking as an aggressive behavior.
"It can be problematic for barking to be considered 'aggression' because barking can have multiple functions," she said, noting that dogs also bark to alert owners or to signal that they need something. "In my opinion, this overly broad definition, which includes barking, skews the data to show that there is an aggression problem in the U.K."
SOURCES: Stephen Zawistowski, science adviser to the ASPCA, and adjunct professor of anthrozoology, Canisius College, Buffalo, N.Y.; Mary Burch, Canine Good Citizen director, American Kennel Club; December 2013, Applied Animal Behaviour Science
HealthDay
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________________________________________
SCIENCE
Soldiers' Suicidal Tendencies
Are Evident Before Deployment, Study Finds
March 3, 2014
Early Findings From Army Study
to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers
(Army STARRS)
Amid growing alarm at the rate of suicide among members of the military and confusion about possible causes, researchers reported on Monday that most of the Army’s enlisted men and women with suicidal tendencies had them before they enlisted, and that those at highest risk of making an attempt often had a long history of impulsive anger.
The new research — contained in three papers posted online by the journal JAMA Psychiatry — found that about one in 10 soldiers qualified for a diagnosis of “intermittent explosive disorder,” as it is known to psychiatrists — more than five times the rate found in the general population. This impulsive pattern, in combination with mood disorders and the stresses of deployment, increased the likelihood of acting on suicidal urges.
The new papers bring together five years of work by a coalition of academic, government and military researchers, investigating hundreds of suicides and surveying thousands of active soldiers in anonymous questionnaires.
The effort began in 2008, after the suicide rate among active soldiers rose above the civilian rate among young healthy adults for the first time. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have relied on an all-volunteer Army, not a draft like previous wars, and many of today’s enlisted men and women have deployed two, three, sometimes four times.
The new reports provide the first glimpse at how changes in the makeup of the fighting force and the increased demands of service have affected the suicide rate. The annual soldier suicide rate more than doubled between 2004 and 2009, to over 23 per 100,000, up from 10 per 100,000. In that period, 569 soldier deaths were ruled suicides. Since then, the rate has begun to fall back toward 20 per 100,000, which has consistently been the civilian rate in the same age group.
“This effort will do for suicide what the Framingham Heart Study did for cardiology, provide for the first time a way to look at multiple factors over a huge number of people,” said Dr. David Brent, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the research. The results, he added, strongly suggest that “the baggage people bring with them and often don’t disclose in order to get into armed services presumably interacts with the stresses of deployment” to increase vulnerability to suicide.
The three reports do not settle whether so-called accession waivers, which relax standards for new soldiers and which the Army has used to shore up its ranks, increased the force’s vulnerability to suicide. One study, an investigation of suicides and accidental deaths led by Michael Schoenbaum of the National Institute of Mental Health, found a host of risk factors many have suspected: demotions, a lower rank and previous deployment among them. But looser standards for enlistment were not correlated with increased suicides.
Overall, the three reports sketch a portrait of suicide risk that in many respects is like the civilian one. About 14 percent of the surveyed soldiers said they had had suicidal thoughts, and 5 percent had made plans at least once to take their lives — mirroring the rates among civilian peers. About 2 percent had actually made an attempt. (The attempt rate for civilians is actually twice as high, but soldiers’ attempts are more often lethal.)
About a quarter of soldiers surveyed qualified for at least one current psychiatric disorder, such as depression, anxiety or substance abuse. That is roughly twice the rate among peers in the general population, but only about half of those disorders developed after enlistment. The biggest difference between soldiers and young adults in the civilian population was in impulsive anger. The rate was more than 11 percent among surveyed soldiers, and less than 2 percent among young civilians. The anger issues predated enlistment about three-quarters of the time, said Matthew Nock, a lead author on one of the papers and a psychologist at Harvard.
“The people at highest risk of making an attempt struggled with depression and anxiety, or post-traumatic stress, in combination with impulsiveness and aggression,” Dr. Nock said. “The former gets people thinking about suicide, and the latter gets them to act on those thoughts.”
The new findings present the military with a challenging question: How do you identify people vulnerable to suicide without driving them underground? More intensive scrutiny typically leads would-be recruits to hide mental struggles. Some experts suggested that the services could screen people after enlistment, to identify those who might be offered additional support.
“A small minority of soldiers are responsible for a disproportionate amount of suicidal behavior,” wrote Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, of the National Center for PTSD*), in an editorial accompanying the three reports. “Better identification of and intervention with the cohort are likely to have the best payoff.”
*) NIMH · Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)www.nimh.nih.gov/.../post-traumatic-s...National Institute of Mental Health - PTSD develops after a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or the threat of physical harm. The person who develops PTSD may have been the one who ...
These experts also said that the military could invest in courses that shore up mental toughness service-wide as a preventive measure. In 2009, the Army invested in such a program for its 1.1 million members, but a recent report concluded that the program had not been effective.
A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Suicidal Tendencies Are Evident Before Deployment, Study Finds
By BENEDICT CAREY
Soldiers' Suicidal Tendencies
Are Evident Before Deployment, Study Finds
March 3, 2014
Early Findings From Army Study
to Assess Risk and Resilience in Servicemembers
(Army STARRS)
Amid growing alarm at the rate of suicide among members of the military and confusion about possible causes, researchers reported on Monday that most of the Army’s enlisted men and women with suicidal tendencies had them before they enlisted, and that those at highest risk of making an attempt often had a long history of impulsive anger.
The new research — contained in three papers posted online by the journal JAMA Psychiatry — found that about one in 10 soldiers qualified for a diagnosis of “intermittent explosive disorder,” as it is known to psychiatrists — more than five times the rate found in the general population. This impulsive pattern, in combination with mood disorders and the stresses of deployment, increased the likelihood of acting on suicidal urges.
The new papers bring together five years of work by a coalition of academic, government and military researchers, investigating hundreds of suicides and surveying thousands of active soldiers in anonymous questionnaires.
The effort began in 2008, after the suicide rate among active soldiers rose above the civilian rate among young healthy adults for the first time. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have relied on an all-volunteer Army, not a draft like previous wars, and many of today’s enlisted men and women have deployed two, three, sometimes four times.
The new reports provide the first glimpse at how changes in the makeup of the fighting force and the increased demands of service have affected the suicide rate. The annual soldier suicide rate more than doubled between 2004 and 2009, to over 23 per 100,000, up from 10 per 100,000. In that period, 569 soldier deaths were ruled suicides. Since then, the rate has begun to fall back toward 20 per 100,000, which has consistently been the civilian rate in the same age group.
“This effort will do for suicide what the Framingham Heart Study did for cardiology, provide for the first time a way to look at multiple factors over a huge number of people,” said Dr. David Brent, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh who was not involved in the research. The results, he added, strongly suggest that “the baggage people bring with them and often don’t disclose in order to get into armed services presumably interacts with the stresses of deployment” to increase vulnerability to suicide.
The three reports do not settle whether so-called accession waivers, which relax standards for new soldiers and which the Army has used to shore up its ranks, increased the force’s vulnerability to suicide. One study, an investigation of suicides and accidental deaths led by Michael Schoenbaum of the National Institute of Mental Health, found a host of risk factors many have suspected: demotions, a lower rank and previous deployment among them. But looser standards for enlistment were not correlated with increased suicides.
Overall, the three reports sketch a portrait of suicide risk that in many respects is like the civilian one. About 14 percent of the surveyed soldiers said they had had suicidal thoughts, and 5 percent had made plans at least once to take their lives — mirroring the rates among civilian peers. About 2 percent had actually made an attempt. (The attempt rate for civilians is actually twice as high, but soldiers’ attempts are more often lethal.)
About a quarter of soldiers surveyed qualified for at least one current psychiatric disorder, such as depression, anxiety or substance abuse. That is roughly twice the rate among peers in the general population, but only about half of those disorders developed after enlistment. The biggest difference between soldiers and young adults in the civilian population was in impulsive anger. The rate was more than 11 percent among surveyed soldiers, and less than 2 percent among young civilians. The anger issues predated enlistment about three-quarters of the time, said Matthew Nock, a lead author on one of the papers and a psychologist at Harvard.
“The people at highest risk of making an attempt struggled with depression and anxiety, or post-traumatic stress, in combination with impulsiveness and aggression,” Dr. Nock said. “The former gets people thinking about suicide, and the latter gets them to act on those thoughts.”
The new findings present the military with a challenging question: How do you identify people vulnerable to suicide without driving them underground? More intensive scrutiny typically leads would-be recruits to hide mental struggles. Some experts suggested that the services could screen people after enlistment, to identify those who might be offered additional support.
“A small minority of soldiers are responsible for a disproportionate amount of suicidal behavior,” wrote Dr. Matthew J. Friedman, of the National Center for PTSD*), in an editorial accompanying the three reports. “Better identification of and intervention with the cohort are likely to have the best payoff.”
*) NIMH · Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)www.nimh.nih.gov/.../post-traumatic-s...National Institute of Mental Health - PTSD develops after a terrifying ordeal that involved physical harm or the threat of physical harm. The person who develops PTSD may have been the one who ...
These experts also said that the military could invest in courses that shore up mental toughness service-wide as a preventive measure. In 2009, the Army invested in such a program for its 1.1 million members, but a recent report concluded that the program had not been effective.
A version of this article appears in print on March 4, 2014, on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Suicidal Tendencies Are Evident Before Deployment, Study Finds
By BENEDICT CAREY
- Suicidal Tendencies Are Evident Before Deployment, Study Finds
New York Times - 3 days ago
Researchers also reported that the soldiers who were at highest risk of making a suicide attempt often had a long history of impulsive anger __________________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLE A
Can’t Get a Bank Loan?
The Alternatives Are Expanding
Ivan Rincon’s products may have been skimpy, but he was convinced his growth prospects were not. Orchid Boutique, the online swimwear shop he founded six years ago in Miami with his wife, Mayra, was approaching $3 million in annual sales. It had been profitable since 2010, he said, with margins that ran between 10 and 15 percent. But the business was highly seasonal, leaving him scrambling for cash in the off-season when he needed to place orders.
Working with an executive coach in 2012, Mr. Rincon developed a plan to diversify the store’s offerings beyond swimwear and tap into promising markets like Australia and Europe. To execute the plan, he needed to stock up on jewelry and other accessories, and he needed to hire more employees — all of which would require money.
- You’re the Boss Blog: Have You Tried a Peer-to-Peer Lender?MARCH 5, 2014 - next below as article B
In late 2012, Mr. Rincon got a merchant cash advance of $200,000, for which he agreed to pay $55,000. The lender took 15 percent of his sales daily until it had recouped the $255,000 — at an effective annual interest rate of more than 50 percent. Mr. Rincon paid off the advance last May with the proceeds from another merchant cash advance, this one for $70,000 at a 15 percent annual rate, not including other fees. In retrospect, Mr. Rincon said, taking the cash advances “wasn’t the healthiest thing to do for the business.”
Then he heard about Dealstruck, a year-old company based in San Diego. In October 2013, Mr. Rincon shared his financials with Dealstruck, and a few days later, he came away with a $250,000 loan that featured a three-year term, a 10 percent annual interest rate, and flexible terms that allow him to make bigger payments in busy months. “The terms are clear and include a set monthly fee and a reasonable payback time frame,” Mr. Rincon said.
Dealstruck is among a new crop of alternative lenders — including Fundationand Funding Circle — offering a middle path between banks, which lend primarily to the most creditworthy small businesses, and cash advance lenders, which thrive on subprime candidates. The new lenders, according to Sam Graziano, Fundation’s chief executive, focus on “midprime” businesses that “deserve a better product but don’t qualify for a bank.”
Alternative lending has filled a gap left by risk-averse banks: big banks approved less than a fifth of all requests for small-business loans they received in January, while small banks approved about half of such requests, according to a survey by Biz2Credit, an online platform that matches businesses and lenders. And that does not reflect the businesses that are too discouraged to apply. By embracing technology to make small-business lending more efficient and profitable, the alternative lenders have opened opportunities for businesses. In January, according to Biz2Credit, alternative lenders approved roughly 64 percent of the loan requests they received.
“The Internet is doing to this industry what it’s done to every other industry — create efficiencies, competition and price transparency,” said Jared Hecht, chief executive of Fundera, another website that matches businesses with lenders.
The first wave of tech-based alternative lenders — companies like OnDeckand Kabbage, which opened in 2007 and 2011 — used innovative software and data metrics, including social media interactions and Yelp reviews, to assess the health of a business. OnDeck alone has underwritten more than $900 million in loans. And Kabbage, which targets online merchants, lent $200 million in 2013.
But these loans typically are similar to a cash advance, with a fixed amount or percent of sales deducted daily from the borrower’s bank account over several months. Given the short loan terms, a small-business borrower can end up paying 50 percent or more on an annualized basis without realizing it. Those rates, however, have made it easy for OnDeck and Kabbage to line up institutional investors looking to supply capital and take a piece of the action.
That has opened the door for the latest lending upstarts, which combine digital innovation and efficiency with true term loans akin to bank loans. Their rates are higher than those charged by banks but lower than those charged by the short-term alternative lenders and the merchant cash advance providers. “It’s not about disintermediating the banks but the very high-yield lenders,” said Ethan Senturia, chief executive of Dealstruck.
Mr. Senturia’s company can offer lower rates by targeting midprime or near-prime borrowers and by lending larger amounts for longer terms. Dealstruck, like Funding Circle, uses a peer-to-peer model, meaning wealthy investors put up the capital for individual loans, which the lenders say lowers their cost of capital by freeing them from raising money.
To secure the loans, these platforms typically require a personal guarantee or business assets as collateral. Along with lower rates, the new lenders offer some transparency to what has been an opaque and confusing market. “We are trying to price fairly for the business,” Mr. Senturia said. “That doesn’t always mean cheap. But we will tell you what we are charging and why.”
Dealstruck’s interest rates range from 8 to 24 percent for loans of up to $250,000 that can stretch for three years. Funding Circle, a British lender that has expanded into the United States, charges 10 to 17 percent for loans of up to $500,000.
The peer-to-peer model is already established in consumer lending, with two companies, Lending Club and Prosper, making more than $4 billion in consumer loans. Now the
market for peer-to-peer small-business loans is heating up. Lending Club plans to expand into the market this year. AndDaric, a peer platform backed by a former Wells Fargo chief executive, opened recently.
Fundation, which is based in New York, offers terms friendly to small borrowers on par with the peer-to-peer lenders, but a partner, Garrison Investment Group, supplies the money. “There’s a lot of room for a lot of different types of lenders,” Mr. Graziano said. Since opening last year, his company has made about 90 loans at rates ranging from 9 to 24 percent. The average loan is $175,000 with a three-year term.
One of those loans went to Lydia Aguinaldo, owner of Pines Home Health Care Services, in Broward County, Fla. Like Mr. Rincon, she had resorted to a high-interest loan from a merchant cash advance provider for her 13-year-old adult care business. She replaced that loan recently with a three-year, $250,000 loan from Fundation. The interest rate, 19 percent, is still high, she said, but it is much lower than what she had been paying.
The fresh competition is already forcing established players to adjust. In February, OnDeck announced it would begin offering loans of up to $250,000 with terms of 12 to 24 months and interest rates of 20 to 40 percent. Noah Breslow, OnDeck’s chief executive, said the move into bigger, longer-term loans reflects the growing accuracy of OnDeck’s lending model, now in its fourth generation, and market demand. “I don’t think we’ll ever get to a five-year bank loan, but we’ll continue to move upstream,” Mr. Breslow said.
The competitive scrum can only be good news for small businesses with big plans. Mr. Hecht of Fundera predicted a day when “there is a credit product out there for everyone.” He added, “We’re just at the beginning of this.”
A version of this article appears in print on March 6, 2014, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Can’t Get a Bank Loan? The Alternatives Are Expanding.
News for NYT article the alternatives are expanding
New York Times
- Small Business|Can't Get a Bank Loan? The Alternatives Are Expanding
New York Times - 1 day ago
New alternative lenders are offering a path between banks, which lend primarily to the ... Credit Angel Valentin for The New York Times .... A version of this article appears in print on March 6, 2014, on page B4 of the New York ... ____________________________________________________________________________ ARTICLE B - Have your tried the peer to peer lenders?
- By YOU'RE THE BOSS EDITORS
- Amy Cortese explains in an article we have just published, small businesses that cannot get bank loans suddenly have new alternative lenders to consider.Ms. Cortese cites the example of Ivan Rincon, whose online swimwear shop, Orchid Boutique, which he founded six years ago in Miami with his wife, is a highly seasonal business. This leaves him scrambling for cash in the off-season when he needs to place orders.
Mr. Rincon came up with a plan to diversify the store’s offerings beyond swimwear and tap into promising markets, but he needed capital. At first, he tried to get a bank loan but was rejected for lack of collateral. Then he did what many small-business owners have been doing since the recession: He turned to a merchant cash advance provider, a type of nonbank lender that advances cash quickly in return for a share of future sales — extracted daily from the borrower’s credit card receipts.
In late 2012, Mr. Rincon took a merchant cash advance of $200,000, for which he agreed to pay $55,000. The lender took 15 percent of his sales daily until it had recouped the $255,000 — resulting in an effective annual interest rate of more than 50 percent. He paid off the advance last May with the proceeds from another merchant cash advance. This one was for $70,000 with an interest rate of 15 percent, not including fees.
Then Mr. Rincon heard about Dealstruck, a year-old company based in San Diego. In October 2013, Mr. Rincon shared his financials with Dealstruck. A few days later, he came away with a $250,000 loan that featured a three-year term, a 10 percent annual interest rate, and flexible terms that allow him to make bigger payments in busy months. “The terms are clear and include a set monthly fee and a reasonable payback time frame,” Mr. Rincon said.
Dealstruck is among a new crop of alternative lenders — including
Fundation and Funding Circle — that take a middle path between highly regulated banks, which lend primarily to the most creditworthy small businesses, and cash advance lenders, which thrive on subprime candidates. Many of them, including Dealstruck, are peer-to-peer lenders, which means the online platform connects investors with capital to businesses looking to borrow.
The peer-to-peer lenders are growing fast and prompting older alternative lenders to adjust. Have you tried a peer-to-peer, small-business loan? If so, what was your experience?
___________________________________________________________________________
Blogging
Click
Myth that gum disease causes heart attacks debunked - Telegraphwww.telegraph.co.uk › Health › Health News
The Daily Telegraph
Apr 18, 2012 - The popular belief that gum disease can lead to heart attacks and strokes is a ... evidence for a causal link between bad gums and heart and artery problems. ... Bad dental health can lead to pneumonia, Yale study suggests.
(Text below)
________________
Myth that gum disease causes heart attacks debunked
The popular belief that gum disease can lead to heart attacks and strokes is a myth, experts say.
18 Apr 2012
Scientists writing in a respected US journal insisted there was no evidence for a causal link between bad gums and heart and artery problems.
The false message distorted the facts and spread alarm among patients, it was claimed.
A panel of 13 US experts spelled out their views in a scientific statement published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
The scientists reviewed 500 journal articles looking at links between gum and cardiovascular disease.
They concluded that while people with gum disease may be at greater risk of heart or artery disease, the association is probably coincidental.
Related Articles
Both conditions shared common risk factors, such as smoking, age and diabetes, and both produced similar inflammation markers.
Lifestyle may also play a role, said the experts. People who did not look after their hearts may also be less inclined to care about their dental health.
The common factors could help explain why diseases of the blood vessels and mouth can occur in tandem.
Research has shown that people with gum disease are almost almost twice as likely to suffer from coronary artery disease as those without gum disease.
Professor Peter Lockhart, co-chair of the expert panel and chair of oral medicine at the Carolinas Medical Centre in Charlotte, New Carolina, said: ''There's a lot of confusion out there.
''The message sent out by some in healthcare professions that heart attack and stroke are directly linked to gum disease can distort the facts, alarm patients and perhaps shift the focus on prevention away from well-known risk factors for these diseases.
''Much of the literature is conflicting, but if there was a strong causative link, we would likely know that by now.''
He added: ''We already know that some people are less proactive about their cardiovascular health than others. Individuals who do not pay attention to the very powerful and well-proven risk factors, like smoking, diabetes or high blood pressure, may not pay close attention to their oral health either.''
Only a large, long-term study could prove that dental disease caused heart disease, but there was no likelihood of such an investigation being conducted in the near future.
''It's most important to let patients know what we know now, and what we don't know,'' said Prof Lockhart.
The belief that infected gums can lead to system problems such as heart disease has been suggested by doctors for more than a century.
Mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
A number of theories have been suggested to explain the association between gum and heart disease.
One is that mouth bacteria attach to fatty deposits in arteries and trigger blood clots. Another is that they are a source of inflammation, which leads to a thickening of artery walls.
But the experts writing in Circulation said statements that imply a cause and effect relationship between gum and heart and artery disease were ''unwarranted'' at this time.
Professor Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee, said: "There are numerous studies investigating possible links between gum disease and various medical conditions, including heart disease. However, just because there appears to be an association between two conditions, that is not the same thing as being able to demonstrate a causal effect.
"One thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being."
_____________________________
Click
Myth that gum disease causes heart attacks debunked - Telegraphwww.telegraph.co.uk › Health › Health News
The Daily Telegraph
Apr 18, 2012 - The popular belief that gum disease can lead to heart attacks and strokes is a ... evidence for a causal link between bad gums and heart and artery problems. ... Bad dental health can lead to pneumonia, Yale study suggests.
(Text below)
________________
Myth that gum disease causes heart attacks debunked
The popular belief that gum disease can lead to heart attacks and strokes is a myth, experts say.
18 Apr 2012
Scientists writing in a respected US journal insisted there was no evidence for a causal link between bad gums and heart and artery problems.
The false message distorted the facts and spread alarm among patients, it was claimed.
A panel of 13 US experts spelled out their views in a scientific statement published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.
The scientists reviewed 500 journal articles looking at links between gum and cardiovascular disease.
They concluded that while people with gum disease may be at greater risk of heart or artery disease, the association is probably coincidental.
Related Articles
- Bad dental health can lead to pneumonia, Yale study suggests
28 Dec 2011 - Gum disease 'linked to heart problems'
10 Sep 2008 - Sex after heart attacks 'not the preserve of Mad Men'
10 May 2012 - Brushing your teeth 'can reduce heart disease'
08 Sep 2008 - Making a stand against prostate cancer Prostate Cancer UK
Both conditions shared common risk factors, such as smoking, age and diabetes, and both produced similar inflammation markers.
Lifestyle may also play a role, said the experts. People who did not look after their hearts may also be less inclined to care about their dental health.
The common factors could help explain why diseases of the blood vessels and mouth can occur in tandem.
Research has shown that people with gum disease are almost almost twice as likely to suffer from coronary artery disease as those without gum disease.
Professor Peter Lockhart, co-chair of the expert panel and chair of oral medicine at the Carolinas Medical Centre in Charlotte, New Carolina, said: ''There's a lot of confusion out there.
''The message sent out by some in healthcare professions that heart attack and stroke are directly linked to gum disease can distort the facts, alarm patients and perhaps shift the focus on prevention away from well-known risk factors for these diseases.
''Much of the literature is conflicting, but if there was a strong causative link, we would likely know that by now.''
He added: ''We already know that some people are less proactive about their cardiovascular health than others. Individuals who do not pay attention to the very powerful and well-proven risk factors, like smoking, diabetes or high blood pressure, may not pay close attention to their oral health either.''
Only a large, long-term study could prove that dental disease caused heart disease, but there was no likelihood of such an investigation being conducted in the near future.
''It's most important to let patients know what we know now, and what we don't know,'' said Prof Lockhart.
The belief that infected gums can lead to system problems such as heart disease has been suggested by doctors for more than a century.
Mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
A number of theories have been suggested to explain the association between gum and heart disease.
One is that mouth bacteria attach to fatty deposits in arteries and trigger blood clots. Another is that they are a source of inflammation, which leads to a thickening of artery walls.
But the experts writing in Circulation said statements that imply a cause and effect relationship between gum and heart and artery disease were ''unwarranted'' at this time.
Professor Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee, said: "There are numerous studies investigating possible links between gum disease and various medical conditions, including heart disease. However, just because there appears to be an association between two conditions, that is not the same thing as being able to demonstrate a causal effect.
"One thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being."
_____________________________
Blogging
CDC: Antibiotic Overuse Can Be Lethal
Wall Street Journal - 20 hours ago
The overuse of antibiotics in U.S. hospitals is putting patients at risk and helping to fuel the creation of deadly superbugs, according to a ...
====================
A Genetic Entrepreneur Sets His Sights on Aging and Death ...www.nytimes.com/.../in-pursuit-of-longevity-a-plan-t...The New York Times
3 days ago - J. Craig Venter says his new company, Human Longevity, will focus on figuring out how people can ... A Genetic Entrepreneur Sets His Sights on Aging and Death ... Credit Michal Czerwonka for The New York Times .... A version of this articleappears in print on March 5, 2014, on page B1 of the New York ...
====================News for WSJ article There is no need to end ...
===================
News for WSJ article When Chief Executives become ...
===================
Battling to Collect a Judgment From a Bank That Won't Give Upnytimes.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx?...article...
senberg is in arrears on, if they would stop representing him. The bank has denied this. At issue is a dispute that began in the depths of the financial crisis in ...
==================
Blogging
New CDC data show encouraging development in obesity rates among 2 to 5 year olds
Though overall obesity rates remain unchanged, rates in young children improve
The latest CDC obesity data, published in the February 26, 2014 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, show a significant decline in obesity among children aged 2 to 5 years. Obesity prevalence for this age group went from nearly 14 percent in 2003-2004 to just over 8 percent in 2011-2012 – a decline of 43 percent – based on CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Although the JAMA study does not specifically compare 2009-2010 with 2011-2012, NHANES data does show a decline in the 2 to 5 year old age group during that time period – from just over 12 percent in 2009-2010 to just over 8 percent in 2011-2012.
“We continue to see signs that, for some children in this country, the scales are tipping. This report comes on the heels of previous CDC data that found a significant decline in obesity prevalence among low-income children aged 2 to 4 years participating in federal nutrition programs,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “We’ve also seen signs from communities around the country with obesity prevention programs including Anchorage, Alaska, Philadelphia, New York City and King County, Washington. This confirms that at least for kids, we can turn the tide and begin to reverse the obesity epidemic.”
While the precise reasons for the decline in obesity among 2 to 5 year olds are not clear, many child care centers have started to improve their nutrition and physical activity standards over the past few years. In addition, CDC data show decreases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among youth in recent years. Another possible factor might be the improvement in breastfeeding rates in the United States, which is beneficial to staving off obesity in breastfed children.
“I am thrilled at the progress we’ve made over the last few years in obesity rates among our youngest Americans,” said Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States of America. “With the participation of kids, parents, and communities in Let’s Move! these last four years, healthier habits are beginning to become the new norm.”
Overall, CDC’s latest NHANES obesity data published in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence among 2-19 year olds or adults in the United States between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012.
###
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Personal Health Issues
Social/Family Issues
Transcript
More than two-thirds of American adults and nearly a third of American youth are either overweight or obese according to a new study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The finding published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the nation's waistline is as over-stretched today as it was a decade ago despite concerted public health efforts to highlight the dangers of obesity.
Between 2011 and 2012, investigators analyzed height and weight figures for more than 9,100 people, ranging from newborns to adults.
I'm Dr. Cindy Haines of HealthDay TV, with news from today that can lead to healthy tomorrows.
________________________
STATISTICS
You see them all the time in the news - the number of people who were in the hospital last year, the percentage of kids who are overweight, the rate at which people are catching the flu, the average cost of a medical procedure. These are all types of health statistics.
Health statistics are numbers about some aspect of health. Statistics about births, deaths, marriages, and divorces are sometimes called "vital statistics." Researchers use statistics to see patterns of diseases in groups of people. This can help in figuring out who is at risk for certain diseases, finding ways to control diseases and deciding which diseases should be studied.
Understanding Medical Research
It seems to happen almost every day - you hear about the results of a new medical research study. Sometimes the results of one study seem to disagree with the results of another study.
It's important to be critical when reading or listening to reports of new medical findings. Some questions that can help you evaluate health information include:
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==================
Blogging
New CDC data show encouraging development in obesity rates among 2 to 5 year olds
Though overall obesity rates remain unchanged, rates in young children improve
The latest CDC obesity data, published in the February 26, 2014 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, show a significant decline in obesity among children aged 2 to 5 years. Obesity prevalence for this age group went from nearly 14 percent in 2003-2004 to just over 8 percent in 2011-2012 – a decline of 43 percent – based on CDC’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Although the JAMA study does not specifically compare 2009-2010 with 2011-2012, NHANES data does show a decline in the 2 to 5 year old age group during that time period – from just over 12 percent in 2009-2010 to just over 8 percent in 2011-2012.
“We continue to see signs that, for some children in this country, the scales are tipping. This report comes on the heels of previous CDC data that found a significant decline in obesity prevalence among low-income children aged 2 to 4 years participating in federal nutrition programs,” said CDC Director Tom Frieden, M.D., M.P.H. “We’ve also seen signs from communities around the country with obesity prevention programs including Anchorage, Alaska, Philadelphia, New York City and King County, Washington. This confirms that at least for kids, we can turn the tide and begin to reverse the obesity epidemic.”
While the precise reasons for the decline in obesity among 2 to 5 year olds are not clear, many child care centers have started to improve their nutrition and physical activity standards over the past few years. In addition, CDC data show decreases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among youth in recent years. Another possible factor might be the improvement in breastfeeding rates in the United States, which is beneficial to staving off obesity in breastfed children.
“I am thrilled at the progress we’ve made over the last few years in obesity rates among our youngest Americans,” said Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States of America. “With the participation of kids, parents, and communities in Let’s Move! these last four years, healthier habits are beginning to become the new norm.”
Overall, CDC’s latest NHANES obesity data published in this week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates there have been no significant changes in obesity prevalence among 2-19 year olds or adults in the United States between 2003-2004 and 2011-2012.
###
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Personal Health Issues
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- Privacy see Patient Rights; Personal Health Records
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- Abuse see Child Abuse; Domestic Violence; Elder Abuse
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- Communicating With Your Healthcare Provider see Talking With Your Doctor
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Transcript
More than two-thirds of American adults and nearly a third of American youth are either overweight or obese according to a new study conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The finding published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that the nation's waistline is as over-stretched today as it was a decade ago despite concerted public health efforts to highlight the dangers of obesity.
Between 2011 and 2012, investigators analyzed height and weight figures for more than 9,100 people, ranging from newborns to adults.
- High weight was seen among more than 8% of infants and toddlers 2 years and under,
- while nearly 17% of youth 12 to 19 years old were obese.
- Among adults 20 and up, nearly 35% were classified as obese with over 6% as extremely obese.
I'm Dr. Cindy Haines of HealthDay TV, with news from today that can lead to healthy tomorrows.
________________________
STATISTICS
You see them all the time in the news - the number of people who were in the hospital last year, the percentage of kids who are overweight, the rate at which people are catching the flu, the average cost of a medical procedure. These are all types of health statistics.
Health statistics are numbers about some aspect of health. Statistics about births, deaths, marriages, and divorces are sometimes called "vital statistics." Researchers use statistics to see patterns of diseases in groups of people. This can help in figuring out who is at risk for certain diseases, finding ways to control diseases and deciding which diseases should be studied.
Understanding Medical Research
It seems to happen almost every day - you hear about the results of a new medical research study. Sometimes the results of one study seem to disagree with the results of another study.
It's important to be critical when reading or listening to reports of new medical findings. Some questions that can help you evaluate health information include:
- Was the study in animals or people?
- Does the study include people like you?
- How big was the study?
- Was it a randomized controlled clinical trial?
- Where was the research done?
- If a new treatment was being tested, were there side effects?
- Who paid for the research?
- Who is reporting the results?
FOR BLOGGING
New on the MedlinePlus Exercise for Children page:
Students' Health Habits Tied to School Success
02/22/2014
Fitness, nutrition, proper sleep and TV restrictions appeared to make a difference in study of city kids
Source: HealthDay
Students' Health Habits Tied to School Success
Fitness, nutrition, proper sleep and TV restrictions appeared to make a difference in study of city kids
By Mary Elizabeth Dallas
Saturday, February 22, 2014 Related MedlinePlus Pages
SATURDAY, Feb. 22, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep and being physically fit are important for students' success in school, a new study suggests.
When students' home and school environments support their physical health and well-being, they perform better academically, the researchers found, so programs in and out of the classroom to promote healthy behavior may be a smart investment.
The study looked at survey results and district test scores of 940 fifth- and sixth-grade students attending 12 randomly selected schools in New Haven, Conn., a poor and ethnically diverse city.
Researchers also assessed the students' physical fitness three to six months before they were tested and again after the scores of the standardized tests were released.
Students with environments that supported their physical health were more likely to reach their target scores in reading, writing and math. They were more than twice as likely to achieve this academic success than students whose environments supported their health the least, the investigators found. However, the study did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study, published online recently in the Journal of School Health, revealed health factors that were linked to improved test scores in the children, including the following:
"Health and social disparities, including academic achievement, are increasing," said Ickovics, also director of the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement, a research program at the Yale School of Public Health.
"One way to reduce disparities and close the equity gaps in health and education is to coordinate community and family-based efforts with comprehensive school-based approaches," she concluded in the news release.
SOURCE: Yale University, news release, Feb. 17, 2014
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on:Exercise for ChildrenSchool HealthRecent Health News
Article 2 of 2 next below
_________________
Article 2 of 2
Health & Academics - Adolescent and School Health
The academic success of America’s youth is strongly linked with their health
Health-related factors such as hunger, physical and emotional abuse, and chronic illness can lead to poor school performance.1 Health-risk behaviors such as early sexual initiation, violence, and physical inactivity are consistently linked to poor grades and test scores and lower educational attainment.2-4
In turn, academic success is an excellent indicator for the overall well-being of youth and a primary predictor and determinant of adult health outcomes.5-7 Leading national education organizations recognize the close relationship between health and education, as well as the need to foster health and well-being within the educational environment for all students.
Scientific reviews have documented that school health programs can have positive effects on educational outcomes, as well as health-risk behaviors and health outcomes.12-13 Similarly, programs that are primarily designed to improve academic performance are increasingly recognized as important public health interventions.14-15
Schools play a critical role in promoting the health and safety of young people and helping them establish lifelong healthy behaviors. Research also has shown that school health programs can reduce the prevalence of health risk behaviors among young people and have a positive effect on academic performance. CDC analyzes research findings to develop guidelines and strategies for schools to address health risk behaviors among students and creates tools to help schools implement these guidelines.
Health & Academics Data & Statistics
This page provides data about the association between youth risk behaviors and students’ academic achievement. These data are collected through the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), administered by CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.
The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) monitors priority health-risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. It is conducted every 2 years during the spring and provides data representative of 9th- through 12th-grade students in public and private schools throughout the nation.
In 2009, students completing the YRBS were asked, “During the past 12 months, how would you describe your grades in school?” and given seven response options (Mostly A’s, Mostly B’s, Mostly C’s, Mostly D’s, Mostly F’s, None of these grades, Not sure). In 2009, 31% of students received mostly A’s, 40% received mostly B’s, 19% received mostly C’s, 6% received mostly D’s or F’s, and 4% reported receiving none of these grades or not sure.
Association Between Health-Risk Behaviors and Academic GradesData from YRBSS show a negative association between health-risk behaviors and academic achievement among high school students, after controlling for sex, race/ethnicity, and grade level. This means that students with higher grades are less likely to engage in health-risk behaviors than their classmates with lower grades, and students who do not engage in health-risk behaviors receive higher grades than their classmates who do engage in health-risk behaviors.
These associations do not prove causation. Further research is needed to determine whether low grades lead to health-risk behaviors, health-risk behaviors lead to low grades, or some other factors lead to both of these problems.
Fact Sheets (2009 YRBS)
Slide Sets (2009 YRBS)
New on the MedlinePlus Exercise for Children page:
Students' Health Habits Tied to School Success
02/22/2014
Fitness, nutrition, proper sleep and TV restrictions appeared to make a difference in study of city kids
Source: HealthDay
Students' Health Habits Tied to School Success
Fitness, nutrition, proper sleep and TV restrictions appeared to make a difference in study of city kids
By Mary Elizabeth Dallas
Saturday, February 22, 2014 Related MedlinePlus Pages
SATURDAY, Feb. 22, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Eating a healthy diet, getting enough sleep and being physically fit are important for students' success in school, a new study suggests.
When students' home and school environments support their physical health and well-being, they perform better academically, the researchers found, so programs in and out of the classroom to promote healthy behavior may be a smart investment.
The study looked at survey results and district test scores of 940 fifth- and sixth-grade students attending 12 randomly selected schools in New Haven, Conn., a poor and ethnically diverse city.
Researchers also assessed the students' physical fitness three to six months before they were tested and again after the scores of the standardized tests were released.
Students with environments that supported their physical health were more likely to reach their target scores in reading, writing and math. They were more than twice as likely to achieve this academic success than students whose environments supported their health the least, the investigators found. However, the study did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study, published online recently in the Journal of School Health, revealed health factors that were linked to improved test scores in the children, including the following:
- Not having a television in the bedroom
- Maintaining a healthy weight
- Being physically fit
- Having access to healthy foods
- Rarely eating fast food
- Not drinking sugary drinks, such as soda
- Getting enough sleep
"Health and social disparities, including academic achievement, are increasing," said Ickovics, also director of the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement, a research program at the Yale School of Public Health.
"One way to reduce disparities and close the equity gaps in health and education is to coordinate community and family-based efforts with comprehensive school-based approaches," she concluded in the news release.
SOURCE: Yale University, news release, Feb. 17, 2014
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on:Exercise for ChildrenSchool HealthRecent Health News
Article 2 of 2 next below
_________________
Article 2 of 2
Health & Academics - Adolescent and School Health
The academic success of America’s youth is strongly linked with their health
Health-related factors such as hunger, physical and emotional abuse, and chronic illness can lead to poor school performance.1 Health-risk behaviors such as early sexual initiation, violence, and physical inactivity are consistently linked to poor grades and test scores and lower educational attainment.2-4
In turn, academic success is an excellent indicator for the overall well-being of youth and a primary predictor and determinant of adult health outcomes.5-7 Leading national education organizations recognize the close relationship between health and education, as well as the need to foster health and well-being within the educational environment for all students.
Scientific reviews have documented that school health programs can have positive effects on educational outcomes, as well as health-risk behaviors and health outcomes.12-13 Similarly, programs that are primarily designed to improve academic performance are increasingly recognized as important public health interventions.14-15
Schools play a critical role in promoting the health and safety of young people and helping them establish lifelong healthy behaviors. Research also has shown that school health programs can reduce the prevalence of health risk behaviors among young people and have a positive effect on academic performance. CDC analyzes research findings to develop guidelines and strategies for schools to address health risk behaviors among students and creates tools to help schools implement these guidelines.
Health & Academics Data & Statistics
This page provides data about the association between youth risk behaviors and students’ academic achievement. These data are collected through the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS), administered by CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health.
The National Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) monitors priority health-risk behaviors that contribute to the leading causes of death, disability, and social problems among youth and adults in the United States. It is conducted every 2 years during the spring and provides data representative of 9th- through 12th-grade students in public and private schools throughout the nation.
In 2009, students completing the YRBS were asked, “During the past 12 months, how would you describe your grades in school?” and given seven response options (Mostly A’s, Mostly B’s, Mostly C’s, Mostly D’s, Mostly F’s, None of these grades, Not sure). In 2009, 31% of students received mostly A’s, 40% received mostly B’s, 19% received mostly C’s, 6% received mostly D’s or F’s, and 4% reported receiving none of these grades or not sure.
Association Between Health-Risk Behaviors and Academic GradesData from YRBSS show a negative association between health-risk behaviors and academic achievement among high school students, after controlling for sex, race/ethnicity, and grade level. This means that students with higher grades are less likely to engage in health-risk behaviors than their classmates with lower grades, and students who do not engage in health-risk behaviors receive higher grades than their classmates who do engage in health-risk behaviors.
These associations do not prove causation. Further research is needed to determine whether low grades lead to health-risk behaviors, health-risk behaviors lead to low grades, or some other factors lead to both of these problems.
Fact Sheets (2009 YRBS)
- Overview [pdf 120K]
- Alcohol & Other Drug Use Behaviors [pdf 146K]
- Physical Inactivity & Unhealthy Dietary Behaviors [pdf 142K]
- Sexual Risk Behaviors [pdf 1M]
- Tobacco Use Behaviors [pdf 102K]
- Unintentional Injury & Violence-Related Behaviors [pdf 131K]
Slide Sets (2009 YRBS)
- Alcohol & Other Drug Use Behaviors [ppt 1.3M - 21 slides] [pdf 119K]
- Physical Inactivity & Unhealthy Dietary Behaviors [ppt 694K – 9 slides] [pdf 248K]
- Sexual Risk Behaviors [ppt 601K – 7 slides] [pdf 137K]
- Tobacco Use Behaviors [ppt 763K – 11 slides] [pdf 178K]
- Unintentional Injury & Violence-Related Behaviors [pdf 1.1M – 20 slides] [pdf 287K] _______________________________________________________________________________
Blogging
THE OUTLOOK
North Carolina Is a Case Study in Jobless-Benefits Cut
State's Experiment Provides Some Answers to a Prickly Policy Question
Six years after the country plunged into recession, politicians and economic-policy makers face a prickly question: What happens when the government ends long-term unemployment benefits meant to help the jobless through the downturn and its aftermath?
One state, North Carolina, is running an experiment that offers some real-life answers.
Long-term unemployment benefits ended in North Carolina in July, six months before the federal government ended $25 billion in long-term jobless benefits for all the other states at the start of the new year.
The Tar Heel State's unemployment rate since then has plunged, as people who were receiving benefits scrambled to find jobs or stopped looking for work. Employers report a flood of applicants.
But the experience in North Carolina has exposed two persistent problems dogging the workforce: many experienced workers are settling for lower-skill jobs, and a lack of skills is blocking many other workers from settling into an abundance of openings.
Washington Wire
Many of the long-term unemployed have taken jobs for which they appear to be overqualified, based on experience or education, and some are piecing together multiple part-time jobs to fill the benefits gap.
At the same time, some employers say they face challenges finding the right people to fill openings.
The shifts in North Carolina have been dramatic since lawmakers in the state changed the law early last year to trim benefits by more than 30% and to include more work requirements.
That move disqualified North Carolina from extended federal unemployment benefits, which ended in July.
The jobless rate plummeted from 9.5% at the start of 2013 to 6.9% at the end, as 110,930 people left the labor force and overall employment rose by 13,414, according to data compiled by South by North Strategies Ltd., an economic- and social-policy research firm in Chapel Hill.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, said there was great uncertainty over what would unfold when benefits in his state were curtailed. But his administration, he said in an interview, kept hearing from employers "saying people weren't taking jobs that were available."
"We made the decision, 'let's try something different, because whatever has been tried for the last three years wasn't working,' " Mr. McCrory said.
At Charlotte Works, a public-private partnership that tries to align job training with skills needed by local employers, Steve Partridge has seen the job scramble up close.
"Some people have jumped into employment, but they are clearly underemployed," said Mr. Partridge, the group's president. "You've got someone who has an associate's or bachelor's degree, and they are working at a retail store to make ends meet."
Eddrena Morris, 51 years old, was laid off from her marketing job in 2012 and lost her long-term unemployment benefits in July. She has some college credits and is working to get a degree in graphic design but said she took temporary work at conventions to earn some income.
She has applied for between 75 and 100 jobs in the past year, including one stocking shelves at a Wal-Mart store, she said, adding, "I didn't even get called."
Several employers, though, point to a misalignment between jobs and the necessary skills in a state that has struggled for decades to rebuild its labor force after heavy job losses in manufacturing, tobacco and textiles.
Kip Blakely, vice president of industry and government relations at Timco Aviation Services in Greensboro, said his airline-maintenance company is trying to fill roughly 75 jobs in the state, though the jobs almost always require extensive certification.
"It's not real practical when someone is unemployed, out of work and underemployed" to tell them to spend two years getting certification from a local community college, Mr. Blakely said.
At the same time, competition for lower-skill jobs has been intense.
David Burleson, superintendent of the school district in Avery County, in the western part of the state, said dozens of people recently applied for a single job that paid between $20,000 and $22,000 annually, a trend he says has intensified in the past six months.
"When we post a clerical position, especially those positions that have limited skills, we just are flooded," Mr. Burleson said. "We have tried to figure out ways to reduce the number of eligible people by including some skill tests, because interviewing that many people really drains your staff."
The skills gap is something that Democrats and Republicans are weighing as they try to continue to address the elevated unemployment rate across the nation.
Mr. McCrory said it was going to be a particular focus in North Carolina, and the White House is reviewing all federal job-training programs to see if there is a better way to avoid duplication and more closely align training with job demand.
How closely—and quickly—the politics align with economics could determine whether policy can be effective in tackling long-term unemployment.
WSJ
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click: Antibiotic Overuse WSJ article March 5, 2014
Blogging
News for WSJ article Soaring prices test wealthiest will
The Wire
News for WSJ article low-cost loans entice students ...
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Blogging
(1)
EPA Set to Reveal Tough New Sulfur Emissions Rule
New York Times - 18 hours ago
Steam streamed from refineries last week in Texas City, Tex. New Environmental Protection Agency rules would strip out sulfurfrom gasoline ...
Fully handled for blogging with all necessary links - only to revive with colors & variable fonts
Placed on Technology tab
__________________________________________________
E.P.A. Set to Reveal Tough New Sulfur Emissions Rule
WASHINGTON. D.C. — February 2014
There is no other regulatory strategy that is
as important
from a health standpoint, in the foreseeable future
(1) The new rule will have a significant impact on the health of low-income Americans who live near major highways.
(2) The cleaner-burning gasoline will yield between $6.7 billion and $19 billion annually in economic benefits by saving lives and preventing missed work and school days due to illness.
(3) The agency estimates that, annually, the new rule will prevent between 770 and 2,000 premature deaths; 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 19,000 asthma attacks, 30,000 cases of symptoms of respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.4 million lost school and work days.
To see the history of News about Environmental Protection Agency, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times click: History of Environmental Protection Agency -
EPA plans to unveil a major new regulation on Monday March 3/2013 that forces oil refiners to strip out sulfur,
a smog-forming pollutant linked to respiratory disease, from American gasoline blends, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.
Click: US Environmental Protection Agencywww.epa.gov/
Proposed Safety Measures to Protect Farm Workers. Improvements to training regarding the safe usage of pesticides, how to prevent and treat pesticide ...Careers - Contact EPA - Laws & Regulations - Regulatory Information By Topic
When burned in gasoline, sulfur blocks pollution-control equipment in vehicle engines, which increases tailpipe emissions linked to lung disease, asthma*-1), emphysema*-2), chronic bronchitis*-3), aggravated heart disease*-4) and premature births*-5) and deaths. Proponents of the rule say it will be President Obama’s most significant public health achievement in his second term, but opponents, chiefly oil refiners, say it is unnecessarily costly and an unfair burden on them.
asthma*-1) Click: What Is Asthma? - NHLBI, NIH
emphysema*-2) click: Emphysema: MedlinePlus
chronic bronchitis*-3) click: Chronic Bronchitis: MedlinePlus
aggravated heart disease*-4) click: What causes heart failure?
premature births*-5) click: Premature Birth - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The E.P.A. estimates that the new rule will drastically reduce soot and smog in the United States, and thus rates of diseases associated with those pollutants, while slightly raising the price of both gasoline and cars. The rule will require oil refiners to install expensive new equipment to clean sulfur out of gasoline and force automakers to install new, cleaner-burning engine technology.
E.P.A. officials estimate that the new regulation will raise the cost of gasoline by about two-thirds of one cent per gallon and add about $75 to the sticker price of cars. But oil refiners say that it will cost their industry $10 billion and raise gasoline costs by up to 9 cents per gallon.
The E.P.A.’s studies conclude that by 2030, the cleaner-burning gasoline will yield between $6.7 billion and $19 billion annually in economic benefits by saving lives and preventing missed work and school days due to illness. The agency estimates that, annually, the new rule will prevent between 770 and 2,000 premature deaths; 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 19,000 asthma attacks, 30,000 cases of symptoms of respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.4 million lost school and work days.
“There is no other regulatory strategy that is as important from a health standpoint, in the foreseeable future,” said S. William Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.
click: NACAAwww.4cleanair.org/ The National Association of Clean Air Agencies (formerly STAPPA and ALAPCO) welcomes you to this web site. Explore this web site to locate state and local air ...
Until now, the sulfur content standards in American gasoline lagged far behind those used in the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The new rule will close that pollution gap by cutting American gasoline sulfur content by more than 60 percent, from 30 parts per million of sulfur down to 10 parts per million, starting in 2017.
The cleaner gasoline standard has been Click: years in the making. Mr. Obama asked the E.P.A. to create the rule in a 2010 presidential memorandum, and public health and environmental advocates lobbied the agency vigorously to complete it. It is the most recent in a cascade of aggressive air pollution regulations that have emerged as a hallmark of the Obama administration.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, the forthcoming gasoline rule was a hotly contested political target. Republicans criticized it as an example of what they called the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach.
But since the presidential election, some Republicans have said they welcome the rule. Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a conservative Republican, said that because of mountain weather patterns, tailpipe smog is often trapped around Salt Lake City, giving his state many days with “gunky air that rivals L.A.”
click: Salt Lake City www.ci.slc.ut.us/ At Salt Lake City Government, we're committed to making digital access to information, City services and your elected officials as easy and efficient as possible
Mr. Herbert said the new rule would help clean up his state’s air. “We’ve got to find a way to eliminate that with cleaner fuels and cleaner autos,” he said in an interview. “Dirty air is not a partisan issue. The fact that we have technology that’s available — cleaner burning fuels, cleaner burning autos — we ought to embrace that.”
The new rule will have a significant impact on the health of low-income Americans who live near major highways, said Dr. Al Rizzo, a pulmonologist at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Del.
click: Albert A. Rizzo, MD, FACP, FACCP - Christiana Care Health System
and a former chairman of the American Lung Association’s board of directors.
click: American Lung Association: Homepagewww.lung.org/American Lung Association Learn how to improve your lung health. Make efforts towards clean air and smokefree living. Find facts about lung diseases, such as lung cancer, COPD, ...
“The population that lives close to highways, that has the greatest exposure to these pollutants, air quality makes a big difference for them,” Dr. Rizzo said. click: President Charles T. Drevna - AFPMBut oil refiners say that the new rule will hurt their industry. Charles T. Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers
click: AFPM | American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturerswww.afpm.org/, which lobbies for the oil refining industry, said that the rule comes on top of a series of other burdensome regulations. A decade ago, American gasoline contained 300 parts per million of sulfur, but earlier rules required refiners to cut the sulfur content by 90 percent, down to the current 30 parts per million.
Mr. Drevna said it was easier to comply with the earlier regulations because removing the first 90 percent of sulfur molecules from gasoline can be done without difficulty. Wringing the last 10 percent of those molecules is harder.
“They’re tough little buggers that don’t want to come out,” Mr. Drevna said. “It’s like getting the last little bit of red wine stain out of a white blouse.”
Asked about the E.P.A.’s estimate that the rule would raise prices at the pump by less than a penny a gallon, Mr. Drevna laughed out loud. “I don’t know what model E.P.A. uses,” he said. “The math doesn’t add up.” His industry’s estimate that the rule could raise gasoline prices by up to 9 cents a gallon comes from a study by the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil companies.
Not all industries oppose the regulation. Although the auto industry estimates that the rule will cost automakers about $15 billion over 10 years, Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, whose members include General Motors, Ford and Toyota, said her group had worked closely with the Obama administration to develop the regulation, and does not oppose it.
click: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers: Homewww.autoalliance.org. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is an association of 12 of the largest car manufacturers, and is the leading advocacy group for the auto industry.
That is in part, she said, because complying with the new clean-gasoline regulation will help automakers more easily meet another set of Obama administration regulations, tightening vehicle fuel economy standards.
“We understand that this is the trend, to get cars cleaner and cleaner,” Ms. Bergquist said. “Our engineers are prepared to work for it.”
Source: (1) EPA , (2) NYT, (3) STAF, Inc.
________________________________
Same text as above as original without any added links or details
E.P.A. Set to Reveal Tough New Sulfur Emissions Rule
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to unveil a major new regulation on Monday that forces oil refiners to strip out sulfur, a smog-forming pollutant linked to respiratory disease, from American gasoline blends, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.
When burned in gasoline, sulfur blocks pollution-control equipment in vehicle engines, which increases tailpipe emissions linked to lung disease, asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, aggravated heart disease and premature births and deaths. Proponents of the rule say it will be President Obama’s most significant public health achievement in his second term, but opponents, chiefly oil refiners, say it is unnecessarily costly and an unfair burden on them.
The E.P.A. estimates that the new rule will drastically reduce soot and smog in the United States, and thus rates of diseases associated with those pollutants, while slightly raising the price of both gasoline and cars. The rule will require oil refiners to install expensive new equipment to clean sulfur out of gasoline and force automakers to install new, cleaner-burning engine technology.
E.P.A. officials estimate that the new regulation will raise the cost of gasoline by about two-thirds of one cent per gallon and add about $75 to the sticker price of cars. But oil refiners say that it will cost their industry $10 billion and raise gasoline costs by up to 9 cents per gallon.
The E.P.A.’s studies conclude that by 2030, the cleaner-burning gasoline will yield between $6.7 billion and $19 billion annually in economic benefits by saving lives and preventing missed work and school days due to illness. The agency estimates that, annually, the new rule will prevent between 770 and 2,000 premature deaths; 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 19,000 asthma attacks, 30,000 cases of symptoms of respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.4 million lost school and work days.
“There is no other regulatory strategy that is as important from a health standpoint, in the foreseeable future,” said S. William Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Until now, the sulfur content standards in American gasoline lagged far behind those used in the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The new rule will close that pollution gap by cutting American gasoline sulfur content by more than 60 percent, from 30 parts per million of sulfur down to 10 parts per million, starting in 2017.
The cleaner gasoline standard has been years in the making. Mr. Obama asked the E.P.A. to create the rule in a 2010 presidential memorandum, and public health and environmental advocates lobbied the agency vigorously to complete it. It is the most recent in a cascade of aggressive air pollution regulations that have emerged as a hallmark of the Obama administration.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, the forthcoming gasoline rule was a hotly contested political target. Republicans criticized it as an example of what they called the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach.
But since the presidential election, some Republicans have said they welcome the rule. Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a conservative Republican, said that because of mountain weather patterns, tailpipe smog is often trapped around Salt Lake City, giving his state many days with “gunky air that rivals L.A.”
Mr. Herbert said the new rule would help clean up his state’s air. “We’ve got to find a way to eliminate that with cleaner fuels and cleaner autos,” he said in an interview. “Dirty air is not a partisan issue. The fact that we have technology that’s available — cleaner burning fuels, cleaner burning autos — we ought to embrace that.”
Photo
Experts from the Environmental Protection Agency have linked the sulfur found in gasoline to smog and respiratory disease.CreditMichael Stravato for The New York TimesContinue reading the main storyHow to get fit in a few minutes a week
The new rule will have a significant impact on the health of low-income Americans who live near major highways, said Dr. Al Rizzo, a pulmonologist at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Del., and a former chairman of the American Lung Association’s board of directors. “The population that lives close to highways, that has the greatest exposure to these pollutants, air quality makes a big difference for them,” Dr. Rizzo said.
But oil refiners say that the new rule will hurt their industry.
Charles T. Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which lobbies for the oil refining industry, said that the rule comes on top of a series of other burdensome regulations. A decade ago, American gasoline contained 300 parts per million of sulfur, but earlier rules required refiners to cut the sulfur content by 90 percent, down to the current 30 parts per million.
Mr. Drevna said it was easier to comply with the earlier regulations because removing the first 90 percent of sulfur molecules from gasoline can be done without difficulty. Wringing the last 10 percent of those molecules is harder.
“They’re tough little buggers that don’t want to come out,” Mr. Drevna said. “It’s like getting the last little bit of red wine stain out of a white blouse.”
Asked about the E.P.A.’s estimate that the rule would raise prices at the pump by less than a penny a gallon, Mr. Drevna laughed out loud. “I don’t know what model E.P.A. uses,” he said. “The math doesn’t add up.” His industry’s estimate that the rule could raise gasoline prices by up to 9 cents a gallon comes from a study by the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil companies.
Not all industries oppose the regulation. Although the auto industry estimates that the rule will cost automakers about $15 billion over 10 years, Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, whose members include General Motors, Ford and Toyota, said her group had worked closely with the Obama administration to develop the regulation, and does not oppose it.
That is in part, she said, because complying with the new clean-gasoline regulation will help automakers more easily meet another set of Obama administration regulations, tightening vehicle fuel economy standards.
“We understand that this is the trend, to get cars cleaner and cleaner,” Ms. Bergquist said. “Our engineers are prepared to work for it.”
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(2) care.com
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Blogging
(3)
Renting Judges for Secret Rulings
New York Times - 2 days ago
NEW HAVEN — SHOULD wealthy litigants be able to rent state judges and courthouses to decide cases in private and keep the results secret?
The answer should be an easy no, but if the judges of Delaware’s Chancery Court persuade the United States Supreme Court to take their case and reverse lower federal court rulings outlawing that practice, corporations will, in Delaware, be able to do just that.
The state has long been a magnet for corporate litigation because of its welcoming tax structures and the court’s business expertise. Yet the State Legislature became concerned that Delaware was losing its “pre-eminence” in corporate litigation to a growing market in private dispute resolution.
To compete, Delaware passed a law in 2009 offering new privileges to well-heeled businesses. If litigants had at least $1 million at stake and were willing to pay $12,000 in filing fees and $6,000 a day thereafter, they could use Delaware’s chancery judges and courtrooms for what was called an “arbitration” that produced enforceable legal judgments.
Instead of open proceedings, filings would not be docketed, the courtroom would be closed to the public and the outcome would be secret. The Delaware Supreme Court could review judgments, but that court has not indicated whether appeals would also be confidential.
A group called the Coalition for Open Government, including news and civic organizations, objected that Delaware’s legislation was unconstitutional. In 2012, a federal judge agreed that the law violated the public’s right of access to civil proceedings under the First Amendment. A divided appellate court concurred. Delaware judges are now asking the Supreme Court to reinstate Delaware’s system.
Proponents argue that keeping sensitive business information secret and avoiding uncomfortable publicity is what makes arbitration attractive. To defend their rent-a-court system’s “conciliatory atmosphere,” conducive to “business relations,” Delaware’s chancery judges invoked the history of privacy in arbitration. This translates into giving control to litigants to make their own rules, use state judges and prevent the public from knowing anything.
Can judges in courts preside over trial-like proceedings in private? Many state constitutions (including Delaware’s) insist that all “courts shall be open.” The United States Constitution does not have those words, but the Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to a “speedy and public trial,” and civil and criminal litigants have rights to jury trials. Those provisions — with First Amendment rights to petition for redress and free speech, due process and English open court traditions — have produced a body of law mandating openness. Before a proceeding can be closed, judges need to make a record of what exceptional circumstances, such as trade secrets or national security, justify secrecy.
What are the stakes? As the philosopher Jeremy Bentham explained centuries ago, when presiding at trial, judges were “on trial.” Publicity (“the very soul of justice”) takes control away from both judges and disputants and shifts power, to the great “tribunal of public opinion.”
Only in the second half of the 20th century did courthouse doors really welcome all persons, regardless of race, gender and ethnicity. Congress, creating new rights for consumers and employees, supported access by funding legal services. Class actions enabled pursuit of claims. Information poured out, as technologies let people read briefs online, watch proceedings streamed live, and download data on courts’ budgets. Courts demonstrate how to have civilized debates about deeply contested views of what law is or ought to be.
In contrast, the public face of private dispute resolution depends on what providers decide to put on it. Information may dribble out, through corporate disclosure statements, academic studies, state mandates for disclosures (such as insurance payments for malpractice) and anecdotes.
Clearly, such an idea, that such an idea is presented seriously, is clear evidence of how far have some in our courts strayed from the idea...
Justice Holmes 2 days agoFar too much of the law in this country is being kept a secret. Gag orders, secret arbitration, legislation whiten by lobbyists and rush...
Delaware’s program points to a broader problem: the growing privatization of judging and the closing of access to courts. The Supreme Court has accelerated this trend through its expansive interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925, intended to ensure that if parties’ contracts include private arbitration, federal courts would enforce them.
In a series of recent decisions, the court stretched that law to apply to consumers and employees, with no bargaining power over terms. For example, purchasers of cellphones and prospective employees are frequently required to sign “contracts” replacing court access with procedures companies choose. These are take-it-or-leave-it deals. If you want a cellphone or a job, you have to agree to private dispute resolution.
Because of this one-sidedness, many state courts refused to enforce boilerplate waivers of access when claimants argued that companies violated consumer protection or anti-discrimination laws. Those courts reasoned that the arbitration clauses were profoundly unfair (“unconscionable” is the term). Yet the Supreme Court has repeatedly relied on that 1925 law to pre-empt state law and enforce such “contracts.” The Delaware judges are invoking those precedents to legitimate in-court secrecy.
The Delaware legislation is a dramatic example of rich litigants using their resources to close court systems that taxpayers support and constitutions require. But the problem goes beyond Delaware. To honor constitutional commitments that “all courts shall be open,” the court should refuse the Delaware judges’ request, and Congress should restore rights to public courts for consumer and employment disputes.
Judith Resnik, a professor of law at Yale, is the co-author of “Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms.”
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Blogging
(4)
Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes
New York Times - 17 hours ago
Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes ... based on genetic testing of 150,000 people has found a rare mutation that... A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page ... More on nytimes.com.
Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes
A new study based on genetic testing of 150,000 people has found a rare mutation that protects even fat people from getting Type 2 diabetes. The effect is so pronounced — the mutation reduces risk by two-thirds — that it provides a promising new target for developing a drug to mimic the mutation’s effect.
The mutation destroys a gene used by pancreas cells where insulin is made. Those with the mutation seem to make slightly more insulin and have slightly lower blood glucose levels for their entire lives.
Already Pfizer, which helped finance the study, and Amgen, which owns a company whose data played a key role in the research, are starting programs aimed at developing drugs that act like the mutation, the companies said.
But Timothy Rolph, a Pfizer vice president, cautioned it can take 10 to 20 years to get a drug to market after discovering something new about human genetics and disease.
The study, published Sunday in Nature Genetics, involved a mutation so rare that finding it was only recently possible, with vast data from large numbers of people, researchers said.
“The study is a tour de force, and the authors are the top people in the field,” said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the center for human nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.
This is the first time in diabetes research that a mutation that destroys a gene has proved beneficial, noted Louis Philipson, director of the Kovler Diabetes Center at the University of Chicago. For drug development, he said, “that is very powerful.”
For scientists, the result was a surprise because the same mutation that protects people from diabetes, by destroying one copy of the gene, known as ZnT8, has the opposite effect in some strains of mice. Destroying that gene actually causes diabetes in the animals.
The work began four years ago when a group of geneticists from academic institutions and Pfizer decided to search for gene mutations that protect against diabetes. Usually researchers look for mutations that increase — rather than decrease — the risk of diseases, with the aim of determining who gets a disease, and why.
The group started with populations in Finland and Sweden, where 28,000 people had been studied for years. The data included their ages, weights and diseases, including diabetes.
They compared people at either end of the spectrum of diabetes risk. One group of 352 people had Type 2 diabetes even though their risk seemed low. Their average age was about 50, they were lean and they did not smoke. The other group of 406 people was just the opposite. Their average age was about 80, and, Dr. Rolph said, “they had all the bad habits — they were overweight, they drank, they smoked.” And yet these people did not have diabetes.
Two of the fat older people who were free of diabetes turned out to have a mutation that destroyed one copy of the ZnT8 gene. It was intriguing, but hard to know if the association was meaningful with only two people.
So the researchers expanded their work, studying the genes of 18,000 people in Sweden, fat and thin, old and young, with diabetes and without. They found another 31 people who seemed protected from diabetes and had mutations that destroyed the ZnT8 gene.
Then Dr. David Altshuler, deputy director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. and the study’s lead author, met with Dr. Kari Stefanson, chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a company with data on genes and diseases for the entire population of Iceland. The American drug company, Amgen, bought deCODE and its valuable genetic database.
Dr. Stefanson searched deCODE’s database and quickly found 39 people out of 5,440 who had a mutation that destroyed the gene and who did not have diabetes. In contrast, just nine out of 3,727 diabetes patients had the mutation.
“It took us five minutes,” Dr. Stefanson said. “It was a lovely little afternoon in our conference room.”
At that point, Dr. Altshuler said, the group wrote a paper and submitted it to a medical journal. It was rejected, he said, after one of the reviewers said it must be wrong because it contradicted what was known from studies with mice.
The group went back for more data. They mapped the genes of 13,000 more people and once again found mutations destroying the same gene and associated with a markedly reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.
This time their paper was accepted for publication by Nature Genetics, Dr. Altshuler said.
Now the researchers are asking whether the mutation has any bad health effects.
So far, Dr. Stefanson said, none has been found. With his data he has established that people with the mutation are no more likely to get 750 diseases he searched for.
Source: Nature Genetics
Click:
Nature Geneticswww.nature.com/ng/
Nature Genetics publishes the very highest quality research in genetics. It encompasses genetic and functional genomic studies on human traits and on other ...
A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes.
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THE OUTLOOK
North Carolina Is a Case Study in Jobless-Benefits Cut
State's Experiment Provides Some Answers to a Prickly Policy Question
Six years after the country plunged into recession, politicians and economic-policy makers face a prickly question: What happens when the government ends long-term unemployment benefits meant to help the jobless through the downturn and its aftermath?
One state, North Carolina, is running an experiment that offers some real-life answers.
Long-term unemployment benefits ended in North Carolina in July, six months before the federal government ended $25 billion in long-term jobless benefits for all the other states at the start of the new year.
The Tar Heel State's unemployment rate since then has plunged, as people who were receiving benefits scrambled to find jobs or stopped looking for work. Employers report a flood of applicants.
But the experience in North Carolina has exposed two persistent problems dogging the workforce: many experienced workers are settling for lower-skill jobs, and a lack of skills is blocking many other workers from settling into an abundance of openings.
Washington Wire
Many of the long-term unemployed have taken jobs for which they appear to be overqualified, based on experience or education, and some are piecing together multiple part-time jobs to fill the benefits gap.
At the same time, some employers say they face challenges finding the right people to fill openings.
The shifts in North Carolina have been dramatic since lawmakers in the state changed the law early last year to trim benefits by more than 30% and to include more work requirements.
That move disqualified North Carolina from extended federal unemployment benefits, which ended in July.
The jobless rate plummeted from 9.5% at the start of 2013 to 6.9% at the end, as 110,930 people left the labor force and overall employment rose by 13,414, according to data compiled by South by North Strategies Ltd., an economic- and social-policy research firm in Chapel Hill.
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican, said there was great uncertainty over what would unfold when benefits in his state were curtailed. But his administration, he said in an interview, kept hearing from employers "saying people weren't taking jobs that were available."
"We made the decision, 'let's try something different, because whatever has been tried for the last three years wasn't working,' " Mr. McCrory said.
At Charlotte Works, a public-private partnership that tries to align job training with skills needed by local employers, Steve Partridge has seen the job scramble up close.
"Some people have jumped into employment, but they are clearly underemployed," said Mr. Partridge, the group's president. "You've got someone who has an associate's or bachelor's degree, and they are working at a retail store to make ends meet."
Eddrena Morris, 51 years old, was laid off from her marketing job in 2012 and lost her long-term unemployment benefits in July. She has some college credits and is working to get a degree in graphic design but said she took temporary work at conventions to earn some income.
She has applied for between 75 and 100 jobs in the past year, including one stocking shelves at a Wal-Mart store, she said, adding, "I didn't even get called."
Several employers, though, point to a misalignment between jobs and the necessary skills in a state that has struggled for decades to rebuild its labor force after heavy job losses in manufacturing, tobacco and textiles.
Kip Blakely, vice president of industry and government relations at Timco Aviation Services in Greensboro, said his airline-maintenance company is trying to fill roughly 75 jobs in the state, though the jobs almost always require extensive certification.
"It's not real practical when someone is unemployed, out of work and underemployed" to tell them to spend two years getting certification from a local community college, Mr. Blakely said.
At the same time, competition for lower-skill jobs has been intense.
David Burleson, superintendent of the school district in Avery County, in the western part of the state, said dozens of people recently applied for a single job that paid between $20,000 and $22,000 annually, a trend he says has intensified in the past six months.
"When we post a clerical position, especially those positions that have limited skills, we just are flooded," Mr. Burleson said. "We have tried to figure out ways to reduce the number of eligible people by including some skill tests, because interviewing that many people really drains your staff."
The skills gap is something that Democrats and Republicans are weighing as they try to continue to address the elevated unemployment rate across the nation.
Mr. McCrory said it was going to be a particular focus in North Carolina, and the White House is reviewing all federal job-training programs to see if there is a better way to avoid duplication and more closely align training with job demand.
How closely—and quickly—the politics align with economics could determine whether policy can be effective in tackling long-term unemployment.
WSJ
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click: Antibiotic Overuse WSJ article March 5, 2014
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News for WSJ article Soaring prices test wealthiest will
The Wire
- Soaring Luxury-Goods Prices Test Wealthy's Will to Pay
Wall Street Journal - 1 day ago
The luxury-goods business has been relying on sharp priceincreases to drive sales. But there are signs that even the very richare nearing ...
News for WSJ article low-cost loans entice students ...
- Student Loans Entice Borrowers More for Cash Than a Degree
Wall Street Journal - 23 hours ago
Some Americans are lining up for federal student aid, not for education that boosts their job prospects but for the chance to take out low-cost ...
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Blogging
(1)
EPA Set to Reveal Tough New Sulfur Emissions Rule
New York Times - 18 hours ago
Steam streamed from refineries last week in Texas City, Tex. New Environmental Protection Agency rules would strip out sulfurfrom gasoline ...
Fully handled for blogging with all necessary links - only to revive with colors & variable fonts
Placed on Technology tab
__________________________________________________
E.P.A. Set to Reveal Tough New Sulfur Emissions Rule
WASHINGTON. D.C. — February 2014
There is no other regulatory strategy that is
as important
from a health standpoint, in the foreseeable future
(1) The new rule will have a significant impact on the health of low-income Americans who live near major highways.
(2) The cleaner-burning gasoline will yield between $6.7 billion and $19 billion annually in economic benefits by saving lives and preventing missed work and school days due to illness.
(3) The agency estimates that, annually, the new rule will prevent between 770 and 2,000 premature deaths; 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 19,000 asthma attacks, 30,000 cases of symptoms of respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.4 million lost school and work days.
To see the history of News about Environmental Protection Agency, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times click: History of Environmental Protection Agency -
EPA plans to unveil a major new regulation on Monday March 3/2013 that forces oil refiners to strip out sulfur,
a smog-forming pollutant linked to respiratory disease, from American gasoline blends, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.
Click: US Environmental Protection Agencywww.epa.gov/
Proposed Safety Measures to Protect Farm Workers. Improvements to training regarding the safe usage of pesticides, how to prevent and treat pesticide ...Careers - Contact EPA - Laws & Regulations - Regulatory Information By Topic
When burned in gasoline, sulfur blocks pollution-control equipment in vehicle engines, which increases tailpipe emissions linked to lung disease, asthma*-1), emphysema*-2), chronic bronchitis*-3), aggravated heart disease*-4) and premature births*-5) and deaths. Proponents of the rule say it will be President Obama’s most significant public health achievement in his second term, but opponents, chiefly oil refiners, say it is unnecessarily costly and an unfair burden on them.
asthma*-1) Click: What Is Asthma? - NHLBI, NIH
emphysema*-2) click: Emphysema: MedlinePlus
chronic bronchitis*-3) click: Chronic Bronchitis: MedlinePlus
aggravated heart disease*-4) click: What causes heart failure?
premature births*-5) click: Premature Birth - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The E.P.A. estimates that the new rule will drastically reduce soot and smog in the United States, and thus rates of diseases associated with those pollutants, while slightly raising the price of both gasoline and cars. The rule will require oil refiners to install expensive new equipment to clean sulfur out of gasoline and force automakers to install new, cleaner-burning engine technology.
E.P.A. officials estimate that the new regulation will raise the cost of gasoline by about two-thirds of one cent per gallon and add about $75 to the sticker price of cars. But oil refiners say that it will cost their industry $10 billion and raise gasoline costs by up to 9 cents per gallon.
The E.P.A.’s studies conclude that by 2030, the cleaner-burning gasoline will yield between $6.7 billion and $19 billion annually in economic benefits by saving lives and preventing missed work and school days due to illness. The agency estimates that, annually, the new rule will prevent between 770 and 2,000 premature deaths; 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 19,000 asthma attacks, 30,000 cases of symptoms of respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.4 million lost school and work days.
“There is no other regulatory strategy that is as important from a health standpoint, in the foreseeable future,” said S. William Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies.
click: NACAAwww.4cleanair.org/ The National Association of Clean Air Agencies (formerly STAPPA and ALAPCO) welcomes you to this web site. Explore this web site to locate state and local air ...
Until now, the sulfur content standards in American gasoline lagged far behind those used in the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The new rule will close that pollution gap by cutting American gasoline sulfur content by more than 60 percent, from 30 parts per million of sulfur down to 10 parts per million, starting in 2017.
The cleaner gasoline standard has been Click: years in the making. Mr. Obama asked the E.P.A. to create the rule in a 2010 presidential memorandum, and public health and environmental advocates lobbied the agency vigorously to complete it. It is the most recent in a cascade of aggressive air pollution regulations that have emerged as a hallmark of the Obama administration.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, the forthcoming gasoline rule was a hotly contested political target. Republicans criticized it as an example of what they called the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach.
But since the presidential election, some Republicans have said they welcome the rule. Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a conservative Republican, said that because of mountain weather patterns, tailpipe smog is often trapped around Salt Lake City, giving his state many days with “gunky air that rivals L.A.”
click: Salt Lake City www.ci.slc.ut.us/ At Salt Lake City Government, we're committed to making digital access to information, City services and your elected officials as easy and efficient as possible
Mr. Herbert said the new rule would help clean up his state’s air. “We’ve got to find a way to eliminate that with cleaner fuels and cleaner autos,” he said in an interview. “Dirty air is not a partisan issue. The fact that we have technology that’s available — cleaner burning fuels, cleaner burning autos — we ought to embrace that.”
The new rule will have a significant impact on the health of low-income Americans who live near major highways, said Dr. Al Rizzo, a pulmonologist at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Del.
click: Albert A. Rizzo, MD, FACP, FACCP - Christiana Care Health System
and a former chairman of the American Lung Association’s board of directors.
click: American Lung Association: Homepagewww.lung.org/American Lung Association Learn how to improve your lung health. Make efforts towards clean air and smokefree living. Find facts about lung diseases, such as lung cancer, COPD, ...
“The population that lives close to highways, that has the greatest exposure to these pollutants, air quality makes a big difference for them,” Dr. Rizzo said. click: President Charles T. Drevna - AFPMBut oil refiners say that the new rule will hurt their industry. Charles T. Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers
click: AFPM | American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturerswww.afpm.org/, which lobbies for the oil refining industry, said that the rule comes on top of a series of other burdensome regulations. A decade ago, American gasoline contained 300 parts per million of sulfur, but earlier rules required refiners to cut the sulfur content by 90 percent, down to the current 30 parts per million.
Mr. Drevna said it was easier to comply with the earlier regulations because removing the first 90 percent of sulfur molecules from gasoline can be done without difficulty. Wringing the last 10 percent of those molecules is harder.
“They’re tough little buggers that don’t want to come out,” Mr. Drevna said. “It’s like getting the last little bit of red wine stain out of a white blouse.”
Asked about the E.P.A.’s estimate that the rule would raise prices at the pump by less than a penny a gallon, Mr. Drevna laughed out loud. “I don’t know what model E.P.A. uses,” he said. “The math doesn’t add up.” His industry’s estimate that the rule could raise gasoline prices by up to 9 cents a gallon comes from a study by the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil companies.
Not all industries oppose the regulation. Although the auto industry estimates that the rule will cost automakers about $15 billion over 10 years, Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, whose members include General Motors, Ford and Toyota, said her group had worked closely with the Obama administration to develop the regulation, and does not oppose it.
click: Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers: Homewww.autoalliance.org. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is an association of 12 of the largest car manufacturers, and is the leading advocacy group for the auto industry.
That is in part, she said, because complying with the new clean-gasoline regulation will help automakers more easily meet another set of Obama administration regulations, tightening vehicle fuel economy standards.
“We understand that this is the trend, to get cars cleaner and cleaner,” Ms. Bergquist said. “Our engineers are prepared to work for it.”
Source: (1) EPA , (2) NYT, (3) STAF, Inc.
________________________________
Same text as above as original without any added links or details
E.P.A. Set to Reveal Tough New Sulfur Emissions Rule
WASHINGTON — The Environmental Protection Agency plans to unveil a major new regulation on Monday that forces oil refiners to strip out sulfur, a smog-forming pollutant linked to respiratory disease, from American gasoline blends, according to people familiar with the agency’s plans.
When burned in gasoline, sulfur blocks pollution-control equipment in vehicle engines, which increases tailpipe emissions linked to lung disease, asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis, aggravated heart disease and premature births and deaths. Proponents of the rule say it will be President Obama’s most significant public health achievement in his second term, but opponents, chiefly oil refiners, say it is unnecessarily costly and an unfair burden on them.
The E.P.A. estimates that the new rule will drastically reduce soot and smog in the United States, and thus rates of diseases associated with those pollutants, while slightly raising the price of both gasoline and cars. The rule will require oil refiners to install expensive new equipment to clean sulfur out of gasoline and force automakers to install new, cleaner-burning engine technology.
E.P.A. officials estimate that the new regulation will raise the cost of gasoline by about two-thirds of one cent per gallon and add about $75 to the sticker price of cars. But oil refiners say that it will cost their industry $10 billion and raise gasoline costs by up to 9 cents per gallon.
The E.P.A.’s studies conclude that by 2030, the cleaner-burning gasoline will yield between $6.7 billion and $19 billion annually in economic benefits by saving lives and preventing missed work and school days due to illness. The agency estimates that, annually, the new rule will prevent between 770 and 2,000 premature deaths; 2,200 hospital admissions and asthma-related emergency room visits; 19,000 asthma attacks, 30,000 cases of symptoms of respiratory symptoms in children, and 1.4 million lost school and work days.
“There is no other regulatory strategy that is as important from a health standpoint, in the foreseeable future,” said S. William Becker, director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. Until now, the sulfur content standards in American gasoline lagged far behind those used in the European Union, Japan and South Korea. The new rule will close that pollution gap by cutting American gasoline sulfur content by more than 60 percent, from 30 parts per million of sulfur down to 10 parts per million, starting in 2017.
The cleaner gasoline standard has been years in the making. Mr. Obama asked the E.P.A. to create the rule in a 2010 presidential memorandum, and public health and environmental advocates lobbied the agency vigorously to complete it. It is the most recent in a cascade of aggressive air pollution regulations that have emerged as a hallmark of the Obama administration.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, the forthcoming gasoline rule was a hotly contested political target. Republicans criticized it as an example of what they called the Obama administration’s regulatory overreach.
But since the presidential election, some Republicans have said they welcome the rule. Gov. Gary R. Herbert of Utah, a conservative Republican, said that because of mountain weather patterns, tailpipe smog is often trapped around Salt Lake City, giving his state many days with “gunky air that rivals L.A.”
Mr. Herbert said the new rule would help clean up his state’s air. “We’ve got to find a way to eliminate that with cleaner fuels and cleaner autos,” he said in an interview. “Dirty air is not a partisan issue. The fact that we have technology that’s available — cleaner burning fuels, cleaner burning autos — we ought to embrace that.”
Photo
Experts from the Environmental Protection Agency have linked the sulfur found in gasoline to smog and respiratory disease.CreditMichael Stravato for The New York TimesContinue reading the main storyHow to get fit in a few minutes a week
The new rule will have a significant impact on the health of low-income Americans who live near major highways, said Dr. Al Rizzo, a pulmonologist at Christiana Care Health System in Newark, Del., and a former chairman of the American Lung Association’s board of directors. “The population that lives close to highways, that has the greatest exposure to these pollutants, air quality makes a big difference for them,” Dr. Rizzo said.
But oil refiners say that the new rule will hurt their industry.
Charles T. Drevna, president of the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which lobbies for the oil refining industry, said that the rule comes on top of a series of other burdensome regulations. A decade ago, American gasoline contained 300 parts per million of sulfur, but earlier rules required refiners to cut the sulfur content by 90 percent, down to the current 30 parts per million.
Mr. Drevna said it was easier to comply with the earlier regulations because removing the first 90 percent of sulfur molecules from gasoline can be done without difficulty. Wringing the last 10 percent of those molecules is harder.
“They’re tough little buggers that don’t want to come out,” Mr. Drevna said. “It’s like getting the last little bit of red wine stain out of a white blouse.”
Asked about the E.P.A.’s estimate that the rule would raise prices at the pump by less than a penny a gallon, Mr. Drevna laughed out loud. “I don’t know what model E.P.A. uses,” he said. “The math doesn’t add up.” His industry’s estimate that the rule could raise gasoline prices by up to 9 cents a gallon comes from a study by the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil companies.
Not all industries oppose the regulation. Although the auto industry estimates that the rule will cost automakers about $15 billion over 10 years, Gloria Bergquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, whose members include General Motors, Ford and Toyota, said her group had worked closely with the Obama administration to develop the regulation, and does not oppose it.
That is in part, she said, because complying with the new clean-gasoline regulation will help automakers more easily meet another set of Obama administration regulations, tightening vehicle fuel economy standards.
“We understand that this is the trend, to get cars cleaner and cleaner,” Ms. Bergquist said. “Our engineers are prepared to work for it.”
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(2) care.com
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Blogging
(3)
Renting Judges for Secret Rulings
New York Times - 2 days ago
NEW HAVEN — SHOULD wealthy litigants be able to rent state judges and courthouses to decide cases in private and keep the results secret?
The answer should be an easy no, but if the judges of Delaware’s Chancery Court persuade the United States Supreme Court to take their case and reverse lower federal court rulings outlawing that practice, corporations will, in Delaware, be able to do just that.
The state has long been a magnet for corporate litigation because of its welcoming tax structures and the court’s business expertise. Yet the State Legislature became concerned that Delaware was losing its “pre-eminence” in corporate litigation to a growing market in private dispute resolution.
To compete, Delaware passed a law in 2009 offering new privileges to well-heeled businesses. If litigants had at least $1 million at stake and were willing to pay $12,000 in filing fees and $6,000 a day thereafter, they could use Delaware’s chancery judges and courtrooms for what was called an “arbitration” that produced enforceable legal judgments.
Instead of open proceedings, filings would not be docketed, the courtroom would be closed to the public and the outcome would be secret. The Delaware Supreme Court could review judgments, but that court has not indicated whether appeals would also be confidential.
A group called the Coalition for Open Government, including news and civic organizations, objected that Delaware’s legislation was unconstitutional. In 2012, a federal judge agreed that the law violated the public’s right of access to civil proceedings under the First Amendment. A divided appellate court concurred. Delaware judges are now asking the Supreme Court to reinstate Delaware’s system.
Proponents argue that keeping sensitive business information secret and avoiding uncomfortable publicity is what makes arbitration attractive. To defend their rent-a-court system’s “conciliatory atmosphere,” conducive to “business relations,” Delaware’s chancery judges invoked the history of privacy in arbitration. This translates into giving control to litigants to make their own rules, use state judges and prevent the public from knowing anything.
Can judges in courts preside over trial-like proceedings in private? Many state constitutions (including Delaware’s) insist that all “courts shall be open.” The United States Constitution does not have those words, but the Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants the right to a “speedy and public trial,” and civil and criminal litigants have rights to jury trials. Those provisions — with First Amendment rights to petition for redress and free speech, due process and English open court traditions — have produced a body of law mandating openness. Before a proceeding can be closed, judges need to make a record of what exceptional circumstances, such as trade secrets or national security, justify secrecy.
What are the stakes? As the philosopher Jeremy Bentham explained centuries ago, when presiding at trial, judges were “on trial.” Publicity (“the very soul of justice”) takes control away from both judges and disputants and shifts power, to the great “tribunal of public opinion.”
Only in the second half of the 20th century did courthouse doors really welcome all persons, regardless of race, gender and ethnicity. Congress, creating new rights for consumers and employees, supported access by funding legal services. Class actions enabled pursuit of claims. Information poured out, as technologies let people read briefs online, watch proceedings streamed live, and download data on courts’ budgets. Courts demonstrate how to have civilized debates about deeply contested views of what law is or ought to be.
In contrast, the public face of private dispute resolution depends on what providers decide to put on it. Information may dribble out, through corporate disclosure statements, academic studies, state mandates for disclosures (such as insurance payments for malpractice) and anecdotes.
Clearly, such an idea, that such an idea is presented seriously, is clear evidence of how far have some in our courts strayed from the idea...
Justice Holmes 2 days agoFar too much of the law in this country is being kept a secret. Gag orders, secret arbitration, legislation whiten by lobbyists and rush...
Delaware’s program points to a broader problem: the growing privatization of judging and the closing of access to courts. The Supreme Court has accelerated this trend through its expansive interpretation of the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925, intended to ensure that if parties’ contracts include private arbitration, federal courts would enforce them.
In a series of recent decisions, the court stretched that law to apply to consumers and employees, with no bargaining power over terms. For example, purchasers of cellphones and prospective employees are frequently required to sign “contracts” replacing court access with procedures companies choose. These are take-it-or-leave-it deals. If you want a cellphone or a job, you have to agree to private dispute resolution.
Because of this one-sidedness, many state courts refused to enforce boilerplate waivers of access when claimants argued that companies violated consumer protection or anti-discrimination laws. Those courts reasoned that the arbitration clauses were profoundly unfair (“unconscionable” is the term). Yet the Supreme Court has repeatedly relied on that 1925 law to pre-empt state law and enforce such “contracts.” The Delaware judges are invoking those precedents to legitimate in-court secrecy.
The Delaware legislation is a dramatic example of rich litigants using their resources to close court systems that taxpayers support and constitutions require. But the problem goes beyond Delaware. To honor constitutional commitments that “all courts shall be open,” the court should refuse the Delaware judges’ request, and Congress should restore rights to public courts for consumer and employment disputes.
Judith Resnik, a professor of law at Yale, is the co-author of “Representing Justice: Invention, Controversy, and Rights in City-States and Democratic Courtrooms.”
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Blogging
(4)
Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes
New York Times - 17 hours ago
Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes ... based on genetic testing of 150,000 people has found a rare mutation that... A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page ... More on nytimes.com.
Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes
A new study based on genetic testing of 150,000 people has found a rare mutation that protects even fat people from getting Type 2 diabetes. The effect is so pronounced — the mutation reduces risk by two-thirds — that it provides a promising new target for developing a drug to mimic the mutation’s effect.
The mutation destroys a gene used by pancreas cells where insulin is made. Those with the mutation seem to make slightly more insulin and have slightly lower blood glucose levels for their entire lives.
Already Pfizer, which helped finance the study, and Amgen, which owns a company whose data played a key role in the research, are starting programs aimed at developing drugs that act like the mutation, the companies said.
But Timothy Rolph, a Pfizer vice president, cautioned it can take 10 to 20 years to get a drug to market after discovering something new about human genetics and disease.
The study, published Sunday in Nature Genetics, involved a mutation so rare that finding it was only recently possible, with vast data from large numbers of people, researchers said.
“The study is a tour de force, and the authors are the top people in the field,” said Dr. Samuel Klein, director of the center for human nutrition at Washington University School of Medicine, who was not involved in the study.
This is the first time in diabetes research that a mutation that destroys a gene has proved beneficial, noted Louis Philipson, director of the Kovler Diabetes Center at the University of Chicago. For drug development, he said, “that is very powerful.”
For scientists, the result was a surprise because the same mutation that protects people from diabetes, by destroying one copy of the gene, known as ZnT8, has the opposite effect in some strains of mice. Destroying that gene actually causes diabetes in the animals.
The work began four years ago when a group of geneticists from academic institutions and Pfizer decided to search for gene mutations that protect against diabetes. Usually researchers look for mutations that increase — rather than decrease — the risk of diseases, with the aim of determining who gets a disease, and why.
The group started with populations in Finland and Sweden, where 28,000 people had been studied for years. The data included their ages, weights and diseases, including diabetes.
They compared people at either end of the spectrum of diabetes risk. One group of 352 people had Type 2 diabetes even though their risk seemed low. Their average age was about 50, they were lean and they did not smoke. The other group of 406 people was just the opposite. Their average age was about 80, and, Dr. Rolph said, “they had all the bad habits — they were overweight, they drank, they smoked.” And yet these people did not have diabetes.
Two of the fat older people who were free of diabetes turned out to have a mutation that destroyed one copy of the ZnT8 gene. It was intriguing, but hard to know if the association was meaningful with only two people.
So the researchers expanded their work, studying the genes of 18,000 people in Sweden, fat and thin, old and young, with diabetes and without. They found another 31 people who seemed protected from diabetes and had mutations that destroyed the ZnT8 gene.
Then Dr. David Altshuler, deputy director of the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T. and the study’s lead author, met with Dr. Kari Stefanson, chief executive of deCODE Genetics, a company with data on genes and diseases for the entire population of Iceland. The American drug company, Amgen, bought deCODE and its valuable genetic database.
Dr. Stefanson searched deCODE’s database and quickly found 39 people out of 5,440 who had a mutation that destroyed the gene and who did not have diabetes. In contrast, just nine out of 3,727 diabetes patients had the mutation.
“It took us five minutes,” Dr. Stefanson said. “It was a lovely little afternoon in our conference room.”
At that point, Dr. Altshuler said, the group wrote a paper and submitted it to a medical journal. It was rejected, he said, after one of the reviewers said it must be wrong because it contradicted what was known from studies with mice.
The group went back for more data. They mapped the genes of 13,000 more people and once again found mutations destroying the same gene and associated with a markedly reduced risk of Type 2 diabetes.
This time their paper was accepted for publication by Nature Genetics, Dr. Altshuler said.
Now the researchers are asking whether the mutation has any bad health effects.
So far, Dr. Stefanson said, none has been found. With his data he has established that people with the mutation are no more likely to get 750 diseases he searched for.
Source: Nature Genetics
Click:
Nature Geneticswww.nature.com/ng/
Nature Genetics publishes the very highest quality research in genetics. It encompasses genetic and functional genomic studies on human traits and on other ...
A version of this article appears in print on March 3, 2014, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Rare Mutation Kills Off Gene Responsible for Diabetes.
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Article A
(Article B next belove)
Fathers’ Sons and Brothers’ Keepers
Love and Affection
Percentage of American fathers who hugged or showed physical affection to their children under age 13 every day in the past month:
(1) White, non-Hispanic: 76 (2) Hispanic: 73 (3) Black-non-Hispanic: 56
Percentage of American fathers who, every day in the past month, told their children that they love them:
(1) White, non-Hispanic: 65 (2) Hispanic: 45 (3) Black-non-Hispanic: 56
Frederick Douglass once noted,
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” *)
*) = Of course we could add "broken women"
Frederick Douglass was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing. Wikipedia
The statement is simple, profound and as true as truth can be. And yet we as a society and as individual families neglect the building, facilitate the breaking and balk at the cost and commitment of the repair.
On Thursday, President Obama took a step toward righting that wrong in regard to young men of color by announcing the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, a partnership between the public and private sectors aimed at bettering outcomes for some of the nation’s most at-risk young men.
It is a necessary and noble ambition to begin to draw resources together in a common effort to find best practices for addressing stubborn issues, and to better fund and expand those efforts.
This will not be easy. The issues facing many of these men are so complicated and layered with pain that they are incredibly daunting. There is a deficit of hope and a surplus of hurdles — familial, cultural, behavioral and structural.
But we must start somewhere. As the old saying goes, “The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”
Programs like this usually focus on the easier part of the problem, the personal, rather than the harder part, the structural.
Youth Guidance, whose Becoming a Man group the president highlighted during his announcement, says that through its program, “Participants learn about and practice impulse control, emotional self-regulation, reading social cues and interpreting intentions of others, raising aspirations for the future and developing a sense of personal responsibility and integrity.”
These are important character traits, to be sure, but it’s hard not to think that ideally they would be transferred from parents — particularly fathers — to sons.
That’s why I was encouraged that the president spent quite a bit of time discussing the role of fathers in boys’ lives.
He said of his father: “I didn’t have a dad in the house. And I was angry about it, even though I didn’t necessarily realize it at the time.”
In a previous column, I wrote this of my own father: “I was forced to experience him as a distant form in a heavy fog, forced to nurse a longing that he was neither equipped nor inclined to satisfy.”
When there is an empty space where a father should be, sorrow often grows. The void creates in a child an injury that the child is often unable to articulate or even recognize. And what children miss at home, they will often seek in the street, to ill effect.
Many boys with that empty space lash out and act up, trying to be seen, searching, as people do, for love and affirmation, wanting desperately to be validated. And too many of us, in turn, see them as menaces rather than as boys struggling — often without sufficient instruction and against a tide of systemic inequity — to simply become men. In such a warped world, basic survival can become a metric of success.
As the president put it, “nothing keeps a young man out of trouble like a father who takes an active role in his son’s life.”
But sometimes fathers don’t even know how to be the best fathers. Sometimes they simply engage in an intergenerational transference of pain and need. It’s sometimes hard to give what you yourself have not received.
For instance, according to Child Trends, black fathers are substantially less likely than white or Hispanic fathers to hug their children or show them physical affection, or to tell them that they love them.
I don’t scold these fathers; I weep for them and with them. I understand, on a most personal level, that conditioning. Sometimes men don’t see that masculinity is as much about tenderness as about toughness. Sometimes they don’t know how to manage emotions. Sometimes the world has so beaten them and so hardened them that expressing any vulnerability feels like providing an opening for an enemy.
But I also know that being an engaged father can be a reparative therapy — healing your hurt as you protect your progeny. Our children provide a reservoir of the deepest, truest love in a harsh and unforgiving world. They are our respite from the battlefield.
We, as a society, must change our perspective when considering these boys and men, and more fully engage our empathy. That is both a personal and a structural change.
We can and must break these cycles of pain, building better boys and repairing broken men.
Fathers' Sons and Brothers' Keepers - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../blow-fathers-sons-and-...The New York Times
Frederick Douglass once noted, “It is easier to build strongchildren than to repair broken men.” The statement is simple, profound and as true ...
(Article B next below)
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Obama Starts Initiative for Young Black Men, Noting His Own Experience
Article B
(Article A next above)
WASHINGTON — President Obama spoke in unusually personal terms at the White House on Thursday about how he got high as a teenager and was at times indifferent to school as he deplored what he called America’s numbness to the plight of young black men.
Drawing on the power of his own racial identity in a way he seldom does as president, Mr. Obama sought to connect his personal narrative about growing up without a father to that of a generation of black youth in the United States who he said faced higher odds of failure than their peers.
“I didn’t have a dad in the house,” Mr. Obama said as he announced a $200 million, five-year initiative, My Brother’s Keeper, to help black youth. “And I was angry about it, even though I didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. I made bad choices. I got high without always thinking about the harm that it could do. I didn’t always take school as seriously as I should have. I made excuses. Sometimes I sold myself short.”
Mr. Obama said the idea for My Brother’s Keeper occurred to him in the aftermath of the killing of Trayvon Martin, the Florida teenager whose death two years ago sparked a roiling national debate about race and class. He called the challenge of ensuring success for young men of color a “moral issue for our country” as he ticked off the statistics: black boys who are more likely to be suspended from school, less likely to be able to read, and almost certain to encounter the criminal justice system as either a perpetrator or a victim.
“We just assume this is an inevitable part of American life, instead of the outrage that it is,” Mr. Obama told an audience of business leaders, politicians, philanthropists, young black men from a Chicago support program, and Mr. Martin’s parents. “It’s like a cultural backdrop for us in movies, in television. We just assume, of course it’s going to be like that.”
“These statistics should break our hearts,” he added. “And they should compel us to act.”
Mr. Obama’s remarks come as the end of his time in office is in sight, with the president mindful of the legacy that his administration will leave behind on race and other civil rights issues like same-sex marriage and immigration. Mr. Obama has embraced the right of gay men and lesbians to marry, and Eric H. Holder Jr., his attorney general, has aggressively sought to ensure that all eligible Americans have access to the ballot box.
Although Mr. Obama nods on occasion to his history-making status as the nation’s first black president, he has sought to avoid being defined entirely by his race. He most often emphasizes that he is the leader of all Americans. But in recent years, the president has spoken more about the black experience in the United States — most strikingly after the death of Mr. Martin, when Mr. Obama said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
On Thursday, the president combined his personal remarks on race with a broader call to focus on “the larger agenda”: economic insecurity and stalled mobility for Americans of any color.
“The plain fact is there are some Americans who, in the aggregate, are consistently doing worse in our society,” Mr. Obama said, “groups that have had the odds stacked against them in unique ways that require unique solutions, groups who’ve seen fewer opportunities that have spanned generations.”
The president also called for action from business leaders, members of religious groups, actors, athletes and anyone who can intervene in the lives of black men before they veer off course. He said a White House task force would examine ways the federal government can help, too.
“It doesn’t take that much, but it takes more than we are doing now,” Mr. Obama said. “We will beat the odds. We need to give every child — no matter what they look like, no matter where they live — the ability to meet their full potential.”
He also challenged black men to do better themselves, and said they must not make excuses for their failures or blame society for the poor decisions they have already made.
“You will have to reject the cynicism that says the circumstances of your birth or society’s lingering injustices necessarily define you and your future,” Mr. Obama said.
“It will take courage, but you will have to tune out the naysayers who say if the deck is stacked against you, you might as well just give up or settle into the stereotype.”
“Nothing will be given to you,” he said.
Thursday’s announcement is unlikely to satisfy Mr. Obama’s most vocal critics in the black population, who have accused him of forgetting his roots.
Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of African and African-American studies at Duke, said the president’s initiative did not focus enough on the more systemic forms of racism in America.
“These young men weren’t killed because of structural situations that didn’t give them opportunities,” Mr. Neal said.
“It’s other kinds of racism and violence that those boys were dealing with. The initiative is not addressing those things.”
The initiative is the latest example of Mr. Obama’s efforts to bypass Congress, which has stymied him on many of the economic policies he considers central to the lives of blacks.
In a show of support, leaders from more than a dozen nonprofit foundations and executives from some of the nation’s largest companies joined the president, along with Magic Johnson, the retired basketball superstar, and Gen. Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state.
White House officials said the foundations had pledged to spend at least $200 million over the next five years in a search for solutions to the problems black men face with early-childhood development, school readiness, educational opportunity, discipline, parenting and the criminal justice system.
“This is not a one-year proposition,” Mr. Obama said. “It’s not a two-year proposition. It’s going to take time. We’re dealing with complicated issues that run deep in our history, run deep in our society and are entrenched in our minds.”
Gail C. Christopher, vice president for program strategy for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, which has committed $750,000 to My Brother’s Keeper, said the initial money would be used for hiring staff, consultants and firms “to get something established that has legs.”
But more money will be needed for the initiative to have an impact, Ms. Christopher said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s a drop in the ocean of money that will be needed to transform the opportunity structures in our society,” she said.
Mr. Obama acknowledged the limits of an approach that relies little on the government. But he offered hope in the power of his office to bring together people as diverse as the Rev. Al Sharpton, the television host and civil rights campaigner, and Bill O’Reilly, the conservative host on Fox News and best-selling novelist. Both attended the event at the White House.
“If I can persuade, you know, Sharpton and O’Reilly to be in the same meeting,” the president said, “then it means that there are people of good faith who want to get some stuff done.”
Obama Starts Initiative for Young Black Men, Noting His Own ...
www.nytimes.com/.../obama-will-announce-i...The New York Times
by Michael Shear - in 1,147 Google+ circles
President Obama's My Brother's Keeper effort is aimed at finding... Search NYTimes.com ... to connect his personal narrative about growing up without a father to that of ... Mr. Martin, when Mr. Obama said, “If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. ... A version of this article appears in print on February 28, 2014, ...
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Same as with us humans:
Feeding Cats Smaller, More Frequent Meals
Might Make Them Friskier
frisky = lively, bubbly, perky, active, energetic
Changing dietary patterns to increase activity could help curb feline obesity,
researchers say
New on the MedlinePlus click: Pet Health
Feeding obese cats more frequent, smaller meals throughout the day could increase their level of physical activity and help them lose weight, new research suggests.
Offering meals with water added to the food also spurred adult cats to become more active, scientists found in their study of 10 lean, neutered cats.
"I think veterinarians will be interested in this information because it gives them evidence to be able to recommend something to pet owners that could help with feline obesity and diabetes," study leader Kelly Swanson, an animal sciences researcher at the University of Illinois, said in a school news release.
"When cats are allowed to feed [freely], it's difficult to prevent obesity," Swanson said. "It is important to identify the right diet. Many owners are accustomed to dumping a pile of food out for multiple cats, just once per day."
Swanson said cat owners must play an active role in helping their pets maintain a healthy weight.
"It all comes down to energy in and energy out," he said. "It's very simple on paper, but it's not that easy in real life, especially in a household where there is more than one pet. That can be difficult, but I think these two strategies are very practical ideas that people can use."
In conducting the study, which was published in the February 2014 issue of the Journal of Animal Science
click: Journal of Animal Science
click: American Society of Animal Sciencehttps://www.asas.org/, the researchers measured cats' level of physical activity between meals with special monitors on their collars.
In one experiment, the cats were placed in one of four rooms. They were fed meals of dry kibble either four times each day, two times daily or once a day, or were given meals at random. All the cats received the same total amount of food each day, but those that ate more frequently ate smaller amounts at each meal.
In another experiment, the cats were split up into two rooms, where they were fed twice a day. The amount of food the cats ate was the same, but water was added to one group's food an hour before feeding.
To closely monitor their diet, the researchers placed cats in individual cages during mealtime. During meals, the cats had little human contact.
The researchers assessed the cats' activity two hours before they ate. In the first part of the experiment, cats were more active before mealtime, particularly those who were fed four times per day and those fed a random number of meals each day.
"If they know they are going to get fed, that's when they are really active, if they can anticipate it," Swanson said.
Cats were even more physically active when they ate food with added water, the researchers found. The biggest spike in activity occurred after the cats ate. Although it is unclear why the cats had this surge in activity after eating, the researchers suggested use of the litter box could have played a role.
Most owners make the mistake of overfeeding their cats, the researchers said.
"Because most pet foods are so digestible and nutrient dense, owners see that small bowl of food and think there's no way they can survive on that -- but they can," Swanson said. "It is tricky because labels on pet food provide ranges for how much should be fed. If you're feeding a cat, that food is supplied to thousands of cats with different metabolism. Some are spayed or neutered, and ages are different."
One way owners can help their cats lose weight is to add water to their dry food to give them a greater sense of fullness. Another option is to alternate between wet and dry meals.
Although many pet owners are not able to be home to feed their cats up to four times a day, even just going from one to two meals a day can help cats become more active and lose extra pounds, the researchers said.
"With cats, one of the tricky things is that few people can walk their cats," Swanson said. "We haven't done studies looking at what happens if you are just in the room with the cat more often and how active you can encourage your cat to be by playing with it. There could be other strategies. From a diet perspective, this is something that is relatively simple."
SOURCE: University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, news release, Feb. 10, 2014
click: College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences ...aces.illinois.edu/
The University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) is a world-class educational and research institution
click: Recent Health News
Pets can add fun, companionship and a feeling of safety to your life
Before getting a pet, think carefully about which animal is best for your family. What is each family member looking for in a pet? Who will take care of it? Does anyone have pet allergies? What type of animal suits your lifestyle and budget?
Once you own a pet, keep it healthy. Know the signs of medical problems. Take your pet to the veterinarian if you notice:
- Loss of appetite
- Drinking a lot of water
- Gaining or losing a lot of weight quickly
- Strange behavior
- Being sluggish and tired
- Trouble getting up or down
- Strange lumps ________________________________________________________________________________
FOR BLOGGING
The ABCs of Investors' DNA
Is your investing style bred in the bone?
DNA – Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the
development and functioning of all known living organisms and many viruses.
click: Wikipedia
Some people become value investors. Some might be born that way.
Consider Benjamin Graham click: Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor and the author of "Security Analysis" click: Security Analysis and "The Intelligent Investor" click: The Intelligent Investor:
Graham's widowed mother was a small-time speculator; she was wiped out during the Panic of 1907
click: Panic of 1907 , when he was 13 years old.
The Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis click: Knickerbocker
– was a United States financial crisis that took place when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. click: Wikipedia
Graham never forgot the "humiliating" moment in his childhood when his mother sent him to cash a check and the bank teller asked the manager if Mrs. Graham was "good for five dollars."
Graham grew up to favor companies so universally despised by investors that the stocks were, as he liked to say, "worth more dead than alive." He resoundingly beat the market over his multidecade investing career.
Or take the late Sir John Templeton click: John Templeton, who grew up the son of a country lawyer in Winchester, Tenn. Templeton's father also was a speculator, trading cotton futures. He arrived home one day and told his young sons, "Boys, we've lost it all; we're ruined." Templeton worked odd jobs to scrounge his way through college and graduate school.
In 1939, at age 27, Templeton told his broker to buy him $100 worth of every listed U.S. stock trading for $1 a share or less; he quadrupled his money in four years.
"People are always asking me where the [investing] outlook is good, but that's the wrong question," Templeton once said. "The right question is: Where is the outlook most miserable?"
Their experiences might have shaped Graham and Templeton to favor cheap "value" stocks over fast-moving "growth" stocks. But that preference might also have been encoded in their genes.
In a speech at Babson College in 2010, the renowned value investor Seth Klarman remarked that research on fruit flies showed that most of them will swarm toward a light—but that a small minority appear to be genetically programmed to stay away from it.
Mr. Klarman, president of the Boston-based Baupost Group, which manages $26 billion in hedge-fund assets, jokingly called these flies "tiny contrarians," the insect equivalents of "deep value investors."
He went on to speculate that most people might possess "a dominant gene" for chasing hot performance and overhyped assets, while only a minority have "the recessive value gene" that confers a patient preference for whatever is battered and unpopular.
Mr. Klarman told me this past week that he still holds the same view.
click: A new study finds that many investors may in fact have a genetic predisposition to hunt for bargains in the stock market—although the environment you grew up in also powerfully shapes the kind of investor you become.
In the study, three economists— Henrik Cronqvist and Frank Yu of China Europe International Business School in Shanghai and Stephan Siegel of the University of Washington—examined the genetic makeup and investment portfolios of 35,000 twins in Sweden.
click: Value versus Growth Investing: Why Do Different Investors Have
Identical twins share 100% of their DNA, while fraternal twins share about the same amount as brothers and sisters.
The researchers compared the similarity of the portfolios held by identical twins and by fraternal twins. That enabled the economists to estimate the extent to which the same combinations of genes were associated with similar portfolios.
The analysis shows that the average stock held by these investors traded at a price/earnings ratio of 23 times. Only a 10th of the investors—call them "deep-value hunters"—held stocks with an average P/E of 11.6 or lower.
One quarter of all the investors—hard-core growth seekers—held stocks trading at an average of 28.6 times earnings or higher.
The study's findings are relatively precise because its sample of investors is large and because Swedish tax law required complete disclosure of individual investors' holdings until recently.
According to the study, up to 24% of the differences in the degree to which investors favor value or growth stocks can be explained by click: variations in their genetic code.
It appears that favoring cheap value stocks or fast-moving growth stocks isn't just a preference; "it is at least partly an innate tendency," says Prof. Siegel.
Environmental influences also help explain the "tilt" toward value or growth investing, the researchers found. For example, if the economy was in a severe recession when an investor was between the ages of 18 and 25, or the investor's parents were relatively poor, he is more likely to prefer investing in cheap stocks.
Genoeconomists, who study such stuff, haven't yet identified the specific variations that might work as "value genes."
click: Genoeconomics: Is Our Financial Future In Our Chromosomes?www.science20.com.
But the new findings suggest that you should ask financial advisers and investment managers: What adversity have you had to overcome in your life? And what does being poor mean to you?
After all, a financial adviser or investment manager who has never overcome a serious obstacle might not have what it takes to hold on to cheap stocks when they get a lot cheaper in a hurry. A value investor who can't withstand pain isn't a value investor at all.
click: Value versus Growth Investing: Why Do Different Investors Have ...papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id...Social Science Research...
by H Cronqvist - 2013 - Related articles
Nov 7, 2013 - Value versus Growth Investing: Why Do Different Investors Have Different Styles? ... explain an investor's style, i.e., the value versus growthorientation of ... Cronqvist, Henrik and Siegel, Stephan and Yu, Frank, Value versus ...
The ABCs of Investors' DNA
Is your investing style bred in the bone?
DNA – Deoxyribonucleic acid is a molecule that encodes the genetic instructions used in the
development and functioning of all known living organisms and many viruses.
click: Wikipedia
Some people become value investors. Some might be born that way.
Consider Benjamin Graham click: Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's mentor and the author of "Security Analysis" click: Security Analysis and "The Intelligent Investor" click: The Intelligent Investor:
Graham's widowed mother was a small-time speculator; she was wiped out during the Panic of 1907
click: Panic of 1907 , when he was 13 years old.
The Panic of 1907 – also known as the 1907 Bankers' Panic or Knickerbocker Crisis click: Knickerbocker
– was a United States financial crisis that took place when the New York Stock Exchange fell almost 50% from its peak the previous year. click: Wikipedia
Graham never forgot the "humiliating" moment in his childhood when his mother sent him to cash a check and the bank teller asked the manager if Mrs. Graham was "good for five dollars."
Graham grew up to favor companies so universally despised by investors that the stocks were, as he liked to say, "worth more dead than alive." He resoundingly beat the market over his multidecade investing career.
Or take the late Sir John Templeton click: John Templeton, who grew up the son of a country lawyer in Winchester, Tenn. Templeton's father also was a speculator, trading cotton futures. He arrived home one day and told his young sons, "Boys, we've lost it all; we're ruined." Templeton worked odd jobs to scrounge his way through college and graduate school.
In 1939, at age 27, Templeton told his broker to buy him $100 worth of every listed U.S. stock trading for $1 a share or less; he quadrupled his money in four years.
"People are always asking me where the [investing] outlook is good, but that's the wrong question," Templeton once said. "The right question is: Where is the outlook most miserable?"
Their experiences might have shaped Graham and Templeton to favor cheap "value" stocks over fast-moving "growth" stocks. But that preference might also have been encoded in their genes.
In a speech at Babson College in 2010, the renowned value investor Seth Klarman remarked that research on fruit flies showed that most of them will swarm toward a light—but that a small minority appear to be genetically programmed to stay away from it.
Mr. Klarman, president of the Boston-based Baupost Group, which manages $26 billion in hedge-fund assets, jokingly called these flies "tiny contrarians," the insect equivalents of "deep value investors."
He went on to speculate that most people might possess "a dominant gene" for chasing hot performance and overhyped assets, while only a minority have "the recessive value gene" that confers a patient preference for whatever is battered and unpopular.
Mr. Klarman told me this past week that he still holds the same view.
click: A new study finds that many investors may in fact have a genetic predisposition to hunt for bargains in the stock market—although the environment you grew up in also powerfully shapes the kind of investor you become.
In the study, three economists— Henrik Cronqvist and Frank Yu of China Europe International Business School in Shanghai and Stephan Siegel of the University of Washington—examined the genetic makeup and investment portfolios of 35,000 twins in Sweden.
click: Value versus Growth Investing: Why Do Different Investors Have
Identical twins share 100% of their DNA, while fraternal twins share about the same amount as brothers and sisters.
The researchers compared the similarity of the portfolios held by identical twins and by fraternal twins. That enabled the economists to estimate the extent to which the same combinations of genes were associated with similar portfolios.
The analysis shows that the average stock held by these investors traded at a price/earnings ratio of 23 times. Only a 10th of the investors—call them "deep-value hunters"—held stocks with an average P/E of 11.6 or lower.
One quarter of all the investors—hard-core growth seekers—held stocks trading at an average of 28.6 times earnings or higher.
The study's findings are relatively precise because its sample of investors is large and because Swedish tax law required complete disclosure of individual investors' holdings until recently.
According to the study, up to 24% of the differences in the degree to which investors favor value or growth stocks can be explained by click: variations in their genetic code.
It appears that favoring cheap value stocks or fast-moving growth stocks isn't just a preference; "it is at least partly an innate tendency," says Prof. Siegel.
Environmental influences also help explain the "tilt" toward value or growth investing, the researchers found. For example, if the economy was in a severe recession when an investor was between the ages of 18 and 25, or the investor's parents were relatively poor, he is more likely to prefer investing in cheap stocks.
Genoeconomists, who study such stuff, haven't yet identified the specific variations that might work as "value genes."
click: Genoeconomics: Is Our Financial Future In Our Chromosomes?www.science20.com.
But the new findings suggest that you should ask financial advisers and investment managers: What adversity have you had to overcome in your life? And what does being poor mean to you?
After all, a financial adviser or investment manager who has never overcome a serious obstacle might not have what it takes to hold on to cheap stocks when they get a lot cheaper in a hurry. A value investor who can't withstand pain isn't a value investor at all.
click: Value versus Growth Investing: Why Do Different Investors Have ...papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id...Social Science Research...
by H Cronqvist - 2013 - Related articles
Nov 7, 2013 - Value versus Growth Investing: Why Do Different Investors Have Different Styles? ... explain an investor's style, i.e., the value versus growthorientation of ... Cronqvist, Henrik and Siegel, Stephan and Yu, Frank, Value versus ...
- ______________________________________________________________
FOR BLOGGING
Is Real Estate Still a Good Buy?
Buying a home is no longer a no-brainer, whether you are buying as an investment or to live in it.Buying a home is no longer a no-brainer, whether you are buying as an investment or to live in it.
That is the message to draw from current measures of value in many metropolitan markets.
The fundamentals have changed from six months ago, when some economists and analysts said that low prices and low mortgage rates made it a great time to buy a home in most of the U.S.
The latest thinking is a reflection of how far and how fast home values have climbed. In the year ended in November, home prices rose 14%, as measured by the most-recent S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index.
Some markets, such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco, saw prices rise by more than 20%.
In general, "you can't buy now and expect a big gain," says Morris Davis, an associate professor in the real-estate department at the University of Wisconsin's business school in Madison. "There's more risk than there was."
One widely tracked measure of housing costs is the average national home price divided by the average rent. That ratio stood at 14 in the third quarter, according to Moody's Analytics, using the most recent data. That is above the average ratio of 12 between 1989 and 2003, which is considered a "normal," preboom home market.
Another measure of value—national prices divided by income—was 1.8 in the third quarter, compared with an average of 1.9 from 1989 to 2003.
Some major cities are looking even more out of whack. San Francisco has a price/rent ratio of 32, compared with its average of 28 between 1989 and 2003, according to Moody's. New York's Nassau County price/rent ratio is 19, compared with its 14 average, and Austin, Texas, has a ratio of 24, compared with an average of 16.
Price/income ratios for those markets didn't look more promising. San Francisco had a ratio of 4.8, 19% above its preboom average. The metro area that includes Nassau County had a ratio of 1.9, 8.4% above its average, and Austin had a ratio of 2.2, 27% above its average.
"Price growth has been very strong, but it's unsustainably strong," says Moody's senior director Celia Chen.
Other metro areas—such as Chicago, Cleveland and Memphis—look relatively cheap, or at least not overpriced, based on both price/rent and price/income ratios.
If you are considering buying a home, there are a couple of easy steps you can take to ensure you aren't overpaying.
No matter how expensive your overall town looks, keep in mind that all real estate is local, says Edward Pinto, co-director of the International Center on Housing Risk at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Mr. Pinto recommends checking the estimated rent of a potential home purchase using the "Rent Zestimate" feature on the website Zillow.com. As a gut check, you can look up actual rental asking prices in the same neighborhood to see how close the estimate comes.
Divide the annual rent by the home price to see how much of a "yield" you would get if you had to rent the home in a pinch. For example, a home with an asking price of $500,000 and an estimated monthly rent of $3,000—or $36,000 annually—would have a yield of 7.2%, before homeownership costs such as maintenance and taxes.
A yield of 8% or more means that buying is a relative bargain, Mr. Pinto says. A number below 5% should make a buyer wary, and something in between 5% and 8% should be safe for a buyer who plans to stay in the same home for at least five years, he says.
The good news is that 30-year fixed-mortgage rates still are low at about 4.5%, close to where they were six months ago.
Given weakness in the economy, there is an equal chance that rates will rise or fall in the next year, making it unnecessary to rush to buy just to capture a low rate, Mr. Pinto says.
If a homeowner does buy, he should expect to about break even if he sells five years down the road, says Wisconsin's Mr. Davis, factoring in selling costs such as real-estate agent commissions.
"You can't buy now and expect a capital gain in the short term," he says. "That's over."
Write to Joe Light at [email protected]
Search Results
Is Real Estate Still a Good Buy?
Buying a home is no longer a no-brainer, whether you are buying as an investment or to live in it.Buying a home is no longer a no-brainer, whether you are buying as an investment or to live in it.
That is the message to draw from current measures of value in many metropolitan markets.
The fundamentals have changed from six months ago, when some economists and analysts said that low prices and low mortgage rates made it a great time to buy a home in most of the U.S.
The latest thinking is a reflection of how far and how fast home values have climbed. In the year ended in November, home prices rose 14%, as measured by the most-recent S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite index.
Some markets, such as Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco, saw prices rise by more than 20%.
In general, "you can't buy now and expect a big gain," says Morris Davis, an associate professor in the real-estate department at the University of Wisconsin's business school in Madison. "There's more risk than there was."
One widely tracked measure of housing costs is the average national home price divided by the average rent. That ratio stood at 14 in the third quarter, according to Moody's Analytics, using the most recent data. That is above the average ratio of 12 between 1989 and 2003, which is considered a "normal," preboom home market.
Another measure of value—national prices divided by income—was 1.8 in the third quarter, compared with an average of 1.9 from 1989 to 2003.
Some major cities are looking even more out of whack. San Francisco has a price/rent ratio of 32, compared with its average of 28 between 1989 and 2003, according to Moody's. New York's Nassau County price/rent ratio is 19, compared with its 14 average, and Austin, Texas, has a ratio of 24, compared with an average of 16.
Price/income ratios for those markets didn't look more promising. San Francisco had a ratio of 4.8, 19% above its preboom average. The metro area that includes Nassau County had a ratio of 1.9, 8.4% above its average, and Austin had a ratio of 2.2, 27% above its average.
"Price growth has been very strong, but it's unsustainably strong," says Moody's senior director Celia Chen.
Other metro areas—such as Chicago, Cleveland and Memphis—look relatively cheap, or at least not overpriced, based on both price/rent and price/income ratios.
If you are considering buying a home, there are a couple of easy steps you can take to ensure you aren't overpaying.
No matter how expensive your overall town looks, keep in mind that all real estate is local, says Edward Pinto, co-director of the International Center on Housing Risk at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.
Mr. Pinto recommends checking the estimated rent of a potential home purchase using the "Rent Zestimate" feature on the website Zillow.com. As a gut check, you can look up actual rental asking prices in the same neighborhood to see how close the estimate comes.
Divide the annual rent by the home price to see how much of a "yield" you would get if you had to rent the home in a pinch. For example, a home with an asking price of $500,000 and an estimated monthly rent of $3,000—or $36,000 annually—would have a yield of 7.2%, before homeownership costs such as maintenance and taxes.
A yield of 8% or more means that buying is a relative bargain, Mr. Pinto says. A number below 5% should make a buyer wary, and something in between 5% and 8% should be safe for a buyer who plans to stay in the same home for at least five years, he says.
The good news is that 30-year fixed-mortgage rates still are low at about 4.5%, close to where they were six months ago.
Given weakness in the economy, there is an equal chance that rates will rise or fall in the next year, making it unnecessary to rush to buy just to capture a low rate, Mr. Pinto says.
If a homeowner does buy, he should expect to about break even if he sells five years down the road, says Wisconsin's Mr. Davis, factoring in selling costs such as real-estate agent commissions.
"You can't buy now and expect a capital gain in the short term," he says. "That's over."
Write to Joe Light at [email protected]
Search Results
- News for Are Homes Still a good Buy - WSJ
- Is Real Estate Still a Good Buy?
Wall Street Journal - by Joe Light - 2 days ago
Buying a home is no longer a no-brainer, whether you are buying as an investment or to live in it.
- Is Real Estate Still a Good Buy?
Blogging + STAF+ Radio/TV
Article links
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News for WSJ To Halt a Family risk of cancer
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Now Packed With Drama: Cans of Tuna Fish - WSJ.com
online.wsj.com/.../SB200014240527023...
The Wall Street Journal Tue 2/18/14
by James R. Hagerty
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News for NYT caring for the caregivers
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News for NYT Ear wax Smell influenced by ethnics
Article links
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News for WSJ To Halt a Family risk of cancer
- Family With a Risk of Cancer Tries to Change Its Destiny
Wall Street Journal - Tue 2/18/14
Katie Dowdy of Castle Pines, Colo., with daughters, Reagan, left, and Mackenzie. She had her embryos tested to try to reduce risk of passing ...
=============================================================================
Now Packed With Drama: Cans of Tuna Fish - WSJ.com
online.wsj.com/.../SB200014240527023...
The Wall Street Journal Tue 2/18/14
by James R. Hagerty
=============================================================================
News for NYT caring for the caregivers
- Caring for the Alzheimer's Caregiver
New York Times (blog) - 1 day ago Tue 2/18/14
Watching over loved ones with dementia frequently presents new challenges, and a new book focuses on caregivers and the stressful ...
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News for NYT Ear wax Smell influenced by ethnics
- 2/18/14
- Earwax's Smell Influenced by Ethnicity
New York Times - by Douglas Quenqua - 1 day ago
The smell of a person's earwax depends partly on his ethnic origin, a new study reports, suggesting that the substance could be an overlooked ...Earwax’s Smell Influenced by EthnicityThe smell of a person’s earwax depends partly on his ethnic origin, a new study reports, suggesting that the substance could be an overlooked source of personal information.The earwax of Caucasian men contains more volatile organic compounds than that of East Asian men, researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia found. Twelve such compounds are common to both groups, they said, but 11 of those are more plentiful in Caucasians.
Monell researchers have previously found that underarm odor contains clues to a person’s age, health and sex. They suspected that earwax might contain similar markers, since a 2006 study found that a gene related to underarm odor, which also varies by ethnicity, helps determine a person’s type of earwax. (East Asians are more likely to have dry earwax, for example.)
"We’re at the beginning of exploring a new and interesting biofluid secretion that has not been looked at in this manner before," said George Preti, an organic chemist at Monell and the senior author of the new study, which was published in The Journal of Chromatography B.
Because of the fatty nature of earwax, or cerumen, Dr. Preti says it is a probable repository for odorants produced by diseases and the environment, and hence a potentially valuable diagnostic tool. A 2013 study showed that a whale’s earwax contains evidence of the animal’s exposure to pollutants and stress hormones, and earwax odor in humans is a known indicator of branched-chain ketoaciduria, also known as maple syrup urine disease. - Maple syrup urine disease (MSUD) is a metabolism disorder passed down through families in which the body cannot break down certain parts of proteins. Urine in persons with this condition can smell like maple syrup.
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention
National Library of Medicine
- Earwax's Smell Influenced by Ethnicity
- ==============================================
- The Tall and the Small
- Q. Among dogs, small breeds often live longer than larger ones. Is there any evidence that life expectancy for taller humans is also briefer
- SCIENCE The Tall and the Small 2/18/14
. - Among dogs, small breeds often live longer than larger ones. Is there any evidence that life expectancy for taller humans is also briefer?
A. Though there has long been a popular assumption that taller people are healthier and therefore likely to live longer, a large body of evidence from recent studies suggests that the opposite may be true.
“Findings based on millions of deaths suggest that shorter, smaller bodies have lower death rates and fewer diet-related chronic diseases, especially past middle age,” researchers concluded in a 2003 review article in the journal Life Sciences. “Shorter people also appear to have longer average life spans.”
For just one example, a 2012 study of hundreds of military conscripts from a village in Sardinia from 1866 to 1915 found that the shorter recruits tended to live longer, and by the age of 70, their life expectancy was two years greater.
There is no single proven cause-and-effect mechanism, however, and there are also substantial studies finding taller stature to be associated with greater longevity, especially in the distant past, when causes of death were different.
A 2001 study of centuries of skeletal remains in an English churchyard, published in The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that longer bones were associated with greater age at death.
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- News for NYT Just ahead your next office
- Just Ahead, Your Next Office
New York Times - 1 day ago - Tuesday 2/18/14
Chris Hammersley of ClickSafety.com at his desk in Office Nomads, a co-working space in Seattle. Stuart Isett for The New York Times.
- Just Ahead, Your Next Office
- ====================================================
- News for NYT Financial Plans Big campaign on ...
Politico
Tuesday 2/18/14- Financier Plans Big Ad Campaign on Climate Change
New York Times - by Nicholas Confessore - 20 hours ago
Financier Plans Big Ad Campaign on Climate Change ... Jason Henry for The New York Times ... the country's leading liberal donors and environmental philanthropists to his 1,800-acre ranch in Pescadero, Calif. ... He also has helped finance opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, appearing in a series of ...
- Financier Plans Big Ad Campaign on Climate Change
- ================================================================== NYT Tuesday 2/18/14
- Phantom Melodies Yield Real Clues to Brain's Workings
New York Times - by Carl Zimmer - 5 days ago
Studying the brain of a woman who hallucinates piano melodies may help researchers understand how the mind make sense of the world.
Tuesday 2/18/14- Ask Well - Unanswered Question - NYTimes.comwell.blogs.nytimes.com/ask/well/question/13912
- Search NYTimes.com. Clear this text input ... Does chocolate really hurt dogs? Asked by mlmj ... Can Heavier People Really Be Healthier? Shoring Up Those ...
ADD: Cats bite more dangerous than dogs click: Why Cat Bites Are More Dangerous - Search NYTimes.com. Clear this text input ... Does chocolate really hurt dogs? Asked by mlmj ... Can Heavier People Really Be Healthier? Shoring Up Those ...
- FEBRUARY 14, 2014
Ask Well: The Problem With Dogs and Chocolate - Does chocolate really hurt dogs?
It can, depending on their weight and how much they eat, so be vigilant this Valentine’s Day. Stimulants in chocolate can lead to vomiting, diarrhea, agitation and life-threatening elevated heart rates or seizures.
“Dogs have no off button,” said Dr. Tina Wismer, the medical director of the ASPCA click: Animal Poison Control Center - visit this site for further important info for the safety of your pets. “If you or I ate 10 percent of our body weight in chocolate, we’d have the same problems. A 10-pound dog can easily eat a pound of chocolate.”
The darker the chocolate, the more toxic it is. For a 20-pound dog, 9 ounces of milk chocolate can cause seizures, but it takes only 1.5 ounces of baker’s chocolate, she said.
Signs of chocolate poisoning usually appear six to 12 hours after ingestion, according to The Merck Veterinary Manual click: THE MERCK VETERINARY MANUAL
“Seizures due to toxicity don’t stop unless you treat them,” Dr. Wismer said. So head to the emergency clinic or veterinarian if you come home to find your dog vomiting repeatedly and extremely agitated, and certainly if the pet is unconscious and its limbs are shaking. By contrast, dogs who vomit once and fall sleep can be watched at home, she said.
Unlike cats, dogs like sweets. So it’s best to keep chocolate stored away and off countertops, which are no match for a motivated climber.
Carob treats are a safe alternative for dogs who love the flavor of chocolate. Other common foods that pose hazards to dogs are raisins and grapes. Xylitol click: XYLITOL, used to sweeten sugarless gum, is also “a big problem” for a pet, Dr. Wismer said, “It actually drops his blood sugar, and he can have seizures.”- Dog owners should know that xylitol can be toxic to dogs, even when the relatively small amounts from candies are eaten. IIf your dog eats a product that contains xylitol, it is important to take the dog to a veterinarian immediately.
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Study this Itching article - good to kow info ro every person worldwide Click the green title below - News for NYT Itching - More than skin deep
- Itching: More Than Skin-Deep
New York Times - Tuesday 2/18/14 - The experiment was not for the squirmish. Volunteers were made to itch like crazy on one arm, but not allowed to scratch. Then they were
- skirmish =
an episode of irregular or unpremeditated fighting, esp. between small or outlying parts of armies or fleet
- skirmish =
- synonyms:fight, battle, clash, conflict, encounter, engagement, fray, combat
- .
- Wall Street Journal - by Elizabeth Bernstein - Tue 2/4/14
Even happy long-term couples ask, 'How can I seduce my spouse and have sex more often?' ... As a relationship columnist, I hear a lot from male readers whose emails .... Mr. Pettiford began implementing the series' advice right away. ... Her answer, half joking: "That depends on if you treat me right today.
- Itching: More Than Skin-Deep
- Wall Street Journal - Tue 2/4/14
The country has built a child-friendly reputation on its mandates for long parental leave and ... Ellen Jervell for The Wall Street Journal... has bred a nation of ouppfostrade, which loosely translates to "badly raised children.
- Wall Street Journal - Tue 2/4/14
- News for WSJ In Dubai, Fast Food Is Big Draw at the Mall
- In Dubai, Fast Food Is Big Draw at the Mall
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
It is a typical scene at lunchtime in a Dubai mall: The food court is packed with diners spilling onto plastic seats with their burgers, burritos and . - News for WSJ Mall of the emirates
- In Dubai, Fast Food Is Big Draw at the Mall
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
WSJ · WSJ; Facebook; Twitter. MarketWatch · MarketWatch · Barron's ... This particular mall, called Mall of the Emirates, is one of the biggest in Dubai, and is ..
- In Dubai, Fast Food Is Big Draw at the Mall
- It is a typical scene at lunchtime in a Dubai mall: the food court is packed with diners spilling onto plastic seats with their burgers, burritos and buffalo wings.
This particular mall, called Mall of the Emirates, is one of the biggest in Dubai, and is teeming as the city's melting pot of nationalities queue at outlets such as Texas Chicken, Bombay Chowpatty, Fat Burger, and of course, the obligatory McDonald's. MCD +0.60%
The majority of customers in this bustling food court are adults, as children are at school. Many of the diners are unaware how prevalent diabetes is in the country—caused predominantly by unhealthy eating habits and lifestyles that lack exercise.
Mita Ray, a Type 2 diabetic who has lived in Dubai since 1989, blames the worsening diabetes epidemic on the "ostrich syndrome," a term she uses to describe the tendency of residents to put their heads in the sand, refusing to acknowledge the need to change their lifestyles and stave off the onset of disease.
Ms. Ray, 57 years old, is a typical example of a diabetes sufferer in the region. Having moved from her home country of India in 1989, she built a life in the United Arab Emirates and eventually set up her own public-relations and marketing company, enjoying a high quality of living, she says. For many years, she smoked, indulged in "good wine and good party," and although she kept fit in her 30s and 40s, her life hit a slower pace after her 50th birthday.
Two years ago, she began feeling continually drowsy and was repeatedly falling ill. She went for tests that ultimately diagnosed diabetes and now takes an antidiabetic drug called metformin, while watching what she eats. "I'm not going to stop life's pleasures, she says, ordering a light Tom Yum soup for lunch. "But I'm going to monitor it, and do it in moderation."
Ms. Ray doesn't blame her environment for contracting diabetes, but does believe there are idiosyncrasies of the Persian Gulf that make it harder to live a healthy lifestyle.
The first is fast food. There is a culture in the region of spending time in malls, where fast-food restaurants are ubiquitous and cheap. In the U.A.E., for example, a Big Mac burger from McDonald's costs $3.27, compared with $4.56 in the U.S., according to the Economist's global Big Mac index. Yet, the country has a higher per-capita GDP of $64,779, compared with $51,248 in the U.S., according to the International Monetary Fund.
The industry is also growing rapidly. Revenue from fast food in the U.A.E. swelled 15% to 9.7 billion dirhams ($2.64 billion) last year, according to the latest figures from data company Euromonitor. That works out at 1,054 dirhams per person spent each year on fast food in the U.A.E., or putting it another way, each person eats the equivalent of 88 Big Macs each year.
The searing summer heat and the lack of parks and walkways in the Gulf can also be a major inhibitor to exercise, Ms. Ray says. "You go from your house to the lift, from the lift to the car, from the car to the office and you're sitting throughout," adds Ms. Ray.
-________________________________________________________________
- In Dubai, Fast Food Is Big Draw at the Mall
_____________________________
Can Mild Jolts of Electric Current
Make People Better at Math or at Other Topics or Tasks?
Scientists find mild jolts*) to the brain may improve performance
*) jolt = vibration, reverberation, shake
Oxford, England
Dr. Roi Cohen Kadosh, in the experimental psychology department at Oxford University, has pioneered studies on using mild electric current to make adults and children better at math, in other topics or tasks and to treat a range of ailments.
In a lab in Oxford University's experimental psychology department, researcher Roi Cohen Kadosh is testing an intriguing treatment: He is sending low-dose electric current through the brains of adults and children as young as 8 to make them better at math.
A relatively new brain-stimulation technique called transcranial (=across or through the skull) electrical stimulation may help people learn and improve their understanding of math concepts.
The electrodes are placed in a tightly fitted cap and worn around the head. The device, run off a 9-volt battery commonly used in smoke detectors, induces only a gentle current and can be targeted to specific areas of the brain or applied generally. The mild current reduces the risk of side effects, which has opened up possibilities about using it, even in individuals without a disorder, as a general cognitive enhancer. Scientists also are investigating its use to treat mood disorders and other conditions.
Dr. Cohen Kadosh's pioneering work on learning enhancement and brain stimulation is one example of the long journey faced by scientists studying brain-stimulation and cognitive-stimulation techniques. Like other researchers in the community, he has dealt with public concerns about safety and side effects, plus skepticism from other scientists about whether these findings would hold in the wider population.
There are also ethical questions about the technique. If it truly works to enhance cognitive performance, should it be accessible to anyone who can afford to buy the device—which already is available for sale in the U.S.? Should parents be able to perform such stimulation on their kids without monitoring?"It's early days but that hasn't stopped some companies from selling the device and marketing it as a learning tool," Dr. Cohen Kadosh says. "Be very careful."
The idea of using electric current to treat the brain of various diseases has a long and fraught history, perhaps most notably with what was called electroshock therapy, developed in 1938 to treat severe mental illness and often portrayed as a medieval treatment that rendered people zombielike in movies such as "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Electroconvulsive therapy has improved dramatically over the years and is considered appropriate for use against types of major depression that don't respond to other treatments, as well as other related, severe mood states.
A number of new brain-stimulation techniques have been developed, including deep brain stimulation, which acts like a pacemaker for the brain. With DBS, electrodes are implanted into the brain and, though a battery pack in the chest, stimulate neurons continuously. DBS devices have been approved by U.S. regulators to treat tremors in Parkinson's disease and continue to be studied as possible treatments for chronic pain and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Transcranial electrical stimulation, or tES, is one of the newest brain stimulation techniques. Unlike DBS, it is noninvasive.
If the technique continues to show promise, "this type of method may have a chance to be the new drug of the 21st century," says Dr. Cohen Kadosh.
The 37-year-old father of two completed graduate school at Ben-Gurion University in Israel before coming to London to do postdoctoral work with Vincent Walsh at University College London. Now, sitting in a small, tidy office with a model brain on a shelf, the senior research fellow at Oxford speaks with cautious enthusiasm about brain stimulation and its potential to help children with math difficulties.
Up to 6% of the population is estimated to have a math-learning disability called developmental dyscalculia, similar to dyslexia but with numerals instead of letters. Many more people say they find math difficult. People with developmental dyscalculia also may have trouble with daily tasks, such as remembering phone numbers and understanding bills.
Whether transcranial electrical stimulation proves to be a useful cognitive enhancer remains to be seen. Dr. Cohen Kadosh first thought about the possibility as a university student in Israel, where he conducted an experiment using transcranial magnetic stimulation, a tool that employs magnetic coils to induce a more powerful electrical current.
He found that he could temporarily turn off regions of the brain known to be important for cognitive skills. When the parietal lobe of the brain was stimulated using that technique, he found that the basic arithmetic skills of doctoral students who were normally very good with numbers were reduced to a level similar to those with developmental dyscalculia.
That led to his next inquiry: If current could turn off regions of the brain making people temporarily math-challenged, could a different type of stimulation improve math performance? Cognitive training helps to some extent in some individuals with math difficulties. Dr. Cohen Kadosh wondered if such learning could be improved if the brain was stimulated at the same time.
But transcranial magnetic stimulation wasn't the right tool because the current induced was too strong. Dr. Cohen Kadosh puzzled over what type of stimulation would be appropriate until a colleague who had worked with researchers in Germany returned and told him about tES, at the time a new technique. Dr. Cohen Kadosh decided tES was the way to go.
His group has since conducted a series of studies suggesting that tES appears helpful improving learning speed on various math tasks in adults who don't have trouble in math. Now they've found preliminary evidence for those who struggle in math, too.
Participants typically come for 30-minute stimulation-and-training sessions daily for a week. His team is now starting to study children between 8 and 10 who receive twice-weekly training and stimulation for a month. Studies of tES, including the ones conducted by Dr. Cohen Kadosh, tend to have small sample sizes of up to several dozen participants; replication of the findings by other researchers is important.
In a small, toasty room, participants, often Oxford students, sit in front of a computer screen and complete hundreds of trials in which they learn to associate numerical values with abstract, nonnumerical symbols, figuring out which symbols are "greater" than others, in the way that people learn to know that three is greater than two.
When neurons fire, they transfer information, which could facilitate learning. The tES technique appears to work by lowering the threshold neurons need to reach before they fire, studies have shown. In addition, the stimulation appears to cause changes in neurochemicals involved in learning and memory.
However, the results so far in the field appear to differ significantly by individual. Stimulating the wrong brain region or at too high or long a current has been known to show an inhibiting effect on learning. The young and elderly, for instance, respond exactly the opposite way to the same current in the same location, Dr. Cohen Kadosh says.
He and a colleague published a paper in January in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, in which they found that one individual with developmental dyscalculia improved her performance significantly while the other study subject didn't.
What is clear is that anyone trying the treatment would need to train as well as to stimulate the brain. Otherwise "it's like taking steroids but sitting on a couch," says Dr. Cohen Kadosh.
Dr. Cohen Kadosh and Beatrix Krause, a graduate student in the lab, have been examining individual differences in response. Whether a room is dark or well-lighted, if a person smokes and even where women are in their menstrual cycle can affect the brain's response to electrical stimulation, studies have found.
Results from his lab and others have shown that even if stimulation is stopped, those who benefited are going to maintain a higher performance level than those who weren't stimulated, up to a year afterward. If there isn't any follow-up training, everyone's performance declines over time, but the stimulated group still performs better than the non-stimulated group. It remains to be seen whether reintroducing stimulation would then improve learning again, Dr. Cohen Kadosh says.
Electric current has been used in an attempt to treat brain disorders since the 1930s. But the efforts have evolved over time. Here are some examples of current technologies:
Click the green title below to see the pictures + other added info
Electric Boost to the Brain -
Electric current has been used in an attempt to treat brain disorders since the. 1930s. But the efforts have evolved over time. Here are some examples of current technologies: Oxford University research assistant Amar Sarkar ...
Can Mild Jolts of Electric Current
Make People Better at Math or at Other Topics or Tasks?
Scientists find mild jolts*) to the brain may improve performance
*) jolt = vibration, reverberation, shake
Oxford, England
Dr. Roi Cohen Kadosh, in the experimental psychology department at Oxford University, has pioneered studies on using mild electric current to make adults and children better at math, in other topics or tasks and to treat a range of ailments.
In a lab in Oxford University's experimental psychology department, researcher Roi Cohen Kadosh is testing an intriguing treatment: He is sending low-dose electric current through the brains of adults and children as young as 8 to make them better at math.
A relatively new brain-stimulation technique called transcranial (=across or through the skull) electrical stimulation may help people learn and improve their understanding of math concepts.
The electrodes are placed in a tightly fitted cap and worn around the head. The device, run off a 9-volt battery commonly used in smoke detectors, induces only a gentle current and can be targeted to specific areas of the brain or applied generally. The mild current reduces the risk of side effects, which has opened up possibilities about using it, even in individuals without a disorder, as a general cognitive enhancer. Scientists also are investigating its use to treat mood disorders and other conditions.
Dr. Cohen Kadosh's pioneering work on learning enhancement and brain stimulation is one example of the long journey faced by scientists studying brain-stimulation and cognitive-stimulation techniques. Like other researchers in the community, he has dealt with public concerns about safety and side effects, plus skepticism from other scientists about whether these findings would hold in the wider population.
There are also ethical questions about the technique. If it truly works to enhance cognitive performance, should it be accessible to anyone who can afford to buy the device—which already is available for sale in the U.S.? Should parents be able to perform such stimulation on their kids without monitoring?"It's early days but that hasn't stopped some companies from selling the device and marketing it as a learning tool," Dr. Cohen Kadosh says. "Be very careful."
The idea of using electric current to treat the brain of various diseases has a long and fraught history, perhaps most notably with what was called electroshock therapy, developed in 1938 to treat severe mental illness and often portrayed as a medieval treatment that rendered people zombielike in movies such as "One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest."
Electroconvulsive therapy has improved dramatically over the years and is considered appropriate for use against types of major depression that don't respond to other treatments, as well as other related, severe mood states.
A number of new brain-stimulation techniques have been developed, including deep brain stimulation, which acts like a pacemaker for the brain. With DBS, electrodes are implanted into the brain and, though a battery pack in the chest, stimulate neurons continuously. DBS devices have been approved by U.S. regulators to treat tremors in Parkinson's disease and continue to be studied as possible treatments for chronic pain and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Transcranial electrical stimulation, or tES, is one of the newest brain stimulation techniques. Unlike DBS, it is noninvasive.
If the technique continues to show promise, "this type of method may have a chance to be the new drug of the 21st century," says Dr. Cohen Kadosh.
The 37-year-old father of two completed graduate school at Ben-Gurion University in Israel before coming to London to do postdoctoral work with Vincent Walsh at University College London. Now, sitting in a small, tidy office with a model brain on a shelf, the senior research fellow at Oxford speaks with cautious enthusiasm about brain stimulation and its potential to help children with math difficulties.
Up to 6% of the population is estimated to have a math-learning disability called developmental dyscalculia, similar to dyslexia but with numerals instead of letters. Many more people say they find math difficult. People with developmental dyscalculia also may have trouble with daily tasks, such as remembering phone numbers and understanding bills.
Whether transcranial electrical stimulation proves to be a useful cognitive enhancer remains to be seen. Dr. Cohen Kadosh first thought about the possibility as a university student in Israel, where he conducted an experiment using transcranial magnetic stimulation, a tool that employs magnetic coils to induce a more powerful electrical current.
He found that he could temporarily turn off regions of the brain known to be important for cognitive skills. When the parietal lobe of the brain was stimulated using that technique, he found that the basic arithmetic skills of doctoral students who were normally very good with numbers were reduced to a level similar to those with developmental dyscalculia.
That led to his next inquiry: If current could turn off regions of the brain making people temporarily math-challenged, could a different type of stimulation improve math performance? Cognitive training helps to some extent in some individuals with math difficulties. Dr. Cohen Kadosh wondered if such learning could be improved if the brain was stimulated at the same time.
But transcranial magnetic stimulation wasn't the right tool because the current induced was too strong. Dr. Cohen Kadosh puzzled over what type of stimulation would be appropriate until a colleague who had worked with researchers in Germany returned and told him about tES, at the time a new technique. Dr. Cohen Kadosh decided tES was the way to go.
His group has since conducted a series of studies suggesting that tES appears helpful improving learning speed on various math tasks in adults who don't have trouble in math. Now they've found preliminary evidence for those who struggle in math, too.
Participants typically come for 30-minute stimulation-and-training sessions daily for a week. His team is now starting to study children between 8 and 10 who receive twice-weekly training and stimulation for a month. Studies of tES, including the ones conducted by Dr. Cohen Kadosh, tend to have small sample sizes of up to several dozen participants; replication of the findings by other researchers is important.
In a small, toasty room, participants, often Oxford students, sit in front of a computer screen and complete hundreds of trials in which they learn to associate numerical values with abstract, nonnumerical symbols, figuring out which symbols are "greater" than others, in the way that people learn to know that three is greater than two.
When neurons fire, they transfer information, which could facilitate learning. The tES technique appears to work by lowering the threshold neurons need to reach before they fire, studies have shown. In addition, the stimulation appears to cause changes in neurochemicals involved in learning and memory.
However, the results so far in the field appear to differ significantly by individual. Stimulating the wrong brain region or at too high or long a current has been known to show an inhibiting effect on learning. The young and elderly, for instance, respond exactly the opposite way to the same current in the same location, Dr. Cohen Kadosh says.
He and a colleague published a paper in January in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, in which they found that one individual with developmental dyscalculia improved her performance significantly while the other study subject didn't.
What is clear is that anyone trying the treatment would need to train as well as to stimulate the brain. Otherwise "it's like taking steroids but sitting on a couch," says Dr. Cohen Kadosh.
Dr. Cohen Kadosh and Beatrix Krause, a graduate student in the lab, have been examining individual differences in response. Whether a room is dark or well-lighted, if a person smokes and even where women are in their menstrual cycle can affect the brain's response to electrical stimulation, studies have found.
Results from his lab and others have shown that even if stimulation is stopped, those who benefited are going to maintain a higher performance level than those who weren't stimulated, up to a year afterward. If there isn't any follow-up training, everyone's performance declines over time, but the stimulated group still performs better than the non-stimulated group. It remains to be seen whether reintroducing stimulation would then improve learning again, Dr. Cohen Kadosh says.
Electric current has been used in an attempt to treat brain disorders since the 1930s. But the efforts have evolved over time. Here are some examples of current technologies:
Click the green title below to see the pictures + other added info
Electric Boost to the Brain -
Electric current has been used in an attempt to treat brain disorders since the. 1930s. But the efforts have evolved over time. Here are some examples of current technologies: Oxford University research assistant Amar Sarkar ...
Warning: through out this website STAF, Inc. provides links for a service purpose
Any action you possibly take you take at your own risk
STAF, Inc. is not endorsing any connection
________________________
For daily investment opportunity information
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Investment vocabulary
Browse by Letter:
# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
_____________
Investment vocabulary
defined, examples given
InvestorWords.com
([email protected])
This guide defines the most important English words
used in the investment industry
For people with English as their 1st or 2nd language
Click green words inside the texts for further info (do not click the green numbers (1)... on the left, at the beginning of the lines.
(1) This list of investor words is for the people whose English is their 2nd language - however, most individuals with English as their first language will find in this list terms that need refreshing and clear definition when dealing with investments and legal language. Check the meaning for every given word entry to be sure of the correct legal usage.
(2) Click on all colored words & colored areas for further details to be sure for the meaning & usage in investment & legal vocabulary related actions & documents.
What is - define - guide
The government in every country monitors the investment activities (at least is supposed to), so first we place the official definition of the word 'government':
Notice: Throughout this guide, for further information, click green words, sentences or areas (sometimes blue as below in # 1, sometimes red or some other color, but not black) - most of the green title words functions as a link also (not all).
Government
A group that exercises sovereign authority over a nation, state, society or other body of people. Governments are generally responsible for making and enforcing laws, managing currency, and protecting the populace from external threats, and may have other duties or privileges. Governments also typically set tax rates, and may regulate investment practices as well.
Read more: http://www.investorwords.com/16458/government.html#ixzz2ynYB81lJ
Click green for further info (any green connects to added info)
Federal Reserve Bank
The Federal Reserve Bank is responsible for all monetary decisions within the United States.
12 regional banks established to maintain reserves, issue bank notes, and lend money to member banks. The Federal Reserve Banks are also responsible for supervising member banks in their areas, and are involved in the setting of national monetary policy.
______________________
What's the difference between "gross" and "net"?
Learn the difference between gross vs. net when talking about finance, accounting, and payments.
Click: Read more...
_______________________
Let's place first one important element in any business:
Common stock
Securities representing equity ownership in a corporation, providing voting rights, and entitling the holder to a share of the company's success through dividends and/or capital appreciation. In the event of liquidation, common stockholders have rights to a company's assets only after bondholders, other debt holders, and preferred stockholders have been satisfied. Typically, common stockholders receive one vote per share to elect the company's board of directors (although the number of votes is not always directly proportional to the number of shares owned). The board of directors is the group of individuals that represents the owners of the corporation and oversees major decisions for the company. Common shareholders also receive voting rights regarding other company matters such as stock splits and company objectives. In addition to voting rights, common shareholders sometimes enjoy what are called "preemptive rights". Preemptive rights allow common shareholders to maintain their proportional ownership in the company in the event that the company issues another offering of stock. This means that common shareholders with preemptive rights have the right but not the obligation to purchase as many new shares of the stock as it would take to maintain their proportional ownership in the company. Also called junior equity, another name for common stock, called junior because it is subordinate (= lower in rank or position) to preferred stock.
For more information click: Common Stock vs. Preferred Stock, and Stock Classes at InvestorGuide.com.
Usage Example:
In the case of a company's liquidation, holders of common stock have rights to the assets but only after preferred shareholders and bondholders have received their money.
_______________________
(1) Click: Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)? Click: Adjusted Gross Income Click: Today's issue is sponsored by Options Industry Council Click: Learn more about this term
(2) Click: Pattern
(3) Click: ETF - Exchange Traded Fund
Usage Example: Investing in an ETF is a good because it is usually associated with low expenses and flexibility.
(4) Free Options Podcasts, from The Options Industry Council
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(5) Structural unemployment
A type of unemployment that is a direct result of economic changes, but yet at the same time, offers the possibility for new, different jobs opening up in other areas of the economy.
Learn more about this term
Usage Example: Causes of structural unemployment can include change in government policy, economic downturn and increasing technology.
Click: green: Today's issue is sponsored by Charles Schwab Active Trading: Smarter Tools for Smarter Trades. Schwab's flagship trading platform features an intuitive workflow that aligns with the way you think about trading, making advanced trading software tools and charting easy to use. Discover the Schwab Difference.
(6) Financial analyst
An employee of a bank, brokerage, advisor, or mutual fund who studies companies and makes buy and sell recommendations, often specializing in a single sector or industry. Financial analysts use a wide variety of techniques for researching and making recommendations. The reports and recommendations they publish are often used by traders, mutual fund managers, portfolio managers and investors in their decision making processes. also called securities analyst or analyst.
Usage Example: A financial analyst often works for financial institutions, brokerage houses or mutual funds in order to analyze finances and project future growth.
(7) Insurance
A promise of compensation for specific potential future losses in exchange for a periodic payment. Insurance is designed to protect the financial well-being of an individual, company or other entity in the case of unexpected loss. Some forms of insurance are required by law, while others are optional. Agreeing to the terms of an insurance policy creates a contract between the insured and the insurer. In exchange for payments from the insured (called premiums), the insurer agrees to pay the policy holder a sum of money upon the occurrence of a specific event. In most cases, the policy holder pays part of the loss (called the deductible), and the insurer pays the rest. Examples include car insurance, health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, and business insurance.
Usage Example: Those living on a coast often times purchase specific insurance that protects their homes in case of a flood.
Today's issue is sponsored by click: Franklin Templeton - click: Download a brochure to see how emotions affect investing decision
(8) 5 C's of credit
The five key elements a borrower should have to obtain credit: character (integrity), capacity (sufficient cash flow to service the obligation), capital (net worth), collateral (assets to secure the debt), and conditions (of the borrower and the overall economy).
Usage Example: The 5 C's of credit are essential to have before being able to borrow money or acquire credit. Click: Today's issue is sponsored by Schwab Advisor Services - Visit the Economic Discovery Tool now
(9) Entity
A thing that exists it its own right. The law recognizes corporations and people as entities with rights and legal obligations. Rights: A privilege allowing existing shareholders to buy shares of an issue of common stock shortly before it is offered to the public, at a specified and usually discounted price, and usually in proportion to the number of shares already owned - also called subscription right. Obligations: Any debt, written promise, or duty.
Usage Example: In business an entity is recognized as a separate corporation or person for legal reasons, pays their own taxes and can enter contractual agreements. ”
(10) National Debt
The sum of all previously incurred annual federal deficits. Since the deficits are financed by government borrowing, national debt is equal to all government debt outstanding.
(11) Budget
An itemized forecast of an individual's or company's income and expenses expected for some period in the future. With a budget, an individual is able to carefully look at how much money they are taking in during a given period, and figure out the best way to divide it among a variety of categories. When making a personal budget, an individual will typically designate the appropriate amount of money to fixed expenses such as rent, car payments, or utility bills, and then make an educated estimation for how much money they will spend in other categories, such as groceries, clothing, or entertainment. By keeping track of where one's money goes, one may be less likely to overspend, and more likely to meet their financial goals.
Usage Example: Maintaining a budget helps you keep track of your expenses, save for future spending and goals.
(12) Invoice
A bill issued by one who has provided products and/or services to a customer. In asset-based lending, invoice means account receivable.
Usage Example: Before paying the marketing firm, the company asked for an invoice so they could see how much the firm charged them for the advertisements
(13) World Trade Organization (WTO)
Usage Example: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is important internationally because it helps maintain fair and safe trading between the 159 member countries.
(14) National Debt
The sum of all previously incurred annual federal deficits. Since the deficits are financed by government
borrowing, national debt is equal to all government debt outstanding.
Usage Example: The United States limits its National Debt with what they call the debt ceiling, so that the government does not default on what it owes. (15) Welfare Refers to the economic well being of an individual, group, or economy. For individuals, it is
conceptualized by a utility function. For groups, including countries and the world, it is a tricky philosophical concept, since individuals fare differently. In trade theory, an improvement in welfare is often inferred from an increase in real national income. Usage example: A country that supports the welfare of its citizens will strive to increase employment, offer aid and improve overall happiness and well-being.
(16) Forex trading = Foreign Exchange markets / trading
The exchange of currencies between two or more countries on a recognized market. Forex trading is a popular type of investing because it provides investors with the ability to make quick profits due to small changes in one country's currency. Due to the time differences around the world, forex trading takes place continuously because as one market closes another one opens.Use forex trading in a sentence: “Forex trading is part of one of the largest markets in the world, and even though there are many financial hubs in various cities, there is no one central marketplace. ”
The market in which currencies are traded. The forex market is the largest, most liquid market in the world with an average traded value that exceeds $1.9 trillion per day and includes all of the currencies in the world.
There is no central marketplace for currency exchange; trade is conducted over the counter. The forex market is open 24 hours a day, five days a week and currencies are traded worldwide among the major financial centers of London, New York, Tokyo, Zürich, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Sydney.
The forex is the largest market in the world in terms of the total cash value traded, and any person, firm or country may participate in this market.
Click each 1 - 20 green or blue title below for further info - relates to Forex trading
(17) Evergreen
A type of contract that rolls over on a continuous basis until one of the obligated parties cancels it. Each contractual period typically covers a short amount of time so the continuation of the agreement may occur multiple times during a one year period.
Usage Example: A gym may offer an evergreen membership contract that automatically renews each month for a year unless notice of termination is received.
(18) Perkins loan
A Federal Perkins Loan, or Perkins Loan, is a need-based student loan offered by the U.S. Department of Education to assist American college students in funding their post-secondary education. The program is named after Carl D. Perkins, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kentucky (Democratic Party -
in office January 3, 1949 - August 3, 1984)
A need-based, low-interest loan available to students rather than their parents. The amount of the loan is determined by each college and is based on the expected family contribution. The student will be held responsible for this loan, not the parent. Repayment doesn't begin until after a student graduates, falls below half-time student status, or leaves college. After graduating, a student typically has a nine-month grace period during which interest doesn't accrue. Perkins loans offer low interest rates to students and can be repaid within ten years.
Usage Example:
If a student is unsure of his or her ability to pay for a college education, one option for funding is a Perkins loan.
Click: Carl D. Perkins - Wikipedia
click: Federal Perkins Loan Program - U.S. Department of Education
(19) Arbitrage
Attempting to profit by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. The ideal version is riskless arbitrage. Riskless arbitrage: A risk-free transaction consisting of purchasing an asset at one price and simultaneously selling that same asset at a higher price, generating a profit on the difference.
Usage Example:
If a stock is traded on two different exchanges, a trader could potentially profit from arbitrage, or the stock's price discrepancy by purchasing shares on one and selling them on the other.
Verb: buy and sell assets using arbitrage.
Another definition: arbitrage: the simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency, or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset
Compare: arbitration, arbitrator (different words),
click: Arbitration - American Arbitration Association
(20) Derivative
Investopedia defines derivative: A security whose price is dependent upon or derived from one or more underlying assets (= taken from/based on a secondary source). The derivative itself is merely a contract between two or more parties. Its value is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset. The most common underlying assets include stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, interest rates and market indexes (see below for definition) . Most derivatives are characterized by high leverage.
Investopedia explains 'Derivative'
Futures contracts, forward contracts, options and swaps (see below 'swaps' definition) are the most common types of derivatives. Derivatives are contracts and can be used as an underlying asset. There are even derivatives based on weather data, such as the amount of rain or the number of sunny days in a particular region.
Derivatives are generally used as an instrument to hedge risk (see below 'hedge' definition), but can also be used for speculative purposes. For example, a European investor purchasing shares of an American company off of an American exchange (using U.S. dollars to do so) would be exposed to exchange-rate risk while holding that stock. To hedge this risk, the investor could purchase currency futures to lock in a specified exchange rate for the future stock sale and currency conversion back into Euros.
Investopedia defines 'Market Index'
An aggregate value(= formed or calculated by the combination of many separate units or items; total - "the aggregate amount of grants made" synonyms: total, combined, gross, overall) produced by combining several stocks or other investment vehicles together and expressing their total values against a base value from a specific date. Market indexes are intended to represent an entire stock market and thus track the market's changes over time.
Investopedia explains 'Market Index'
Index values are useful for investors to track changes in market values over long periods of time. For example, the widely used Standard and Poor's 500 Index is computed by combining 500 large-cap U.S. stocks together into one index value. Investors can track changes in the index's value over time and use it as a benchmark against which to compare their own portfolio returns.
Investopedia defines of 'Swap'
Traditionally, the exchange of one security for another to change the maturity (bonds), quality of issues (stocks or bonds), or because investment objectives have changed. Recently, swaps have grown to include currency swaps and interest rate swaps.
Investopedia explains 'Swap'
If firms in separate countries have comparative advantages on interest rates, then a swap could benefit both firms. For example, one firm may have a lower fixed interest rate, while another has access to a lower floating interest rate. These firms could swap to take advantage of the lower rates.
(21) Hedge Fund
A limited partnership of investors that uses high risk methods, such as investing with borrowed money, in hopes of realizing large capital gains.
Investopedia defines 'Hedge Fund'
An aggressively managed portfolio of investments that uses advanced investment strategies such as leveraged, long, short and derivative positions in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns (either in an absolute sense or over a specified market benchmark).
Legally, hedge funds are most often set up as private investment partnerships that are open to a limited number of investors and require a very large initial minimum investment. Investments in hedge funds are illiquid as they often require investors keep their money in the fund for at least one year.
Investopedia explains 'Hedge Fund'
For the most part, hedge funds (unlike mutual funds) are unregulated because they cater to sophisticated investors. In the U.S., laws require that the majority of investors in the fund be accredited. That is, they must earn a minimum amount of money annually and have a net worth of more than $1 million, along with a significant amount of investment knowledge. You can think of hedge funds as mutual funds for the super rich. They are similar to mutual funds in that investments are pooled and professionally managed, but differ in that the fund has far more flexibility in its investment strategies.
It is important to note that hedging is actually the practice of attempting to reduce risk, but the goal of most hedge funds is to maximize return on investment. The name is mostly historical, as the first hedge funds tried to hedge against the downside risk of a bear market by shorting the market (mutual funds generally can't enter into short positions as one of their primary goals). Nowadays, hedge funds use dozens of different strategies, so it isn't accurate to say that hedge funds just "hedge risk". In fact, because hedge fund managers make speculative investments, these funds can carry more risk than the overall market.
To dig deeper into hedge funds, and to learn how to invest like one -- check out our
click: Hedge Fund Tutorial
and click: How To Invest Like A Hedge Fund
(22) Due diligence -DD
Generally, due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party.
An investigation or audit of a potential investment. Due diligence serves to confirm all material facts in regards to a sale-an investigation or audit of a potential investment. Due diligence serves to confirm all material facts in regards to a sale. Reasonable steps taken by a person in order to satisfy a legal requirement, esp. in buying or selling something. The process of investigation, performed by investors, into the details of a potential investment, such as an examination of operations and management and the verification of material facts. Research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction (as a corporate merger or purchase of securities). The care that a reasonable person exercises to avoid harm to other persons or their property.
Offers to purchase an asset are usually dependent on the results of due diligence analysis. This includes reviewing all financial records plus anything else deemed material to the sale. Sellers could also perform a due diligence analysis on the buyer. Items that may be considered are the buyer's ability to purchase, as well as other items that would affect the purchased entity or the seller after the sale has been completed.
Due diligence is a way of preventing unnecessary harm to either party involved in a transaction.
Usage Example:
Before signing on as a potential investor, the business owner's friend did his due diligence and thoroughly researched the company and industry.
(23) Straddle
(1) A simultaneous purchase of options to buy and to sell a security or commodity at a fixed price, allowing the purchaser to make a profit whether the price of the security or commodity goes up or down.(2) An options strategy with which the investor holds a position in both a call and put with the same strike price and expiration date. For further details click: Straddle Definition | Investopedia
(24) Tax bracket
The level of income tax of a given individual, as indicated by the amount of taxes he/she pays on his/her final dollar of taxable income. also called marginal tax bracket or tax rate.
Usage Example:
Knowing what tax bracket you fall into can be very beneficial because it explains the percentage that your income will be taxed.
(25) Taxable income
The amount of income subject to income taxes; found by subtracting the appropriate deductions (IRA contributions, alimony payments, unreimbursed business expenses, some capital losses, etc.) from adjusted gross income.
(26) Advisor = Adviser
A person or organization employed by an individual or mutual fund or by any other investment organizaton to manage assets or provide investment advice.
Also called (1) financial advisor or (2) investment advisor or (3) investment counsel. Sometimes spelled adviser.
Usage Example:
An advisor for a mutual fund makes decisions each day about buying and selling the fund's securities, as well as handles investment strategy and goals.
(27) W-2 Form & W-4 Form
W-2 Form - The form that an employer must send to an employee and the IRS at the end of the year. The W-2 form reports an employee's annual wages and the amount of taxes withheld from his or her paycheck. click: Form W-2 click:Form W-2
W-4 Form - The individuals complete for withholding purposes, whereas a W-2 form is for employers to fill out.
The employer must provide the employee their W-2 form by the deadline set by the IRS.
click: Internal Revenue Servicewww.irs.gov click: Form W4 click: Form W-4
(28) Earned income (see next below 'unearned income") compensation from participation in a business, including wages, salary, tips,commissions and bonuses. Opposite of unearned income.
Usage Example:
On the W2 form that my company sent me it stated my salary and bonuses which make up my earned income for the year. The W2 form - see (27) above
(29) Unearned income
An individual's income derived from sources other than employment, such as interest and dividends from investments, or income from rental property. Also called unearned revenue. Opposite of earned income.
Usage Example:
All interest payments are considered unearned income because you didn't work for that additional income, thus it was unearned.
(30) Taxable wage base
The maximum dollar amount of wages that is subject to Social Security taxes. Wages in excess of this at amount are not subject to Social Security taxes. Note that there is no cap on wages subject to Medicare taxes.
(31) IRS - 1040 Form - IRS
Internal Revenue Service. The federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing the Treasury Department's revenue laws, through the assessment and collection of taxes, determination of pension plan qualification, and related activities. Click: Form 1040 click: Form 1040
Usage Example:
Every year in the spring, Americans must report their previous year's financial information to the IRS when filing their taxes. Inside the texts: Click green for further info
IRS. The federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing the Treasury Department's revenue laws, through the assessment and collection of taxes, determination of pension plan qualification, and related activities. The office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue was first established in 1862 by President Lincoln, although in the upcoming decades the income tax was repeatedly established and then repealed. The first 1040 form was used 1913. The agency itself was restructured numerous times, adopting its current name in the 1950s, and adopting its current model in the late 1990s. Along with administering and collecting taxes, the agency also provides a variety of services to help individuals understand the rules and the process.
1040 Form U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. This form is used for individuals in filing their annual income tax returns. It is used by individual taxpayers in reporting their financial income status for the year in order to determine if any additional taxes are owed or if the taxpayer is owed a refund for taxes already paid throughout the year.click: Form 1040 click: Form 1040
(32) Filing status
The types of taxpayers: single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, and head of household. Determines filing requirements, the amount of the standard deduction, eligibility for certain credits, and the tax bracket.
Usage Example:
Since becoming married, the couple changed their filing status from single to married filing jointly to reflect their recent status change.
(33) Tax deduction
An expense subtracted from adjusted gross income when calculating taxable income, such as for state and local taxes paid, charitable gifts, and certain types of interest payments. Also called deduction.
Usage Example:
Charitable gifts are a very common tax deduction that helps lower the amount owed to the IRS.
(34) Redemption
The return of an investor's principal in a security, such as a bond, preferred stock or mutual fund shares, at or prior to maturity.
Usage Example:
A redemption occurs at the time of maturity or cancellation of a fixed income security, or for mutual funds at the time the investor chooses.
The action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.
(35) Capital structure
The permanent long-term financing of a company, including long-term debt, common stock and preferred stock, and retained earnings. It differs from financial structure, which includes short-term debt and accounts payable.
Usage Example:
A company organizes and finances its operations with a capital structure. Generally if the firm has more debt than equity, it has more risk.
(36) Depreciation
A noncash expense that reduces the value of an asset as a result of wear and tear, age, or obsolescence*). Most assets lose their value over time (in other words, they depreciate), and must be replaced once the end of their useful life is reached. There are several accounting methods that are used in order to write off an asset's depreciation cost over the period of its useful life. Because it is a non-cash expense, depreciation lowers the company's reported earnings while increasing free cash flow.*) obsolescence = the state, process, or condition of being or becoming obsolete = out of date., e.g.:"We're planning to stimulate the business by obsoleting last year's designs."A loss in the utility of an asset due to the development of improved or superior equipment, but not due to physical deterioration.
Usage Example: A decline in the value of a given currency in comparison with other currencies. For instance, if the U.S. dollar depreciates against the Euro, buyers would have to pay more dollars in order to obtain the original amount of euros before depreciation occurred.
Usage Example:
Many businesses must take into account depreciation because much of their equipment is not worth as much now as it was when it was first purchased.
(37) Exemption A direct reduction taken from taxable income for a specific reason, as allowed by the IRS.
Also called tax exemption
Usage Example:
There are many different types of tax exemptions that a tax filer can claim which can lower the amount of taxes owed.
Also: The process of freeing or state of being free from an obligation or liability imposed on others.
Synonyms: (click green) immunity, exception, dispensation, indemnity, exclusion, freedom,release, relief, absolution
(38) Credit rating
A published ranking, based on detailed financial analysis by a credit bureau, of one's financial history, specifically as it relates to one's ability to meet debt obligations. The highest rating is usually AAA, and the lowest is D. Lenders use this information to decide whether to approve a loan.
Usage Example:
While a credit score usually applies to individuals, a credit rating evaluates companies or governments.
(39) Vulnerability
In computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance. Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw. Click: Vulnerability (computing)
(40) Tax credit
The direct dollar-for-dollar reduction of an individual's tax liability; compare with tax deduction, which reduces an individual's tax liability only in proportion to his/her tax bracket (cont. next line... # 41)
Usage Example:
"A tax credit is very beneficial because it helps lower the amount of taxes that you owe to the government. ”
(41) Tax bracket
The level of income tax of a given individual, as indicated by the amount of taxes he/she pays on his/her final dollar of taxable income. Also called marginal tax bracket or tax rate.
Usage Example:
“ Knowing what tax bracket you fall into can be very beneficial because it explains the percentage that your income will be taxed.”
(42) Trust 1. A legal arrangement in which an individual (the trustor) gives fiduciary control of property to a person or institution (the trustee) for the benefit of beneficiaries Usage Example:
A trust can be effective during someone's lifetime or created through a will when a person dies in order to manage specific funds and assets.
2. A monopolistic corporation, prior to the enactment of antitrust laws.
(43) Fiduciary
An individual, corporation or association holding assets for another party, often with the legal authority and duty to make decisions regarding financial matters on behalf of the other party Fiduciary noun In law, a person in a position of authority whom the law obligates to act solely on behalf of the person he or she represents and in good faith. Examples of fiduciaries are agents, executors, trustees, guardians, and officers of corporations. Unlike people in ordinary business relationships, fiduciaries may not seek personal benefit from their transactions with those they represent. Latin fiduciarius, from fiducia confidence, trust, from fidere First Known Use: circa 1641
(44) Endowment
A financial asset donation made to a non-profit group or institution in the form of investment funds or other property that has a stated purpose at the bequest of the donor. Most endowments are designed to keep the principal amount intact while using the investment income from dividends for charitable efforts.
Endowments provide ongoing benefits for those that receive them by earning a market rate of interest while keeping the core endowment principal intact to fund future years of scholarships, or whatever efforts the donor sought to fund. In some cases, a certain percentage of the assets are allowed to be used each year, so the amount pulled out of the endowment could be a combination of interest income and principal. The ratio of principal to income would change year to year based on prevailing market rates.
Related Definitions, click each:
Federal tax levied equally on employers and employees, used to pay for Social Security programs.
Usage Example:
Before I receive my paycheck, the federally mandated percentage of Social Security Tax is deducted from my pay.
(46) Purchasing power parity
The theory that, in the long run, identical products and services in different countries should cost the same in different countries. This is based on the belief that exchange rates will adjust to eliminate the arbitrage opportunity of buying a product or service in one country and selling it in another. For example, consider a laptop computer that costs 1,500 Euros in Germany and an exchange rate of 2 Euros to 1 U.S. Dollar. If the same laptop cost 1,000 dollars in the United States, U.S. consumers would buy the laptop in Germany. If done on a large scale, the influx of U.S. dollars would drive up the price of the Euro, until it equalized at 1.5 Euros to 1 U.S. Dollar - the same ratio of the price of the laptop in Germany to the price of the laptop in the U.S. The theory only applies to tradable goods, not to immobile goods or local services. The theory also discounts several real world factors, such as transportation costs, tariffs and It also assumes there are competitive markets for the goods and services in both countries.
Usage Example:
The purchasing power parity theory suggests that if a can of soda costs 2 euros in Germany and the exchange rate between Germany and the US is 2 US dollars/euro, the can of soda would cost $1USD in the United States.
(47) Arbitrage
Attempting to profit by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. The ideal version is riskless arbitrage. The simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency, or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset.
Usage Example:
“ If a stock is traded on two different exchanges, a trader could potentially profit from arbitrage, or the stock's price discrepancy by purchasing shares on one and selling them on the other.
Investopedia - Definition of 'Arbitrage'
The simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price. It is a trade that profits by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. Arbitrage exists as a result of market inefficiencies; it provides a mechanism to ensure prices do not deviate substantially from fair value for long periods of time.
Investopedia explains 'Arbitrage'
Given the advancement in technology it has become extremely difficult to profit from mispricing in the market. Many traders have computerized trading systems set to monitor fluctuations in similar financial instruments. Any inefficient pricing setups are usually acted upon quickly and the opportunity is often eliminated in a matter of seconds.
Arbitrage is a necessary force in the financial marketplace.
To understand more of this concept, read Trading The Odds With Arbitrage.
(48) FAFSA
Free Application for Federal Student Aid. A form required by the government for application to any federal education aid program. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is used to determine the expected family contribution based on family financial information. An expected family contribution is calculated for every student, even if the family is not going to contribute that amount. A FAFSA is used to determine the specific Federal Student Aid programs that can contribute to a student's total financial aid package and in what proportions. Many universities also use the information provided on the FAFSA to determine other grants and scholarships as well. The Federal Student Aid office is a part of the United States Department of Education.
Completing a FAFSA form can help students looking to go to college that cannot fully finance the schooling themselves and need federal aid.
Usage Example:
Completing a FAFSA form can help students looking to go to college that cannot fully finance the schooling themselves and need federal aid.
This link on the next line is the official U.S. gov. FAFSA link - click green below:
Home - FAFSA on the Web - Federal Student Aid https://fafsa.ed.gov/
United States Department of Education
Electronically submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). All students interested in financial aid for college will need to complete this form. (49) Audit
Due to a number of red flags in my tax return, the IRS issued an audit to verify the accuracy of my tax return. Click for further info: burden of proof legal definition
Brief definitions of burden of proof:
1.Chiefly Law. the obligation to offer evidence that the court or jury could reasonably believe, in support of a contention, failing which the case will be lost.
2.the obligation to establish a contention as fact by evoking evidence of its probable truth.
(50) Abandon
If someone knowingly abandons his personal property without the intent of returning, he relinquishes*) ownership, control and possession of the property.
*) to relinquish = voluntarily cease to keep or claim; give up
(51) Debt to income ratio - DTI
A figure that calculates how much of a person's income is spent paying his or her debts. The higher one's debt to income ratio, the more of their monthly income that is solely devoted to paying back debts. DTI is important to manage, because it is something often considered by institutions when they evaluate loan credit worthiness; Institutions conclude that if a person's DTI is too high, they might not be able to pay back their debts very easily, and the institution will be less inclined to make the loan. Formula: monthly debts owed divided by monthly income.
Learn more about this term
Usage Example:
A person's debt to income ratio is important in determining how probable it is that he/she will repay a loan and the chances of receiving financial support in the future.
(52) Tax refund
The return by the government of excess taxes paid by an individual. If, during the course of a calendar year, an individual paid more taxes than they actually owed (after taking into consideration income tax, withholdings, tax deductions or credits, and other factors), then he or she will receive a tax refund after filing his or her taxes for the year.
Usage Example:
After I filed my taxes I received a tax refund since I paid more taxes than I actually owed during the previous year.
(53) z-score
An indicator used in data analysis which measures how far a given data point is from the mean of the data. Z-scores are often used to analyze credit, and will give an estimation of the probability of going bankrupt.
Usage Example:
By determining the z-score of something, statisticians are able to decide if the score is typical or not for that data by calculating how far it differs from the mean.
Investment vocabulary
defined, examples given
InvestorWords.com
([email protected])
This guide defines the most important English words
used in the investment industry
For people with English as their 1st or 2nd language
Click green words inside the texts for further info (do not click the green numbers (1)... on the left, at the beginning of the lines.
(1) This list of investor words is for the people whose English is their 2nd language - however, most individuals with English as their first language will find in this list terms that need refreshing and clear definition when dealing with investments and legal language. Check the meaning for every given word entry to be sure of the correct legal usage.
(2) Click on all colored words & colored areas for further details to be sure for the meaning & usage in investment & legal vocabulary related actions & documents.
What is - define - guide
The government in every country monitors the investment activities (at least is supposed to), so first we place the official definition of the word 'government':
Notice: Throughout this guide, for further information, click green words, sentences or areas (sometimes blue as below in # 1, sometimes red or some other color, but not black) - most of the green title words functions as a link also (not all).
Government
A group that exercises sovereign authority over a nation, state, society or other body of people. Governments are generally responsible for making and enforcing laws, managing currency, and protecting the populace from external threats, and may have other duties or privileges. Governments also typically set tax rates, and may regulate investment practices as well.
Read more: http://www.investorwords.com/16458/government.html#ixzz2ynYB81lJ
Click green for further info (any green connects to added info)
Federal Reserve Bank
The Federal Reserve Bank is responsible for all monetary decisions within the United States.
12 regional banks established to maintain reserves, issue bank notes, and lend money to member banks. The Federal Reserve Banks are also responsible for supervising member banks in their areas, and are involved in the setting of national monetary policy.
______________________
What's the difference between "gross" and "net"?
Learn the difference between gross vs. net when talking about finance, accounting, and payments.
Click: Read more...
_______________________
Let's place first one important element in any business:
Common stock
Securities representing equity ownership in a corporation, providing voting rights, and entitling the holder to a share of the company's success through dividends and/or capital appreciation. In the event of liquidation, common stockholders have rights to a company's assets only after bondholders, other debt holders, and preferred stockholders have been satisfied. Typically, common stockholders receive one vote per share to elect the company's board of directors (although the number of votes is not always directly proportional to the number of shares owned). The board of directors is the group of individuals that represents the owners of the corporation and oversees major decisions for the company. Common shareholders also receive voting rights regarding other company matters such as stock splits and company objectives. In addition to voting rights, common shareholders sometimes enjoy what are called "preemptive rights". Preemptive rights allow common shareholders to maintain their proportional ownership in the company in the event that the company issues another offering of stock. This means that common shareholders with preemptive rights have the right but not the obligation to purchase as many new shares of the stock as it would take to maintain their proportional ownership in the company. Also called junior equity, another name for common stock, called junior because it is subordinate (= lower in rank or position) to preferred stock.
For more information click: Common Stock vs. Preferred Stock, and Stock Classes at InvestorGuide.com.
Usage Example:
In the case of a company's liquidation, holders of common stock have rights to the assets but only after preferred shareholders and bondholders have received their money.
_______________________
(1) Click: Adjusted Gross Income (AGI)? Click: Adjusted Gross Income Click: Today's issue is sponsored by Options Industry Council Click: Learn more about this term
(2) Click: Pattern
(3) Click: ETF - Exchange Traded Fund
Usage Example: Investing in an ETF is a good because it is usually associated with low expenses and flexibility.
(4) Free Options Podcasts, from The Options Industry Council
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(5) Structural unemployment
A type of unemployment that is a direct result of economic changes, but yet at the same time, offers the possibility for new, different jobs opening up in other areas of the economy.
Learn more about this term
Usage Example: Causes of structural unemployment can include change in government policy, economic downturn and increasing technology.
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(6) Financial analyst
An employee of a bank, brokerage, advisor, or mutual fund who studies companies and makes buy and sell recommendations, often specializing in a single sector or industry. Financial analysts use a wide variety of techniques for researching and making recommendations. The reports and recommendations they publish are often used by traders, mutual fund managers, portfolio managers and investors in their decision making processes. also called securities analyst or analyst.
Usage Example: A financial analyst often works for financial institutions, brokerage houses or mutual funds in order to analyze finances and project future growth.
(7) Insurance
A promise of compensation for specific potential future losses in exchange for a periodic payment. Insurance is designed to protect the financial well-being of an individual, company or other entity in the case of unexpected loss. Some forms of insurance are required by law, while others are optional. Agreeing to the terms of an insurance policy creates a contract between the insured and the insurer. In exchange for payments from the insured (called premiums), the insurer agrees to pay the policy holder a sum of money upon the occurrence of a specific event. In most cases, the policy holder pays part of the loss (called the deductible), and the insurer pays the rest. Examples include car insurance, health insurance, disability insurance, life insurance, and business insurance.
Usage Example: Those living on a coast often times purchase specific insurance that protects their homes in case of a flood.
Today's issue is sponsored by click: Franklin Templeton - click: Download a brochure to see how emotions affect investing decision
(8) 5 C's of credit
The five key elements a borrower should have to obtain credit: character (integrity), capacity (sufficient cash flow to service the obligation), capital (net worth), collateral (assets to secure the debt), and conditions (of the borrower and the overall economy).
Usage Example: The 5 C's of credit are essential to have before being able to borrow money or acquire credit. Click: Today's issue is sponsored by Schwab Advisor Services - Visit the Economic Discovery Tool now
(9) Entity
A thing that exists it its own right. The law recognizes corporations and people as entities with rights and legal obligations. Rights: A privilege allowing existing shareholders to buy shares of an issue of common stock shortly before it is offered to the public, at a specified and usually discounted price, and usually in proportion to the number of shares already owned - also called subscription right. Obligations: Any debt, written promise, or duty.
Usage Example: In business an entity is recognized as a separate corporation or person for legal reasons, pays their own taxes and can enter contractual agreements. ”
(10) National Debt
The sum of all previously incurred annual federal deficits. Since the deficits are financed by government borrowing, national debt is equal to all government debt outstanding.
(11) Budget
An itemized forecast of an individual's or company's income and expenses expected for some period in the future. With a budget, an individual is able to carefully look at how much money they are taking in during a given period, and figure out the best way to divide it among a variety of categories. When making a personal budget, an individual will typically designate the appropriate amount of money to fixed expenses such as rent, car payments, or utility bills, and then make an educated estimation for how much money they will spend in other categories, such as groceries, clothing, or entertainment. By keeping track of where one's money goes, one may be less likely to overspend, and more likely to meet their financial goals.
Usage Example: Maintaining a budget helps you keep track of your expenses, save for future spending and goals.
(12) Invoice
A bill issued by one who has provided products and/or services to a customer. In asset-based lending, invoice means account receivable.
Usage Example: Before paying the marketing firm, the company asked for an invoice so they could see how much the firm charged them for the advertisements
(13) World Trade Organization (WTO)
Usage Example: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is important internationally because it helps maintain fair and safe trading between the 159 member countries.
(14) National Debt
The sum of all previously incurred annual federal deficits. Since the deficits are financed by government
borrowing, national debt is equal to all government debt outstanding.
Usage Example: The United States limits its National Debt with what they call the debt ceiling, so that the government does not default on what it owes. (15) Welfare Refers to the economic well being of an individual, group, or economy. For individuals, it is
conceptualized by a utility function. For groups, including countries and the world, it is a tricky philosophical concept, since individuals fare differently. In trade theory, an improvement in welfare is often inferred from an increase in real national income. Usage example: A country that supports the welfare of its citizens will strive to increase employment, offer aid and improve overall happiness and well-being.
(16) Forex trading = Foreign Exchange markets / trading
The exchange of currencies between two or more countries on a recognized market. Forex trading is a popular type of investing because it provides investors with the ability to make quick profits due to small changes in one country's currency. Due to the time differences around the world, forex trading takes place continuously because as one market closes another one opens.Use forex trading in a sentence: “Forex trading is part of one of the largest markets in the world, and even though there are many financial hubs in various cities, there is no one central marketplace. ”
The market in which currencies are traded. The forex market is the largest, most liquid market in the world with an average traded value that exceeds $1.9 trillion per day and includes all of the currencies in the world.
There is no central marketplace for currency exchange; trade is conducted over the counter. The forex market is open 24 hours a day, five days a week and currencies are traded worldwide among the major financial centers of London, New York, Tokyo, Zürich, Frankfurt, Hong Kong, Singapore, Paris and Sydney.
The forex is the largest market in the world in terms of the total cash value traded, and any person, firm or country may participate in this market.
Click each 1 - 20 green or blue title below for further info - relates to Forex trading
- Mini-Lot
- Pip
- Forex Mini Account
- Forex Account
- Mini Forex Account
- Exchange Rate
- Indirect Quote
- Competitive Devaluation
- Prime Of Prime - PoP
- Digital Currency Exchanger - DCE
- Exchange Rate
- Mini-Lot
- Basis Point - BPS
- Currency
- Performance Index Paper - PIP
- Currency Pair
- Cover On A Bounce
- Cover On Approach
- Currency Depreciation
- Money Market Account
(17) Evergreen
A type of contract that rolls over on a continuous basis until one of the obligated parties cancels it. Each contractual period typically covers a short amount of time so the continuation of the agreement may occur multiple times during a one year period.
Usage Example: A gym may offer an evergreen membership contract that automatically renews each month for a year unless notice of termination is received.
(18) Perkins loan
A Federal Perkins Loan, or Perkins Loan, is a need-based student loan offered by the U.S. Department of Education to assist American college students in funding their post-secondary education. The program is named after Carl D. Perkins, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kentucky (Democratic Party -
in office January 3, 1949 - August 3, 1984)
A need-based, low-interest loan available to students rather than their parents. The amount of the loan is determined by each college and is based on the expected family contribution. The student will be held responsible for this loan, not the parent. Repayment doesn't begin until after a student graduates, falls below half-time student status, or leaves college. After graduating, a student typically has a nine-month grace period during which interest doesn't accrue. Perkins loans offer low interest rates to students and can be repaid within ten years.
Usage Example:
If a student is unsure of his or her ability to pay for a college education, one option for funding is a Perkins loan.
Click: Carl D. Perkins - Wikipedia
click: Federal Perkins Loan Program - U.S. Department of Education
(19) Arbitrage
Attempting to profit by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. The ideal version is riskless arbitrage. Riskless arbitrage: A risk-free transaction consisting of purchasing an asset at one price and simultaneously selling that same asset at a higher price, generating a profit on the difference.
Usage Example:
If a stock is traded on two different exchanges, a trader could potentially profit from arbitrage, or the stock's price discrepancy by purchasing shares on one and selling them on the other.
Verb: buy and sell assets using arbitrage.
Another definition: arbitrage: the simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency, or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset
Compare: arbitration, arbitrator (different words),
click: Arbitration - American Arbitration Association
(20) Derivative
Investopedia defines derivative: A security whose price is dependent upon or derived from one or more underlying assets (= taken from/based on a secondary source). The derivative itself is merely a contract between two or more parties. Its value is determined by fluctuations in the underlying asset. The most common underlying assets include stocks, bonds, commodities, currencies, interest rates and market indexes (see below for definition) . Most derivatives are characterized by high leverage.
Investopedia explains 'Derivative'
Futures contracts, forward contracts, options and swaps (see below 'swaps' definition) are the most common types of derivatives. Derivatives are contracts and can be used as an underlying asset. There are even derivatives based on weather data, such as the amount of rain or the number of sunny days in a particular region.
Derivatives are generally used as an instrument to hedge risk (see below 'hedge' definition), but can also be used for speculative purposes. For example, a European investor purchasing shares of an American company off of an American exchange (using U.S. dollars to do so) would be exposed to exchange-rate risk while holding that stock. To hedge this risk, the investor could purchase currency futures to lock in a specified exchange rate for the future stock sale and currency conversion back into Euros.
Investopedia defines 'Market Index'
An aggregate value(= formed or calculated by the combination of many separate units or items; total - "the aggregate amount of grants made" synonyms: total, combined, gross, overall) produced by combining several stocks or other investment vehicles together and expressing their total values against a base value from a specific date. Market indexes are intended to represent an entire stock market and thus track the market's changes over time.
Investopedia explains 'Market Index'
Index values are useful for investors to track changes in market values over long periods of time. For example, the widely used Standard and Poor's 500 Index is computed by combining 500 large-cap U.S. stocks together into one index value. Investors can track changes in the index's value over time and use it as a benchmark against which to compare their own portfolio returns.
Investopedia defines of 'Swap'
Traditionally, the exchange of one security for another to change the maturity (bonds), quality of issues (stocks or bonds), or because investment objectives have changed. Recently, swaps have grown to include currency swaps and interest rate swaps.
Investopedia explains 'Swap'
If firms in separate countries have comparative advantages on interest rates, then a swap could benefit both firms. For example, one firm may have a lower fixed interest rate, while another has access to a lower floating interest rate. These firms could swap to take advantage of the lower rates.
(21) Hedge Fund
A limited partnership of investors that uses high risk methods, such as investing with borrowed money, in hopes of realizing large capital gains.
Investopedia defines 'Hedge Fund'
An aggressively managed portfolio of investments that uses advanced investment strategies such as leveraged, long, short and derivative positions in both domestic and international markets with the goal of generating high returns (either in an absolute sense or over a specified market benchmark).
Legally, hedge funds are most often set up as private investment partnerships that are open to a limited number of investors and require a very large initial minimum investment. Investments in hedge funds are illiquid as they often require investors keep their money in the fund for at least one year.
Investopedia explains 'Hedge Fund'
For the most part, hedge funds (unlike mutual funds) are unregulated because they cater to sophisticated investors. In the U.S., laws require that the majority of investors in the fund be accredited. That is, they must earn a minimum amount of money annually and have a net worth of more than $1 million, along with a significant amount of investment knowledge. You can think of hedge funds as mutual funds for the super rich. They are similar to mutual funds in that investments are pooled and professionally managed, but differ in that the fund has far more flexibility in its investment strategies.
It is important to note that hedging is actually the practice of attempting to reduce risk, but the goal of most hedge funds is to maximize return on investment. The name is mostly historical, as the first hedge funds tried to hedge against the downside risk of a bear market by shorting the market (mutual funds generally can't enter into short positions as one of their primary goals). Nowadays, hedge funds use dozens of different strategies, so it isn't accurate to say that hedge funds just "hedge risk". In fact, because hedge fund managers make speculative investments, these funds can carry more risk than the overall market.
To dig deeper into hedge funds, and to learn how to invest like one -- check out our
click: Hedge Fund Tutorial
and click: How To Invest Like A Hedge Fund
(22) Due diligence -DD
Generally, due diligence refers to the care a reasonable person should take before entering into an agreement or a transaction with another party.
An investigation or audit of a potential investment. Due diligence serves to confirm all material facts in regards to a sale-an investigation or audit of a potential investment. Due diligence serves to confirm all material facts in regards to a sale. Reasonable steps taken by a person in order to satisfy a legal requirement, esp. in buying or selling something. The process of investigation, performed by investors, into the details of a potential investment, such as an examination of operations and management and the verification of material facts. Research and analysis of a company or organization done in preparation for a business transaction (as a corporate merger or purchase of securities). The care that a reasonable person exercises to avoid harm to other persons or their property.
Offers to purchase an asset are usually dependent on the results of due diligence analysis. This includes reviewing all financial records plus anything else deemed material to the sale. Sellers could also perform a due diligence analysis on the buyer. Items that may be considered are the buyer's ability to purchase, as well as other items that would affect the purchased entity or the seller after the sale has been completed.
Due diligence is a way of preventing unnecessary harm to either party involved in a transaction.
Usage Example:
Before signing on as a potential investor, the business owner's friend did his due diligence and thoroughly researched the company and industry.
(23) Straddle
(1) A simultaneous purchase of options to buy and to sell a security or commodity at a fixed price, allowing the purchaser to make a profit whether the price of the security or commodity goes up or down.(2) An options strategy with which the investor holds a position in both a call and put with the same strike price and expiration date. For further details click: Straddle Definition | Investopedia
(24) Tax bracket
The level of income tax of a given individual, as indicated by the amount of taxes he/she pays on his/her final dollar of taxable income. also called marginal tax bracket or tax rate.
Usage Example:
Knowing what tax bracket you fall into can be very beneficial because it explains the percentage that your income will be taxed.
(25) Taxable income
The amount of income subject to income taxes; found by subtracting the appropriate deductions (IRA contributions, alimony payments, unreimbursed business expenses, some capital losses, etc.) from adjusted gross income.
(26) Advisor = Adviser
A person or organization employed by an individual or mutual fund or by any other investment organizaton to manage assets or provide investment advice.
Also called (1) financial advisor or (2) investment advisor or (3) investment counsel. Sometimes spelled adviser.
Usage Example:
An advisor for a mutual fund makes decisions each day about buying and selling the fund's securities, as well as handles investment strategy and goals.
(27) W-2 Form & W-4 Form
W-2 Form - The form that an employer must send to an employee and the IRS at the end of the year. The W-2 form reports an employee's annual wages and the amount of taxes withheld from his or her paycheck. click: Form W-2 click:Form W-2
W-4 Form - The individuals complete for withholding purposes, whereas a W-2 form is for employers to fill out.
The employer must provide the employee their W-2 form by the deadline set by the IRS.
click: Internal Revenue Servicewww.irs.gov click: Form W4 click: Form W-4
(28) Earned income (see next below 'unearned income") compensation from participation in a business, including wages, salary, tips,commissions and bonuses. Opposite of unearned income.
Usage Example:
On the W2 form that my company sent me it stated my salary and bonuses which make up my earned income for the year. The W2 form - see (27) above
(29) Unearned income
An individual's income derived from sources other than employment, such as interest and dividends from investments, or income from rental property. Also called unearned revenue. Opposite of earned income.
Usage Example:
All interest payments are considered unearned income because you didn't work for that additional income, thus it was unearned.
(30) Taxable wage base
The maximum dollar amount of wages that is subject to Social Security taxes. Wages in excess of this at amount are not subject to Social Security taxes. Note that there is no cap on wages subject to Medicare taxes.
(31) IRS - 1040 Form - IRS
Internal Revenue Service. The federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing the Treasury Department's revenue laws, through the assessment and collection of taxes, determination of pension plan qualification, and related activities. Click: Form 1040 click: Form 1040
Usage Example:
Every year in the spring, Americans must report their previous year's financial information to the IRS when filing their taxes. Inside the texts: Click green for further info
IRS. The federal agency responsible for administering and enforcing the Treasury Department's revenue laws, through the assessment and collection of taxes, determination of pension plan qualification, and related activities. The office of Commissioner of Internal Revenue was first established in 1862 by President Lincoln, although in the upcoming decades the income tax was repeatedly established and then repealed. The first 1040 form was used 1913. The agency itself was restructured numerous times, adopting its current name in the 1950s, and adopting its current model in the late 1990s. Along with administering and collecting taxes, the agency also provides a variety of services to help individuals understand the rules and the process.
1040 Form U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. This form is used for individuals in filing their annual income tax returns. It is used by individual taxpayers in reporting their financial income status for the year in order to determine if any additional taxes are owed or if the taxpayer is owed a refund for taxes already paid throughout the year.click: Form 1040 click: Form 1040
(32) Filing status
The types of taxpayers: single, married filing jointly, married filing separately, and head of household. Determines filing requirements, the amount of the standard deduction, eligibility for certain credits, and the tax bracket.
Usage Example:
Since becoming married, the couple changed their filing status from single to married filing jointly to reflect their recent status change.
(33) Tax deduction
An expense subtracted from adjusted gross income when calculating taxable income, such as for state and local taxes paid, charitable gifts, and certain types of interest payments. Also called deduction.
Usage Example:
Charitable gifts are a very common tax deduction that helps lower the amount owed to the IRS.
(34) Redemption
The return of an investor's principal in a security, such as a bond, preferred stock or mutual fund shares, at or prior to maturity.
Usage Example:
A redemption occurs at the time of maturity or cancellation of a fixed income security, or for mutual funds at the time the investor chooses.
The action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt.
(35) Capital structure
The permanent long-term financing of a company, including long-term debt, common stock and preferred stock, and retained earnings. It differs from financial structure, which includes short-term debt and accounts payable.
Usage Example:
A company organizes and finances its operations with a capital structure. Generally if the firm has more debt than equity, it has more risk.
(36) Depreciation
A noncash expense that reduces the value of an asset as a result of wear and tear, age, or obsolescence*). Most assets lose their value over time (in other words, they depreciate), and must be replaced once the end of their useful life is reached. There are several accounting methods that are used in order to write off an asset's depreciation cost over the period of its useful life. Because it is a non-cash expense, depreciation lowers the company's reported earnings while increasing free cash flow.*) obsolescence = the state, process, or condition of being or becoming obsolete = out of date., e.g.:"We're planning to stimulate the business by obsoleting last year's designs."A loss in the utility of an asset due to the development of improved or superior equipment, but not due to physical deterioration.
Usage Example: A decline in the value of a given currency in comparison with other currencies. For instance, if the U.S. dollar depreciates against the Euro, buyers would have to pay more dollars in order to obtain the original amount of euros before depreciation occurred.
Usage Example:
Many businesses must take into account depreciation because much of their equipment is not worth as much now as it was when it was first purchased.
(37) Exemption A direct reduction taken from taxable income for a specific reason, as allowed by the IRS.
Also called tax exemption
Usage Example:
There are many different types of tax exemptions that a tax filer can claim which can lower the amount of taxes owed.
Also: The process of freeing or state of being free from an obligation or liability imposed on others.
Synonyms: (click green) immunity, exception, dispensation, indemnity, exclusion, freedom,release, relief, absolution
(38) Credit rating
A published ranking, based on detailed financial analysis by a credit bureau, of one's financial history, specifically as it relates to one's ability to meet debt obligations. The highest rating is usually AAA, and the lowest is D. Lenders use this information to decide whether to approve a loan.
Usage Example:
While a credit score usually applies to individuals, a credit rating evaluates companies or governments.
(39) Vulnerability
In computer security, a vulnerability is a weakness which allows an attacker to reduce a system's information assurance. Vulnerability is the intersection of three elements: a system susceptibility or flaw, attacker access to the flaw, and attacker capability to exploit the flaw. Click: Vulnerability (computing)
(40) Tax credit
The direct dollar-for-dollar reduction of an individual's tax liability; compare with tax deduction, which reduces an individual's tax liability only in proportion to his/her tax bracket (cont. next line... # 41)
Usage Example:
"A tax credit is very beneficial because it helps lower the amount of taxes that you owe to the government. ”
(41) Tax bracket
The level of income tax of a given individual, as indicated by the amount of taxes he/she pays on his/her final dollar of taxable income. Also called marginal tax bracket or tax rate.
Usage Example:
“ Knowing what tax bracket you fall into can be very beneficial because it explains the percentage that your income will be taxed.”
(42) Trust 1. A legal arrangement in which an individual (the trustor) gives fiduciary control of property to a person or institution (the trustee) for the benefit of beneficiaries Usage Example:
A trust can be effective during someone's lifetime or created through a will when a person dies in order to manage specific funds and assets.
2. A monopolistic corporation, prior to the enactment of antitrust laws.
(43) Fiduciary
An individual, corporation or association holding assets for another party, often with the legal authority and duty to make decisions regarding financial matters on behalf of the other party Fiduciary noun In law, a person in a position of authority whom the law obligates to act solely on behalf of the person he or she represents and in good faith. Examples of fiduciaries are agents, executors, trustees, guardians, and officers of corporations. Unlike people in ordinary business relationships, fiduciaries may not seek personal benefit from their transactions with those they represent. Latin fiduciarius, from fiducia confidence, trust, from fidere First Known Use: circa 1641
(44) Endowment
A financial asset donation made to a non-profit group or institution in the form of investment funds or other property that has a stated purpose at the bequest of the donor. Most endowments are designed to keep the principal amount intact while using the investment income from dividends for charitable efforts.
Endowments provide ongoing benefits for those that receive them by earning a market rate of interest while keeping the core endowment principal intact to fund future years of scholarships, or whatever efforts the donor sought to fund. In some cases, a certain percentage of the assets are allowed to be used each year, so the amount pulled out of the endowment could be a combination of interest income and principal. The ratio of principal to income would change year to year based on prevailing market rates.
Related Definitions, click each:
- Institutional Fund
- Institutional Investor
- Principal
- Donor Advised Fund
- Philanthropy
- Endowment Loan
- Endowment Fund
- Guarantee Company
- Investment Counsel Association Of America ...
- Permanently Restricted Assets
Federal tax levied equally on employers and employees, used to pay for Social Security programs.
Usage Example:
Before I receive my paycheck, the federally mandated percentage of Social Security Tax is deducted from my pay.
(46) Purchasing power parity
The theory that, in the long run, identical products and services in different countries should cost the same in different countries. This is based on the belief that exchange rates will adjust to eliminate the arbitrage opportunity of buying a product or service in one country and selling it in another. For example, consider a laptop computer that costs 1,500 Euros in Germany and an exchange rate of 2 Euros to 1 U.S. Dollar. If the same laptop cost 1,000 dollars in the United States, U.S. consumers would buy the laptop in Germany. If done on a large scale, the influx of U.S. dollars would drive up the price of the Euro, until it equalized at 1.5 Euros to 1 U.S. Dollar - the same ratio of the price of the laptop in Germany to the price of the laptop in the U.S. The theory only applies to tradable goods, not to immobile goods or local services. The theory also discounts several real world factors, such as transportation costs, tariffs and It also assumes there are competitive markets for the goods and services in both countries.
Usage Example:
The purchasing power parity theory suggests that if a can of soda costs 2 euros in Germany and the exchange rate between Germany and the US is 2 US dollars/euro, the can of soda would cost $1USD in the United States.
(47) Arbitrage
Attempting to profit by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. The ideal version is riskless arbitrage. The simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency, or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset.
Usage Example:
“ If a stock is traded on two different exchanges, a trader could potentially profit from arbitrage, or the stock's price discrepancy by purchasing shares on one and selling them on the other.
Investopedia - Definition of 'Arbitrage'
The simultaneous purchase and sale of an asset in order to profit from a difference in the price. It is a trade that profits by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms. Arbitrage exists as a result of market inefficiencies; it provides a mechanism to ensure prices do not deviate substantially from fair value for long periods of time.
Investopedia explains 'Arbitrage'
Given the advancement in technology it has become extremely difficult to profit from mispricing in the market. Many traders have computerized trading systems set to monitor fluctuations in similar financial instruments. Any inefficient pricing setups are usually acted upon quickly and the opportunity is often eliminated in a matter of seconds.
Arbitrage is a necessary force in the financial marketplace.
To understand more of this concept, read Trading The Odds With Arbitrage.
(48) FAFSA
Free Application for Federal Student Aid. A form required by the government for application to any federal education aid program. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid is used to determine the expected family contribution based on family financial information. An expected family contribution is calculated for every student, even if the family is not going to contribute that amount. A FAFSA is used to determine the specific Federal Student Aid programs that can contribute to a student's total financial aid package and in what proportions. Many universities also use the information provided on the FAFSA to determine other grants and scholarships as well. The Federal Student Aid office is a part of the United States Department of Education.
Completing a FAFSA form can help students looking to go to college that cannot fully finance the schooling themselves and need federal aid.
Usage Example:
Completing a FAFSA form can help students looking to go to college that cannot fully finance the schooling themselves and need federal aid.
This link on the next line is the official U.S. gov. FAFSA link - click green below:
Home - FAFSA on the Web - Federal Student Aid https://fafsa.ed.gov/
United States Department of Education
Electronically submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). All students interested in financial aid for college will need to complete this form. (49) Audit
- An examination and verification of a company's financial and accounting records and supporting documents by a professional, such as a Certified Public Accountant.
- An audit is an IRS examination of an individual or corporation's tax return, to verify its accuracy. There are three types of audits: (1) correspondence audits (the IRS mails a request for additional information), (2) office audits (an interview is conducted at a local IRS office), and (3) field audits (an interview is conducted at a taxpayer's place of business, for a corporate tax return). Since there is always the chance of an audit, experts recommend keeping good records to support all the information in a return. The reason detailed and accurate bookkeeping is so important is that the burden of proof is on the filer, not the IRS.
Due to a number of red flags in my tax return, the IRS issued an audit to verify the accuracy of my tax return. Click for further info: burden of proof legal definition
Brief definitions of burden of proof:
1.Chiefly Law. the obligation to offer evidence that the court or jury could reasonably believe, in support of a contention, failing which the case will be lost.
2.the obligation to establish a contention as fact by evoking evidence of its probable truth.
(50) Abandon
- To choose not to exercise or sell an option. Abandonment occurs when the option is out of the money on the expiration date.
- To voluntarily relinquish the rights of property ownership, usually real estate.
If someone knowingly abandons his personal property without the intent of returning, he relinquishes*) ownership, control and possession of the property.
*) to relinquish = voluntarily cease to keep or claim; give up
(51) Debt to income ratio - DTI
A figure that calculates how much of a person's income is spent paying his or her debts. The higher one's debt to income ratio, the more of their monthly income that is solely devoted to paying back debts. DTI is important to manage, because it is something often considered by institutions when they evaluate loan credit worthiness; Institutions conclude that if a person's DTI is too high, they might not be able to pay back their debts very easily, and the institution will be less inclined to make the loan. Formula: monthly debts owed divided by monthly income.
Learn more about this term
Usage Example:
A person's debt to income ratio is important in determining how probable it is that he/she will repay a loan and the chances of receiving financial support in the future.
(52) Tax refund
The return by the government of excess taxes paid by an individual. If, during the course of a calendar year, an individual paid more taxes than they actually owed (after taking into consideration income tax, withholdings, tax deductions or credits, and other factors), then he or she will receive a tax refund after filing his or her taxes for the year.
Usage Example:
After I filed my taxes I received a tax refund since I paid more taxes than I actually owed during the previous year.
(53) z-score
An indicator used in data analysis which measures how far a given data point is from the mean of the data. Z-scores are often used to analyze credit, and will give an estimation of the probability of going bankrupt.
Usage Example:
By determining the z-score of something, statisticians are able to decide if the score is typical or not for that data by calculating how far it differs from the mean.
(54) Appraisal
A professional opinion, usually written, of the market value of a property, such as a home, business, or other asset whose market price is not easily determined. Usually required when a property is sold, taxed, insured, or financed.
Usage Example:
When selling a home, the owner may have an appraisal completed to find out its current value and at what price to put it on the market for.
(55) Intellectual property
Any intangible asset that consists of human knowledge and ideas. Some examples are patents, copyrights, trademarks and software. Most such assets cannot be recognized on a balance sheet when internally generated, since it is very difficult to objectively value intellectual property assets (slightly different rules apply in the case of software & apps). They can, however, be included in a balance sheet if acquired, which allows a more accurate valuation for the asset (that is, the acquisition cost).
Usage Example:
The patent lawsuits between Apple and Samsung over the past few years had to do with intellectual property of smartphone design features that were allegedly stolen.
(56) Adjustable Rate Mortgage - ARM A mortgage with an interest rate that may change, usually in response to changes in the Treasury Bill rate or the prime rate. The purpose of the interest rate adjustment is primarily to bring the interest rate on the mortgage in line with market rates. The mortgage holder is protected by a maximum interest rate (called a ceiling), which might be reset annually. ARMs usually start with better rates than fixed rate mortgages, in order to compensate the borrower for the additional risk that future interest rate fluctuations will create.
Usage Example: The borrower picked a 3/27 Adjustable Rate Mortgage that has a fixed interest rate for the first 3 years but then floats for the remaining 27 years of the mortgage.
(57) Qualitative research Research generated outside the framework of a quantitative approach (quantitative = relating to, measuring, or measured by the quantity of something rather than its quality; "quantitative analysis" = analysis of a situation or event, especially a financial market, by means of complex mathematical and statistical modeling). Collected data is not subjected to formulaic (= constituting or containing a verbal formula or set form of words) analysis for the purpose of generating projections.
Usage Example:
The company decided to use qualitative research to gauge the needs of its customers by asking a focus group specific questions, as opposed to analyzing numbers and data in a quantitative approach.
(58) Trademark
A distinctive name, symbol, motto, or design that legally identifies a company or its products and services, and sometimes prevents others from using identical or similar marks
Usage Example:
McDonald's golden arch building design is an example of a very famous trademark that adds value because it is instantly recognizable and unique to the chain.
(59) Nasdaq
A computerized system established by the NASD (= National Association of Securities Dealers, the former name of the American self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers, now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)) to facilitate trading by providing broker/dealers with current bid and ask price quotes on over-the-counter stocks and some listed stocks. Unlike the Amex and the NYSE, the Nasdaq (once an acronym for the National Association of securities Dealers Automated Quotation system) does not have a physical trading floor that brings together buyers and sellers. Instead, all trading on the Nasdaq exchange is done over a network of computers and telephones. Also, the Nasdaq does not employ market specialists to buy unfilled orders like the NYSE does. The Nasdaq began when brokers started informally trading via telephone; the network was later formalized and linked by computer in the early 1970s. In 1998 the parent company of the Nasdaq purchased the Amex, although the two continue to operate separately. Orders for stock are sent out electronically on the Nasdaq, where market makers list their buy and sell prices. Once a price is agreed upon, the transaction is executed electronically.
Usage Example:
Nasdaq is just one of many electronic marketplaces and primarily trades equities, options, derivatives (= something that is based on another source) and commodities (= a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee)
across about 50 different countries.
Investopedia Definition of 'National Association Of Securities Dealers - NASD'
The NASD was a self-regulatory organization of the securities industry responsible for the operation and regulation of the Nasdaq stock market and over-the-counter markets. It also administrated exams for investment professionals, such as the Series 7 exam*).
Investopedia explains 'National Association Of Securities Dealers - NASD'
The NASD watches over the Nasdaq to make sure the market operates correctly. In 2007, the NASD merged with the New York Stock Exchange's regulation committee to form the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.
NASD may refer to:
This exam is administered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) (previously the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and provides an individual with the qualifications necessary in order to make different types of trades with all types of corporate securities, excluding commodities and futures. It is also one of the steps necessary in order for a member firm associate to register with FINRA. The Series 7 exam must be passed in order to take many other principal exams offered by FINRA.
Click: Series 7 - Exam Prep
SEC.gov | Series 7 Examinationhttps://www.sec.gov/.../series7....
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) administers the Series 7 ... can learn about the Series 7 exam and its qualification and registration process.
(60) Competitive advantage Condition which enables a company to operate in a more efficient or otherwise higher-quality manner than the companies it competes with, and which results in benefits accruing to that company.
Usage Example:
A company that streamlines*) its production chain will have a competitive advantage over rival businesses that need to outsource**) many processes along the way.
*) to streamline = make (an organization or system) more efficient and effective by employing faster or simpler working methods. E.g.:"the company streamlined its operations by removing whole layers of management"
Synonyms: efficient, smooth-running, well run
**) to outsource = (1) obtain (goods or a service) from an outside or foreign supplier, especially in place of an internal source. Eg.:"outsourcing components from other countries" (2) contract (work) out or abroad. E.g.: "you may choose to outsource this function to another company or do it yourself"
Synonyms: contract out, farm out, subcontract, delegate
(61) Gold A precious metal commodity that serves as a store of value and a medium of exchange. Gold has been used as a currency and as a way to stabilize the value of the U.S. dollar and other modern currencies.
Usage Example:
Demand for gold is much higher than the world's supply, so the commodity markets will therefore continue to see prices rise.
(62) Monetary policy The regulation of the money supply and interest rates by a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve Board in the U.S., in order to control inflation and stabilize currency. Monetary policy is one the two ways the government can impact the economy. By impacting the effective cost of money, the Federal Reserve can affect the amount of money that is spent by consumers and businesses.
Usage Example:
In the US, the Federal Reserve controls monetary policy with the goal of maintaining a healthy and stable inflation rate.
(63) Common stock Securities representing equity ownership in a corporation, providing voting rights, and entitling the holder to a share of the company's success through dividends and/or capital appreciation. In the event of liquidation, common stockholders have rights to a company's assets only after bondholders, other debt holders, and preferred stockholders have been satisfied. Typically, common stockholders receive one vote per share to elect the company's board of directors (although the number of votes is not always directly proportional to the number of shares owned). The board of directors is the group of individuals that represents the owners of the corporation and oversees major decisions for the company. Common shareholders also receive voting rights regarding other company matters such as stock splits and company objectives. In addition to voting rights, common shareholders sometimes enjoy what are called "preemptive rights". Preemptive rights allow common shareholders to maintain their proportional ownership in the company in the event that the company issues another offering of stock. This means that common shareholders with preemptive rights have the right but not the obligation to purchase as many new shares of the stock as it would take to maintain their proportional ownership in the company. Also called junior equity, another name for common stock, called junior because it is subordinate (= lower in rank or position) to preferred stock.
For more information see Common Stock vs. Preferred Stock, and Stock Classes at InvestorGuide.com.
Usage Example:
In the case of a company's liquidation, holders of common stock have rights to the assets but only after preferred shareholders and bondholders have received their money.
(64) equities
An instrument that signifies an ownership position, or equity, in a corporation, and represents a claim on its proportionate share in the corporation's assets and profits. A person holding such an ownership in the company does not enjoy the highest claim on the company's earnings. Instead, an equity holder's claim is subordinated to creditor's claims, and the equity holder will only enjoy distributions from earnings after these higher priority claims are satisfied. equity securities or corporate stock.
Usage Example:
Equities represent ownership in a company or asset but only after all debts are paid off.
(65) FCC - Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - FCC.gov: Homewww.fcc.govFCC. A U.S. government agency charged with the task of regulating all forms ofinterstate and international communication. The agency was created via the Communications Act of 1934, originally for the purpose of regulating radiolicensing. Over the years, as technology developed, various other forms of communication fell under the agency's jurisdiciton, including television and telecommunication mediums. The agency strives to reach several broad goals, including providing everyone with access to broadband services, and creatingefficient ways to communicate during emergency situations. The FCC has also created laws which speak to decency, and can punish entities for broadcasting content that doesn't follow the regulations. The Commissioners of the FCC are appointed by the President, and generally serve five year terms.
Usage Example:
The actions, regulations and standards set by the FCC are even more important today because content can be distributed in many different ways at high speeds.
(66) Fixed expenses
(1) Click: fixed cost (2) Real Estate: Expenses that remain the same regardless of occupancy. Interest expense is typically considered fixed, while electricity costs are considered to be variable because they typically change from month to month.
Usage Example:
The company's total fixed expenses went up for the year after the building's landlord increased rent for all tenants.(67) Alimony
Payments made to a separated or divorced spouse as required by a divorce decree or separation agreement. Alimony is different from child support, because it is based on the idea that a husband and wife must both support each other. A court may order an individual to pay alimony based on the circumstances, and may take into consideration a variety of factors including how long the couple has been married, how much money each individual is likely to make in the future, and if either party has any specific needs (such has health issues) which have a high financial expense. In general, women are granted alimony more frequently than men. Alimony is counted as income for the person receiving it, and is deducted from the income of the person paying it.
Usage Example:
Different factors influence how much alimony is awarded under divorce agreements, and each state in the US sets its own laws on how it is awarded.
(67) SPD Summary Plan Description.
A document containing a comprehensive description of a retirement plan, including the terms and conditions of participation. The summary plan description is distributed to potential participants in advance of enrollment.
Usage Example:
While going through the process of planning your retirement, creating a Summary Plan Description can help immediate family such as a spouse understand the conditions.
(68) Tax-deductible
An item or expense subtracted from adjusted gross income to reduce the amount of income subject to tax. Tax authorities specify the items that can be deducted from gross income for the purpose of reducing taxable income, and the specific rules governing the deductibility of each of these items. Some examples of tax-deductible items include mortgage interest, state and local taxes, unreimbursed business expenses, and charitable contributions.
Usage Example:
Many charitable contributions such as gifts of money, donated clothing or volunteer work that incurs expenses are considered tax-deductible because the amount of tax you have to pay is reduced due to these contributions.
(69) Credit card Any card that may be used repeatedly to borrow money or buy products and services on credit. Issued by banks, savings and loans, retail stores, and other businesses.
Usage Example:
One way to build up your credit score is to use a credit card for purchases and pay all the bills associated with it on time.
(70) Fiduciary
An individual, corporation or association holding assets for another party, often with the legal authority and duty to make decisions regarding financial matters on behalf of the other party.
Usage Example:
The child's adoptive parent became his fiduciary in order to look over the child's assets for which he was too young to hold.
(71) GAAP
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. A widely accepted set of rules, conventions, standards, and procedures for reporting financial information, as established by the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
Usage Example:
This historical cost principle, revenue recognition principle and objectivity principle are just a few examples of GAAP that help companies maintain a level of consistency across different financial statements.
(72) Volatility
The relative rate at which the price of a security moves up and down. Volatility is found by calculating the annualized standard deviation of daily change in price. If the price of a stock moves up and down rapidly over short time periods, it has high volatility. If the price almost never changes, it has low volatility.
Usage Example:
After the advanced investor studied the volatility of a particular stock she decided that the potential risk was not worth the reward
(73) Deviation
A statistical measure of the historical volatility of a mutual fund or portfolio, usually computed using 36 monthly returns. More generally, a measure of the extent to which numbers are spread around their average.
(74) Capital gain
The amount by which an asset's selling price exceeds its initial purchase price. A realized capital gain is an investment that has been sold at a profit. An unrealized capital gain is an investment that hasn't been sold yet but would result in a profit if sold. Capital gain is often used to mean realized capital gain. For most investments sold at a profit, including mutual funds, bonds, options,collectibles, homes, and businesses, the IRS is owed money called capital gains tax. opposite of capital lo
Usage Example: I was able to receive a capital gain once I sold my stock shares that I originally purchased for $2,000 at a higher price of $5,000.
(75) Credit default swap
A specific kind of counterparty agreement which allows the transfer of third party credit risk from one party to the other. One party in the swap is a lender and faces credit risk from a third party, and the counterparty in the credit default swap agrees to insure this risk in exchange of regular periodic payments (essentially an insurance premium). If the third party defaults, the party providing insurance will have to purchase from the insured party the defaulted asset. In turn, the insurer pays the insured the remaining interest on the debt, as well as the principal.
Usage Example:
After paying a premium, the buyer of the credit default swap was able to transfer the risk of his mortgage backed securities in case of a debt default.
(76) FOMC - Federal Open Market Committee. A 12-member committee which sets creditand interest rate policies for the Federal Reserve System. This committee consists of 7 members of the Board of Governors, and 5 of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank Presidents. This group, headed by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, sets interest rates either directly (by changing the discount rate) or through the use of open market operations (by buying and selling government securities which affects the federal funds rate). The discount rate is the rate at which the Federal Reserve Bank charges member banks for overnight loans. The Fed actually controls this rate directly, but it tends to have little impact on theactivities of banks because these funds are available elsewhere. This rate is set during the FOMC meetings by the regional banks and the Federal Reserve Board. The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which banks loan excess reserves to each other. While the Fed can't directly affect this rate, it effectively controls it through the way it buys and sells Treasuries to banks. There are 8 scheduled FOMC meetings during the course of each year. However, when circumstances dictate, the Fed can make inter-meeting rate changes.
Usage Example:
A recent and frequent topic of conversation for the FOMC is monetary policy exit strategy, as the US economy has continued to improve and inflation has remained below the Committee's 2% objective.
(77) Market Order
A buy or sell order in which the broker is to execute the order at the best price currently available. Also called at the market. These are often the lowest-commission trades because they involve very little work by the broker.
Usage Example:
It is safer to use a market order on high-volume stocks because you don't control how much you pay for the stock purchase or sale, the market does.
(78) OPEC
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. A collective of countries founded in 1960 that choose to collaborate in order to manage the exportation of their crude oil to the rest of the world. Because of their ability to adjust production levels, they possess a great deal of influence on the price of oil.
Usage Example:
Together OPEC's 12 member countries are responsible for about 40% of the world's oil supply, but because of instability in the Middle East, it may have issues producing enough oil to meet demand this year.
(79) Convenience sampling
An approach to gathering data that uses a readily available sample group, such as all consumers who visit a store on a given day. In convenience sampling, no attempt is made to use a random sample or a sample that represents a specific subset of the population. Statisticians have a low opinion of convenience sampling.
Usage Example:
Although convenience sampling may be quick and inexpensive, it is typically not as accurate as other sampling methods and can lead to future problems and criticisms.
(79) Forbearance
A lender's postponement of foreclosure in order to give the borrower time an opportunity to make up for overdue payments; Also a s general noun means: the quality of someone who is patient and able to deal with a difficult person or situation without becoming angry;
The act of forbearing : patience; the quality of being forbearing : leniency
Usage Example: The tenant completely forgot to pay his monthly rent, but thankfully the landlord sent him a forbearance and he was able to make up for the overdue payment in just a couple of days.
(80) Balance
(1) The amount of money in an account, equal to the net of credits and debits at that point in time for that account. Also called account balance (2) The amount remaining to be paid toward an obligation. For example, a homeowner who has paid down $25,000 of a $100,000 mortgage has a principal balance of $75,000. Balance also refers to the appraisal principle that states the greatest value in a property will occur when the type and size of the improvements are proportional to each other as well as the land.
Usage Example:
My balance wasn't big enough to buy a new car last month, but now that more money has been added to my account I can afford the purchase.
(81) Securitization
The process through which an issuer creates a financial instrument by combining other financial assets and then marketing different tiers of the repackaged instruments to investors. The process can encompass any type of financial asset and promotes liquidity in the marketplace. Mortgage-backed securities are a perfect example of securitization. By combining mortgages into one large pool, the issuer can divide the large pool into smaller pieces based on each individual mortgage's inherent risk of default and then sell those smaller pieces to investors. The process creates liquidity by enabling smaller investors to purchase shares in a larger asset pool. Using the mortgage-backed security example, individual retail investors are able to purchase portions of a mortgage as a type of bond. Without the securitization of mortgages, retail investors may not be able to afford to buy into a large pool of mortgages. Alternative Investments, MBS, Mortgage (82) Transaction 1. An agreement between a buyer and a seller to exchange an asset for payment. 2. In accounting, any event or condition recorded in the book of accounts.
Usage Example:
Buying my car was the first large transaction that I was able to complete on my own and without financial support from my parents.
(80) Index A statistical indicator providing a representation of the value of the securities which constitute it. Indices often serve as barometers for a given market or industry and benchmarks against which financial or economic performance is measured.
Usage Example:
When managers are faced with offers for their companies, they unfailingly point out how unrealistic market prices can be as an index of real value. (80) Savings Bonds A registered, non-callable, non-transferable bond issued by the U.S. Government, and backed by its full faith and credit. Savings bonds differ from other Treasury securities in several ways. Savings bonds are non-marketable, meaning that they cannot be bought and sold after they are purchased from the government; therefore, there is no secondary market for savings bonds. The tax benefits associated with savings bonds are significant. Like all treasury securities, they are exempt from state and local taxes, but in the specific case of savings bonds, all federal taxes may be deferred until the bond is redeemed. Therefore, even though interest will accrue, no taxes will be due until that money can be accessed. Additionally, if the money received at redemption is used to pay tuition expenses for the holder, a spouse or a dependent in the same year, the interest earned may be exempt from federal taxes as well. Face values range from $50 to $10,000. also called U.S. Savings bond.
Usage Example:
One of the safest investments for the public, Savings Bonds are used by the U.S. government to pay for its borrowing needs. (81) Roth IRA = individual retirement account (IRA) The Roth IRA was established by the click: Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-34) and named for its chief legislative sponsor, Senator click: William Roth of Delaware. A new type of IRA, established in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which allows taxpayers, subject to certain income limits, to save for retirement while allowing the savings to grow tax-free. Taxes are paid on contributions, but withdrawals, subject to certain rules, are not taxed at all. Contributions to the Roth IRA are invested in mutual funds, stocks, or other securities, and the amount that someone is able to contribute is dependent upon their income, age, and tax filing status. Unique features of a Roth IRA are that it does not require you to start making withdrawals at a certain age, and also it allows an individual to make a qualified withdrawal up to $10,000 for a first time home purchase.
Individual Retirement Arrangement is a certain type of retirement plan under US law that is generally not taxed, provided certain conditions are met. The tax law of the United States allows a tax reduction on a limited amount of saving for retirement. The Roth IRA's principal difference from most other tax advantaged retirement plans is that, rather than granting a tax break for money placed into the plan, the tax break is granted on the money withdrawn from the plan during retirement. Click: Roth IRA - Wikipedia
(82) 401(k) - click: Wikipedia
In the United States, a 401(k) plan is the tax-qualified, defined-contribution pension account defined in subsection 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code. Under the plan, retirement savings contributions are provided (and sometimes proportionately matched) by an employer, deducted from the employee's paycheck before taxation (therefore tax-deferred until withdrawn during retirement), and limited to a maximum pre-tax annual contribution of $17,500 (as of 2013). Definition for tax-deferred: In the investment world, "tax deferred" refers to investments on which applicable taxes (typically income taxes and capital gains taxes) are paid at a future date instead of in the period in which they are incurred. By deferring taxes on the returns of an investment, the investor benefits in two ways. The first benefit is tax-free growth: instead of paying tax on the returns of an investment, tax is paid only at a later date, leaving the investment to grow unhindered. The second benefit of tax deferral is that investments are usually made when a person is earning higher income and is taxed at a higher tax rate. Withdrawals are made from an investment account when a person is earning little or no income and is taxed at a lower rate. click: Tax deferral Alternative employer-provided defined-contribution pensions include click: 403(b) and click: 401(a), offering higher mandatory limits.
(83) click: 401(a) and click: 403(b) click green areas/words for further info
A 403(b) plan is a U.S. tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers (only Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3) organizations), cooperative hospital service organizations, and self-employed ministers in the United States. It has tax treatment similar to a 401(k) plan, especially after the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.Employee salary deferrals into a 403(b) plan are made before income tax is paid and allowed to grow tax-deferred until the money is taxed as income when withdrawn from the plan.
403(b) plans are also referred to as a tax-sheltered annuity although since 1974 they no longer are restricted to an annuity form and participants can also invest in mutual funds (84) Credit report A report containing detailed information on a person's credit history, including identifying information, credit accounts and loans, bankruptcies and late payments, and recent inquiries. It can be obtained by prospective lenders with the borrower's permission, to determine his or her creditworthiness.
Usage Example"
Financial advisors recommend checking your credit report on a regular basis to get an early warning about fraudulent activities.
(85) Advertising
Description or presentation of a product, idea, or organization, in order to induce individuals to buy, support, or approve of it.
Usage Example:
In recent years digital advertising spending has been growing at a faster pace than traditional advertising, i.e. TV, print, and radio.
(86) Bull market A prolonged period in which investment prices rise faster than their historical average. Bull markets can happen as a result of an economic recovery, an economic boom, or investor psychology. The longest and most famous bull market is the one that began in the early 1990s in which the U.S. equity markets grew at their fastest pace ever.
Also know as up market - The opposite of bear market
Usage Example:
A bull market is characterized by increased investing levels based on expectations of continued stock price increases.
(87) Social Security The comprehensive federal program of benefits providing workers and their dependents (= a person who is financially supported by another person) with retirement income, disability income, and other payments. The Social security tax is used to pay for the program.
Usage Example:
Increased life expectancy is among key factors putting pressure on the Social Security system.
(88) Escrow
The seller of the home decided to have the buyer use escrow to prove that the buyer was capable of making payment while final inspections were being carried out.
(89) GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Treaty organization affiliated with the United Nations whose purpose was to facilitate international trade. The primary actions of the organization were to freeze and reduce tariff levels on various . GATT was created in 1947, and was originally intended to become a part of the International Trade Organization (ITO); however, the ITO failed to be created, so the GATT was left as an independent organization. In 1994, GATT was superseded by the WTO - click: World Trade Organization click: World Trade Organization Usage Example:
Though credited with the expansion of international trade, some experts were critical of GATT saying that it favored developed countries and that it did not bring promised prosperity to the emerging economies.
(90) Alpha
A coefficient which measures risk-adjusted performance, factoring in the risk due to the specific security, rather than the overall market. A high value for alpha implies that the stock or mutual fund has performed better than would have been expected given its beta (volatility).
Usage Example:
Before deciding which shares to purchase, the investor looked at the alpha indicator to see which shares performed better than expected.
Definition of 'Alpha'
1. A measure of performance on a risk-adjusted basis. Alpha takes the volatility (price risk) of a mutual fund and compares its risk-adjusted performance to a benchmark index. The excess return of the fund relative to the return of the benchmark index is a fund's alpha.
2. The abnormal rate of return on a security or portfolio in excess of what would be predicted by an equilibrium model like the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Investopedia explains 'Alpha'
1. Alpha is one of five technical risk ratios; the others are (2) beta, (3) standard deviation, (4) R-squared, and (5) the Sharpe ratio. All of these indicators are intended to help investors determine the risk-reward profile of a mutual fund. Simply stated, alpha is often considered to represent the value that a portfolio manager adds to or subtracts from a fund's return.
A positive alpha of 1.0 means the fund has outperformed its benchmark (=see definition below) index by 1%. Correspondingly, a similar negative alpha would indicate an underperformance of 1%.
2. If a CAPM analysis estimates that a portfolio should earn 10% based on the risk of the portfolio but the portfolio actually earns 15%, the portfolio's alpha would be 5%. This 5% is the excess return over what was predicted in the CAPM model.
Now the definition is laid out, let's go deeper - Read click A Deeper Look At Alpha and click Adding Alpha Without Adding Risk
Filed Under: CAPM, Financial Theory, Mutual Funds, Portfolio Management, Statistics
Definition of 'Benchmark' = standard or point of reference against which things may be compared or assessed
A standard against which the performance of a security, mutual fund or investment manager can be measured. Generally, broad market and market-segment stock and bond indexes are used for this purpose. Investopedia explains 'Benchmark'
When evaluating the performance of any investment, it's important to compare it against an appropriate benchmark. In the financial field, there are dozens of indexes that analysts use to gauge the performance of any given investment including the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Russell 2000 Index and even competitor fund.
Filed Under: Dow Jones Industrial Average, Mutual Funds, Stock Market Terminology
Modern Portfolio Theory - MPT
Definition of 'Modern Portfolio Theory - MPT'
A theory on how risk-averse investors can construct portfolios to optimize or maximize expected return based on a given level of market risk, emphasizing that risk is an inherent part of higher reward.
Also called "portfolio theory" or "portfolio management theory."
Investopedia explains 'Modern Portfolio Theory - MPT'
According to the theory, it's possible to construct an "efficient frontier" of optimal portfolios offering the maximum possible expected return for a given level of risk. This theory was pioneered by click Harry Markowitz
in his paper "Portfolio Selection," published in 1952 by the Journal of Finance. click PORTFOLIO SELECTION - Markowitz
There are four basic steps involved in portfolio construction:
-Security valuation
-Asset allocation
-Portfolio optimization
-Performance measurement
(91) Discount rate
Following the economic crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has kept the discount rate at a low level.
(92) Amendment
A change or addition to a legal document which, when properly signed, has the same legal power as the original document.
Usage Example:
While 33 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were adopted by the Congress, only 27 of them were ratified by the states and became a part of the Constitution in
amendment (əˈmɛndmənt) — noun 1.the act of amending; 2. an addition, alteration, or improvement to a motion, document, etc. The Constitution was written and signed in 1787. It was a charter of government that came to be ratified by the states, and it continues to be the supreme law of the land. The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776. It was a list of grievances against the king of England intended to justify separation from British rule. (1)The Constitution of the United States: Questions and Answers - www.archives.gov/.../cons...
National Archives and Records Administration
(2) Constitution FAQs - National Constitution Center
(3) History of the United States Constitution (93) Keynesian Economics Named for economist John Maynard Keynes. An economic theory which advocates click: government intervention, or demand-side click: management of the click: economy, to achieve full employment and click: stable prices. Mr. Keynes was a radical economist who believed that it was the responsibility of the government to use click: fiscal resources to counteract the click: effects of economic problems such as click: recessions. He has been hailed as one of the most influential economists of his time. His ideas and philosophies are still referred to in click: present day economic literature. John Maynard Keynes lived through a turbulent period of British history. He was born in 1883, a subject of Queen Victoria. He died in 1946, having lived through the Boer War, both World Wars, and a worldwide economic depression. Click: Boer Wars
Keynes the Speculator
Keynes made and lost fortunes click: speculating. He liked to warn novices about the dangers of pitching their intellects against the vagaries (singular: vagary = an unexpected and inexplicable change in a situation or in someone's behavior; "the vagaries of the weather"; synonyms: change, fluctuation, unpredictability, variation) of financial markets, declaring: click: "markets can remain irrational far longer tha
Keynes and Investing
In an eighteen-year period encompassing the Great Depression (started in 1930 and lasted until the late 1930s or middle 1940s) click: Great Depression and World War 2 (1939-1945) click: World War II , click: Keynes's Chest Fund grew fivefold - a remarkable performance given that the UK stock market fell fifteen percent in the same period.
Usage Example:
Developed by John Maynard Keynes, Keynesian Economics rely on the belief that economic slumps (= drop, tumble, downturn, downswing, slide) can be prevented and optimal economic performance can be achieved by influencing a country's aggregated demand (aggregated = formed by the collection of units or particles into a body, mass, or amount. Examples: (1) The university receives more than half its aggregate income from government sources. (2) The team with the highest aggregate score wins. Concentrated Portfolios
One of Keynes's major contributions to investment methodology was his championing of click: concentrated investment portfolios. These, he proposed, should consist exclusively of investments about which the investor had become highly knowledgeable.
Keynesian Economics
Click: Keynes, the economist, is best known for his proposal that when national economies suffer a downturn, governments should borrow and spend money to boost economic activity. Part of the proceeds of the resulting economic growth should then be used to repay the debt.
War Settlements
Keynes played a vital role in the click: economic settlements implemented after World Wars 1 and 2. He fervently (fervently = having or showing great warmth or intensity of spirit, feeling, enthusiasm; a fervent admirer; a fervent plea) opposed the severe reparations imposed on Germany after WW 1. History vindicated (= clear someone of blame or suspicion) his position when Germany's economic collapse bred extremist groups, leading, ultimately, to WW 2.
(93) Capitalize
To classify a cost as a long-term investment, rather than charging it to current operations. A capitalized cost does not appear on the income statement, but instead appears as a debit on the long-term assets account and a credit on the cash account of the balance sheet. However, the depreciation expense related to the capitalized cost will appear as an expense on the income statement. Since the long-term assets account is larger due to the effect of capitalization, the depreciation costs are also proportionately larger.
Thus, the timing of expense recognition is changed, but eventually all expenses do get recognized on the income statement. Usage Example:
To reduce the negative impact of many large purchases on the company's current revenue, the accounting department decided to capitalize the expense and record it as a long-term asset, thus changing the time that the expense is recognized.
(94) Bait and switch An illegal tactic in which a seller advertises a product with the intention of persuading customers to purchase a more expensive product. When a seller uses this tactic, they frequently tell the customer that the original product is sold out or no longer available (even if the product is indeed still available), and push hard for the customer to purchase the costlier product. This tactic can be considered false advertising if the seller is not actually providing the original product, but if the item is available but the seller strongly encourages the customer towards another item, in general no legal action can be taken.
Usage Example:
One industry where the bait and switch strategy is widely used is the mortgage market - companies often tease customers with low mortgage rates but in reality most cannot qualify for these rates.
(95) Trader
A trader differs from an investor because a trader will hold assets for a shorter period of time and tends to capitalize on short-term trends.
(96) Cashier's check
A check which cannot bounce because its face amount is paid to the bank when it is issued, and the bank then assumes the obligation.
Usage Example:
One of the requirements of purchasing my new house was that I had to pay with a cashier's check because cashier's checks are treated as guaranteed funds since the bank is responsible for paying the amount.
(97) Title Insurance Insurance to protect a lender or owner against loss in the event of a property ownership dispute. Title insurance is most frequently used for mortgages, and is required by a large number of lenders. Title insurance has become necessary in the United States because, unlike many other countries, the United States (with the exception of a few areas) does not use a land registration system which could determine the validity of a claimed ownership of property.
Usage Example:
Most title insurance protects the lender in the case of a legal issue, but is paid for by the borrower.
(98) Public sector The part of the economy concerned with providing basic government services. The composition of the public sector varies by country, but in most countries the public sector includes such services as the police, military, public roads, public transit, primary education and healthcare for the poor. The public sector might provide services that non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service (such as public education), and services that encourage equal opportunity.
Usage Example:
Companies within the public sector can be one of two types - either funded directly by the government or publicly owned where a majority of the company's shares are owned by the government.
(99) Capital expenditure Money spent to acquire or upgrade physical assets such as buildings and machinery. also called capital spending or capital expense.
Usage Example
As the company's customer base grew, it had to also expand its operations and allocated extra capital expenditure to build a new factory.
(100) Medicare
A federal program that pays for certain health care expenses for people aged 65 or older. Enrolled individuals must pay deductibles and co-payments, but much of their medical costs are covered by the program. Medicare is lesscomprehensive than some other health care programs, but it is an important source of post-retirement health care. Medicare is divided into four parts. Part A covers hospital bills, Part B covers doctor bills, Part C provides the Medicare vs. Medicaid -- How and When Each Can Help You.
Usage Example:
Once I turned 65 I became eligible for Medicare health coverage since I had been contributing to the program throughout my entire career.
(101) amortization
Every month when I pay my mortgage the amortization on my loan decreases as I near paying off my loan completely.
(102) Fair Credit Reporting Act
Federal law giving individuals the right to examine their own credit history. The provisions of this law enable consumers to approach credit reporting agencies to see what the agencies may be saying about them, find out if their credit information has been used any third parties, and approach an agency to dispute wrongful use or interpretation of their information. The law also places restrictions on the consumer reporting agencies, such as requiring the agencies to provide each consumer one free report per year upon request, as well as restricting the amount of time certain information can remain on one's credit report.
Usage Example:
The creation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act has made checking your credit report and history a much easier process.
value, also called: par or par value
(103) PAR VALUE - also called FACE VALUE or PAR
The nominal dollar amount assigned to a security by the issuer. For an equity security, face value is usually a very small amount that bears no relationship to its market price, except for preferred stock, in which case face value is used to calculate dividend payments. For a debt security, face value is the amount repaid to the investor when the bond matures (usually, corporate bonds have a face value of $1000, municipal bonds $5000, and federal bonds $10,000). In the secondary market, a bond's price fluctuates with interest rates. If interest rates are higher than the coupon rate on a bond, the bond will be sold below face value (at a "discount"). If interest rates have fallen, the price will be sold above face value. here also called par or par value.
Usage Example
Despite the high market price, I got the shares at the lower, face value price since the issuer really wanted to sell his shares.
(104) ERP Enterprise Resource Planning. An amalgamation of a company's information systems designed to bind more closely a variety of company functions including human resources, inventories and financials while simultaneously linking Usage Example Since the implementation of ERP it has become much easier to access company files and analyze data.
(105) GDP Gross Domestic Product. The total market value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a given year, equal to total consumer, investment and government spending, plus the value of exports, minus the value of imports.
GDP Reporting
The GDP report is released at 8:30 am EST on the last day of each quarter and reflects the previous quarter. Growth in GDP is what matters, and the U.S. GDP growth has historically averaged about 2.5-3% per year but with substantial deviations (= A rate that is different from the manual rate).
Each initial GDP report will be revised twice before the final figure is settled upon: the "advance report" is followed by the "preliminary report" about a month later and a final report a month after that. Significant revisions to the advance number can cause additional ripples through the markets. The GDP numbers are reported in two forms: current dollar and constant dollar.
A commodity, currency or other type of capital that is tradable and can be stored for future use. It is a fundamental component of the economic system because it allows trade to occur with items that have inherent value. An example of a store of value is currency, which can be exchanged for goods and services. If the value of currency becomes unpredictable, such as in times of hyperinflation,investors and consumers will shift to alternative stores of value, such as gold,silver, precious stones and real estate.
Usage Example:
Gold is considered by some as a better store of value than currency because gold is not subject to hyperinflation like currency is. (106) (106) Raw Materials
Unfinished goods consumed by a manufacturer in providing finished goods. Classified as inventory in the current assets section of a company's balance sheet.
Usage Example:
All finished products once started as many different raw materials before going through the manufacturing process. (107) W-4 Form A tax form prepared by an employee for an employer indicating the employee's exemptions and Social Security number, and enabling the employer to determine the amount of taxes to be withheld for the employee.
Usage Example:
Upon getting hired at a new job most employers make new hires fill out a W-4 Form so the correct amount of taxes are withheld from the new hires paycheck. CPA - Certified Public Accountant An individual who has passed the uniform CPA examination administered by the American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants, and who has received state certification to practice accounting. To achieve this designation, an individual usually has to complete 5 years of education, and a certain degree of work experience. Additionally, once an individual becomes a CPA, they typically must complete a certain number of hours of continuing education each year.
Usage Example:
Before submitting your tax filing to the IRS, it would be beneficial to have a CPA look over it to ensure that your tax filing is correct.
(108) Gross National Product
GNP is the total value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a particular year, plus income earned by its citizens (including income of those located abroad), minus income of non-residents located in that country. Basically, GNP measures the value of goods and services that the country's citizens produced regardless of their location. GNP is one measure of the economic condition of a country, under the assumption that a higher GNP leads to a higher quality of living, all other things being equal.
For further explanation, see GDP vs. GNP -- What's the Difference? Click the links below - 2 next lines
GDP Click: Definition | Investopedia
GNP Click: Definition | Investopedia
(109) Bond
A debt instrument issued for a period of more than one year with the purpose of raising capital by borrowing. The Federal government, states, cities,corporations, and many other types of institutions sell bonds. Generally, a bond is a promise to repay the principal along with interest (coupons) on a specified date (maturity). Some bonds do not pay interest, but all bonds require a repayment of principal. When an investor buys a bond, he/she becomes a creditor of the issuer. However, the buyer does not gain any kind of ownership rights to the issuer, unlike in the case of equities. On the hand, a bond holder has a greater claim on an issuer's income than a shareholder in the case of distress (this is true for all creditors). Bonds are often divided into different categories based on tax status, credit quality, issuer type, maturity and secured/unsecured (and there are several other ways to classify bonds as well)...
Usage Example:
Governments issue bonds to their citizens to help fund projects when they don't have enough cash on hand with a promise to repay the principal.
(110) EBITDA
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. An approximate measure of a company's operating cash flow based on data from the company's income statement. Calculated by looking at earnings before the deduction of interest expenses, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. The formula is:
EBITDA = Revenue -- Expenses (excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization)
In business, amortization refers to spreading payments over multiple periods. The term is used for two separate processes: amortization of loans and amortization of intangible assets.
This earnings measure is of particular interest in cases where companies have large amounts of fixed assets which are subject to heavy depreciation charges (such as manufacturing companies) or in the case where a company has a large amount of acquired intangible assets on its books and is thus subject to large amortization charges (such as a company that has purchased a brand or a company that has recently made a large acquisition). Since the distortionary accounting and financing effects on company earnings do not factor into EBITDA, it is a good way of comparing companies within and across industries. This measure is also of interest to a company's creditors, since EBITDA is essentially the income that a company has free for interest payments.
Learn more about this term
Usage Example
Many companies use EBITDA to compare profitability among their competitors and other companies within their industry since it eliminates the effects of accounting and financing decisions.
(111) Non-profit organization - An incorporated organization which exists for educational or charitable reasons, and from which its shareholders or trustees do not benefit financially. Also called not-for-profit organization.
Any money earned by a non-profit organization must be retained by the organization, and used for its own expenses, operations, and programs. Many non-profit organizations also seek tax exempt status, and may also be exempt from local taxes including sales taxes or property taxes. Well-known non-profit organizations include Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, and United Way.
Usage Example
World Wildlife Fund is a well-known non-profit organization because it exists to raise money to help protect endangered species and preserve at-risk places.
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List of food origins
Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_origins
Corn, beans and squash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BCE Mesoamerica is a region and cultural area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize,Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas after Norte Chico(Caral-Supe) in present-day northern coastal. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America. *) manioc another term for click: cassava.
Contents
Various squashes such as Turban, Sweet Dumpling, Carnival, Gold Acorn, Delicata, Pizza trees, Buttercup and Golden Nugget.
Corn, beans and squash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BCE. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America. In what is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower, sumpweed andgoosefoot around 2500 BCE.[1]
Ancient American Crops[2]CerealsMaize (corn), maygrass, and little barleyPseudocerealsAmaranth, quinoa, erect knotweed, sumpweed, and sunflowersPulsesCommon beans, tepary beans, scarlet runner beans, lima beans, and peanutsFiberCotton, yucca, and agaveRoots and TubersJicama, manioc (cassava), potatoes, sweet potatoes, sunchokes, oca, mashua, ulloco, arrowroot, yacon, leren, and groundnutsFruitsTomatoes, chili peppers, avocados, cranberries, blueberries, huckleberries, cherimoyas, papayas, pawpaws, passionfruit, pineapples, soursops and strawberriesMelonsSquashesMeat and poultryturkey, bison, muscovy ducks, and guinea pigsNutsPeanut, black walnuts, shagbark hickory, pecans and hickory nutsOtherChocolate, Canna, tobacco, Chicle, rubber, maple syrup, birch syrup and vanillaTimeline of American Crop Cultivation[3]DateCropsLocation7000 BCEMaizeMexico5000 BCECottonMexico4800 BCESquash
Chili Peppers
Avocados
AmaranthMexico4000 BCEMaize
Common BeanMexico4000 BCEGround NutSouth America2000 BCESunflowers
BeansNorth America[edit]North American Nuts[edit]
Fruits of North American origin[edit]Canada, Mexico, and the United States are home to a surprising number of edible fruit; however, only three are commercially grown/known on a global scale (grapes, cranberries, and blueberries.) Many of the fruits below are still eaten locally as they have been for centuries and others are generating renewed interest by eco-friendly gardeners (less need for bug control) and chefs alike.
Pacific North West[edit]Provisionally, this is primarily southern Coast Salish, though much is in common with Coast Salish overall.
Anthropogenic grasslands were maintained. The south Coast Salish may have had more vegetables and land game than people farther north or on the outer coast. Salmon and other fish were staples in this area. There was kokanee, a freshwater fish in the Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish watersheds. Shellfish were abundant. Butter clams, horse clams, and cockles were dried for trade.
Hunting was specialized; professions were probably sea hunters, land hunters, fowlers. Water fowl were captured on moonless nights using strategic flares.
The managed grasslands not only provided game habitat, but vegetable sprouts, roots, bulbs, berries, and nuts were foraged from them as well as found wild. The most important were probably bracken and camas; wapato especially for the Duwamish. Many, many varieties of berries were foraged; some were harvested with comblike devices not reportedly used elsewhere. Acorns were relished but were not widely available. Regional tribes went in autumn to the Nisqually Flats (Nisqually plains) to harvest them.[5] Indeed, the region was so abundant that the southern Puget Sound as a whole had one of the only sedentary hunter-gatherer societies that has ever existed.[citation needed]
Central America[edit]Central America[edit] coffee
South America[edit]South America[edit]
Middle East[edit]
Fertile Crescent, often seen as the birthplace of civilization.
See also: Ancient Egyptian cuisine
Neolithic founder crops[edit]The Neolithic founder crops (or primary domesticates) are the eight plant species that were domesticated by early Holocene (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region of southwest Asia, and which formed the basis of systematic agriculture in the Middle East, North Africa, India, Persia and (later) Europe. They consist of flax, three cereals and four pulses, and are the first known domesticated plants in the world. Although domesticated rye (Secale cereale) occurs in the final Epi-Palaeolithic strata at Tell Abu Hureyra (the earliest instance of a domesticated plant species), it was an insignificant in the Neolithic Period of southwest Asia and only became common with the spread of farming into northern Europe several millennia later.
Cereals and Pseudocereals[edit]
Europe[edit]
Grapes
Asia[edit]Tibetan plateau
North Asia[edit]Korean Peninsula[edit]Fruits of Asian origin[edit]Some fruits native to Asia or of Asian Origin.
Indus Valley[edit]See also: Origins of North Indian foods
Around 7000 BCE, sesame, eggplant, and humped cattle had been domesticated in the Indus Valley.[9] By 3000 BCE, turmeric, cardamom, black pepper and mustard were harvested in India.[10]
China[edit]Main article: Chinese herbology
Africa[edit]
Helmeted Guinea Fowl in tall grass.
The first instances of domestication of plants for agricultural purposes in Africa occurred in the Sahel region circa 5000 BCE, when sorghum and African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) began to be cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small Guineafowl were domesticated.
Around 4000 BCE the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink rather significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and helped to cause migrations of farming communities to the more humid climate of West Africa.[11]
The most famous crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands is coffee. In addition, khat, ensete, noog, teff and finger millet were also domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands. Crops domesticated in the Sahel region include sorghum and pearl millet. The Kola nut, extracts from which became an ingredient in Coca-Cola, was first domesticated in West Africa. Other crops domesticated in West Africa include African rice, African yams, black-eyed peas and the oil palm.[1]
Polynesia[edit]Australia[edit]Fruits of Australian origin[edit]Although the fruits of Australia were eaten for thousands of years as bushfood by Aboriginal people, they have only been recently recognized for their culinary qualities by non-indigenous people. Many are regarded for their piquancy and spice-like qualities for use in cooking and preserves. Some Australian fruits also have exceptional nutritional qualities, including high vitamin C and other antioxidants.
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A professional opinion, usually written, of the market value of a property, such as a home, business, or other asset whose market price is not easily determined. Usually required when a property is sold, taxed, insured, or financed.
Usage Example:
When selling a home, the owner may have an appraisal completed to find out its current value and at what price to put it on the market for.
(55) Intellectual property
Any intangible asset that consists of human knowledge and ideas. Some examples are patents, copyrights, trademarks and software. Most such assets cannot be recognized on a balance sheet when internally generated, since it is very difficult to objectively value intellectual property assets (slightly different rules apply in the case of software & apps). They can, however, be included in a balance sheet if acquired, which allows a more accurate valuation for the asset (that is, the acquisition cost).
Usage Example:
The patent lawsuits between Apple and Samsung over the past few years had to do with intellectual property of smartphone design features that were allegedly stolen.
(56) Adjustable Rate Mortgage - ARM A mortgage with an interest rate that may change, usually in response to changes in the Treasury Bill rate or the prime rate. The purpose of the interest rate adjustment is primarily to bring the interest rate on the mortgage in line with market rates. The mortgage holder is protected by a maximum interest rate (called a ceiling), which might be reset annually. ARMs usually start with better rates than fixed rate mortgages, in order to compensate the borrower for the additional risk that future interest rate fluctuations will create.
Usage Example: The borrower picked a 3/27 Adjustable Rate Mortgage that has a fixed interest rate for the first 3 years but then floats for the remaining 27 years of the mortgage.
(57) Qualitative research Research generated outside the framework of a quantitative approach (quantitative = relating to, measuring, or measured by the quantity of something rather than its quality; "quantitative analysis" = analysis of a situation or event, especially a financial market, by means of complex mathematical and statistical modeling). Collected data is not subjected to formulaic (= constituting or containing a verbal formula or set form of words) analysis for the purpose of generating projections.
Usage Example:
The company decided to use qualitative research to gauge the needs of its customers by asking a focus group specific questions, as opposed to analyzing numbers and data in a quantitative approach.
(58) Trademark
A distinctive name, symbol, motto, or design that legally identifies a company or its products and services, and sometimes prevents others from using identical or similar marks
Usage Example:
McDonald's golden arch building design is an example of a very famous trademark that adds value because it is instantly recognizable and unique to the chain.
(59) Nasdaq
A computerized system established by the NASD (= National Association of Securities Dealers, the former name of the American self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers, now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)) to facilitate trading by providing broker/dealers with current bid and ask price quotes on over-the-counter stocks and some listed stocks. Unlike the Amex and the NYSE, the Nasdaq (once an acronym for the National Association of securities Dealers Automated Quotation system) does not have a physical trading floor that brings together buyers and sellers. Instead, all trading on the Nasdaq exchange is done over a network of computers and telephones. Also, the Nasdaq does not employ market specialists to buy unfilled orders like the NYSE does. The Nasdaq began when brokers started informally trading via telephone; the network was later formalized and linked by computer in the early 1970s. In 1998 the parent company of the Nasdaq purchased the Amex, although the two continue to operate separately. Orders for stock are sent out electronically on the Nasdaq, where market makers list their buy and sell prices. Once a price is agreed upon, the transaction is executed electronically.
Usage Example:
Nasdaq is just one of many electronic marketplaces and primarily trades equities, options, derivatives (= something that is based on another source) and commodities (= a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as copper or coffee)
across about 50 different countries.
Investopedia Definition of 'National Association Of Securities Dealers - NASD'
The NASD was a self-regulatory organization of the securities industry responsible for the operation and regulation of the Nasdaq stock market and over-the-counter markets. It also administrated exams for investment professionals, such as the Series 7 exam*).
Investopedia explains 'National Association Of Securities Dealers - NASD'
The NASD watches over the Nasdaq to make sure the market operates correctly. In 2007, the NASD merged with the New York Stock Exchange's regulation committee to form the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or FINRA.
NASD may refer to:
- National Agricultural Safety Database, maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- National Amalgamated Stevedores*) and Dockers**), a British trade union *) stevedore = a person employed, or a contractor engaged, at a dock to load and unload cargo from ships - **) docker = another term for longshoreman =
- a person employed in a port to load and unload ships
- National Association of Securities Dealers, the former name of the American self-regulatory organization for broker-dealers, now known as the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)
- Network-Attached Secure Disks, a 1997–2001 research project of Carnegie Mellon University, with the goal of providing cost-effective scalable storage bandwidth
- Network Audio System Daemon, software for transparent remote access to local audio hardware
- Norristown Area School District, located in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
- North Allegheny School District, located in Wexford, Pennsylvania
This exam is administered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) (previously the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) and provides an individual with the qualifications necessary in order to make different types of trades with all types of corporate securities, excluding commodities and futures. It is also one of the steps necessary in order for a member firm associate to register with FINRA. The Series 7 exam must be passed in order to take many other principal exams offered by FINRA.
Click: Series 7 - Exam Prep
SEC.gov | Series 7 Examinationhttps://www.sec.gov/.../series7....
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) administers the Series 7 ... can learn about the Series 7 exam and its qualification and registration process.
(60) Competitive advantage Condition which enables a company to operate in a more efficient or otherwise higher-quality manner than the companies it competes with, and which results in benefits accruing to that company.
Usage Example:
A company that streamlines*) its production chain will have a competitive advantage over rival businesses that need to outsource**) many processes along the way.
*) to streamline = make (an organization or system) more efficient and effective by employing faster or simpler working methods. E.g.:"the company streamlined its operations by removing whole layers of management"
Synonyms: efficient, smooth-running, well run
**) to outsource = (1) obtain (goods or a service) from an outside or foreign supplier, especially in place of an internal source. Eg.:"outsourcing components from other countries" (2) contract (work) out or abroad. E.g.: "you may choose to outsource this function to another company or do it yourself"
Synonyms: contract out, farm out, subcontract, delegate
(61) Gold A precious metal commodity that serves as a store of value and a medium of exchange. Gold has been used as a currency and as a way to stabilize the value of the U.S. dollar and other modern currencies.
Usage Example:
Demand for gold is much higher than the world's supply, so the commodity markets will therefore continue to see prices rise.
(62) Monetary policy The regulation of the money supply and interest rates by a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve Board in the U.S., in order to control inflation and stabilize currency. Monetary policy is one the two ways the government can impact the economy. By impacting the effective cost of money, the Federal Reserve can affect the amount of money that is spent by consumers and businesses.
Usage Example:
In the US, the Federal Reserve controls monetary policy with the goal of maintaining a healthy and stable inflation rate.
(63) Common stock Securities representing equity ownership in a corporation, providing voting rights, and entitling the holder to a share of the company's success through dividends and/or capital appreciation. In the event of liquidation, common stockholders have rights to a company's assets only after bondholders, other debt holders, and preferred stockholders have been satisfied. Typically, common stockholders receive one vote per share to elect the company's board of directors (although the number of votes is not always directly proportional to the number of shares owned). The board of directors is the group of individuals that represents the owners of the corporation and oversees major decisions for the company. Common shareholders also receive voting rights regarding other company matters such as stock splits and company objectives. In addition to voting rights, common shareholders sometimes enjoy what are called "preemptive rights". Preemptive rights allow common shareholders to maintain their proportional ownership in the company in the event that the company issues another offering of stock. This means that common shareholders with preemptive rights have the right but not the obligation to purchase as many new shares of the stock as it would take to maintain their proportional ownership in the company. Also called junior equity, another name for common stock, called junior because it is subordinate (= lower in rank or position) to preferred stock.
For more information see Common Stock vs. Preferred Stock, and Stock Classes at InvestorGuide.com.
Usage Example:
In the case of a company's liquidation, holders of common stock have rights to the assets but only after preferred shareholders and bondholders have received their money.
(64) equities
An instrument that signifies an ownership position, or equity, in a corporation, and represents a claim on its proportionate share in the corporation's assets and profits. A person holding such an ownership in the company does not enjoy the highest claim on the company's earnings. Instead, an equity holder's claim is subordinated to creditor's claims, and the equity holder will only enjoy distributions from earnings after these higher priority claims are satisfied. equity securities or corporate stock.
Usage Example:
Equities represent ownership in a company or asset but only after all debts are paid off.
(65) FCC - Federal Communications Commission (FCC) - FCC.gov: Homewww.fcc.govFCC. A U.S. government agency charged with the task of regulating all forms ofinterstate and international communication. The agency was created via the Communications Act of 1934, originally for the purpose of regulating radiolicensing. Over the years, as technology developed, various other forms of communication fell under the agency's jurisdiciton, including television and telecommunication mediums. The agency strives to reach several broad goals, including providing everyone with access to broadband services, and creatingefficient ways to communicate during emergency situations. The FCC has also created laws which speak to decency, and can punish entities for broadcasting content that doesn't follow the regulations. The Commissioners of the FCC are appointed by the President, and generally serve five year terms.
Usage Example:
The actions, regulations and standards set by the FCC are even more important today because content can be distributed in many different ways at high speeds.
(66) Fixed expenses
(1) Click: fixed cost (2) Real Estate: Expenses that remain the same regardless of occupancy. Interest expense is typically considered fixed, while electricity costs are considered to be variable because they typically change from month to month.
Usage Example:
The company's total fixed expenses went up for the year after the building's landlord increased rent for all tenants.(67) Alimony
Payments made to a separated or divorced spouse as required by a divorce decree or separation agreement. Alimony is different from child support, because it is based on the idea that a husband and wife must both support each other. A court may order an individual to pay alimony based on the circumstances, and may take into consideration a variety of factors including how long the couple has been married, how much money each individual is likely to make in the future, and if either party has any specific needs (such has health issues) which have a high financial expense. In general, women are granted alimony more frequently than men. Alimony is counted as income for the person receiving it, and is deducted from the income of the person paying it.
Usage Example:
Different factors influence how much alimony is awarded under divorce agreements, and each state in the US sets its own laws on how it is awarded.
(67) SPD Summary Plan Description.
A document containing a comprehensive description of a retirement plan, including the terms and conditions of participation. The summary plan description is distributed to potential participants in advance of enrollment.
Usage Example:
While going through the process of planning your retirement, creating a Summary Plan Description can help immediate family such as a spouse understand the conditions.
(68) Tax-deductible
An item or expense subtracted from adjusted gross income to reduce the amount of income subject to tax. Tax authorities specify the items that can be deducted from gross income for the purpose of reducing taxable income, and the specific rules governing the deductibility of each of these items. Some examples of tax-deductible items include mortgage interest, state and local taxes, unreimbursed business expenses, and charitable contributions.
Usage Example:
Many charitable contributions such as gifts of money, donated clothing or volunteer work that incurs expenses are considered tax-deductible because the amount of tax you have to pay is reduced due to these contributions.
(69) Credit card Any card that may be used repeatedly to borrow money or buy products and services on credit. Issued by banks, savings and loans, retail stores, and other businesses.
Usage Example:
One way to build up your credit score is to use a credit card for purchases and pay all the bills associated with it on time.
(70) Fiduciary
An individual, corporation or association holding assets for another party, often with the legal authority and duty to make decisions regarding financial matters on behalf of the other party.
Usage Example:
The child's adoptive parent became his fiduciary in order to look over the child's assets for which he was too young to hold.
(71) GAAP
Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. A widely accepted set of rules, conventions, standards, and procedures for reporting financial information, as established by the Financial Accounting Standards Board.
Usage Example:
This historical cost principle, revenue recognition principle and objectivity principle are just a few examples of GAAP that help companies maintain a level of consistency across different financial statements.
(72) Volatility
The relative rate at which the price of a security moves up and down. Volatility is found by calculating the annualized standard deviation of daily change in price. If the price of a stock moves up and down rapidly over short time periods, it has high volatility. If the price almost never changes, it has low volatility.
Usage Example:
After the advanced investor studied the volatility of a particular stock she decided that the potential risk was not worth the reward
(73) Deviation
A statistical measure of the historical volatility of a mutual fund or portfolio, usually computed using 36 monthly returns. More generally, a measure of the extent to which numbers are spread around their average.
(74) Capital gain
The amount by which an asset's selling price exceeds its initial purchase price. A realized capital gain is an investment that has been sold at a profit. An unrealized capital gain is an investment that hasn't been sold yet but would result in a profit if sold. Capital gain is often used to mean realized capital gain. For most investments sold at a profit, including mutual funds, bonds, options,collectibles, homes, and businesses, the IRS is owed money called capital gains tax. opposite of capital lo
Usage Example: I was able to receive a capital gain once I sold my stock shares that I originally purchased for $2,000 at a higher price of $5,000.
(75) Credit default swap
A specific kind of counterparty agreement which allows the transfer of third party credit risk from one party to the other. One party in the swap is a lender and faces credit risk from a third party, and the counterparty in the credit default swap agrees to insure this risk in exchange of regular periodic payments (essentially an insurance premium). If the third party defaults, the party providing insurance will have to purchase from the insured party the defaulted asset. In turn, the insurer pays the insured the remaining interest on the debt, as well as the principal.
Usage Example:
After paying a premium, the buyer of the credit default swap was able to transfer the risk of his mortgage backed securities in case of a debt default.
(76) FOMC - Federal Open Market Committee. A 12-member committee which sets creditand interest rate policies for the Federal Reserve System. This committee consists of 7 members of the Board of Governors, and 5 of the 12 Federal Reserve Bank Presidents. This group, headed by the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, sets interest rates either directly (by changing the discount rate) or through the use of open market operations (by buying and selling government securities which affects the federal funds rate). The discount rate is the rate at which the Federal Reserve Bank charges member banks for overnight loans. The Fed actually controls this rate directly, but it tends to have little impact on theactivities of banks because these funds are available elsewhere. This rate is set during the FOMC meetings by the regional banks and the Federal Reserve Board. The federal funds rate is the interest rate at which banks loan excess reserves to each other. While the Fed can't directly affect this rate, it effectively controls it through the way it buys and sells Treasuries to banks. There are 8 scheduled FOMC meetings during the course of each year. However, when circumstances dictate, the Fed can make inter-meeting rate changes.
Usage Example:
A recent and frequent topic of conversation for the FOMC is monetary policy exit strategy, as the US economy has continued to improve and inflation has remained below the Committee's 2% objective.
(77) Market Order
A buy or sell order in which the broker is to execute the order at the best price currently available. Also called at the market. These are often the lowest-commission trades because they involve very little work by the broker.
Usage Example:
It is safer to use a market order on high-volume stocks because you don't control how much you pay for the stock purchase or sale, the market does.
(78) OPEC
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. A collective of countries founded in 1960 that choose to collaborate in order to manage the exportation of their crude oil to the rest of the world. Because of their ability to adjust production levels, they possess a great deal of influence on the price of oil.
Usage Example:
Together OPEC's 12 member countries are responsible for about 40% of the world's oil supply, but because of instability in the Middle East, it may have issues producing enough oil to meet demand this year.
(79) Convenience sampling
An approach to gathering data that uses a readily available sample group, such as all consumers who visit a store on a given day. In convenience sampling, no attempt is made to use a random sample or a sample that represents a specific subset of the population. Statisticians have a low opinion of convenience sampling.
Usage Example:
Although convenience sampling may be quick and inexpensive, it is typically not as accurate as other sampling methods and can lead to future problems and criticisms.
(79) Forbearance
A lender's postponement of foreclosure in order to give the borrower time an opportunity to make up for overdue payments; Also a s general noun means: the quality of someone who is patient and able to deal with a difficult person or situation without becoming angry;
The act of forbearing : patience; the quality of being forbearing : leniency
Usage Example: The tenant completely forgot to pay his monthly rent, but thankfully the landlord sent him a forbearance and he was able to make up for the overdue payment in just a couple of days.
(80) Balance
(1) The amount of money in an account, equal to the net of credits and debits at that point in time for that account. Also called account balance (2) The amount remaining to be paid toward an obligation. For example, a homeowner who has paid down $25,000 of a $100,000 mortgage has a principal balance of $75,000. Balance also refers to the appraisal principle that states the greatest value in a property will occur when the type and size of the improvements are proportional to each other as well as the land.
Usage Example:
My balance wasn't big enough to buy a new car last month, but now that more money has been added to my account I can afford the purchase.
(81) Securitization
The process through which an issuer creates a financial instrument by combining other financial assets and then marketing different tiers of the repackaged instruments to investors. The process can encompass any type of financial asset and promotes liquidity in the marketplace. Mortgage-backed securities are a perfect example of securitization. By combining mortgages into one large pool, the issuer can divide the large pool into smaller pieces based on each individual mortgage's inherent risk of default and then sell those smaller pieces to investors. The process creates liquidity by enabling smaller investors to purchase shares in a larger asset pool. Using the mortgage-backed security example, individual retail investors are able to purchase portions of a mortgage as a type of bond. Without the securitization of mortgages, retail investors may not be able to afford to buy into a large pool of mortgages. Alternative Investments, MBS, Mortgage (82) Transaction 1. An agreement between a buyer and a seller to exchange an asset for payment. 2. In accounting, any event or condition recorded in the book of accounts.
Usage Example:
Buying my car was the first large transaction that I was able to complete on my own and without financial support from my parents.
(80) Index A statistical indicator providing a representation of the value of the securities which constitute it. Indices often serve as barometers for a given market or industry and benchmarks against which financial or economic performance is measured.
Usage Example:
When managers are faced with offers for their companies, they unfailingly point out how unrealistic market prices can be as an index of real value. (80) Savings Bonds A registered, non-callable, non-transferable bond issued by the U.S. Government, and backed by its full faith and credit. Savings bonds differ from other Treasury securities in several ways. Savings bonds are non-marketable, meaning that they cannot be bought and sold after they are purchased from the government; therefore, there is no secondary market for savings bonds. The tax benefits associated with savings bonds are significant. Like all treasury securities, they are exempt from state and local taxes, but in the specific case of savings bonds, all federal taxes may be deferred until the bond is redeemed. Therefore, even though interest will accrue, no taxes will be due until that money can be accessed. Additionally, if the money received at redemption is used to pay tuition expenses for the holder, a spouse or a dependent in the same year, the interest earned may be exempt from federal taxes as well. Face values range from $50 to $10,000. also called U.S. Savings bond.
Usage Example:
One of the safest investments for the public, Savings Bonds are used by the U.S. government to pay for its borrowing needs. (81) Roth IRA = individual retirement account (IRA) The Roth IRA was established by the click: Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-34) and named for its chief legislative sponsor, Senator click: William Roth of Delaware. A new type of IRA, established in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which allows taxpayers, subject to certain income limits, to save for retirement while allowing the savings to grow tax-free. Taxes are paid on contributions, but withdrawals, subject to certain rules, are not taxed at all. Contributions to the Roth IRA are invested in mutual funds, stocks, or other securities, and the amount that someone is able to contribute is dependent upon their income, age, and tax filing status. Unique features of a Roth IRA are that it does not require you to start making withdrawals at a certain age, and also it allows an individual to make a qualified withdrawal up to $10,000 for a first time home purchase.
Individual Retirement Arrangement is a certain type of retirement plan under US law that is generally not taxed, provided certain conditions are met. The tax law of the United States allows a tax reduction on a limited amount of saving for retirement. The Roth IRA's principal difference from most other tax advantaged retirement plans is that, rather than granting a tax break for money placed into the plan, the tax break is granted on the money withdrawn from the plan during retirement. Click: Roth IRA - Wikipedia
(82) 401(k) - click: Wikipedia
In the United States, a 401(k) plan is the tax-qualified, defined-contribution pension account defined in subsection 401(k) of the Internal Revenue Code. Under the plan, retirement savings contributions are provided (and sometimes proportionately matched) by an employer, deducted from the employee's paycheck before taxation (therefore tax-deferred until withdrawn during retirement), and limited to a maximum pre-tax annual contribution of $17,500 (as of 2013). Definition for tax-deferred: In the investment world, "tax deferred" refers to investments on which applicable taxes (typically income taxes and capital gains taxes) are paid at a future date instead of in the period in which they are incurred. By deferring taxes on the returns of an investment, the investor benefits in two ways. The first benefit is tax-free growth: instead of paying tax on the returns of an investment, tax is paid only at a later date, leaving the investment to grow unhindered. The second benefit of tax deferral is that investments are usually made when a person is earning higher income and is taxed at a higher tax rate. Withdrawals are made from an investment account when a person is earning little or no income and is taxed at a lower rate. click: Tax deferral Alternative employer-provided defined-contribution pensions include click: 403(b) and click: 401(a), offering higher mandatory limits.
(83) click: 401(a) and click: 403(b) click green areas/words for further info
A 403(b) plan is a U.S. tax-advantaged retirement savings plan available for public education organizations, some non-profit employers (only Internal Revenue Code 501(c)(3) organizations), cooperative hospital service organizations, and self-employed ministers in the United States. It has tax treatment similar to a 401(k) plan, especially after the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001.Employee salary deferrals into a 403(b) plan are made before income tax is paid and allowed to grow tax-deferred until the money is taxed as income when withdrawn from the plan.
403(b) plans are also referred to as a tax-sheltered annuity although since 1974 they no longer are restricted to an annuity form and participants can also invest in mutual funds (84) Credit report A report containing detailed information on a person's credit history, including identifying information, credit accounts and loans, bankruptcies and late payments, and recent inquiries. It can be obtained by prospective lenders with the borrower's permission, to determine his or her creditworthiness.
Usage Example"
Financial advisors recommend checking your credit report on a regular basis to get an early warning about fraudulent activities.
(85) Advertising
Description or presentation of a product, idea, or organization, in order to induce individuals to buy, support, or approve of it.
Usage Example:
In recent years digital advertising spending has been growing at a faster pace than traditional advertising, i.e. TV, print, and radio.
(86) Bull market A prolonged period in which investment prices rise faster than their historical average. Bull markets can happen as a result of an economic recovery, an economic boom, or investor psychology. The longest and most famous bull market is the one that began in the early 1990s in which the U.S. equity markets grew at their fastest pace ever.
Also know as up market - The opposite of bear market
Usage Example:
A bull market is characterized by increased investing levels based on expectations of continued stock price increases.
(87) Social Security The comprehensive federal program of benefits providing workers and their dependents (= a person who is financially supported by another person) with retirement income, disability income, and other payments. The Social security tax is used to pay for the program.
Usage Example:
Increased life expectancy is among key factors putting pressure on the Social Security system.
(88) Escrow
- Documents, real estate, money, or securities deposited with a neutral third party (the escrow agent) to be delivered upon fulfillment of certain conditions, as established in a written agreement.
- An account held by the lender into which a insurance.
The seller of the home decided to have the buyer use escrow to prove that the buyer was capable of making payment while final inspections were being carried out.
(89) GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. Treaty organization affiliated with the United Nations whose purpose was to facilitate international trade. The primary actions of the organization were to freeze and reduce tariff levels on various . GATT was created in 1947, and was originally intended to become a part of the International Trade Organization (ITO); however, the ITO failed to be created, so the GATT was left as an independent organization. In 1994, GATT was superseded by the WTO - click: World Trade Organization click: World Trade Organization Usage Example:
Though credited with the expansion of international trade, some experts were critical of GATT saying that it favored developed countries and that it did not bring promised prosperity to the emerging economies.
(90) Alpha
A coefficient which measures risk-adjusted performance, factoring in the risk due to the specific security, rather than the overall market. A high value for alpha implies that the stock or mutual fund has performed better than would have been expected given its beta (volatility).
Usage Example:
Before deciding which shares to purchase, the investor looked at the alpha indicator to see which shares performed better than expected.
Definition of 'Alpha'
1. A measure of performance on a risk-adjusted basis. Alpha takes the volatility (price risk) of a mutual fund and compares its risk-adjusted performance to a benchmark index. The excess return of the fund relative to the return of the benchmark index is a fund's alpha.
2. The abnormal rate of return on a security or portfolio in excess of what would be predicted by an equilibrium model like the capital asset pricing model (CAPM). Investopedia explains 'Alpha'
1. Alpha is one of five technical risk ratios; the others are (2) beta, (3) standard deviation, (4) R-squared, and (5) the Sharpe ratio. All of these indicators are intended to help investors determine the risk-reward profile of a mutual fund. Simply stated, alpha is often considered to represent the value that a portfolio manager adds to or subtracts from a fund's return.
A positive alpha of 1.0 means the fund has outperformed its benchmark (=see definition below) index by 1%. Correspondingly, a similar negative alpha would indicate an underperformance of 1%.
2. If a CAPM analysis estimates that a portfolio should earn 10% based on the risk of the portfolio but the portfolio actually earns 15%, the portfolio's alpha would be 5%. This 5% is the excess return over what was predicted in the CAPM model.
Now the definition is laid out, let's go deeper - Read click A Deeper Look At Alpha and click Adding Alpha Without Adding Risk
Filed Under: CAPM, Financial Theory, Mutual Funds, Portfolio Management, Statistics
Definition of 'Benchmark' = standard or point of reference against which things may be compared or assessed
A standard against which the performance of a security, mutual fund or investment manager can be measured. Generally, broad market and market-segment stock and bond indexes are used for this purpose. Investopedia explains 'Benchmark'
When evaluating the performance of any investment, it's important to compare it against an appropriate benchmark. In the financial field, there are dozens of indexes that analysts use to gauge the performance of any given investment including the S&P 500, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Russell 2000 Index and even competitor fund.
Filed Under: Dow Jones Industrial Average, Mutual Funds, Stock Market Terminology
Modern Portfolio Theory - MPT
Definition of 'Modern Portfolio Theory - MPT'
A theory on how risk-averse investors can construct portfolios to optimize or maximize expected return based on a given level of market risk, emphasizing that risk is an inherent part of higher reward.
Also called "portfolio theory" or "portfolio management theory."
Investopedia explains 'Modern Portfolio Theory - MPT'
According to the theory, it's possible to construct an "efficient frontier" of optimal portfolios offering the maximum possible expected return for a given level of risk. This theory was pioneered by click Harry Markowitz
in his paper "Portfolio Selection," published in 1952 by the Journal of Finance. click PORTFOLIO SELECTION - Markowitz
There are four basic steps involved in portfolio construction:
-Security valuation
-Asset allocation
-Portfolio optimization
-Performance measurement
(91) Discount rate
- The rate at which member banks may borrow short term funds directly from a Federal Reserve Bank. The discount rate is one of the two interest rates set by the Fed, the other being the Federal funds rate. The Fed actually controls this rate directly, but this fact does not really help in policy implementation, since banks can also find such funds elsewhere. Also called Federal Reserve Discount Rate.
- The interest rate used in discounting future cash flows; here also called capitalization rate.
Following the economic crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has kept the discount rate at a low level.
(92) Amendment
A change or addition to a legal document which, when properly signed, has the same legal power as the original document.
Usage Example:
While 33 amendments to the U.S. Constitution were adopted by the Congress, only 27 of them were ratified by the states and became a part of the Constitution in
amendment (əˈmɛndmənt) — noun 1.the act of amending; 2. an addition, alteration, or improvement to a motion, document, etc. The Constitution was written and signed in 1787. It was a charter of government that came to be ratified by the states, and it continues to be the supreme law of the land. The Declaration of Independence was written in 1776. It was a list of grievances against the king of England intended to justify separation from British rule. (1)The Constitution of the United States: Questions and Answers - www.archives.gov/.../cons...
National Archives and Records Administration
(2) Constitution FAQs - National Constitution Center
(3) History of the United States Constitution (93) Keynesian Economics Named for economist John Maynard Keynes. An economic theory which advocates click: government intervention, or demand-side click: management of the click: economy, to achieve full employment and click: stable prices. Mr. Keynes was a radical economist who believed that it was the responsibility of the government to use click: fiscal resources to counteract the click: effects of economic problems such as click: recessions. He has been hailed as one of the most influential economists of his time. His ideas and philosophies are still referred to in click: present day economic literature. John Maynard Keynes lived through a turbulent period of British history. He was born in 1883, a subject of Queen Victoria. He died in 1946, having lived through the Boer War, both World Wars, and a worldwide economic depression. Click: Boer Wars
Keynes the Speculator
Keynes made and lost fortunes click: speculating. He liked to warn novices about the dangers of pitching their intellects against the vagaries (singular: vagary = an unexpected and inexplicable change in a situation or in someone's behavior; "the vagaries of the weather"; synonyms: change, fluctuation, unpredictability, variation) of financial markets, declaring: click: "markets can remain irrational far longer tha
Keynes and Investing
In an eighteen-year period encompassing the Great Depression (started in 1930 and lasted until the late 1930s or middle 1940s) click: Great Depression and World War 2 (1939-1945) click: World War II , click: Keynes's Chest Fund grew fivefold - a remarkable performance given that the UK stock market fell fifteen percent in the same period.
Usage Example:
Developed by John Maynard Keynes, Keynesian Economics rely on the belief that economic slumps (= drop, tumble, downturn, downswing, slide) can be prevented and optimal economic performance can be achieved by influencing a country's aggregated demand (aggregated = formed by the collection of units or particles into a body, mass, or amount. Examples: (1) The university receives more than half its aggregate income from government sources. (2) The team with the highest aggregate score wins. Concentrated Portfolios
One of Keynes's major contributions to investment methodology was his championing of click: concentrated investment portfolios. These, he proposed, should consist exclusively of investments about which the investor had become highly knowledgeable.
Keynesian Economics
Click: Keynes, the economist, is best known for his proposal that when national economies suffer a downturn, governments should borrow and spend money to boost economic activity. Part of the proceeds of the resulting economic growth should then be used to repay the debt.
War Settlements
Keynes played a vital role in the click: economic settlements implemented after World Wars 1 and 2. He fervently (fervently = having or showing great warmth or intensity of spirit, feeling, enthusiasm; a fervent admirer; a fervent plea) opposed the severe reparations imposed on Germany after WW 1. History vindicated (= clear someone of blame or suspicion) his position when Germany's economic collapse bred extremist groups, leading, ultimately, to WW 2.
(93) Capitalize
To classify a cost as a long-term investment, rather than charging it to current operations. A capitalized cost does not appear on the income statement, but instead appears as a debit on the long-term assets account and a credit on the cash account of the balance sheet. However, the depreciation expense related to the capitalized cost will appear as an expense on the income statement. Since the long-term assets account is larger due to the effect of capitalization, the depreciation costs are also proportionately larger.
Thus, the timing of expense recognition is changed, but eventually all expenses do get recognized on the income statement. Usage Example:
To reduce the negative impact of many large purchases on the company's current revenue, the accounting department decided to capitalize the expense and record it as a long-term asset, thus changing the time that the expense is recognized.
(94) Bait and switch An illegal tactic in which a seller advertises a product with the intention of persuading customers to purchase a more expensive product. When a seller uses this tactic, they frequently tell the customer that the original product is sold out or no longer available (even if the product is indeed still available), and push hard for the customer to purchase the costlier product. This tactic can be considered false advertising if the seller is not actually providing the original product, but if the item is available but the seller strongly encourages the customer towards another item, in general no legal action can be taken.
Usage Example:
One industry where the bait and switch strategy is widely used is the mortgage market - companies often tease customers with low mortgage rates but in reality most cannot qualify for these rates.
(95) Trader
- One who buys and sells securities for his/her personal account, not on behalf of clients.
- An investor who holds stocks and securities for a short period of time (a few minutes, hours or days). The goal is to profit from short-term gains in the market. The stock selection is generally based on technical analysis or charting which relate only to the stock price rather than a fundamental evaluation of the company as a business. The IRS offers some tax benefits to traders: they can deduct their interest expense without itemizing, and seminar costs can be investing.
A trader differs from an investor because a trader will hold assets for a shorter period of time and tends to capitalize on short-term trends.
(96) Cashier's check
A check which cannot bounce because its face amount is paid to the bank when it is issued, and the bank then assumes the obligation.
Usage Example:
One of the requirements of purchasing my new house was that I had to pay with a cashier's check because cashier's checks are treated as guaranteed funds since the bank is responsible for paying the amount.
(97) Title Insurance Insurance to protect a lender or owner against loss in the event of a property ownership dispute. Title insurance is most frequently used for mortgages, and is required by a large number of lenders. Title insurance has become necessary in the United States because, unlike many other countries, the United States (with the exception of a few areas) does not use a land registration system which could determine the validity of a claimed ownership of property.
Usage Example:
Most title insurance protects the lender in the case of a legal issue, but is paid for by the borrower.
(98) Public sector The part of the economy concerned with providing basic government services. The composition of the public sector varies by country, but in most countries the public sector includes such services as the police, military, public roads, public transit, primary education and healthcare for the poor. The public sector might provide services that non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service (such as public education), and services that encourage equal opportunity.
Usage Example:
Companies within the public sector can be one of two types - either funded directly by the government or publicly owned where a majority of the company's shares are owned by the government.
(99) Capital expenditure Money spent to acquire or upgrade physical assets such as buildings and machinery. also called capital spending or capital expense.
Usage Example
As the company's customer base grew, it had to also expand its operations and allocated extra capital expenditure to build a new factory.
(100) Medicare
A federal program that pays for certain health care expenses for people aged 65 or older. Enrolled individuals must pay deductibles and co-payments, but much of their medical costs are covered by the program. Medicare is lesscomprehensive than some other health care programs, but it is an important source of post-retirement health care. Medicare is divided into four parts. Part A covers hospital bills, Part B covers doctor bills, Part C provides the Medicare vs. Medicaid -- How and When Each Can Help You.
Usage Example:
Once I turned 65 I became eligible for Medicare health coverage since I had been contributing to the program throughout my entire career.
(101) amortization
- The gradual elimination of a liability, such as a mortgage, in regular payments over a specified period of time. Such payments must be sufficient to cover both principal and interest.
- Writing off an intangible asset investment over the projected life of the assets.
Every month when I pay my mortgage the amortization on my loan decreases as I near paying off my loan completely.
(102) Fair Credit Reporting Act
Federal law giving individuals the right to examine their own credit history. The provisions of this law enable consumers to approach credit reporting agencies to see what the agencies may be saying about them, find out if their credit information has been used any third parties, and approach an agency to dispute wrongful use or interpretation of their information. The law also places restrictions on the consumer reporting agencies, such as requiring the agencies to provide each consumer one free report per year upon request, as well as restricting the amount of time certain information can remain on one's credit report.
Usage Example:
The creation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act has made checking your credit report and history a much easier process.
value, also called: par or par value
(103) PAR VALUE - also called FACE VALUE or PAR
The nominal dollar amount assigned to a security by the issuer. For an equity security, face value is usually a very small amount that bears no relationship to its market price, except for preferred stock, in which case face value is used to calculate dividend payments. For a debt security, face value is the amount repaid to the investor when the bond matures (usually, corporate bonds have a face value of $1000, municipal bonds $5000, and federal bonds $10,000). In the secondary market, a bond's price fluctuates with interest rates. If interest rates are higher than the coupon rate on a bond, the bond will be sold below face value (at a "discount"). If interest rates have fallen, the price will be sold above face value. here also called par or par value.
Usage Example
Despite the high market price, I got the shares at the lower, face value price since the issuer really wanted to sell his shares.
(104) ERP Enterprise Resource Planning. An amalgamation of a company's information systems designed to bind more closely a variety of company functions including human resources, inventories and financials while simultaneously linking Usage Example Since the implementation of ERP it has become much easier to access company files and analyze data.
(105) GDP Gross Domestic Product. The total market value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a given year, equal to total consumer, investment and government spending, plus the value of exports, minus the value of imports.
GDP Reporting
The GDP report is released at 8:30 am EST on the last day of each quarter and reflects the previous quarter. Growth in GDP is what matters, and the U.S. GDP growth has historically averaged about 2.5-3% per year but with substantial deviations (= A rate that is different from the manual rate).
Each initial GDP report will be revised twice before the final figure is settled upon: the "advance report" is followed by the "preliminary report" about a month later and a final report a month after that. Significant revisions to the advance number can cause additional ripples through the markets. The GDP numbers are reported in two forms: current dollar and constant dollar.
- Current dollar GDP is calculated using today's dollars and makes comparisons between time periods difficult because of the effects of inflation.
- Constant dollar GDP solves this problem by converting the current information into some standard era dollar, such as 1997 dollars. This process factors out the effects of inflation and allows easy comparisons between periods.
- Current versus Constant (or Real) Dollars In order to accurately compare income over time, users should adjust the summary measures (medians, means, etc.) for changes in cost of living. The Census Bureau uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) Consumer Price Index (CPI-U) to adjust for changes in the cost of living.1
Current dollars is a term describing income in the year in which a person, household, or family receives it. For example, the income someone received in 1989 unadjusted for inflation is in current dollars.
Constant or real dollars are terms describing income after adjustment for inflation. The Dictionary of Business and Economics defines constant dollar values and real income as shown below.
Constant-dollar value (also called real-dollar value) is a value expressed in dollars adjusted for purchasing power. Constant-dollar values represent an effort to remove the effects of price changes from statistical series reported in dollar terms. The result is a series as it would presumably exist if prices were the same throughout as they were in the base year-in other words, as if the dollar had constant purchasing power.
Real Income. The purchasing power of the income of an individual, group, or nation, computed by adjusting money income to price changes. A comparison between incomes earned during 1970 and 1980, for example, would be pointless unless 1970 and 1980 price levels were identical. Using a price index showing, for example, that average consumer prices increased by 50 percent between those years, it becomes clear that $1,000 in 1980 bought what $667 bought in 1970. Thus, even if total income actually doubled, real income would double only if prices remained constant.
EXAMPLE:
The median household income in 1989 in current dollars is $28,906. If you compared that with the 1990 median household income of $29,943, there appears to be an increase. If you adjusted that 1989 income for changes in the cost of living (converted it to 1990 constant or real dollars), the resulting 1989 median household income is $30,468 (now a 1989-to-1990 comparison of income shows a decline of 1.7 percent).
Footnote:- The Census Bureau uses BLS' experimental Consumer Price Index (CPI-U-X1) for 1967 through 1982 and the CPI-U for 1983 through 1998. The Census Bureau derived the CPI-U indexes for years before 1967 by applying the 1967 CPI-U-X1-to-CPI-U ratio to the 1947 to 1966 CPI-U indexes.
A commodity, currency or other type of capital that is tradable and can be stored for future use. It is a fundamental component of the economic system because it allows trade to occur with items that have inherent value. An example of a store of value is currency, which can be exchanged for goods and services. If the value of currency becomes unpredictable, such as in times of hyperinflation,investors and consumers will shift to alternative stores of value, such as gold,silver, precious stones and real estate.
Usage Example:
Gold is considered by some as a better store of value than currency because gold is not subject to hyperinflation like currency is. (106) (106) Raw Materials
Unfinished goods consumed by a manufacturer in providing finished goods. Classified as inventory in the current assets section of a company's balance sheet.
Usage Example:
All finished products once started as many different raw materials before going through the manufacturing process. (107) W-4 Form A tax form prepared by an employee for an employer indicating the employee's exemptions and Social Security number, and enabling the employer to determine the amount of taxes to be withheld for the employee.
Usage Example:
Upon getting hired at a new job most employers make new hires fill out a W-4 Form so the correct amount of taxes are withheld from the new hires paycheck. CPA - Certified Public Accountant An individual who has passed the uniform CPA examination administered by the American Institute Of Certified Public Accountants, and who has received state certification to practice accounting. To achieve this designation, an individual usually has to complete 5 years of education, and a certain degree of work experience. Additionally, once an individual becomes a CPA, they typically must complete a certain number of hours of continuing education each year.
Usage Example:
Before submitting your tax filing to the IRS, it would be beneficial to have a CPA look over it to ensure that your tax filing is correct.
(108) Gross National Product
GNP is the total value of all final goods and services produced within a nation in a particular year, plus income earned by its citizens (including income of those located abroad), minus income of non-residents located in that country. Basically, GNP measures the value of goods and services that the country's citizens produced regardless of their location. GNP is one measure of the economic condition of a country, under the assumption that a higher GNP leads to a higher quality of living, all other things being equal.
For further explanation, see GDP vs. GNP -- What's the Difference? Click the links below - 2 next lines
GDP Click: Definition | Investopedia
GNP Click: Definition | Investopedia
(109) Bond
A debt instrument issued for a period of more than one year with the purpose of raising capital by borrowing. The Federal government, states, cities,corporations, and many other types of institutions sell bonds. Generally, a bond is a promise to repay the principal along with interest (coupons) on a specified date (maturity). Some bonds do not pay interest, but all bonds require a repayment of principal. When an investor buys a bond, he/she becomes a creditor of the issuer. However, the buyer does not gain any kind of ownership rights to the issuer, unlike in the case of equities. On the hand, a bond holder has a greater claim on an issuer's income than a shareholder in the case of distress (this is true for all creditors). Bonds are often divided into different categories based on tax status, credit quality, issuer type, maturity and secured/unsecured (and there are several other ways to classify bonds as well)...
Usage Example:
Governments issue bonds to their citizens to help fund projects when they don't have enough cash on hand with a promise to repay the principal.
(110) EBITDA
Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization. An approximate measure of a company's operating cash flow based on data from the company's income statement. Calculated by looking at earnings before the deduction of interest expenses, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. The formula is:
EBITDA = Revenue -- Expenses (excluding interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization)
In business, amortization refers to spreading payments over multiple periods. The term is used for two separate processes: amortization of loans and amortization of intangible assets.
This earnings measure is of particular interest in cases where companies have large amounts of fixed assets which are subject to heavy depreciation charges (such as manufacturing companies) or in the case where a company has a large amount of acquired intangible assets on its books and is thus subject to large amortization charges (such as a company that has purchased a brand or a company that has recently made a large acquisition). Since the distortionary accounting and financing effects on company earnings do not factor into EBITDA, it is a good way of comparing companies within and across industries. This measure is also of interest to a company's creditors, since EBITDA is essentially the income that a company has free for interest payments.
Learn more about this term
Usage Example
Many companies use EBITDA to compare profitability among their competitors and other companies within their industry since it eliminates the effects of accounting and financing decisions.
(111) Non-profit organization - An incorporated organization which exists for educational or charitable reasons, and from which its shareholders or trustees do not benefit financially. Also called not-for-profit organization.
Any money earned by a non-profit organization must be retained by the organization, and used for its own expenses, operations, and programs. Many non-profit organizations also seek tax exempt status, and may also be exempt from local taxes including sales taxes or property taxes. Well-known non-profit organizations include Habitat for Humanity, American Red Cross, and United Way.
Usage Example
World Wildlife Fund is a well-known non-profit organization because it exists to raise money to help protect endangered species and preserve at-risk places.
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List of food origins
Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_origins
Corn, beans and squash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BCE Mesoamerica is a region and cultural area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize,Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. It is one of six areas in the world where ancient civilization arose independently, and the second in the Americas after Norte Chico(Caral-Supe) in present-day northern coastal. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America. *) manioc another term for click: cassava.
Contents
- 1 Americas
- 2 North America
- 3 Central America
- 4 South America
- 5 Middle East
- 6 Europe
- 7 Atlantic, North Europe
- 8 Asia
- 9 Africa
- 10 Polynesia
- 11 See also
- 12 References
Various squashes such as Turban, Sweet Dumpling, Carnival, Gold Acorn, Delicata, Pizza trees, Buttercup and Golden Nugget.
Corn, beans and squash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BCE. Potatoes and manioc were domesticated in South America. In what is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower, sumpweed andgoosefoot around 2500 BCE.[1]
Ancient American Crops[2]CerealsMaize (corn), maygrass, and little barleyPseudocerealsAmaranth, quinoa, erect knotweed, sumpweed, and sunflowersPulsesCommon beans, tepary beans, scarlet runner beans, lima beans, and peanutsFiberCotton, yucca, and agaveRoots and TubersJicama, manioc (cassava), potatoes, sweet potatoes, sunchokes, oca, mashua, ulloco, arrowroot, yacon, leren, and groundnutsFruitsTomatoes, chili peppers, avocados, cranberries, blueberries, huckleberries, cherimoyas, papayas, pawpaws, passionfruit, pineapples, soursops and strawberriesMelonsSquashesMeat and poultryturkey, bison, muscovy ducks, and guinea pigsNutsPeanut, black walnuts, shagbark hickory, pecans and hickory nutsOtherChocolate, Canna, tobacco, Chicle, rubber, maple syrup, birch syrup and vanillaTimeline of American Crop Cultivation[3]DateCropsLocation7000 BCEMaizeMexico5000 BCECottonMexico4800 BCESquash
Chili Peppers
Avocados
AmaranthMexico4000 BCEMaize
Common BeanMexico4000 BCEGround NutSouth America2000 BCESunflowers
BeansNorth America[edit]North American Nuts[edit]
- Acorn (Quercus alba, Quercus gambelii, Quercus kelloggii, Notholithocarpus densiflorus; Fagaceae)
- Black Walnut (Juglans nigra; Juglandaceae)
- Hickory nut (Carya; Juglandaceae)
- Pecans (Carya illinoinensis; Juglandaceae)
- Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovate; Juglandaceae)
- Chives (Allium schoenoprasum; Amaryllidaceae)
- Echinacea (Asteroideae heliantheae; Asteraceae)
- Maple Sap (Acer; Hippocastanoideae)
- Pole Beans (Phaseolus coccineus; Faboideae)
- Pumpkin (Cucurbita; Cucurbitaceae)
- Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum; Solaneae)
- Sage (Salvia apiana; Lamiaceae)
- Squash (Cucurbiteae cucurbita; Cucurbitoideae)
- Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus; Asteraceae)
- Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus; Asteraceae), also known as topinambour
- Wild Rice (Zizania palustris; Poaceae)
Fruits of North American origin[edit]Canada, Mexico, and the United States are home to a surprising number of edible fruit; however, only three are commercially grown/known on a global scale (grapes, cranberries, and blueberries.) Many of the fruits below are still eaten locally as they have been for centuries and others are generating renewed interest by eco-friendly gardeners (less need for bug control) and chefs alike.
- American Elderberry (Sambucus canadensis; Adoxaceae)
- American grape: North American species (e.g., Vitis labrusca; Vitaceae) and American-European hybrids are grown where grape (Vitis vinifera) is not hardy and are used as rootstocks
- American Mayapple (Podophyllum peltatum; Berberidaceae)
- American plum (Prunus americana; Rosaceae)
- American persimmon (Diospyros virginiana; Ebenaceae): Traditional for desserts and as dried fruit.
- Beach Plum (Prunus maritima; Rosaceae)
- Black cherry (Prunus serotina; Rosaceae very popular flavoring for pies, jams, and sweets.
- Black raspberry (Rubus occidentalis or Rubus leucodermis; Rosaceae)
- Blueberry (Vaccinium, sect. Cyanococcus; Ericaceae) [4]
- Buffaloberry (Shepherdia argentea; Elaeagnaceae), which grows wild in the prairies of Canada.
- Canada Plum (Prunus nigra; Rosaceae)
- Canadian serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis; Rosaceae), also called Sugarplum
- Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana; Rosaceae)
- Cocoplum (Chrysobalanus icaco; Chrysobalanaceae)
- Concord grape[4]
- Cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccus; Ericaceae)[4]
- Dewberry (Rubus, sect. Flagellares, American dewberries; Rosaceae)
- False-mastic (Mastichodendron foetidissimum; Sapotaceae)
- Florida Strangler Fig (Ficus aurea; Moraceae)
- Ground Plum (Astragalus caryocarpus; Fabaceae), also called Ground-plum milk-vetch.
- Eastern May Hawthorn (Crataegus aestivalis; Rosaceae, better known as mayhaw.
- Huckleberry (Vaccinium parvifolium; Ericaceae)
- Maypop (Passiflora incarnata; Passifloraceae), traditionally a summer treat.
- Pawpaw (Asimina triloba; Annonaceae), not to be confused with Papaya (Carica papaya; Caricaceae), which is called pawpaw in some English dialects.
- Prickly pear (Opuntia spp.,; Cactaceae) used as both a fruit and vegetable depending on part of plant.
- Red mulberry (Morus rubra; Moraceae)
- Pigeon plum (Coccoloba diversifolia; Polygonaceae)
- Salal berry (Gaultheria shallon; Ericaceae)
- Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis; Rosaceae)
- Saskatoonberry (Amelanchier alnifolia, Rosaceae
- Saw Palmetto (Serenoa repens; Arecaceae)
- Southern crabapple (Malus angustifolia; Rosaceae)
- Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa; Rosoideae)
- Thimbleberry (Rubus parviflorus; Rosaceae)
- Toyon (Heteromeles arbutifolia; Rosaceae)
- Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens; Ericaceae)
Pacific North West[edit]Provisionally, this is primarily southern Coast Salish, though much is in common with Coast Salish overall.
Anthropogenic grasslands were maintained. The south Coast Salish may have had more vegetables and land game than people farther north or on the outer coast. Salmon and other fish were staples in this area. There was kokanee, a freshwater fish in the Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish watersheds. Shellfish were abundant. Butter clams, horse clams, and cockles were dried for trade.
Hunting was specialized; professions were probably sea hunters, land hunters, fowlers. Water fowl were captured on moonless nights using strategic flares.
The managed grasslands not only provided game habitat, but vegetable sprouts, roots, bulbs, berries, and nuts were foraged from them as well as found wild. The most important were probably bracken and camas; wapato especially for the Duwamish. Many, many varieties of berries were foraged; some were harvested with comblike devices not reportedly used elsewhere. Acorns were relished but were not widely available. Regional tribes went in autumn to the Nisqually Flats (Nisqually plains) to harvest them.[5] Indeed, the region was so abundant that the southern Puget Sound as a whole had one of the only sedentary hunter-gatherer societies that has ever existed.[citation needed]
Central America[edit]Central America[edit] coffee
South America[edit]South America[edit]
- Sweet potatoes
- Chocolate
- Cacao
- Strawberry
- Alpacas
- Cape Gooseberry (Uchuva)
- Cat's Claw
- Pineapple
- Potatoes
- Quinoa
- Tomato
- Oca
- Papalisa
- Peanut
- Madagascar bean
- French bean
- Chili pepper
Middle East[edit]
Fertile Crescent, often seen as the birthplace of civilization.
See also: Ancient Egyptian cuisine
Neolithic founder crops[edit]The Neolithic founder crops (or primary domesticates) are the eight plant species that were domesticated by early Holocene (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A and Pre-Pottery Neolithic B) farming communities in the Fertile Crescent region of southwest Asia, and which formed the basis of systematic agriculture in the Middle East, North Africa, India, Persia and (later) Europe. They consist of flax, three cereals and four pulses, and are the first known domesticated plants in the world. Although domesticated rye (Secale cereale) occurs in the final Epi-Palaeolithic strata at Tell Abu Hureyra (the earliest instance of a domesticated plant species), it was an insignificant in the Neolithic Period of southwest Asia and only became common with the spread of farming into northern Europe several millennia later.
Cereals and Pseudocereals[edit]
- Emmer (Triticum dicoccum, descended from the wild T. dicoccoides)
- Einkorn (Triticum monococcum, descended from the wild T. boeoticum)
- Barley (Hordeum vulgare/sativum, descended from the wild H. spontaneum)
- Oats
- Wheat
- Sesame
- Flax (Linum usitatissimum)
- Lentil (Lens culinaris)
- Pea (Pisum sativum)
- Chickpea (Cicer arietinum)
- Bitter vetch (Vicia ervilia)
Europe[edit]
- Tea
- Beets
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Cabbage
- Kale
- Kohlrabi
- Brussels sprouts
- Walnuts
- Fennel
- Catnip (nepeta)
- Caper
- Centaurium
Grapes
- Black mulberry (Morus nigra; Moraceae)
- Cornelian cherry (Cornus mas; Cornaceae)
- Date palm (Phoenix dactylifera; Arecaceae)
- Fig (Ficus spp. Moraceae)
- Grape, called raisin, sultana, or currant when it is dried. (Vitis spp.; Vitaceae)
- Jujube (Ziziphus zizyphus; Rhamnaceae)
- Olive (Olea europea; Oleaceae)
- Pomegranate (Punica granatum; Punicaceae)
- Sycamore fig (Ficus sycomorus. Moraceae) also called old world sycomore or just sycomore.
Asia[edit]Tibetan plateau
North Asia[edit]Korean Peninsula[edit]Fruits of Asian origin[edit]Some fruits native to Asia or of Asian Origin.
- Citrus fruits
- Arhat (Siraitia grosvenorii; Cucurbitaceae) Also called longevity fruit
- Coconut (Cocos nucifera; Arecaceae)
- Che (Maclura tricuspidata; Moraceae) Also called Cudrania, Chinese Mulberry, Cudrang, Mandarin Melon Berry, Silkworm Thorn, zhe
- Durian (Durio spp; Malvaceae)
- Goumi (Elaeagnus multiflora ovata; Elaeagnaceae family)
- Hardy Kiwi (Actinidia arguta; Actinidiaceae family)
- Kiwifruit or Chinese gooseberry (Actinidia spp.; Actinidiaceae)
- Mock Strawberry or Indian Strawberry (Potentilla indica; Rosaceae)
- Lanzones (Lansium domesticum; Meliaceae family)
- Lapsi (Choerospondias axillaris Roxb. Anacardiaceae)
- Longan (Dimocarpus longan; Sapindaceae family)
- Lychee (Litchi chinensis; Sapindaceae family)
- Mangosteen (Garcinia mangostana; Clusiaceae family)
- Nungu (Borassus flabellifer; Arecaceae)
- Peach
- Persimmon (aka Sharon Fruit) (Diospyros kaki; Ebenaceae)
- Rambutan (Nephelium lappaceum; Sapindaceae family)
- Rhubarb (Rheum rhaponticum; Polygonaceae)
- Sageretia (Sageretia theezans; Rhamnaceae) Also called Mock Buckthorn
Indus Valley[edit]See also: Origins of North Indian foods
Around 7000 BCE, sesame, eggplant, and humped cattle had been domesticated in the Indus Valley.[9] By 3000 BCE, turmeric, cardamom, black pepper and mustard were harvested in India.[10]
China[edit]Main article: Chinese herbology
Africa[edit]
Helmeted Guinea Fowl in tall grass.
The first instances of domestication of plants for agricultural purposes in Africa occurred in the Sahel region circa 5000 BCE, when sorghum and African Rice (Oryza glaberrima) began to be cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small Guineafowl were domesticated.
Around 4000 BCE the climate of the Sahara and the Sahel started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink rather significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and helped to cause migrations of farming communities to the more humid climate of West Africa.[11]
The most famous crop domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands is coffee. In addition, khat, ensete, noog, teff and finger millet were also domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands. Crops domesticated in the Sahel region include sorghum and pearl millet. The Kola nut, extracts from which became an ingredient in Coca-Cola, was first domesticated in West Africa. Other crops domesticated in West Africa include African rice, African yams, black-eyed peas and the oil palm.[1]
Polynesia[edit]Australia[edit]Fruits of Australian origin[edit]Although the fruits of Australia were eaten for thousands of years as bushfood by Aboriginal people, they have only been recently recognized for their culinary qualities by non-indigenous people. Many are regarded for their piquancy and spice-like qualities for use in cooking and preserves. Some Australian fruits also have exceptional nutritional qualities, including high vitamin C and other antioxidants.
- Atherton Raspberry (Rubus probus; Rosaceae)
- Black Apple (Planchonella australis; Sapotaceae)
- Blue tongue (Melastoma affine; Melastomataceae)
- Bolwarra (Eupomatia laurina; Eupomatiaceae)
- Burdekin Plum (Pleiogynium timorense; Anacardiaceae)
- Broad-leaf Bramble (Rubus hillii; Rosaceae)
- Cedar Bay cherry (Eugenia carissoides; Myrtaceae)
- Cluster fig (Ficus racemosa; Moraceae)
- Common apple-berry (Billardiera scandens; Pittosporaceae)
- Conkerberry (Carissa lanceolata; Apocynaceae)
- Davidson's plum (Davidsonia spp.; Cunoniaceae)
- Desert fig (Ficus platypoda; Moraceae)
- Desert lime (Citrus glauca; Rutaceae)
- Doubah (Marsdenia australis; Apocynaceae)
- Emu Apple (Owenia acidula; Meliaceae)
- Fibrous Satinash (Syzygium fibrosum; Myrtaceae)
- Finger Lime (Citrus australasica; Rutaceae)
- Illawarra Plum (Podocarpus elatus; Podocarpaceae)
- Little gooseberry tree (Buachanania arborescens; Anacardiaceae)
- Kakadu lime (Citrus gracilis; Rutaceae)
- Kutjera (Solanum centrale; Solanaceae)
- Kakadu plum (Terminalia ferdinandiana; Combretaceae)
- Karkalla (Carpobrotus rossii; Aizoaceae)
- Lady apple (Syzygium suborbiculare; Myrtaceae)
- Lemon aspen (Acronychia acidula; Rutaceae)
- Midyim (Austromyrtus dulcis; Myrtaceae)
- Mountain pepper (Tasmannia spp.; Winteraceae )
- Muntries (Kunzea pomifera; Myrtaceae)
- Native Cherry (Exocarpus cupressiformis; Santalaceae)
- Native currant (Acrotriche depressa; Ericaceae)
- Native gooseberry (Physalis minima; Solanaceae)
- Pigface (Carpobrotus glaucescens; Aizoaceae)
- Pink-flowered Native Raspberry (Rubus parvifolius; Rosaceae)
- Purple apple-berry (Billarderia longiflora; Pittosporaceae)
- Quandong (Santalum acuminatum; Elaeocarpaceae)
- Riberry (Syzygium luehmannii; Myrtaceae)
- Rose-leaf Bramble (Rubus rosifolius; Rosaceae)
- Rose myrtle (Archirhodomyrtus beckleri; Myrtaceae)
- Sandpaper Fig (Ficus coronata; Moraceae)
- Small-leaf tamarind (Diploglottis campbellii; Sapindaceae)
- Snow berry (Gaultheria hispida; Ericaceae)
- Sweet apple-berry (Billarderia cymosa; Pittosporaceae)
- Tanjong (Mimusops elengi; Sapindaceae)
- White aspen (Acronychia oblongifolia; Rutaceae)
- Wild orange (Capparis mitchellii; Capparaceae)
- Wongi (Manilkara kaukii; Sapotaceae)
- Yellow plum (Ximenia americana; Olacaceae)
- Zig Zag Vine (Melodurum leichhardtii; Annonaceae)
- Neolithic Revolution
- New World Crops
- List of edible seeds
- List of culinary herbs and spices
- List of culinary nuts
- List of culinary vegetables
- List of dried foods
- List of snack foods
- Local food
- Ark of Taste
- ^ Jump up to:a b Diamond, Jared (1999). Guns, Germs, and Steel. New York: Norton Press. ISBN 0-393-31755-2.
- Jump up^ Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steel, W. W. Norton & Company, 1999, p. 126.
- Jump up^ Gardening History Timeline: From Ancient Times to the 20th Century
- ^ Jump up to:a b c "Cranberries: America's Native Fruit". Belly Bytes. Retrieved 2009-01-04. "Cranberries are as American as apple pie - in fact, even more so, for cranberries are one of only three major native North American fruits (Concord grapes and blueberries being the others). Long before the Pilgrims arrived in 1620 CE, the North American Indians combined crushed cranberries with dried deer meat and melted fat to make pemmican - a food that would keep for a long time."
- Jump up^ Suttle, Wayne P.; Lane, Barbara (1990-08-20). "South Coast Salish". In Sturtevant, William C. Handbook of North American Indians. 7. Northwest coast. Washington: Smithsonian Institution. pp. 485–500. ISBN 0-16-020390-2 (v. 7).
- Jump up^ However, it has been doubted recently that the systematic exploitation within a polyculture model was employed at Crete (Hamilakis, Y (2007) [1]
- Jump up^ Sherratt, A. (1981) Plough and pastoralism: aspects of the secondary products revolution
- Jump up^ Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, On Agriculture (Res Rustica), (Loeb Classical Library), Book II page 145
- Jump up^ Diamond 1997, p. 100
- Jump up^ "Curry, Spice & All Things Nice: Dawn of History".
- Jump up^ O'Brien, Patrick K. (General Editor). Oxford Atlas of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. pp.22-23
_______________________________________________________________________________________
New ideas for finding a job
When the Going Gets Tough,
Job Hunters Call In The Stunt Résumé
See one website as an example: copy & paste to search: Employadam.com
See the pictures, see the texts, see the ideas
Vitae Delivered With a Pillow or by a Stuffed Carrier Pigeon Bring Attention but Not Always Gigs
The box was delivered to the Los Angeles office of One Fine Stay, a business that arranges short-term accommodations in luxury homes. Stuffed inside was a queen-size pillow in a cheap cotton pillowcase.
A résumé, enlarged to about 24 by 33 inches, was attached to it with cellophane tape. It came from a man the staff began to call Pillow Guy, who was looking for a job. Nobody can remember his name.
"It was funny for about five seconds," says Alexandra Rethore, One Fine Stay's L.A. operations director, who signed for the package and opened it thinking it might contain linens she had ordered.
The résumé was torn and blurred from water damage in transit, and the writing at the top, with Pillow Guy's contact information, was too wrinkled to read. To make it legible, Ms. Rethore ironed it.
The intriguing gimmick didn't ultimately work for Pillow Guy, who was rejected after one phone conversation and a face-to-face interview. Also rebuffed by One Fine Stay: an applicant who "delivered" a résumé via a stuffed carrier pigeon and another who included a link to his unpublished erotica.
Stunts like these became fairly common during the recession and they still are in today's slack labor market. Companies received an average of 383 applications for every opening they advertised in 2013, according to CEB, formerly known as the Corporate Executive Board, and many are funneled through automated tracking systems that rank résumés based on such things as keyword matches. Bypassing the robots requires a blend of ingenuity, skill and chutzpah.
Sometimes the ploys work, allowing run-of-the-mill candidates to grab a recruiter's attention and hold it long enough to land a job. In the best cases, they let applicants show that they have devoted some thought to an employer's brand and culture. Mostly, though, whimsical applications are just good for a laugh.
Companies like the online craft marketplace Etsy have seen it all. Senior recruiting manager Bobby Gormsen says recent entries include an embroidered cover letter, a potholder résumé, a paper-garland résumé that looked as if it could be strung on a Christmas tree and an application that bobbed up in a corked bottle.
"I'm sort of immune to this stuff," said Mr. Gormsen. The candidates "get points for creativity, but it only tells one side of the story. We have a set of hard skills an applicant has to meet"—ranging from years of experience to relevant software languages—in order to be considered. No amount of creativity can compensate if those are missing, he said.
The theatrics still can get a foot in the door. Leslie Hall, co-founder of New York marketing agency ICED Media, said she once needed to hire someone to handle relationships with bloggers and writers for online media campaigns. One candidate who came in for an interview sent a thank-you note the next day—along with pizza for the whole office. The grand gesture hit its mark. It "was a sign that he knew how to get someone's attention, which is obviously a core competency for the position," Ms. Hall said.
She says he turned out to be a dud. Employees saw him watching "South Park" on his computer and taking naps at his desk. "There was absolutely no output whatsoever," said Ms. Hall, who fired him after three months.
"We [had] allowed ourselves to be charmed," she said.
So when a candidate recently submitted chocolate bars with a résumé printed on paper resembling Hershey wrappers with his qualifications listed on the nutrition label, ICED took a pass. "I'd like to think we now have greater discipline," said Ms. Hall. "We all thought the Hershey bar was really cute, but no one said, 'Oh, the Hershey bar, we need to hire him.' "
In other cases, quirky wins the day. Aleks Kamko overcame a relative lack of computer-science experience to win a coveted internship at Facebook Inc. last year, in part by creating a YouTube video listing five reasons the social network should hire him, including his passion for software code and a desire to make the world a better place. The University of California, Berkeley sophomore filmed it in his dorm hallway, spending about six hours writing the script and 18 hours editing it, he said.
It worked. "We need to figure out quickly if someone has energy and enthusiasm for the company," said Adam Ward, a recruiting director at Facebook who viewed Mr. Kamko's video. With something like that "you can check that box."
Despite the low success rate, creative contenders likely won't let up as long as they keep hearing about people like Adam Pacitti. After graduating from England's University of Winchester in 2012, he sent out 250 résumés for media production jobs over six weeks, yielding exactly two replies (both rejections), he said. So in January last year, he rented a billboard in central London. Next to a photo of himself, he splashed the words: "I spent my last £500 on this billboard. Please give me a job. Employadam.com."
He tweeted a picture and waited for the effort to go viral. It did, and within a few days, job offers poured in—from ad agencies, plumbers, lawyers and others. Now he works at a digital marketing company that contacted him after seeing his billboard via social media. He says he is "a viral producer, whatever that means."
Source: Internet news
_____________________________________
- 5 Best Things to Say in an Interview
- What are the biggest short- and long-term issues I would need to focus on in this position?
- What would I need to focus on differently than the previous person in this position?
- What organizational issues should I be aware of?
The best things you can say in an interview won’t necessarily get you the job on their own, but they can certainly pave the way. Keep these five things in mind as you go through the interviewing process to give yourself the best chance at landing the job.
Ask Good Questions
According to Howard Pines, founder and CEO of BeamPines, “the best thing a candidate can do at an interview is ask good questions.”
Doing so shows that you are thoughtful and interested in understanding the company. There’s usually a chance to ask questions at the end of your interview, so be ready with questions that show you’re engaged in the process.
Pines suggests several questions, including:
“I’m flexible.”
Whether it’s about possible job duties, a potential start date or simply timing for the second interview, stressing your flexibility makes you easy to get along with.
Hiring managers don’t like complications, and having to coordinate complicated schedules or haggle over a job description eventually just makes you look difficult. While you certainly don’t want to be a pushover -- and “flexible” shouldn’t define your salary negotiation -- show your potential employer that you’re interested in results that work for everyone.
The Company’s Own Words
Before your interview, become familiar with the company’s website and literature. Pay attention to the words used -- what’s important to the organization?
“In your interview, hit key words that appeared on the company website or brochure,” says Olivia Ford of Adeptio. “These key words might include team, leadership, simplistic, culture or growth.”
Mixing these keywords into your answers can provide a subtle hint that you are plugged in to what the organization is looking for.
“That’s a Good Question”
Use this phrase instead of blurting out “I don’t know” if the interviewer stumps you with a surprise question. It can give you a few moments to come up with an answer and, in the meantime, strokes the interviewer's ego a little bit too.
Avoid the “I don’t know” answer when possible, but of course don’t lie about your experience or training.
Reasons You Want the Job
Knowing a job prospect’s motivations is important for managers who are hiring.
During your interview, talk about how this position fits into your future plans and the ideas you have about your career, how it fits with your values, and what you would like to learn from it. Talk about how you see yourself in relation to the company and what you believe you can bring to the position.
These kinds of thoughts show who you are as a person, and go a long way toward giving the hiring manager an idea about how you might fit in the company’s culture and values.
- Related Articles
- Click green title
- 7 Questions to Ask in Every Interview
- 5 Questions You Should Never Ask in a Job Interview
- What Motivates You?
- 100 Potential Interview Questions
- Prep for the Top 10 Interview Questions
- Source: Monster
________________________________
NEW For blogging
Weekend weight gain won't ruin your diet - it may be the way to safely get rid of your overweight - HOW?
CNN - You've been eating well all week: oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch and grilled chicken with vegetables for dinner. Then the weekend hits. Suddenly your taste buds want French fries at the bar and Mom's cheesy lasagna is calling your name during Sunday dinner.
Not to worry. A new study suggests small weight gains on weekends are normal, and as long as you can compensate during the week, indulging a bit may even help you lose weight long-term.
“There is a clear weekly rhythm to weight variation for most people,” says one of the study authors, Anna-Leena Orsama, a research scientist with VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. “On the weekends there is more variability and unpredictability in what we eat.”
The study, “Weight Rhythms: Weight Increases during Weekends and Decreases during Weekdays,” was published this week in the journal Obesity Facts.
The study
Researchers analyzed data from 80 adults, ranging in age from 25 to 62 years old, who recorded their weight each day after waking up.
The participants were grouped according to their weight changes over the study period: weight losers who lost at least 3% of their body weight; weight gainers who put on at least 1%; and weight maintainers who stayed in between those minimums.
The results
All three groups, the losers, gainers and maintainers, recorded higher weights on Sundays and Mondays than other days of the week. But those who successfully lost weight had lower weights during the week, with their lowest generally recorded on Friday.
This shows they managed to compensate for the weekend gain during the work week, researchers say.
Limitations
The sample size for this study was relatively small. Only 10 people were in the gain group; only 18 were in the loss group. The data was also all self-reported, meaning the study participants could have made a mistake or purposefully altered their recorded weights.
Also important to note is that the researchers are talking about slight caloric increases. This is not a free pass to eat your weight in cookie dough.
The takeaway
Long-term habits may make more of a difference than short-term splurges, the study authors say. And a flexible eating pattern - i.e., allowing yourself that brownie or beer on Friday night - may help you sustain overall healthy eating habits over time. Weight loss success depends primarily on your ability to compensate for those splurges on other days of the week.
“The big difference between those who gain weight over time and those who lose or maintain weight is directly related to the way they eat from Monday to Friday," said Cornell University behavioral economist Brian Wansink, one of the study authors.
"Some indulging during weekends makes no harm but for successful weight loss it is important to notice these rhythms and take steps to reverse the upward trends."
Source:
Relax, weekend weight gain won't ruin your diet - Local 8 Nowwww.local8now.com/.../Relax-weekend-weight-gain-wont-ruin-your-die...
7 days ago - CNN - You've been eating well all week: oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch ... This is not a free pass to eat your weight in cookie dough.
_____________________________
Weekend weight gain won't ruin your diet - it may be the way to safely get rid of your overweight - HOW?
CNN - You've been eating well all week: oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch and grilled chicken with vegetables for dinner. Then the weekend hits. Suddenly your taste buds want French fries at the bar and Mom's cheesy lasagna is calling your name during Sunday dinner.
Not to worry. A new study suggests small weight gains on weekends are normal, and as long as you can compensate during the week, indulging a bit may even help you lose weight long-term.
“There is a clear weekly rhythm to weight variation for most people,” says one of the study authors, Anna-Leena Orsama, a research scientist with VTT Technical Research Center of Finland. “On the weekends there is more variability and unpredictability in what we eat.”
The study, “Weight Rhythms: Weight Increases during Weekends and Decreases during Weekdays,” was published this week in the journal Obesity Facts.
The study
Researchers analyzed data from 80 adults, ranging in age from 25 to 62 years old, who recorded their weight each day after waking up.
The participants were grouped according to their weight changes over the study period: weight losers who lost at least 3% of their body weight; weight gainers who put on at least 1%; and weight maintainers who stayed in between those minimums.
The results
All three groups, the losers, gainers and maintainers, recorded higher weights on Sundays and Mondays than other days of the week. But those who successfully lost weight had lower weights during the week, with their lowest generally recorded on Friday.
This shows they managed to compensate for the weekend gain during the work week, researchers say.
Limitations
The sample size for this study was relatively small. Only 10 people were in the gain group; only 18 were in the loss group. The data was also all self-reported, meaning the study participants could have made a mistake or purposefully altered their recorded weights.
Also important to note is that the researchers are talking about slight caloric increases. This is not a free pass to eat your weight in cookie dough.
The takeaway
Long-term habits may make more of a difference than short-term splurges, the study authors say. And a flexible eating pattern - i.e., allowing yourself that brownie or beer on Friday night - may help you sustain overall healthy eating habits over time. Weight loss success depends primarily on your ability to compensate for those splurges on other days of the week.
“The big difference between those who gain weight over time and those who lose or maintain weight is directly related to the way they eat from Monday to Friday," said Cornell University behavioral economist Brian Wansink, one of the study authors.
"Some indulging during weekends makes no harm but for successful weight loss it is important to notice these rhythms and take steps to reverse the upward trends."
Source:
Relax, weekend weight gain won't ruin your diet - Local 8 Nowwww.local8now.com/.../Relax-weekend-weight-gain-wont-ruin-your-die...
7 days ago - CNN - You've been eating well all week: oatmeal for breakfast, a salad for lunch ... This is not a free pass to eat your weight in cookie dough.
_____________________________
BLOGGING - make article 2 of 2 shorter ?
Friday, February 13, 14
Cancer Screenings - Killer or Life Saver? Here is what to do to SAVE YOUR HEALTH -Twelve-Step Guide for women, men & children
Article 1 of 2
How to maintain your health - How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D, N.D., D.D.
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
___________________________
First the latest news relating to mammograms
A long-term study, 25-year follow-up with over 90,000 women states:
breast cancer screenings are no good, rather harmful.
The same way the most recent studies show that men's prostate click:Prostate screening for cancer is not necessary as the risk to cause more harm is bigger than the possible benefits.
(Further below an article link to prostate screening)
For women who dutifully keep their mammogram appointments year after year, click: the latest results from a long-term trial, 25-year follow-up, in Canada involving 90,000 women, which found no difference in death rates from breast cancer among women who had regular mammograms and those who did not, are bound to sow confusion, perhaps even anger.
A few words about the mammograms
Click green for further info
Mammography is the process of using low-energy X-rays (usually around 30 kVp) to examine the human breast and is used as a diagnostic and a screening tool. The goal of mammography is the early detection of breast cancer, typically through detection of characteristic masses and/or microcalcifications.
Click: Mammography
Microcalcifications are tiny specks of mineral deposits (calcium), that can be scattered throughout the mammary gland, or occur in clusters. When found on a mammogram, a radiologist will then decide whether the specks are of concern - usually, this is not the case. Commonly, they simply indicate the presence of tiny benign cysts, and may signify the presence of early breast cancer.
For decades now, the annual mammogram has been promoted vociferously, expressed in a very loud or forceful way and continuously as an essential way to protect oneself from breast cancer. Many women feel they are being irresponsible if they do not get a regular scan, said Dr. Lisa Schwartz, a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
Click: The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
Click: Lisa Schwartz, MD, MS
The latest about screening men for a possible prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the #1 cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths for men in the United States, after lung cancer.
Lung cancer
click: Lung Cancer
Are you still smoking - if you do not know how to stop smoking and save your health, STAF, Inc.'s private service will guide you to stop smoking and gives, as the only one, a lifetime result-guarantee with a one-time fee only. With the modern technology private services can be given worldwide (in addition to our office).
Prostate cancer
click: Prostate Cancer
One in every six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime,with about 90% of cases occurring in men 55 and older, and 71% of deaths occurring in men 75 and older. For these reasons, annual screenings would seem to be an important way to prevent prostate cancer. But there is a hot debate within the medical community: do regular prostate cancer screenings do more harm than good?
Are Annual Prostate Cancer Screenings Necessary?
Should Early Stage Prostate Cancer Be Treated?
Click green below for the latest science info:
Are Annual Prostate Cancer Screenings Necessary?
____________
About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle
and wrong nutrition.
Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free 12-step fast-track
guide next below - fits for women, men & children.
Study and apply the information in this article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
Quotation :
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry), nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below).
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money -
the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be freezed. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma). Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vain walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vain walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE (because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
If the green link below has expired, search with the title - published in The New York Times
Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms FEB. 11, 2014
_______________________________________________________________________
Friday, February 13, 14
Cancer Screenings - Killer or Life Saver? Here is what to do to SAVE YOUR HEALTH -Twelve-Step Guide for women, men & children
Article 1 of 2
How to maintain your health - How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D, N.D., D.D.
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
___________________________
First the latest news relating to mammograms
A long-term study, 25-year follow-up with over 90,000 women states:
breast cancer screenings are no good, rather harmful.
The same way the most recent studies show that men's prostate click:Prostate screening for cancer is not necessary as the risk to cause more harm is bigger than the possible benefits.
(Further below an article link to prostate screening)
For women who dutifully keep their mammogram appointments year after year, click: the latest results from a long-term trial, 25-year follow-up, in Canada involving 90,000 women, which found no difference in death rates from breast cancer among women who had regular mammograms and those who did not, are bound to sow confusion, perhaps even anger.
A few words about the mammograms
Click green for further info
Mammography is the process of using low-energy X-rays (usually around 30 kVp) to examine the human breast and is used as a diagnostic and a screening tool. The goal of mammography is the early detection of breast cancer, typically through detection of characteristic masses and/or microcalcifications.
Click: Mammography
Microcalcifications are tiny specks of mineral deposits (calcium), that can be scattered throughout the mammary gland, or occur in clusters. When found on a mammogram, a radiologist will then decide whether the specks are of concern - usually, this is not the case. Commonly, they simply indicate the presence of tiny benign cysts, and may signify the presence of early breast cancer.
For decades now, the annual mammogram has been promoted vociferously, expressed in a very loud or forceful way and continuously as an essential way to protect oneself from breast cancer. Many women feel they are being irresponsible if they do not get a regular scan, said Dr. Lisa Schwartz, a professor at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.
Click: The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice
Click: Lisa Schwartz, MD, MS
The latest about screening men for a possible prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the #1 cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer deaths for men in the United States, after lung cancer.
Lung cancer
click: Lung Cancer
Are you still smoking - if you do not know how to stop smoking and save your health, STAF, Inc.'s private service will guide you to stop smoking and gives, as the only one, a lifetime result-guarantee with a one-time fee only. With the modern technology private services can be given worldwide (in addition to our office).
Prostate cancer
click: Prostate Cancer
One in every six men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in his lifetime,with about 90% of cases occurring in men 55 and older, and 71% of deaths occurring in men 75 and older. For these reasons, annual screenings would seem to be an important way to prevent prostate cancer. But there is a hot debate within the medical community: do regular prostate cancer screenings do more harm than good?
Are Annual Prostate Cancer Screenings Necessary?
Should Early Stage Prostate Cancer Be Treated?
Click green below for the latest science info:
Are Annual Prostate Cancer Screenings Necessary?
____________
About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle
and wrong nutrition.
Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free 12-step fast-track
guide next below - fits for women, men & children.
Study and apply the information in this article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
Quotation :
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry), nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below).
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money -
the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be freezed. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma). Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vain walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vain walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE (because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
If the green link below has expired, search with the title - published in The New York Times
Vast Study Casts Doubts on Value of Mammograms FEB. 11, 2014
_______________________________________________________________________
BLOGGING
Friday, February 14, 14
Skipping Proper Breakfast You May End in Your Early Grave - Here is what to do to SAVE YOUR HEALTH How to maintain your health - How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D, N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
___________________________
Article 1 of 2
This article information is valid for any age, from 1 year up to any age,
even though it first shows the teenage related research facts.
STAF, Inc.'s advice: In the morning: fruit, whole grains, an egg (steamed healthiest).
Below further info in The Free 12-Step Fast-Track Guide
The European (Swedish) study was published in "Public Health Nutrition", online January 28, 2014
Teenagers who didn't eat a good breakfast were more likely to be obese and have elevated blood sugar in middle age, a new study shows.
Researchers at Umea University in Sweden click: Umeå University, Sweden
found that teens who reported eating no breakfast or only sweets were two-thirds more likely to develop a cluster of risk factors linked to heart disease and diabetes when they were in their 40s than their peers who ate more substantial morning meals.
"It may be that eating breakfast aids in keeping to a healthier diet the rest of the day," the study's lead author, Maria Wennberg. click: Maria Wennberg - Search Facilities - Umeå University, Sweden
Kids who miss breakfast experience hunger surges and tend to overeat later in the day, Dr. David Ludwig, a pediatrics and nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said. He was not involved in the current study.
Wennberg and her colleagues reviewed data from 889 people in Lulea, Sweden. In 1981, when they were 16 years old, the participants completed questionnaires about what they ate for breakfast on a single day.
Researchers then examined them in 2008, when they were 43 years old, for metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors that can lead to heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
They found that 27 percent had developed signs of the syndrome, according to the study published in Public Health Nutrition.
Moreover, those who reported missing breakfast or eating a poor-quality one as a teenager were 68 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome in middle age.
Metabolic syndrome is a name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
Click for each topic:
Causes - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
When the researchers analyzed separate components of the syndrome, they found that obesity and high blood-sugar levels at age 43 were linked with poor breakfast habits at age 16.
About 35 percent of U.S. adults have metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association. In addition to a large waistline and high blood sugar, components of the syndrome include high blood pressure and low "good" cholesterol.
click: American Heart Association - Building healthier lives
Past studies found links between higher quality diets and healthier lifestyles, the authors write. Poor breakfast habits may therefore be part of an unhealthy lifestyle.
Wennberg called for more research on the link between adolescent breakfast habits and middle-age disease as well as for studies evaluating the benefits of school-breakfast programs "both because of effects on metabolic health and because of effects on academic performance."
"This may especially be of value in areas with socioeconomic disadvantage," she said.
Ludwig agreed, citing the benefits of a healthy breakfast on physical health as well as on thinking skills and academic performance. But he questioned the quality of the government-subsidized or free breakfasts that millions of American children currently receive at school.
"The rule is these breakfasts are cheap, low quality and of potentially marginal benefit," he told Reuters Health. "This is a tremendous missed opportunity."
An ideal breakfast would include protein, healthy fat and a source of carbohydrates like fruit or vegetables or minimally processed grain, he said.
The amount of money available for the federally-funded U.S. School Breakfast Program "is woefully inadequate," and "the nutritional standards are archaic," Ludwig said.
"In some cases, the schools have virtually outsourced the kitchen to the fast-food industry," he said.
He noted that the U.S. Senate sent to President Barack Obama a bill to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, by about $900 million a year, or roughly 1 percent. About half of food stamp recipients are children.
____________
About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle
and wrong nutrition.
Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free 12-step fast-track
guide next below - fits for women, men & children.
Study and apply the information in this article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
Quotation :
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry), nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below).
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money -
the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be freezed. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma). Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titled M+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 free advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
That's like a free health insurance and better
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Teens' poor breakfast choices predict later health problems | Reuterswww.reuters.com/.../us-teens-breakfast-idUSBREA161GK2014...Reuters
7 days ago - Teens' poor breakfast choices predict later health problems ... two-thirds more likely to develop a cluster of risk factors linked to heart disease ...
________________________
Friday, February 14, 14
Skipping Proper Breakfast You May End in Your Early Grave - Here is what to do to SAVE YOUR HEALTH How to maintain your health - How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D, N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
___________________________
Article 1 of 2
This article information is valid for any age, from 1 year up to any age,
even though it first shows the teenage related research facts.
STAF, Inc.'s advice: In the morning: fruit, whole grains, an egg (steamed healthiest).
Below further info in The Free 12-Step Fast-Track Guide
The European (Swedish) study was published in "Public Health Nutrition", online January 28, 2014
Teenagers who didn't eat a good breakfast were more likely to be obese and have elevated blood sugar in middle age, a new study shows.
Researchers at Umea University in Sweden click: Umeå University, Sweden
found that teens who reported eating no breakfast or only sweets were two-thirds more likely to develop a cluster of risk factors linked to heart disease and diabetes when they were in their 40s than their peers who ate more substantial morning meals.
"It may be that eating breakfast aids in keeping to a healthier diet the rest of the day," the study's lead author, Maria Wennberg. click: Maria Wennberg - Search Facilities - Umeå University, Sweden
Kids who miss breakfast experience hunger surges and tend to overeat later in the day, Dr. David Ludwig, a pediatrics and nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said. He was not involved in the current study.
Wennberg and her colleagues reviewed data from 889 people in Lulea, Sweden. In 1981, when they were 16 years old, the participants completed questionnaires about what they ate for breakfast on a single day.
Researchers then examined them in 2008, when they were 43 years old, for metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors that can lead to heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
They found that 27 percent had developed signs of the syndrome, according to the study published in Public Health Nutrition.
Moreover, those who reported missing breakfast or eating a poor-quality one as a teenager were 68 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome in middle age.
Metabolic syndrome is a name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes.
Click for each topic:
Causes - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
When the researchers analyzed separate components of the syndrome, they found that obesity and high blood-sugar levels at age 43 were linked with poor breakfast habits at age 16.
About 35 percent of U.S. adults have metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association. In addition to a large waistline and high blood sugar, components of the syndrome include high blood pressure and low "good" cholesterol.
click: American Heart Association - Building healthier lives
Past studies found links between higher quality diets and healthier lifestyles, the authors write. Poor breakfast habits may therefore be part of an unhealthy lifestyle.
Wennberg called for more research on the link between adolescent breakfast habits and middle-age disease as well as for studies evaluating the benefits of school-breakfast programs "both because of effects on metabolic health and because of effects on academic performance."
"This may especially be of value in areas with socioeconomic disadvantage," she said.
Ludwig agreed, citing the benefits of a healthy breakfast on physical health as well as on thinking skills and academic performance. But he questioned the quality of the government-subsidized or free breakfasts that millions of American children currently receive at school.
"The rule is these breakfasts are cheap, low quality and of potentially marginal benefit," he told Reuters Health. "This is a tremendous missed opportunity."
An ideal breakfast would include protein, healthy fat and a source of carbohydrates like fruit or vegetables or minimally processed grain, he said.
The amount of money available for the federally-funded U.S. School Breakfast Program "is woefully inadequate," and "the nutritional standards are archaic," Ludwig said.
"In some cases, the schools have virtually outsourced the kitchen to the fast-food industry," he said.
He noted that the U.S. Senate sent to President Barack Obama a bill to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, by about $900 million a year, or roughly 1 percent. About half of food stamp recipients are children.
____________
About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle
and wrong nutrition.
Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free 12-step fast-track
guide next below - fits for women, men & children.
Study and apply the information in this article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
Quotation :
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry), nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below).
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money -
the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be freezed. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma). Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titled M+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 free advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
That's like a free health insurance and better
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Teens' poor breakfast choices predict later health problems | Reuterswww.reuters.com/.../us-teens-breakfast-idUSBREA161GK2014...Reuters
7 days ago - Teens' poor breakfast choices predict later health problems ... two-thirds more likely to develop a cluster of risk factors linked to heart disease ...
________________________
The life-changing guide in the right hand side "blog" in STAF, Inc.'s website
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D. ,N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
Article 1 of 2
In its World Cancer Report 2014 The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
said cancer was growing "at an alarming pace" worldwide and new strategies were needed to curb the fatal and costly disease.
click: World Health Organization: WHO
The report states that we are unable to curb cancer with medical treatments.
The reports strongly states that the only way to restrain the growing, deadly cancer rate is prevention.
STAF, Inc.'s new, nationwide & worldwide leading Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program is the solution.
The "STAF Plan" (as it is also called) is (1) for prevention and (2) for naturally, without any negative side effects, restoring the lost health due to a wrong, unhealthy lifestyle & wrong, unhealthy nutrition (including the fast food = "bad food").
It is believed that about 95 % of all diseases may be caused by a wrong lifestyle & wrong nutrition.
It took 26 years worldwide research to develop the new STAF, Inc.'s Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program, "The STAF Plan".
What is also new and especially important in the STAF Plan is that (1) in the developed world (including the U.S.) everyone who works (even on the minimum salary) or gets basic government help, can afford to adopt the STAF Plan.
In the less developed world the governments can afford the new STAF Plan and provide the costs for healthy food & correct nutrients to everyone in need.
Based on the new STAF Plan the savings in the health care costs in the U.S. will be several billions every year adding finally, within years, to trillions. Proportionally in the same level in the other countries worldwide.
Article 2 of 2 below has additional details about the STAF Plan.
Back to the World Cancer Report 2014 by WHO
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), is the specialized cancer agency
of the World Health Organization.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between
250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
What is your choice?
(1) Life or (2) suffering & an early death?
The Good News:
As a principle, it is very simple and easy to learn to stay healthy and have a long life & get rich financially, even become a millionaire.
All that? - Yes, it can be yours. Keep reading.
The Bad News:
We humans are all slaves of our old habits, no matter how bad the habits.
To change our daily routines is scary as we love our own ways no matter how disastrous they may be. Even though we know that our wrong habits can & will kill us fast we hold to our wrong habits like a cat holds to a mouse in his mouth (at least that is a healthy habit for a cat, but: it is a cat, you are a human being).
If you keep eating unhealthy food (or stuff that could not really be called "food") you will miss the life-maintaining nutrients and for sure, not maybe or perhaps, but for sure, sooner or later, get sick and probably have several difficult diseases and you suffer, and suffer, and suffer until there is no more you.
When the killing sicknesses overwhelm your body & your mind, do you think you will then enjoy the terrible suffering when your body is slowly collapsing? Do you think your loved ones enjoy seeing your condition and love handling the mess your choice of unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition habit has caused to them?
It is not only about you - it is about everyone else also.
Then it is too late to repent - you lost your chances.
It is wise to drop your bad lifestyle & wrong nutrition habits now before you get sick. If you are already sick and suffering, you still have a potential chance for a new life because STAF Plan may also return your lost health. Give it a chance.
Are you one of the many who say "it is my private matter what I eat, drink,
if I miss daily exercising my body (at least walk daily 25K steps) and miss relaxing & quieting my mind - it is my private matter to handle my body & mind the way I want - it is my own life".
It is not YOUR private matter - you are not alone. In this world and life we ALL are linked to each other in several different ways. Most likely you have a family and you make all your family members suffer based on your wrong choices. Most likely you make your family also suffer financially because of your own wrong choices.
Do you have the right to come to my wallet and to everyone else's wallet to have us all paying for your sickness care you caused yourself because "it was your private matter what you eat and how you live".
Fine: it is fully your own private matter IF you do not make everyone, not only your family members, pay for all your sickness care expenses. Most sicknesses, over 95 % are based on a wrong lifestyle and unhealthy nutrition - - that part is in your & my own choice.
The rest, about 5 %, have their sickness roots in the gene mutations or in other genetic reasons - a small fraction of the whole 100 %
It is sure your own private matter (1) if and when you pay yourself for all your sickness expenses & care and (2) if and when your make no one else suffer losses in time and finances because of your own wrong choices how you eat and live. You may say "the insurance pays for me". Yes, but who pays for the insurance pool: all of us. The more sicknesses, the more we all have to pay to the insurance companies or as taxes to the government.
The basic principle in life is: in most cases to get older it does not have to meanthat we have to get sick. We can and maybe are even meant to die as healthy. As stated: about 95 % of all sicknesses may be coming from a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition.
When you hold into your wrong lifestyle & harmful nutrition and you are gone, you lived only half of your life & did not have much time reserved for you to enjoy full life including being financially wealthy. You missed then seeing your children succeed and you missed knowing your grand-children and perhaps even your grand-grand children.
You made a wrong choice.
Based on the above serious sermon I wish you opened your eyes & opened your ears to give yourself & to your loved ones the best gift you can give:
The Gift of Life
Decide today to start respecting good health to maintain & save your life.
Quotation "You respect you keep, you don't, you loose" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In 95 % of the cases it is the choice of the individual to stay healthy for life.
If you do not have any genetic disease (as can be in about 5 % of the population worldwide), you then belong to the 95 % who can decide to enjoy a healthy life as long as you live.
Because you, based on your correct choice, stay healthy for life, you will then also have energy, strength & brain power to be active and (if it is your will) to learn how to become a (multi-) millionaire so you widen you enjoyment of life and can help the suffering wrong choice makers nationwide & worldwide.
When you make the right choice and decide having The Healthy Lifestyle and the Correct Nutrition as your choice you will then also be a good model for everyone else including for your children.
As stated above, the children do not do what their parents tell them to do, the children do what they SEE their parents doing.
(1) NOW you have a real chance to make the CORRECT choice
to stay healthy, have a long life and make your whole family happy.
(2) Decide now and start from this free 12-step guide below.
(3) Then start studying, as instructed below, the whole STAF, Inc.'s guidance website from the beginning to the end. It will take several years to go through the whole website BUT: it will teach you & your children how to have the best life with all the good available. Have your whole family, including the children, actively involved and learning with you.
How to do that best, is all below.
Make the right choice and make it now:
Choose Life & Success
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. has the solutions - some easy, basic steps below (1) next and (2) in the article 2 of 2
Some easy steps to Health, Success & Long, Happy Life
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
Quotation " Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To get the desired results for your healthier, even financially richer life, APPLY the information and guide your whole family to do the same including your children from early on. Teach the main healthy lifestyle facts to your offspring and you may give them the best gift for life. Parents: realize also that children do what they SEE their parents doing, not what the parents tell them to do.
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat, nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and
(2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled water (boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in every fruit & vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the boiled water daily.
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces ad put as whole in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Back to the 2014 WHO cancer report:
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization
"It's untenable to think we can treat our way out of the cancer problem. That alone will not be a sufficient response - Prevention is the key", Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014, told reporters at a London briefing.
"More commitment to prevention & in healthy lifestyle and early detection is desperately needed... to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in the cancer burden globally."
The World Cancer Report, which is only produced roughly once every five years, involved a collaboration of around 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would significantly cut death rates, even in places where health-care services are less well developed.
The spiraling costs of cancer are hurting the economies of even the richest countries and are often way beyond the reach of poorer nations. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated at around $1.16 trillion.
Yet around half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters.
Sharp Rise in Cases Expected
The report said that in 2012 - the latest year for which data are available - new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year, a figure expected to grow to 22 million within the next two decades.
Over the same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million a year to 13 million per year.
The data mean that at current rates, one in five men and one in six women worldwide will develop cancer before they reach 75 years old, while one in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease.
In 2012, the most common cancers diagnosed were lung, breast and colon or bowel cancers, while the most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
As populations across the world are both growing and ageing, IARC said developing countries were disproportionately affected by the increasing numbers of cancers.
"Behind each one of these numbers, there's an individual and a family faced with a tragic situation," Wild said.
More than 60 percent of the world's total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths, it said. The situation is made worse in poorer countries by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
"Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programs, which are an investment rather than a cost," said Bernard Stewart, another co-editor of the report.
The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines to prevent infections that cause cervical and liver cancers and policies aimed at bringing down rates of obesity as key areas in which more should be done.
"Adequate legislation can encourage healthier behavior," said Stewart.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, the new, leading organization in Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition with nationwide & worldwide operation states:
Senator Schumer is right - however, the fast food (= "Bad No-Food") and processed stuff called "food" is not suitable as food for us humans, not for our pets, either.
The way to eat safely to maintain our health is possible.
STAF, Inc. has the solution. See below.
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat, nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz.
1-min. boiled water (brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in every fruit & vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the boiled water daily.
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces ad put as whole in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Published Tuesday 2/11/14 blogging
Do you enjoy eating chemical used in shoe soles and yoga mats - it's commonly used in the food industry - find out how to avoid this poison and maintain your health
Senator Charles Schumer (Dem., NY) called on the FDA to ban a chemical that's added into the bread at most fast-food chains.
"In a day where cancer rates are rising . . . you have to be careful," he said outside a McDonald's on Manhattan's West Side.
Many restaurants, grocery stores and fast-food chains, like McDonald's, use azodicarbonamide click: Wikipedia
to condition dough and make the bread last longer, but studies have found that it can create semicarbazide, a carcinogen, when cooked.
"The burger chain is one of many restaurants, like Arby's, Burger King and Wendy's, that use the chemical," Schumer said.
Last week, Subway announced it would stop using the chemical in its stores. McDonald's didn't return messages for comment.
Schumer is less worried about the use of the chemical in other products such as shoe soles and yoga mats. "It's pretty infrequent that we'd eat a shoe or yoga mat," he said.
Australia and the European Union have already banned azodicarbonamide from their food and the United States should follow suit, Schumer said.
The FDA could easily be rid of the chemical by attaching it to a clause in regulations, which prohibits the agency from approving anything carcinogenic for consumption.
"We need to do everything we can to remove carcinogens from the food pyramid," Schumer said.
___________________
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, the new, leading organization in Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition with nationwide & worldwide operation states:
Senator Schumer is right - however, the fast food (= "Bad No-Food") and processed stuff called "food" is not suitable as food for us humans, not for our pets, either.
The way to eat safely to maintain our health is possible.
STAF, Inc. has the solution. See below.
Below the updated (about the same as above) - published with Tuesday 2/11/14 blogging
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below).
The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan.
It is also called: The STAF Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan, also called The STAF Plan,
is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D. ,N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
Article 1 of 2
In its World Cancer Report 2014 The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
said cancer was growing "at an alarming pace" worldwide and new strategies were needed to curb the fatal and costly disease.
click: World Health Organization: WHO
The report states that we are unable to curb cancer with medical treatments.
The reports strongly states that the only way to restrain the growing, deadly cancer rate is prevention.
STAF, Inc.'s new, nationwide & worldwide leading Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program is the solution.
The "STAF Plan" (as it is also called) is (1) for prevention and (2) for naturally, without any negative side effects, restoring the lost health due to a wrong, unhealthy lifestyle & wrong, unhealthy nutrition (including the fast food = "bad food").
It is believed that about 95 % of all diseases may be caused by a wrong lifestyle & wrong nutrition.
It took 26 years worldwide research to develop the new STAF, Inc.'s Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program, "The STAF Plan".
What is also new and especially important in the STAF Plan is that (1) in the developed world (including the U.S.) everyone who works (even on the minimum salary) or gets basic government help, can afford to adopt the STAF Plan.
In the less developed world the governments can afford the new STAF Plan and provide the costs for healthy food & correct nutrients to everyone in need.
Based on the new STAF Plan the savings in the health care costs in the U.S. will be several billions every year adding finally, within years, to trillions. Proportionally in the same level in the other countries worldwide.
Article 2 of 2 below has additional details about the STAF Plan.
Back to the World Cancer Report 2014 by WHO
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), is the specialized cancer agency
of the World Health Organization.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between
250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
What is your choice?
(1) Life or (2) suffering & an early death?
The Good News:
As a principle, it is very simple and easy to learn to stay healthy and have a long life & get rich financially, even become a millionaire.
All that? - Yes, it can be yours. Keep reading.
The Bad News:
We humans are all slaves of our old habits, no matter how bad the habits.
To change our daily routines is scary as we love our own ways no matter how disastrous they may be. Even though we know that our wrong habits can & will kill us fast we hold to our wrong habits like a cat holds to a mouse in his mouth (at least that is a healthy habit for a cat, but: it is a cat, you are a human being).
If you keep eating unhealthy food (or stuff that could not really be called "food") you will miss the life-maintaining nutrients and for sure, not maybe or perhaps, but for sure, sooner or later, get sick and probably have several difficult diseases and you suffer, and suffer, and suffer until there is no more you.
When the killing sicknesses overwhelm your body & your mind, do you think you will then enjoy the terrible suffering when your body is slowly collapsing? Do you think your loved ones enjoy seeing your condition and love handling the mess your choice of unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition habit has caused to them?
It is not only about you - it is about everyone else also.
Then it is too late to repent - you lost your chances.
It is wise to drop your bad lifestyle & wrong nutrition habits now before you get sick. If you are already sick and suffering, you still have a potential chance for a new life because STAF Plan may also return your lost health. Give it a chance.
Are you one of the many who say "it is my private matter what I eat, drink,
if I miss daily exercising my body (at least walk daily 25K steps) and miss relaxing & quieting my mind - it is my private matter to handle my body & mind the way I want - it is my own life".
It is not YOUR private matter - you are not alone. In this world and life we ALL are linked to each other in several different ways. Most likely you have a family and you make all your family members suffer based on your wrong choices. Most likely you make your family also suffer financially because of your own wrong choices.
Do you have the right to come to my wallet and to everyone else's wallet to have us all paying for your sickness care you caused yourself because "it was your private matter what you eat and how you live".
Fine: it is fully your own private matter IF you do not make everyone, not only your family members, pay for all your sickness care expenses. Most sicknesses, over 95 % are based on a wrong lifestyle and unhealthy nutrition - - that part is in your & my own choice.
The rest, about 5 %, have their sickness roots in the gene mutations or in other genetic reasons - a small fraction of the whole 100 %
It is sure your own private matter (1) if and when you pay yourself for all your sickness expenses & care and (2) if and when your make no one else suffer losses in time and finances because of your own wrong choices how you eat and live. You may say "the insurance pays for me". Yes, but who pays for the insurance pool: all of us. The more sicknesses, the more we all have to pay to the insurance companies or as taxes to the government.
The basic principle in life is: in most cases to get older it does not have to meanthat we have to get sick. We can and maybe are even meant to die as healthy. As stated: about 95 % of all sicknesses may be coming from a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition.
When you hold into your wrong lifestyle & harmful nutrition and you are gone, you lived only half of your life & did not have much time reserved for you to enjoy full life including being financially wealthy. You missed then seeing your children succeed and you missed knowing your grand-children and perhaps even your grand-grand children.
You made a wrong choice.
Based on the above serious sermon I wish you opened your eyes & opened your ears to give yourself & to your loved ones the best gift you can give:
The Gift of Life
Decide today to start respecting good health to maintain & save your life.
Quotation "You respect you keep, you don't, you loose" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In 95 % of the cases it is the choice of the individual to stay healthy for life.
If you do not have any genetic disease (as can be in about 5 % of the population worldwide), you then belong to the 95 % who can decide to enjoy a healthy life as long as you live.
Because you, based on your correct choice, stay healthy for life, you will then also have energy, strength & brain power to be active and (if it is your will) to learn how to become a (multi-) millionaire so you widen you enjoyment of life and can help the suffering wrong choice makers nationwide & worldwide.
When you make the right choice and decide having The Healthy Lifestyle and the Correct Nutrition as your choice you will then also be a good model for everyone else including for your children.
As stated above, the children do not do what their parents tell them to do, the children do what they SEE their parents doing.
(1) NOW you have a real chance to make the CORRECT choice
to stay healthy, have a long life and make your whole family happy.
(2) Decide now and start from this free 12-step guide below.
(3) Then start studying, as instructed below, the whole STAF, Inc.'s guidance website from the beginning to the end. It will take several years to go through the whole website BUT: it will teach you & your children how to have the best life with all the good available. Have your whole family, including the children, actively involved and learning with you.
How to do that best, is all below.
Make the right choice and make it now:
Choose Life & Success
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. has the solutions - some easy, basic steps below (1) next and (2) in the article 2 of 2
Some easy steps to Health, Success & Long, Happy Life
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
Quotation " Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To get the desired results for your healthier, even financially richer life, APPLY the information and guide your whole family to do the same including your children from early on. Teach the main healthy lifestyle facts to your offspring and you may give them the best gift for life. Parents: realize also that children do what they SEE their parents doing, not what the parents tell them to do.
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat, nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and
(2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled water (boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in every fruit & vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the boiled water daily.
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces ad put as whole in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Back to the 2014 WHO cancer report:
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization
"It's untenable to think we can treat our way out of the cancer problem. That alone will not be a sufficient response - Prevention is the key", Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014, told reporters at a London briefing.
"More commitment to prevention & in healthy lifestyle and early detection is desperately needed... to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in the cancer burden globally."
The World Cancer Report, which is only produced roughly once every five years, involved a collaboration of around 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would significantly cut death rates, even in places where health-care services are less well developed.
The spiraling costs of cancer are hurting the economies of even the richest countries and are often way beyond the reach of poorer nations. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated at around $1.16 trillion.
Yet around half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters.
Sharp Rise in Cases Expected
The report said that in 2012 - the latest year for which data are available - new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year, a figure expected to grow to 22 million within the next two decades.
Over the same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million a year to 13 million per year.
The data mean that at current rates, one in five men and one in six women worldwide will develop cancer before they reach 75 years old, while one in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease.
In 2012, the most common cancers diagnosed were lung, breast and colon or bowel cancers, while the most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
As populations across the world are both growing and ageing, IARC said developing countries were disproportionately affected by the increasing numbers of cancers.
"Behind each one of these numbers, there's an individual and a family faced with a tragic situation," Wild said.
More than 60 percent of the world's total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths, it said. The situation is made worse in poorer countries by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
"Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programs, which are an investment rather than a cost," said Bernard Stewart, another co-editor of the report.
The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines to prevent infections that cause cervical and liver cancers and policies aimed at bringing down rates of obesity as key areas in which more should be done.
"Adequate legislation can encourage healthier behavior," said Stewart.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, the new, leading organization in Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition with nationwide & worldwide operation states:
Senator Schumer is right - however, the fast food (= "Bad No-Food") and processed stuff called "food" is not suitable as food for us humans, not for our pets, either.
The way to eat safely to maintain our health is possible.
STAF, Inc. has the solution. See below.
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat, nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz.
1-min. boiled water (brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in every fruit & vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the boiled water daily.
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces ad put as whole in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Published Tuesday 2/11/14 blogging
Do you enjoy eating chemical used in shoe soles and yoga mats - it's commonly used in the food industry - find out how to avoid this poison and maintain your health
Senator Charles Schumer (Dem., NY) called on the FDA to ban a chemical that's added into the bread at most fast-food chains.
"In a day where cancer rates are rising . . . you have to be careful," he said outside a McDonald's on Manhattan's West Side.
Many restaurants, grocery stores and fast-food chains, like McDonald's, use azodicarbonamide click: Wikipedia
to condition dough and make the bread last longer, but studies have found that it can create semicarbazide, a carcinogen, when cooked.
"The burger chain is one of many restaurants, like Arby's, Burger King and Wendy's, that use the chemical," Schumer said.
Last week, Subway announced it would stop using the chemical in its stores. McDonald's didn't return messages for comment.
Schumer is less worried about the use of the chemical in other products such as shoe soles and yoga mats. "It's pretty infrequent that we'd eat a shoe or yoga mat," he said.
Australia and the European Union have already banned azodicarbonamide from their food and the United States should follow suit, Schumer said.
The FDA could easily be rid of the chemical by attaching it to a clause in regulations, which prohibits the agency from approving anything carcinogenic for consumption.
"We need to do everything we can to remove carcinogens from the food pyramid," Schumer said.
___________________
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, the new, leading organization in Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition with nationwide & worldwide operation states:
Senator Schumer is right - however, the fast food (= "Bad No-Food") and processed stuff called "food" is not suitable as food for us humans, not for our pets, either.
The way to eat safely to maintain our health is possible.
STAF, Inc. has the solution. See below.
Below the updated (about the same as above) - published with Tuesday 2/11/14 blogging
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below).
The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan.
It is also called: The STAF Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan, also called The STAF Plan,
is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
For Blogging
To end the killing of our children in their home care must end as any type of domestic violence must be reduced or ended - STAF, Inc. has the real solution
The life-changing guide in the right hand side "blog" in STAF, Inc.'s website
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Article 1 of 2
2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
The babysitters and the parents, unfortunately, can lose their full understanding while in rage when the limbic system starts dominating.
The limbic (click:Limbic) system in the human brains is the atavistic (click: Atavism), animal like behavior "fight or run" and can, during emotional challenges, lead fast to uncontrolled violence.
The lack of knowledge about our human behavior is the primary reason when some individuals are not able to control what actions they take.
The cure for lack of knowledge is training in the knowledge.
It is also important to realize that the limbic system can lead any person, less or more highly educated, to uncontrolled violence.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, headquartered in the New York City with nationwide & worldwide operations, has as tested, practical solution capable of dramatically reducing the fatal harming of our babies & children. The same solution will also greatly reduce any other type of domestic violence.
Federal, state & local level legislation is needed to change the present lack of knowledge otherwise the killing of our babies & children will rampantly continue and other domestic violence goes on.
(1) The solution is reduce any type of violence (physical or mental) is to train every new parent in the hospital before releasing the baby.
A one-hour parental training will give the basic knowledge HOW to handle the situation when the baby or the child can cause the adult losing his/her temper. In the training part of the time is also given to how to avoid any domestic violence as the reasons for any domestic violence are the same no matter who is the target and who is the violator.
This same training must be repeated in the hospital for both parents every time a new baby is born. The repeated training can be just 30 min. long and will make a difference in any type of home violence. The hospitals can use outside, licensed trainers.
It is also necessary to know what the statistics show: the men are not the main violators (as many may think) - both male & female partners can be the culprits as the deep-down, atavistic reasons for any violent actions are in the human limbic system and has nothing to do with the male/female difference.
Domestic violence done by men is about 60 % and done by women is about 40 %. Violence against babies and children is about 65 % done by women and 35 % by men.
(2) The 2nd part of the solution to reduce any type of violence (physical or mental) towards the babies & children is to make paid babysitting/child care available only for a person who has taken a similar basic training.
(3) The 3rd part is for training the p/t or f/t or live-in nanny - a better-paid profession than most realize.
A professional nanny has to have a minimum of an Associate level College degree as also the salary level in that profession is commonly on that level.
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family’s home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and bruising around her mouth.
Police officers arrived at the family’s apartment in the Arverne section of the Rockaway Peninsula around 11:30 p.m., officials said. There they found the girl, Kevasia Edwards, unconscious. She was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where she was pronounced dead.
A woman who was staying with her sister in the building called 911 after she was notified of the emergency by the child’s mother, who was identified by the police as Ashley Diaz, 28.
Christine Murphy, 27, the woman who called 911, said she ran to Ms. Diaz’s sixth-floor apartment after she had called to say Kevasia was not breathing. Ms. Murphy found the girl lying on the floor.
“I started crying hysterically,” Ms. Murphy said. “I said, ‘Ashley, what happened? Did you call the ambulance?’ She goes, ‘No. I was about to.’ ”
As of Tuesday evening, there had been no arrests.
This article continues after the Article 2 of 2 below
Although police officials could not immediately say whether a crime had occurred, they said Kevasia had been surrounded by violence and abuse for much of her short life. From 2010 to 2013, police officers came to her home nine times in response to domestic disputes, including arguments, harassment and assault, police officials said. Social workers from the Administration for Children’s Services had visited the home at least four times since 2011, officials said.
Kevasia had four siblings, ages 3, 4, 6 and 10, officials said. A neighbor and friend of the family who requested anonymity said the children had only recently returned to live with their mother in their newly renovated building, in a complex called the Arverne View, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. She said she had not seen the children’s father in a year.
She said that when she saw Kevasia for the last time a week ago, she looked “frail, very little.”
“Her nose was running like she always had a cold,” the neighbor said.
The night Kevasia died, she said, she watched as “the ambulance guys tried to beat life into this baby.” Kevasia was wearing an oxygen mask, and Ms. Diaz was standing by, watching. After Kevasia was put in the ambulance, the neighbor said, Ms. Diaz was taken away in a police car.
Christopher McKniff, a spokesman for the Administration for Children’s Services, said the agency was working with the Police Department to investigate Kevasia’s death, but said he could not provide any additional information.
Kevasia’s death comes just two weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed changes to child protection policies in response to the death of another child, Myls Dobson, 4, who died on Jan. 8 after he was abused for weeks, allegedly by a caregiver, officials said.
The caregiver, Kryzie King, had been given temporary custody of the boy by his father after the father was jailed on racketeering, fraud and money laundering charges. A review by the city found that officials from the Administration for Children’s Services had not been aware of the extent of the father’s criminal history and had stopped monitoring his parenting last August.
Mr. de Blasio has proposed changing state law to give social workers access to arrest records and has called on the Family Court system to notify the relevant agencies when a parent on parole or probation is awarded custody.
Source: NYT
2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family’s home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and bruising around her mouth.
Police officers arrived at the family’s apartment in the Arverne section of the Rockaway Peninsula around 11:30 p.m., officials said. There they found the girl, Kevasia Edwards, unconscious. She was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where she was pronounced dead.
A woman who was staying with her sister in the building called 911 after she was notified of the emergency by the child’s mother, who was identified by the police as Ashley Diaz, 28.
Christine Murphy, 27, the woman who called 911, said she ran to Ms. Diaz’s sixth-floor apartment after she had called to say Kevasia was not breathing. Ms. Murphy found the girl lying on the floor.
“I started crying hysterically,” Ms. Murphy said. “I said, ‘Ashley, what happened? Did you call the ambulance?’ She goes, ‘No. I was about to.’ ”
As of Tuesday evening, there had been no arrests.
Although police officials could not immediately say whether a crime had occurred, they said Kevasia had been surrounded by violence and abuse for much of her short life. From 2010 to 2013, police officers came to her home nine times in response to domestic disputes, including arguments, harassment and assault, police officials said. Social workers from the Administration for Children’s Services had visited the home at least four times since 2011, officials said.
Kevasia had four siblings, ages 3, 4, 6 and 10, officials said. A neighbor and friend of the family who requested anonymity said the children had only recently returned to live with their mother in their newly renovated building, in a complex called the Arverne View, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. She said she had not seen the children’s father in a year.
She said that when she saw Kevasia for the last time a week ago, she looked “frail, very little.”
“Her nose was running like she always had a cold,” the neighbor said.
The night Kevasia died, she said, she watched as “the ambulance guys tried to beat life into this baby.” Kevasia was wearing an oxygen mask, and Ms. Diaz was standing by, watching. After Kevasia was put in the ambulance, the neighbor said, Ms. Diaz was taken away in a police car.
Christopher McKniff, a spokesman for the Administration for Children’s Services, said the agency was working with the Police Department to investigate Kevasia’s death, but said he could not provide any additional information.
Kevasia’s death comes just two weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed changes to child protection policies in response to the death of another child, Myls Dobson, 4, who died on Jan. 8 after he was abused for weeks, allegedly by a caregiver, officials said.
The caregiver, Kryzie King, had been given temporary custody of the boy by his father after the father was jailed on racketeering, fraud and money laundering charges. A review by the city found that officials from the Administration for Children’s Services had not been aware of the extent of the father’s criminal history and had stopped monitoring his parenting last August.
Mr. de Blasio has proposed changing state law to give social workers access to arrest records and has called on the Family Court system to notify the relevant agencies when a parent on parole or probation is awarded custody.
Source: NYT
To end the killing of our children in their home care must end as any type of domestic violence must be reduced or ended - STAF, Inc. has the real solution
The life-changing guide in the right hand side "blog" in STAF, Inc.'s website
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Article 1 of 2
2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
The babysitters and the parents, unfortunately, can lose their full understanding while in rage when the limbic system starts dominating.
The limbic (click:Limbic) system in the human brains is the atavistic (click: Atavism), animal like behavior "fight or run" and can, during emotional challenges, lead fast to uncontrolled violence.
The lack of knowledge about our human behavior is the primary reason when some individuals are not able to control what actions they take.
The cure for lack of knowledge is training in the knowledge.
It is also important to realize that the limbic system can lead any person, less or more highly educated, to uncontrolled violence.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, headquartered in the New York City with nationwide & worldwide operations, has as tested, practical solution capable of dramatically reducing the fatal harming of our babies & children. The same solution will also greatly reduce any other type of domestic violence.
Federal, state & local level legislation is needed to change the present lack of knowledge otherwise the killing of our babies & children will rampantly continue and other domestic violence goes on.
(1) The solution is reduce any type of violence (physical or mental) is to train every new parent in the hospital before releasing the baby.
A one-hour parental training will give the basic knowledge HOW to handle the situation when the baby or the child can cause the adult losing his/her temper. In the training part of the time is also given to how to avoid any domestic violence as the reasons for any domestic violence are the same no matter who is the target and who is the violator.
This same training must be repeated in the hospital for both parents every time a new baby is born. The repeated training can be just 30 min. long and will make a difference in any type of home violence. The hospitals can use outside, licensed trainers.
It is also necessary to know what the statistics show: the men are not the main violators (as many may think) - both male & female partners can be the culprits as the deep-down, atavistic reasons for any violent actions are in the human limbic system and has nothing to do with the male/female difference.
Domestic violence done by men is about 60 % and done by women is about 40 %. Violence against babies and children is about 65 % done by women and 35 % by men.
(2) The 2nd part of the solution to reduce any type of violence (physical or mental) towards the babies & children is to make paid babysitting/child care available only for a person who has taken a similar basic training.
(3) The 3rd part is for training the p/t or f/t or live-in nanny - a better-paid profession than most realize.
A professional nanny has to have a minimum of an Associate level College degree as also the salary level in that profession is commonly on that level.
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family’s home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and bruising around her mouth.
Police officers arrived at the family’s apartment in the Arverne section of the Rockaway Peninsula around 11:30 p.m., officials said. There they found the girl, Kevasia Edwards, unconscious. She was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where she was pronounced dead.
A woman who was staying with her sister in the building called 911 after she was notified of the emergency by the child’s mother, who was identified by the police as Ashley Diaz, 28.
Christine Murphy, 27, the woman who called 911, said she ran to Ms. Diaz’s sixth-floor apartment after she had called to say Kevasia was not breathing. Ms. Murphy found the girl lying on the floor.
“I started crying hysterically,” Ms. Murphy said. “I said, ‘Ashley, what happened? Did you call the ambulance?’ She goes, ‘No. I was about to.’ ”
As of Tuesday evening, there had been no arrests.
This article continues after the Article 2 of 2 below
Although police officials could not immediately say whether a crime had occurred, they said Kevasia had been surrounded by violence and abuse for much of her short life. From 2010 to 2013, police officers came to her home nine times in response to domestic disputes, including arguments, harassment and assault, police officials said. Social workers from the Administration for Children’s Services had visited the home at least four times since 2011, officials said.
Kevasia had four siblings, ages 3, 4, 6 and 10, officials said. A neighbor and friend of the family who requested anonymity said the children had only recently returned to live with their mother in their newly renovated building, in a complex called the Arverne View, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. She said she had not seen the children’s father in a year.
She said that when she saw Kevasia for the last time a week ago, she looked “frail, very little.”
“Her nose was running like she always had a cold,” the neighbor said.
The night Kevasia died, she said, she watched as “the ambulance guys tried to beat life into this baby.” Kevasia was wearing an oxygen mask, and Ms. Diaz was standing by, watching. After Kevasia was put in the ambulance, the neighbor said, Ms. Diaz was taken away in a police car.
Christopher McKniff, a spokesman for the Administration for Children’s Services, said the agency was working with the Police Department to investigate Kevasia’s death, but said he could not provide any additional information.
Kevasia’s death comes just two weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed changes to child protection policies in response to the death of another child, Myls Dobson, 4, who died on Jan. 8 after he was abused for weeks, allegedly by a caregiver, officials said.
The caregiver, Kryzie King, had been given temporary custody of the boy by his father after the father was jailed on racketeering, fraud and money laundering charges. A review by the city found that officials from the Administration for Children’s Services had not been aware of the extent of the father’s criminal history and had stopped monitoring his parenting last August.
Mr. de Blasio has proposed changing state law to give social workers access to arrest records and has called on the Family Court system to notify the relevant agencies when a parent on parole or probation is awarded custody.
Source: NYT
- 2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
New York Times
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family's home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and ...
- 2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family’s home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and bruising around her mouth.
Police officers arrived at the family’s apartment in the Arverne section of the Rockaway Peninsula around 11:30 p.m., officials said. There they found the girl, Kevasia Edwards, unconscious. She was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where she was pronounced dead.
A woman who was staying with her sister in the building called 911 after she was notified of the emergency by the child’s mother, who was identified by the police as Ashley Diaz, 28.
Christine Murphy, 27, the woman who called 911, said she ran to Ms. Diaz’s sixth-floor apartment after she had called to say Kevasia was not breathing. Ms. Murphy found the girl lying on the floor.
“I started crying hysterically,” Ms. Murphy said. “I said, ‘Ashley, what happened? Did you call the ambulance?’ She goes, ‘No. I was about to.’ ”
As of Tuesday evening, there had been no arrests.
Although police officials could not immediately say whether a crime had occurred, they said Kevasia had been surrounded by violence and abuse for much of her short life. From 2010 to 2013, police officers came to her home nine times in response to domestic disputes, including arguments, harassment and assault, police officials said. Social workers from the Administration for Children’s Services had visited the home at least four times since 2011, officials said.
Kevasia had four siblings, ages 3, 4, 6 and 10, officials said. A neighbor and friend of the family who requested anonymity said the children had only recently returned to live with their mother in their newly renovated building, in a complex called the Arverne View, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. She said she had not seen the children’s father in a year.
She said that when she saw Kevasia for the last time a week ago, she looked “frail, very little.”
“Her nose was running like she always had a cold,” the neighbor said.
The night Kevasia died, she said, she watched as “the ambulance guys tried to beat life into this baby.” Kevasia was wearing an oxygen mask, and Ms. Diaz was standing by, watching. After Kevasia was put in the ambulance, the neighbor said, Ms. Diaz was taken away in a police car.
Christopher McKniff, a spokesman for the Administration for Children’s Services, said the agency was working with the Police Department to investigate Kevasia’s death, but said he could not provide any additional information.
Kevasia’s death comes just two weeks after Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed changes to child protection policies in response to the death of another child, Myls Dobson, 4, who died on Jan. 8 after he was abused for weeks, allegedly by a caregiver, officials said.
The caregiver, Kryzie King, had been given temporary custody of the boy by his father after the father was jailed on racketeering, fraud and money laundering charges. A review by the city found that officials from the Administration for Children’s Services had not been aware of the extent of the father’s criminal history and had stopped monitoring his parenting last August.
Mr. de Blasio has proposed changing state law to give social workers access to arrest records and has called on the Family Court system to notify the relevant agencies when a parent on parole or probation is awarded custody.
Source: NYT
- News for Nyt 2-year old girl dies in home with a history ...
NY1- 2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
New York Times - 19 hours ago
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family's home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and ...
- 2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
For Blogging
Don’t Ask Your Doctor About ‘Low T’
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — A FUNNY thing has happened in the United States over the last few decades. Men’s average testosterone levels have been dropping by at least 1 percent a year, according to a 2006 study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Testosterone appears to decline naturally with aging, but internal belly fat depresses the hormone further, especially in obese men. Drugs like steroids and opiates also lower testosterone, and it’s suspected that chemicals like bisphenol A
(or BPA, commonly found in plastic food containers) and diseases like Type 2 diabetes play a role as well.
Men feel the loss. Clinical testosterone deficiency, which is variously defined as lower than 220 to 350 nanograms of testosterone per deciliter of blood serum, can cause men to lose sex drive and fertility. Their bone density often declines, and they may feel tired and experience hot flashes and sweats.
But “low T,” as the condition has been labeled, isn’t nearly as common as the drug ads for prescription testosterone would have you believe. Pharmaceutical companies have seized on the decline in testosterone levels as pathological and applicable to every man. They aim to convince men that common effects of aging like slowing down a bit and feeling less sexual actually constitute a new disease, and that they need a prescription to cure it. This is a seductive message for many men, who just want to feel better than they do, and want to give it a shot, literally.
The problem is that prescription testosterone doesn’t just give your T level a boost: it may also increase your risk of heart attack. It can add huge numbers of red blood cells to your bloodstream and shrink your testes. In some men, it increases aggression and irritability. Children who accidentally come in contact with the hormone can develop unwanted pubic hair and genital changes. Last week, a large click: study published in the journal PLoS ONE found that, within three months, taking the hormone doubled the rate of heart attacks in men 65 and older, as well as in younger men who had heart disease. The Food and Drug Administration has begun an investigation. click: PLOS ONE : accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed science
The number of testosterone prescriptions given to American men has tripled since 2001. Used clinically since 1937 and approved by the F.D.A. since 1953, testosterone is now administered in at least five forms, including patches, gels and injections. Three million prescriptions were written in 2012 for the market leader AndroGel alone. Sales of all testosterone-boosting drugs are estimated to have been $2 billion in 2012, and are projected to hit $5 billion by 2017.
Too many doctors are now writing testosterone prescriptions without even measuring the patient’s hormone levels, much less re-testing for confirmation and adjusting the dose after prescription. Up to a quarter of these prescriptions are dispensed without a blood test.
From a psychological perspective, this isn’t helping men. From a medical perspective, it’s devastating. In addition to the cardiac risks, prescription T can mean a permanent shut-off in men’s own, albeit diminished, testosterone production. In other words, once you start, you may well be hooked for life.
Instead of heading to the pharmacy to get their fix, men should address the leading cause of the problem. Losing weight is a tried and true way to naturally boost testosterone levels. According to findings presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in 2012, obese men who lost an average of 17 pounds saw their testosterone levels increase by 15 percent. In general, a man’s waist should be half his height. click: Endocrine Society
Some diet changes may be useful for reasons other than just weight loss. If you drink too much booze, switch to water — alcohol lowers testosterone levels. Eating more cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and collard greens can also help, by blunting the effects of estrogen in a man’s body. At the end of the day, eating more of the right foods and fewer junk foods improves mood and energy — which may be the only fix many men need.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, middle-aged women went through their own hormone trial, taking synthetic prescription estrogen and progesterone to treat the symptoms of menopause, among other reasons. But by 2002 we knew that those hormones raised the risk of stroke, heart disease, life-threatening blood clots and invasive breast cancer in healthy women.
Luckily, we don’t have to wait 12 more years to learn about the risks of testosterone in healthy men. Men have been drugged by overprocessed foods and gender-bending chemicals like BPA
. The last thing they need now is a prescription for a risky drug to treat a trumped-up disease.
click: Scientists Discover The First Direct Link Between BPA And Cancer
Click: John La Puma is an internist and the author of “Refuel: A 24-Day Eating Plan to Shed Fat, Boost Testosterone, and Pump Up Strength and Stamina.”
Source: The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. click: JCEM: Home
Don't Ask Your Doctor About 'Low T'
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — A FUNNY thing has happened in the United States over the last few decades. Men's average testosteronelevels
__________________________________________
Don’t Ask Your Doctor About ‘Low T’
Article 2 of 2 (Article 1 of 2 next above)
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — A FUNNY thing has happened in the United States over the last few decades. Men’s average testosterone levels have been dropping by at least 1 percent a year, according to a 2006 study in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.
Testosterone appears to decline naturally with aging, but internal belly fat depresses the hormone further, especially in obese men. Drugs like steroids and opiates also lower testosterone, and it’s suspected that chemicals like bisphenol A
(or BPA, commonly found in plastic food containers) and diseases like Type 2 diabetes play a role as well.
Men feel the loss. Clinical testosterone deficiency, which is variously defined as lower than 220 to 350 nanograms of testosterone per deciliter of blood serum, can cause men to lose sex drive and fertility. Their bone density often declines, and they may feel tired and experience hot flashes and sweats.
But “low T,” as the condition has been labeled, isn’t nearly as common as the drug ads for prescription testosterone would have you believe. Pharmaceutical companies have seized on the decline in testosterone levels as pathological and applicable to every man. They aim to convince men that common effects of aging like slowing down a bit and feeling less sexual actually constitute a new disease, and that they need a prescription to cure it. This is a seductive message for many men, who just want to feel better than they do, and want to give it a shot, literally.
The problem is that prescription testosterone doesn’t just give your T level a boost: it may also increase your risk of heart attack. It can add huge numbers of red blood cells to your bloodstream and shrink your testes. In some men, it increases aggression and irritability. Children who accidentally come in contact with the hormone can develop unwanted pubic hair and genital changes. Last week, a large click: study published in the journal PLoS ONE found that, within three months, taking the hormone doubled the rate of heart attacks in men 65 and older, as well as in younger men who had heart disease. The Food and Drug Administration has begun an investigation. click: PLOS ONE : accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed science
The number of testosterone prescriptions given to American men has tripled since 2001. Used clinically since 1937 and approved by the F.D.A. since 1953, testosterone is now administered in at least five forms, including patches, gels and injections. Three million prescriptions were written in 2012 for the market leader AndroGel alone. Sales of all testosterone-boosting drugs are estimated to have been $2 billion in 2012, and are projected to hit $5 billion by 2017.
Too many doctors are now writing testosterone prescriptions without even measuring the patient’s hormone levels, much less re-testing for confirmation and adjusting the dose after prescription. Up to a quarter of these prescriptions are dispensed without a blood test.
From a psychological perspective, this isn’t helping men. From a medical perspective, it’s devastating. In addition to the cardiac risks, prescription T can mean a permanent shut-off in men’s own, albeit diminished, testosterone production. In other words, once you start, you may well be hooked for life.
Instead of heading to the pharmacy to get their fix, men should address the leading cause of the problem. Losing weight is a tried and true way to naturally boost testosterone levels. According to findings presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in 2012, obese men who lost an average of 17 pounds saw their testosterone levels increase by 15 percent. In general, a man’s waist should be half his height. click: Endocrine Society
Some diet changes may be useful for reasons other than just weight loss. If you drink too much booze, switch to water — alcohol lowers testosterone levels. Eating more cruciferous vegetables like broccoli and collard greens can also help, by blunting the effects of estrogen in a man’s body. At the end of the day, eating more of the right foods and fewer junk foods improves mood and energy — which may be the only fix many men need.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, middle-aged women went through their own hormone trial, taking synthetic prescription estrogen and progesterone to treat the symptoms of menopause, among other reasons. But by 2002 we knew that those hormones raised the risk of stroke, heart disease, life-threatening blood clots and invasive breast cancer in healthy women.
Luckily, we don’t have to wait 12 more years to learn about the risks of testosterone in healthy men. Men have been drugged by overprocessed foods and gender-bending chemicals like BPA
. The last thing they need now is a prescription for a risky drug to treat a trumped-up disease.
click: Scientists Discover The First Direct Link Between BPA And Cancer
Click: John La Puma is an internist and the author of “Refuel: A 24-Day Eating Plan to Shed Fat, Boost Testosterone, and Pump Up Strength and Stamina.”
Source: The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. click: JCEM: Home
Don't Ask Your Doctor About 'Low T'
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — A FUNNY thing has happened in the United States over the last few decades. Men's average testosteronelevels
__________________________________________
For BLOGGING
Overselling Testosterone, Dangerously
Article 1 of 2
(Article 2 of 2 next below)
A large study has found substantial risks in prescribing testosterone to middle-age and older men for a variety of ailments. One part of the study found that testosterone doubled the risk of cardiovascular disease in more than 7,000 men who were 65 years old or older, essentially confirming findings in previous studies. The other part found that testosterone almost tripled the risk of heart attacks in a group of more than 48,000 middle-age men with previous histories of heart disease. The harm in both cases occurred within 90 days of receiving the prescription.
The new study — conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles; click: UCLA
the National Institutes of Health; click: NIH and Consolidated Research click: Consolidated Research
— analyzed prescription records from a large database of insurance health claims around the country. In a striking comparison, it found that drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction, such as Viagra and Cialis, which are often prescribed for similar purposes, did not increase heart risks.
The study, published last week in the online journal PLOS One, provides the most compelling evidence yet that many American men have embarked on a perilous course of overtreatment. Testosterone is clearly indicated to treat abnormally low levels of the hormone because of genetic or pathological causes, a condition known as hypogonadism. But a huge upsurge in prescriptions in recent years suggests that testosterone is now being prescribed to men who are simply reluctant to accept the fact that they are getting older. In many cases, doctors are prescribing testosterone without even ascertaining whether a patient’s testosterone levels are actually low or whether he has a medical condition that justifies it.
The reason seems clear. Drug companies have shamelessly pushed the notion, to doctors and to the public, that their testosterone-boosting product can overcome a supposed disease called “low T,” which is characterized by feelings of fatigue, loss of sexual drive, depressed moods, an increase in body fat and decrease in muscle strength, among other symptoms.
The overselling is reminiscent of the reckless overprescribing of hormone replacement therapy to millions of American women as an anti-aging elixir until a large federal study in 2002 found that some pills were causing more harm than good.
Men need to recognize the dangers of seeking a quick fix for aging, and doctors need to be more cautious in prescribing. Some experts are calling for a large clinical trial to document the risks and benefits more definitively. The latest study provides enough evidence to persuade regulators to strengthen warning labels and find ways to rein in the industry’s promotional efforts.
News for NYT Overselling tesrosterone dangerously
Men's Journal
- Overselling Testosterone, Dangerously
New York Times - 20 hours ago
A large study has found substantial risks in prescribing testosteroneto middle-age and older men for a variety of ailments. One part of the study ...
(Article 2 of 2 next below)
___________________
Law Doesn’t End Revolving Door on Capitol Hill
(1) a Republican congressman from Arizona helped promote a legislative plan to overhaul the nation’s home mortgage finance system. Weeks after leaving his government job, he reappeared on Capitol Hill, now as a lobbyist for a company poised to capitalize on the plan.
(2) A former counsel to Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee left Capitol Hill a year ago. He, too, returned to the Hill just months later, lobbying committee aides on behalf of Wall Street giants like JPMorgan Chase and Bloomberg L.P.
(3) And the chief of staff for the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee left his government salary behind in January 2012. Yet for months afterward, he continued to manage his boss’s re-election campaign, even while serving as a lobbyist for financial industry clients.
The experiences of the above three Capitol Hill aides-turned-lobbyists — traced through interviews with political operatives and a review of public records -- illustrate in new detail the gaping holes in rules governing Washington’s revolving door.
Federal ethics rules are intended to limit lobbying by former senior officials within one year after they leave the government. Yet even after the ethics rules were revised in 2007 following a lobbying scandal, more than 1,650 congressional aides have registered to lobby within a year of leaving Capitol Hill, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from LegiStorm, an online database that tracks congressional staff members and lobbying. At least half of those departing aides, the analysis shows, faced no restrictions at all.
The rules are particularly loose in the House of Representatives, where aides and lawmakers enjoy significant leeway in hopping from job to job — and from government pay to six- and seven-figure private sector salaries.
In the three cases identified by The Times, the interviews and records suggest, the former House staff members did not violate the rules but rather seized on loopholes to lobby within one year.
Those examples, and the data analyzed by The Times, offer a playbook of the many ways that former officials can legally circumvent the purpose of the law. While the law’s limitations were known, the data highlight for the first time the extent to which lobbyists routinely capitalize on an array of loopholes.
Some aides resist pay raises, to keep their salaries just below the cutoff that would prompt lobbying restrictions. More highly paid House aides, simply because their paycheck came from an individual lawmaker or leadership office rather than a committee they worked closely with, are immediately allowed to lobby former committee colleagues. This maneuver would be prohibited in the Senate, where senior aides cannot contact anyone in the Senate for a year.
In other cases, former House aides can continue socializing with lawmakers, working on campaigns and attending committee hearings while representing private clients as a lobbyist. That loophole exists even though a lobbyist’s presence on campaigns and at committee hearings could serve as a reminder of pending requests by clients.
The effortless way former staff members avoid the one-year ban raises new concerns about the revolving door. Some critics say it fosters a clubby culture in Washington, where lawmakers and their aides might seek to protect Wall Street and other industries like health care from new rules and legislation.
When Congress updated the ethics rules in 2007 in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which included illegal influence peddling between a lawmaker and a former aide, it initially drafted tighter restrictions on the revolving door, arguing that a broader ban lasting two years might curb conflicts of interest in Washington. But with protests from some lawmakers — including Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, then the top two members of the House Judiciary Committee — the proposal was watered down to remove the two-year “cooling off” period for the House and other restrictions.
The resulting widespread use of loopholes is disheartening to former lawmakers who tried, but failed, to enact more radical changes.
“Is it any wonder that the public holds such a low esteem for Congress?” said Joel M. Hefley, a Republican who served as chairman of the House Ethics Committee before he retired in 2007. “You can dance around these rules in so many ways it really does not accomplish much of anything.”
The continued surge of former congressional staffers to K Street helps explain the fundamental change that is taking place in the lobbying profession in Washington, as former government employees accounted for 44 percent of all registered, active firm lobbyists in 2012, up from 18 percent in 1998, according to a recent study by the Sunlight Foundation. The Sunlight Foundation is a 501 nonpartisan nonprofit organization that was founded in April 2006 with a goal of increasing transparency and accountability in the United States Congress, the executive branch, and in state and local governments. Click: Wikipedia
On some occasions, former congressional aides crossed a legal line and paid a price. Doug Hampton — a onetime aide to the former senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada — pleaded guilty in 2012 to violating the one-year ban.
But such prosecutions are rare. The Justice Department, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, does not actively police compliance with the rules, ethics lawyers who handle such cases said.
“Unless the violation is brought to our attention, it is hard to enforce,” said Michael P. Kortan, the chief spokesman for the F.B.I.
And in interviews, aides-turned-lobbyists emphasized that there was no need to run afoul of the law, given the broad number of exemptions.
The salary loophole is perhaps the most popular. House aides can avoid the one-year “cooling-off” period as long as their salaries are below a certain cap, totaling $130,500 last year.
Erik Olson’s salary fell below that cap when he stepped down in September from his job as chief of staff to Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin. Soon after, he started to lobby Congress on behalf of corporate clients like Leprino Foods of Denver, which wanted to shape the so-called Farm Bill, a topic that Mr. Kind was involved in.
Mr. Olson, when asked if he had contacted his former boss in the months since he left, said his firm’s policy was “to not publicize who we are meeting with on the Hill or administration,” and a spokesman for Mr. Kind simply said, “No comment.”
Matthew Tully, the Congressional aide who helped pitch a plan to revamp the nation’s home mortgage finance system, earned an annual salary of $128,000 while serving as chief of staff to Representative David Schweikert, Republican of Arizona. Mr. Tully’s job title, like Mr. Olson’s, would seem to have qualified him as a senior staff member, a role the ethics law is supposed to cover. But again, the paycheck amount exempted him from the one-year ban.
During Mr. Tully’s tenure in the House, Mr. Schweikert was one of the leading House advocates for legislation that would change the way most Americans obtain home mortgages, limiting the federal government’s role as the primary insurer of these loans. While on Capitol Hill, Mr. Tully became a sought-after expert on the debate, speaking in 2012 at a major mortgage industry conference in Miami to highlight legislation his boss was preparing.
But in 2013, Mr. Tully spun that expertise into a job as the only internal lobbyist for a Pennsylvania-based private mortgage insurer, a job he started one day after leaving the House. The company, Essent Guaranty, stands to benefit from Mr. Schweikert’s positions.
And yet Mr. Tully, in his new role as a lobbyist, was free to communicate with the staff in his former boss’s office. At one point, while attending a House hearing on housing legislation, he emailed one of Mr. Schweikert’s staff members, according to a Congressional aide with direct knowledge of the matter.
Mr. Tully and Essent declined requests for comment, so it is unclear whether he intentionally kept his salary below the $130,500 threshold.
But a former Senate staff member-turned-lobbyist, whose salary was just a few thousand dollars below the cap, acknowledged that she had knowingly kept down her pay. That way, she was free to immediately lobby at least some members of the Senate upon her departure for a mortgage company.
“I was very lucky I was underneath the cap,” she said, asking that she not be named because her new employer would not allow her to speak on the subject. “The rules are very arbitrary. Honestly, they don’t make sense to me.”
Dee Buchanan, a Republican who earned more than $170,000 during his last year as a senior aide to Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, benefited from a different exemption.
After departing Capitol Hill in fall 2012, Mr. Buchanan started a job with Ogilvy Government Relations. The firm’s website boasts that Mr. Buchanan — who quickly registered to lobby for the American Bankers Association and the CME Group, one of the world’s largest futures exchanges — was “the ‘go-to guy’ for the new House Financial Services Committee chairman,” Mr. Hensarling.
Despite the close ties, Mr. Buchanan was free to immediately lobby most members of Mr. Hensarling’s committee. Mr. Buchanan’s one-year ban did not apply to the committee at large because his government paycheck had come from the House Republican Conference, a leadership arm of the party that Mr. Hensarling led in 2011 and 2012. As such, Mr. Buchanan was restricted from lobbying only Mr. Hensarling and a few other committee members who also belonged to leadership.
Democratic aides have made similar moves.
John Hughes, the lobbyist now representing JPMorgan Chase and Bloomberg L.P., last held a job on Capitol Hill as a senior adviser to Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. As an aide to Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Hughes’s job in part was to be the contact person with the House Financial Services Committee, where he worked as the top lawyer during the 2008 financial crisis.
Because his most recent government paycheck came from House Democratic leadership, Mr. Hughes was prohibited only from lobbying top House leaders. Mr. Hughes, who declined to comment for this article, was soon able to begin contacting his former associates on the House committee.
“It is almost a meaningless ban,” said Craig Holman, who helped write the 2007 ethics law as a government ethics expert at the nonprofit group Public Citizen. Public Citizen is a non-profit, consumer rights advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Click: Wikipedia
The one-year ban also allows former aides to “interact socially“ with former bosses or Capitol Hill colleagues. Although there can be no “intent to influence” a lawmaker’s “official actions or decisions” at dinner parties and golf games, the lobbyists can work behind the scenes, using their expertise to advise clients about the inner workings of Congress. And when it comes to working on a political campaign, there are few restrictions, since such activity is considered a form of free speech.
The result is a blurring of lines that allows former aides like Larry Lavender to legally spin through the revolving door. Mr. Lavender spent five years as chief of staff to the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee at the time, Representative Spencer Bachus, a longtime friend from Alabama.
When a law firm representing JPMorgan recruited Mr. Lavender for a job in early 2012, he left the committee behind. But he stayed close to Mr. Bachus, becoming an unpaid campaign manager for the congressman’s re-election bid.
Mr. Lavender, who earned $172,500 in his final full year on the Hill, fit squarely into the one-year ban’s allowances for campaigning and socializing. While Mr. Lavender occasionally lunched with former colleagues, and even made an appearance at the committee’s holiday party, he said he did not seek out any official favors or actions. And although he represented JPMorgan, he said he had never contacted the committee on the bank’s behalf.
“I took great care to confer with the House ethics committee to make sure I understood the rules, and then I was scrupulous in complying,” Mr. Lavender said in an interview.
The rules allowed Mr. Lavender to join a behind-the-scenes effort to help JPMorgan avoid having to testify at a House hearing in 2012. The hearing focused on the collapse of MF Global, a major New York brokerage firm that was one of JPMorgan’s clients.
On a conference call with fellow lobbyists, one person briefed on the call recalled, Mr. Lavender took aim at the former colleagues who wanted to force JPMorgan executives to testify. The person briefed on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Lavender remarked about his former colleagues: “I should have fired them when I had the chance.”
Article source: NYT, (2) Comments STAF, Inc.
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Definition of 'Limited Partnership - LP'
Two or more partners united to conduct a business jointly, and in which one or more of the partners is liable only to the extent of the amount of money that partner has invested. Limited partners do not receive dividends, but enjoy direct access to the flow of income and expenses.
This term is also referred to as a "limited liability partnership" (LLP).
The main advantage to this structure is that the owners are generally not liable for the debts of the company.
_______________________________________________
(1) a Republican congressman from Arizona helped promote a legislative plan to overhaul the nation’s home mortgage finance system. Weeks after leaving his government job, he reappeared on Capitol Hill, now as a lobbyist for a company poised to capitalize on the plan.
(2) A former counsel to Democrats on the House Financial Services Committee left Capitol Hill a year ago. He, too, returned to the Hill just months later, lobbying committee aides on behalf of Wall Street giants like JPMorgan Chase and Bloomberg L.P.
(3) And the chief of staff for the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee left his government salary behind in January 2012. Yet for months afterward, he continued to manage his boss’s re-election campaign, even while serving as a lobbyist for financial industry clients.
The experiences of the above three Capitol Hill aides-turned-lobbyists — traced through interviews with political operatives and a review of public records -- illustrate in new detail the gaping holes in rules governing Washington’s revolving door.
Federal ethics rules are intended to limit lobbying by former senior officials within one year after they leave the government. Yet even after the ethics rules were revised in 2007 following a lobbying scandal, more than 1,650 congressional aides have registered to lobby within a year of leaving Capitol Hill, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from LegiStorm, an online database that tracks congressional staff members and lobbying. At least half of those departing aides, the analysis shows, faced no restrictions at all.
The rules are particularly loose in the House of Representatives, where aides and lawmakers enjoy significant leeway in hopping from job to job — and from government pay to six- and seven-figure private sector salaries.
In the three cases identified by The Times, the interviews and records suggest, the former House staff members did not violate the rules but rather seized on loopholes to lobby within one year.
Those examples, and the data analyzed by The Times, offer a playbook of the many ways that former officials can legally circumvent the purpose of the law. While the law’s limitations were known, the data highlight for the first time the extent to which lobbyists routinely capitalize on an array of loopholes.
Some aides resist pay raises, to keep their salaries just below the cutoff that would prompt lobbying restrictions. More highly paid House aides, simply because their paycheck came from an individual lawmaker or leadership office rather than a committee they worked closely with, are immediately allowed to lobby former committee colleagues. This maneuver would be prohibited in the Senate, where senior aides cannot contact anyone in the Senate for a year.
In other cases, former House aides can continue socializing with lawmakers, working on campaigns and attending committee hearings while representing private clients as a lobbyist. That loophole exists even though a lobbyist’s presence on campaigns and at committee hearings could serve as a reminder of pending requests by clients.
The effortless way former staff members avoid the one-year ban raises new concerns about the revolving door. Some critics say it fosters a clubby culture in Washington, where lawmakers and their aides might seek to protect Wall Street and other industries like health care from new rules and legislation.
When Congress updated the ethics rules in 2007 in the wake of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which included illegal influence peddling between a lawmaker and a former aide, it initially drafted tighter restrictions on the revolving door, arguing that a broader ban lasting two years might curb conflicts of interest in Washington. But with protests from some lawmakers — including Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas, then the top two members of the House Judiciary Committee — the proposal was watered down to remove the two-year “cooling off” period for the House and other restrictions.
The resulting widespread use of loopholes is disheartening to former lawmakers who tried, but failed, to enact more radical changes.
“Is it any wonder that the public holds such a low esteem for Congress?” said Joel M. Hefley, a Republican who served as chairman of the House Ethics Committee before he retired in 2007. “You can dance around these rules in so many ways it really does not accomplish much of anything.”
The continued surge of former congressional staffers to K Street helps explain the fundamental change that is taking place in the lobbying profession in Washington, as former government employees accounted for 44 percent of all registered, active firm lobbyists in 2012, up from 18 percent in 1998, according to a recent study by the Sunlight Foundation. The Sunlight Foundation is a 501 nonpartisan nonprofit organization that was founded in April 2006 with a goal of increasing transparency and accountability in the United States Congress, the executive branch, and in state and local governments. Click: Wikipedia
On some occasions, former congressional aides crossed a legal line and paid a price. Doug Hampton — a onetime aide to the former senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada — pleaded guilty in 2012 to violating the one-year ban.
But such prosecutions are rare. The Justice Department, which is responsible for enforcing the ban, does not actively police compliance with the rules, ethics lawyers who handle such cases said.
“Unless the violation is brought to our attention, it is hard to enforce,” said Michael P. Kortan, the chief spokesman for the F.B.I.
And in interviews, aides-turned-lobbyists emphasized that there was no need to run afoul of the law, given the broad number of exemptions.
The salary loophole is perhaps the most popular. House aides can avoid the one-year “cooling-off” period as long as their salaries are below a certain cap, totaling $130,500 last year.
Erik Olson’s salary fell below that cap when he stepped down in September from his job as chief of staff to Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin. Soon after, he started to lobby Congress on behalf of corporate clients like Leprino Foods of Denver, which wanted to shape the so-called Farm Bill, a topic that Mr. Kind was involved in.
Mr. Olson, when asked if he had contacted his former boss in the months since he left, said his firm’s policy was “to not publicize who we are meeting with on the Hill or administration,” and a spokesman for Mr. Kind simply said, “No comment.”
Matthew Tully, the Congressional aide who helped pitch a plan to revamp the nation’s home mortgage finance system, earned an annual salary of $128,000 while serving as chief of staff to Representative David Schweikert, Republican of Arizona. Mr. Tully’s job title, like Mr. Olson’s, would seem to have qualified him as a senior staff member, a role the ethics law is supposed to cover. But again, the paycheck amount exempted him from the one-year ban.
During Mr. Tully’s tenure in the House, Mr. Schweikert was one of the leading House advocates for legislation that would change the way most Americans obtain home mortgages, limiting the federal government’s role as the primary insurer of these loans. While on Capitol Hill, Mr. Tully became a sought-after expert on the debate, speaking in 2012 at a major mortgage industry conference in Miami to highlight legislation his boss was preparing.
But in 2013, Mr. Tully spun that expertise into a job as the only internal lobbyist for a Pennsylvania-based private mortgage insurer, a job he started one day after leaving the House. The company, Essent Guaranty, stands to benefit from Mr. Schweikert’s positions.
And yet Mr. Tully, in his new role as a lobbyist, was free to communicate with the staff in his former boss’s office. At one point, while attending a House hearing on housing legislation, he emailed one of Mr. Schweikert’s staff members, according to a Congressional aide with direct knowledge of the matter.
Mr. Tully and Essent declined requests for comment, so it is unclear whether he intentionally kept his salary below the $130,500 threshold.
But a former Senate staff member-turned-lobbyist, whose salary was just a few thousand dollars below the cap, acknowledged that she had knowingly kept down her pay. That way, she was free to immediately lobby at least some members of the Senate upon her departure for a mortgage company.
“I was very lucky I was underneath the cap,” she said, asking that she not be named because her new employer would not allow her to speak on the subject. “The rules are very arbitrary. Honestly, they don’t make sense to me.”
Dee Buchanan, a Republican who earned more than $170,000 during his last year as a senior aide to Representative Jeb Hensarling, Republican of Texas, benefited from a different exemption.
After departing Capitol Hill in fall 2012, Mr. Buchanan started a job with Ogilvy Government Relations. The firm’s website boasts that Mr. Buchanan — who quickly registered to lobby for the American Bankers Association and the CME Group, one of the world’s largest futures exchanges — was “the ‘go-to guy’ for the new House Financial Services Committee chairman,” Mr. Hensarling.
Despite the close ties, Mr. Buchanan was free to immediately lobby most members of Mr. Hensarling’s committee. Mr. Buchanan’s one-year ban did not apply to the committee at large because his government paycheck had come from the House Republican Conference, a leadership arm of the party that Mr. Hensarling led in 2011 and 2012. As such, Mr. Buchanan was restricted from lobbying only Mr. Hensarling and a few other committee members who also belonged to leadership.
Democratic aides have made similar moves.
John Hughes, the lobbyist now representing JPMorgan Chase and Bloomberg L.P., last held a job on Capitol Hill as a senior adviser to Representative Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House. As an aide to Mr. Hoyer, Mr. Hughes’s job in part was to be the contact person with the House Financial Services Committee, where he worked as the top lawyer during the 2008 financial crisis.
Because his most recent government paycheck came from House Democratic leadership, Mr. Hughes was prohibited only from lobbying top House leaders. Mr. Hughes, who declined to comment for this article, was soon able to begin contacting his former associates on the House committee.
“It is almost a meaningless ban,” said Craig Holman, who helped write the 2007 ethics law as a government ethics expert at the nonprofit group Public Citizen. Public Citizen is a non-profit, consumer rights advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Click: Wikipedia
The one-year ban also allows former aides to “interact socially“ with former bosses or Capitol Hill colleagues. Although there can be no “intent to influence” a lawmaker’s “official actions or decisions” at dinner parties and golf games, the lobbyists can work behind the scenes, using their expertise to advise clients about the inner workings of Congress. And when it comes to working on a political campaign, there are few restrictions, since such activity is considered a form of free speech.
The result is a blurring of lines that allows former aides like Larry Lavender to legally spin through the revolving door. Mr. Lavender spent five years as chief of staff to the top Republican on the House Financial Services Committee at the time, Representative Spencer Bachus, a longtime friend from Alabama.
When a law firm representing JPMorgan recruited Mr. Lavender for a job in early 2012, he left the committee behind. But he stayed close to Mr. Bachus, becoming an unpaid campaign manager for the congressman’s re-election bid.
Mr. Lavender, who earned $172,500 in his final full year on the Hill, fit squarely into the one-year ban’s allowances for campaigning and socializing. While Mr. Lavender occasionally lunched with former colleagues, and even made an appearance at the committee’s holiday party, he said he did not seek out any official favors or actions. And although he represented JPMorgan, he said he had never contacted the committee on the bank’s behalf.
“I took great care to confer with the House ethics committee to make sure I understood the rules, and then I was scrupulous in complying,” Mr. Lavender said in an interview.
The rules allowed Mr. Lavender to join a behind-the-scenes effort to help JPMorgan avoid having to testify at a House hearing in 2012. The hearing focused on the collapse of MF Global, a major New York brokerage firm that was one of JPMorgan’s clients.
On a conference call with fellow lobbyists, one person briefed on the call recalled, Mr. Lavender took aim at the former colleagues who wanted to force JPMorgan executives to testify. The person briefed on the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Lavender remarked about his former colleagues: “I should have fired them when I had the chance.”
Article source: NYT, (2) Comments STAF, Inc.
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Definition of 'Limited Partnership - LP'
Two or more partners united to conduct a business jointly, and in which one or more of the partners is liable only to the extent of the amount of money that partner has invested. Limited partners do not receive dividends, but enjoy direct access to the flow of income and expenses.
This term is also referred to as a "limited liability partnership" (LLP).
The main advantage to this structure is that the owners are generally not liable for the debts of the company.
- News for Law Doesn’t End Revolving Door on Capitol ...
- Law Doesn't End Revolving Door on Capitol Hill
By ERIC LIPTON and BEN PROTESS .... page A1 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Law Doesn't End Revolving Door on Capitol Hill
- Law Doesn't End Revolving Door on Capitol Hill
_______________________________________________
For BLOGGING
The Seeds of a New Generation
PART A
John D. Jackson lives in the heart of the Corn Belt, where most of the corn has nothing to do with sweet kernels on the cob. His farm in Southern Illinois typically grows field corn, the high-starch variety that is turned into ethanol and cattle feed. He also works as a logistics manager for click: Archer Daniels Midland, the agricultural giant that produces the other big artifact of this crop: high fructose corn syrup.
But on 10 of his 700 acres, Mr. Jackson broke from this culture of corn last fall by planting something people can sink their teeth into. With a tractor and an auger, he drilled four-foot holes in his soil, added fertilizer and put in 48 apple trees bearing Gold Rush, Jonagold, Enterprise and the sweet-tart blushing globe called the Crimson Crisp. This year he plans to add more apple trees, blackberry bushes and possibly some vegetables.
Mr. Jackson is part of a small but eager cadre of corn farmers who are starting to switch sides, as it were, lured by a little-appreciated fact of farm economics: There is vastly more money to be made in growing other vegetables and fruits. While an acre of corn is projected to net average farmers $284 this year after expenses, and just $34 if they rent the land, as is common, an apple orchard on that same acre will make $2,000 or more, click: according to crop analysts.
A sophisticated vegetable operation using the popular plastic covers called high tunnels, which increase yields and extend the growing season, can push that figure click: as high as $100,000. (Selected Alternative Agricultural Financial Benchmarks link: see the end)
Until recently, farmers in the nation’s heartland could only dream about such profits because there were so few ways to sell their produce locally. California dominates vegetable production, with a vast infrastructure of distribution and transportation to stores coast to coast. But the rising demand for fresh, indigenous produce has spawned new markets — from grocers to restaurants to school cafeterias — that are making it possible for more Midwestern farmers to give fruits and vegetables a go.
The success of this movement, still in its toddler stage, could affect more than just the farmers. Field corn, bolstered by subsidies and corporate research, now dominates American agriculture and constitutes much of what we eat in processed foods. A turn toward locally grown produce would lessen the dependency on California (now plagued by drought), slash carbon emissions from trucking, make produce available to more people, increase its appeal through freshness and perhaps even lower prices.
Indeed, even as the federal government urges Americans to double their consumption of produce for better health, the amount of farmland devoted to it has slipped over the last decade, federal statistics show — to about 1.8 million acres in 2012 for the top 25 vegetables, from 1.9 million acres in 2002, and to 2.8 million acres of main fruits including citrus in 2012, from 3.2 million in 2002.
By comparison, plantings of field corn surged to a record 97 million acres in 2012, from 79 million in 2002 — or roughly 20 times the amount of land given over to other vegetables and fruits.
This imbalance could be in for a modest change. A glut in corn has sent prices tumbling to near $4.50 a bushel, from $8 in 2012, and while farm economists are not expecting a torrent of converts to produce, a wide variety of farmers are already coping with tough economic times by hedging their bets with berries and beets.
Throughout the Midwest, where dairy farmers face a host of financial challenges, two dozen Organic Valley Co-op members now grow fruits or vegetables or both on the side. In western North Carolina, ending government support has led an estimated 200 to 300 tobacco growers to plant produce, says the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. And in Iowa, a generation that left the farm to pursue other careers is returning, but with its own ideas.
“The children of corn farmers are coming back to the farm, and carving out 5 or 10 acres to grow fruits and vegetables,” said Craig A. Chase, the local food and farm coordinator at Iowa State University. “They can easily make $30,000 to $40,000 a year.” While their numbers are too small to be reflected yet in farm data, this new passion for produce is evidence that government and private efforts to nurture new markets in the nation’s heartland are starting to pay off, federal officials said.
“It’s really exciting to see farmers trying out these new opportunities, and it’s rewarding to know the U.S.D.A. can assist,” said Elanor Starmer, the Department of Agriculture’s national coordinator for local and regional food systems.
Midwestern grocery chains have begun promoting the advantages of local produce to shoppers, just as East and West Coast stores have been doing for years, and are teaming up with farmers to ensure a steady supply. These deals can include the occasional truckload of cucumbers, or the one million pounds of tomatoes, leafy greens and herbs that a Missouri-based chain,Schnuck Markets, has agreed to buy each year from a two-acre greenhouse under construction in St. Louis. The builder, BrightFarms, based in New York City, has similar greenhouse-to-grocer projects underway in Oklahoma City and St. Paul, and said it was striving to hire local farmers.
Schools, nudged by new federal rules that require healthier snacks and lunches, are seeking more local produce, and the Pentagon has stepped in to help, using the same logistics that supply its military bases. The system, called
DoD Fresh (= The Department of Defense (DoD) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program allows schools to use USDA Foods entitlement dollars to buy fresh produce
, uses distributors who connect schools to farms; up to one-fifth of the $100 million in produce that traveled through this system last year was locally grown, according to the Department of Agriculture, which oversees this effort as part of its budding farm-to-school program.
Seven school districts in Chicago, Detroit and other Midwestern cities have also united to increase their purchasing power, organized by a New York City-based group called School Food Focus that aims to tap the production of midsize local farms.
The smallest farmers are also getting new help in selling crops to restaurants. Starting last year, a food advocacy group, the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, held seven “farmer mixers” in the state; growers, typically modest men of few words, found themselves pursued by chefs craving microgreens and other fresh fare.
“It’s the speed dating of farm to fork,” said Thad Morrow, the owner and chef of Bacaro in Champaign, Ill., who scored a steady supply of Thumbelinas and other unusual carrots at one such event by wooing the grower. “You have to extract information from these guys. He was sitting next to me, and was growing the carrots as something of an experiment, and he said, ‘You mean you might want these?’ ”
To sell his apples, Mr. Jackson plans to tap into one of the more unusual new outlets: the corporate C.S.A., or community-supported agriculture. Many of his colleagues at the Archer Daniels Midland plant and headquarters in Decatur, Ill., 200 miles from his farm in Galatia, were already ordering sweet corn delivered to their parking lot when he began asking them about apples. He found huge interest. “One man said to me, ‘Here is an apple my wife bought at a store, for $1 apiece, and they taste terrible,’ ” Mr. Jackson said. “I can beat that price, with great taste.”
Growing that kind of produce has its disadvantages. It requires far more work than growing corn, which is usually managed with farm machinery and requires little planning, marketing or even irrigation. So last year, Mr. Jackson attended a new series of classes aimed at teaching the ins and outs of fruits and vegetables.
Organized by Richard Weinzierl, a crop sciences professor at the University of Illinois, the Saturday classes are held in three locations around the state, with topics like pesticide drift, pathogen control and high tunnel construction, and had about 90 students in all.
“I would say they’re most surprised by the range of varieties of the crops they might grow,” Mr. Weinzierl said in an interview. “And that when it comes to marketing, a tomato is not a tomato is not a tomato. Heirlooms are priced higher but harder to grow, and the people taking these classes are interested in helping poorer folks eat better, too, so they might want to look at lower-priced hybrids for that reason, too.”
The classes, which began anew in December, are drawing a wide variety of would-be produce farmers, including people with large gardens; 1 in 10 students is a farmer who now grows corn or the other common field crop, soybeans.
67COMMENTSCorn farmers who have made the switch say that for all the added work, growing fruits and vegetables is incredibly rewarding in ways other than profits. Tim B. Slepicka, who attended the classes, slid into the booth of a diner last summer in St. Charles, Ill., about an hour’s drive west of Chicago, to talk about his budding conversion from corn. But first he plunked his day’s pickings on the table with a huge grin. “Just taste this cucumber,” he said, gnawing one in his other hand.
To these he added tomatoes, a variety called Mountain Fresh, and some just-picked ears of raw sweet corn for eating, which he did, right there in the booth. To Mr. Slepicka, perhaps the biggest benefit of seeing more local produce being grown by farmers like himself is the prospect of offering shoppers not only higher quality food, but perhaps even lower prices through direct marketing. A 2009 survey in Iowa found that the mean price for a pound of vegetables at farmers’ markets was comparable to that of nonlocal produce sold by grocery stores. With organic produce, informal surveys have found that farmers’ markets and C.S.A.’s can even beat store prices.
“It’s a good feeling,” he said. “Especially knowing that one in six people are using food stamps. They’re looking for the least expensive calorie possible, and why should a pound of tomatoes — which are basically seed, dirt and water — have to cost as much or more than a frozen meal?”
Click green for further info
Source:
The Seeds of a New Generation
New York Times - 1 day ago
Midwestern farmers are planting alternatives to corn. ... The Seeds of a New Generation ... Nathan Weber for The New York Times. John D.
Selected Alternative Agricultural Financial Benchmarkswww.extension.iastate.edu/.../wholefarm/.../c3-6...
Iowa State University - The information that follows contains rough estimates of the potential revenues and costs for selected alternative agricultural enterprises. The information should ...
PART B
Food Distribution
The Department of Defense (DoD)
DoD Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program
The Department of Defense (DoD) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program allows schools to use USDA Foodsentitlement dollars to buy fresh produce. The program is operated by the Defense Logistics Agency at the Department of Defense. In school year (SY) 1994-1995, the program began as a pilot in eight states; $3.2 million of produce was delivered to schools. Today, schools in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam participate in the program, with more than $100 million in anticipated purchases during SY 2012-2013. DoD Fresh allocations may be changed throughout the year and USDA does not impose a cap on the amount of entitlement used through this program.
_________________________________
The Seeds of a New Generation
PART A
John D. Jackson lives in the heart of the Corn Belt, where most of the corn has nothing to do with sweet kernels on the cob. His farm in Southern Illinois typically grows field corn, the high-starch variety that is turned into ethanol and cattle feed. He also works as a logistics manager for click: Archer Daniels Midland, the agricultural giant that produces the other big artifact of this crop: high fructose corn syrup.
But on 10 of his 700 acres, Mr. Jackson broke from this culture of corn last fall by planting something people can sink their teeth into. With a tractor and an auger, he drilled four-foot holes in his soil, added fertilizer and put in 48 apple trees bearing Gold Rush, Jonagold, Enterprise and the sweet-tart blushing globe called the Crimson Crisp. This year he plans to add more apple trees, blackberry bushes and possibly some vegetables.
Mr. Jackson is part of a small but eager cadre of corn farmers who are starting to switch sides, as it were, lured by a little-appreciated fact of farm economics: There is vastly more money to be made in growing other vegetables and fruits. While an acre of corn is projected to net average farmers $284 this year after expenses, and just $34 if they rent the land, as is common, an apple orchard on that same acre will make $2,000 or more, click: according to crop analysts.
A sophisticated vegetable operation using the popular plastic covers called high tunnels, which increase yields and extend the growing season, can push that figure click: as high as $100,000. (Selected Alternative Agricultural Financial Benchmarks link: see the end)
Until recently, farmers in the nation’s heartland could only dream about such profits because there were so few ways to sell their produce locally. California dominates vegetable production, with a vast infrastructure of distribution and transportation to stores coast to coast. But the rising demand for fresh, indigenous produce has spawned new markets — from grocers to restaurants to school cafeterias — that are making it possible for more Midwestern farmers to give fruits and vegetables a go.
The success of this movement, still in its toddler stage, could affect more than just the farmers. Field corn, bolstered by subsidies and corporate research, now dominates American agriculture and constitutes much of what we eat in processed foods. A turn toward locally grown produce would lessen the dependency on California (now plagued by drought), slash carbon emissions from trucking, make produce available to more people, increase its appeal through freshness and perhaps even lower prices.
Indeed, even as the federal government urges Americans to double their consumption of produce for better health, the amount of farmland devoted to it has slipped over the last decade, federal statistics show — to about 1.8 million acres in 2012 for the top 25 vegetables, from 1.9 million acres in 2002, and to 2.8 million acres of main fruits including citrus in 2012, from 3.2 million in 2002.
By comparison, plantings of field corn surged to a record 97 million acres in 2012, from 79 million in 2002 — or roughly 20 times the amount of land given over to other vegetables and fruits.
This imbalance could be in for a modest change. A glut in corn has sent prices tumbling to near $4.50 a bushel, from $8 in 2012, and while farm economists are not expecting a torrent of converts to produce, a wide variety of farmers are already coping with tough economic times by hedging their bets with berries and beets.
Throughout the Midwest, where dairy farmers face a host of financial challenges, two dozen Organic Valley Co-op members now grow fruits or vegetables or both on the side. In western North Carolina, ending government support has led an estimated 200 to 300 tobacco growers to plant produce, says the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. And in Iowa, a generation that left the farm to pursue other careers is returning, but with its own ideas.
“The children of corn farmers are coming back to the farm, and carving out 5 or 10 acres to grow fruits and vegetables,” said Craig A. Chase, the local food and farm coordinator at Iowa State University. “They can easily make $30,000 to $40,000 a year.” While their numbers are too small to be reflected yet in farm data, this new passion for produce is evidence that government and private efforts to nurture new markets in the nation’s heartland are starting to pay off, federal officials said.
“It’s really exciting to see farmers trying out these new opportunities, and it’s rewarding to know the U.S.D.A. can assist,” said Elanor Starmer, the Department of Agriculture’s national coordinator for local and regional food systems.
Midwestern grocery chains have begun promoting the advantages of local produce to shoppers, just as East and West Coast stores have been doing for years, and are teaming up with farmers to ensure a steady supply. These deals can include the occasional truckload of cucumbers, or the one million pounds of tomatoes, leafy greens and herbs that a Missouri-based chain,Schnuck Markets, has agreed to buy each year from a two-acre greenhouse under construction in St. Louis. The builder, BrightFarms, based in New York City, has similar greenhouse-to-grocer projects underway in Oklahoma City and St. Paul, and said it was striving to hire local farmers.
Schools, nudged by new federal rules that require healthier snacks and lunches, are seeking more local produce, and the Pentagon has stepped in to help, using the same logistics that supply its military bases. The system, called
DoD Fresh (= The Department of Defense (DoD) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program allows schools to use USDA Foods entitlement dollars to buy fresh produce
, uses distributors who connect schools to farms; up to one-fifth of the $100 million in produce that traveled through this system last year was locally grown, according to the Department of Agriculture, which oversees this effort as part of its budding farm-to-school program.
Seven school districts in Chicago, Detroit and other Midwestern cities have also united to increase their purchasing power, organized by a New York City-based group called School Food Focus that aims to tap the production of midsize local farms.
The smallest farmers are also getting new help in selling crops to restaurants. Starting last year, a food advocacy group, the Illinois Stewardship Alliance, held seven “farmer mixers” in the state; growers, typically modest men of few words, found themselves pursued by chefs craving microgreens and other fresh fare.
“It’s the speed dating of farm to fork,” said Thad Morrow, the owner and chef of Bacaro in Champaign, Ill., who scored a steady supply of Thumbelinas and other unusual carrots at one such event by wooing the grower. “You have to extract information from these guys. He was sitting next to me, and was growing the carrots as something of an experiment, and he said, ‘You mean you might want these?’ ”
To sell his apples, Mr. Jackson plans to tap into one of the more unusual new outlets: the corporate C.S.A., or community-supported agriculture. Many of his colleagues at the Archer Daniels Midland plant and headquarters in Decatur, Ill., 200 miles from his farm in Galatia, were already ordering sweet corn delivered to their parking lot when he began asking them about apples. He found huge interest. “One man said to me, ‘Here is an apple my wife bought at a store, for $1 apiece, and they taste terrible,’ ” Mr. Jackson said. “I can beat that price, with great taste.”
Growing that kind of produce has its disadvantages. It requires far more work than growing corn, which is usually managed with farm machinery and requires little planning, marketing or even irrigation. So last year, Mr. Jackson attended a new series of classes aimed at teaching the ins and outs of fruits and vegetables.
Organized by Richard Weinzierl, a crop sciences professor at the University of Illinois, the Saturday classes are held in three locations around the state, with topics like pesticide drift, pathogen control and high tunnel construction, and had about 90 students in all.
“I would say they’re most surprised by the range of varieties of the crops they might grow,” Mr. Weinzierl said in an interview. “And that when it comes to marketing, a tomato is not a tomato is not a tomato. Heirlooms are priced higher but harder to grow, and the people taking these classes are interested in helping poorer folks eat better, too, so they might want to look at lower-priced hybrids for that reason, too.”
The classes, which began anew in December, are drawing a wide variety of would-be produce farmers, including people with large gardens; 1 in 10 students is a farmer who now grows corn or the other common field crop, soybeans.
67COMMENTSCorn farmers who have made the switch say that for all the added work, growing fruits and vegetables is incredibly rewarding in ways other than profits. Tim B. Slepicka, who attended the classes, slid into the booth of a diner last summer in St. Charles, Ill., about an hour’s drive west of Chicago, to talk about his budding conversion from corn. But first he plunked his day’s pickings on the table with a huge grin. “Just taste this cucumber,” he said, gnawing one in his other hand.
To these he added tomatoes, a variety called Mountain Fresh, and some just-picked ears of raw sweet corn for eating, which he did, right there in the booth. To Mr. Slepicka, perhaps the biggest benefit of seeing more local produce being grown by farmers like himself is the prospect of offering shoppers not only higher quality food, but perhaps even lower prices through direct marketing. A 2009 survey in Iowa found that the mean price for a pound of vegetables at farmers’ markets was comparable to that of nonlocal produce sold by grocery stores. With organic produce, informal surveys have found that farmers’ markets and C.S.A.’s can even beat store prices.
“It’s a good feeling,” he said. “Especially knowing that one in six people are using food stamps. They’re looking for the least expensive calorie possible, and why should a pound of tomatoes — which are basically seed, dirt and water — have to cost as much or more than a frozen meal?”
Click green for further info
Source:
The Seeds of a New Generation
New York Times - 1 day ago
Midwestern farmers are planting alternatives to corn. ... The Seeds of a New Generation ... Nathan Weber for The New York Times. John D.
Selected Alternative Agricultural Financial Benchmarkswww.extension.iastate.edu/.../wholefarm/.../c3-6...
Iowa State University - The information that follows contains rough estimates of the potential revenues and costs for selected alternative agricultural enterprises. The information should ...
PART B
Food Distribution
The Department of Defense (DoD)
DoD Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program
The Department of Defense (DoD) Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program allows schools to use USDA Foodsentitlement dollars to buy fresh produce. The program is operated by the Defense Logistics Agency at the Department of Defense. In school year (SY) 1994-1995, the program began as a pilot in eight states; $3.2 million of produce was delivered to schools. Today, schools in 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Guam participate in the program, with more than $100 million in anticipated purchases during SY 2012-2013. DoD Fresh allocations may be changed throughout the year and USDA does not impose a cap on the amount of entitlement used through this program.
- About DOD Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program This document provides history of the program and information about current operations
- Defense Logistics Agency Produce Website DLA's site provides detailed information about how the program works and lists links to the produce vendor long term contracts and delivery zones
- Farm to school state contacts This site provides a farm to school contact for every state.
- FFAVORS Web The web-based Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Order/Receipt System is the ordering mechanism for the DoD Fresh program.
- DoD Vendor Information This list provides contact information for DoD produce vendors, DoD regional representatives, state agency contacts and state farm to school coordinators. This information will help everyone from vendors to schools connect the dots and learn more about DoD produce in their area.
- Using DoD Fresh for Local Produce Purchases – USDA Farm to School Fact Sheet
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STAF - BLOGGING ARTICLE 2 of 2
Article 2 of 2
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This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. (Above additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy and a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
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Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
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Respectfully,
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STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Relating to the article 1 of 2 above
To find out what you have to do to avoid the cancer & other disease danger and become physically, mentally & emotionally healthier and financially wealthier read the whole article 1 of 2
click: materials
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Seeking Better Legal Help for Immigrants
Date: January 29, 2014
Click green for further info
In the next several days, the deans of the nation’s top law schools will be notified of a new job opportunity for their graduating students. Applicants must be high achievers who want to be part of a groundbreaking start-up, live in New York City, train with veteran lawyers and help create a new paradigm in immigration representation.
The call comes from the Immigrant Justice Corps, a new group that received a life-giving injection when the board of the Robin Hood Foundation, a poverty-fighting philanthropy, approved more than $1.3 million in funding.
The initiative is the long-nurtured idea of Robert A. Katzmann, the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who has for years campaigned to redress a grave problem: the shortage of competent legal representation for immigrants, particularly those of modest means facing deportation.
The group’s plan is to recruit 25 graduating law students or recent graduates, immerse them in immigration law and then farm them out to community-based organizations. The young lawyers would commit to at least two years of service and as many as three.
“It’s a very simple concept, but it’s one that will not only ensure fairness for immigrants but will infuse our legal system with a generation of lawyers committed to serving those in need,” said Judge Katzmann, whose father was a refugee from Nazi Germany and whose maternal grandparents were immigrants from Russia.
The corps intends to hire a cadre of 25 lawyers every year, each earning a salary of $47,000 plus benefits. They will be assisted by recent college graduates with multilingual skills who will handle less complex cases, such as naturalization applications. The team will be supervised by a group of staff lawyers and advised by veteran lawyers.
Organizers estimate that by the third year, the corps will be handling nearly 15,000 cases a year, about double the number of immigration cases currently overseen by nonprofit organizations in New York City.
Robin Hood’s grants, while enough to get the initiative off the ground, will cover only a fraction of the project’s operating costs, which are expected to total about $4 million in the first year and about $7 million in each successive year.
But foundation officials and corps board members anticipate that they will be able to raise money from other foundations as well as philanthropists and the government.
During an interview this month, with the foundation’s approval nearly certain, Judge Katzmann turned emotional.
“The dream is about to come true, after lots of hopes and some disappointments,” he said, pausing for a moment. “I’m choked up as I’m thinking about it.”
In 2007, deeply concerned about the quality and availability of representation for immigrants, he sounded a clarion call and started a study group that investigated the issue’s impact on immigrant populations. Among its findings: Most detained immigrants in the New York region did not have counsel at the time their cases were completed.
Judge Katzmann and his allies have warned that, absent new programs, the problem would grow worse should Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform providing legal status for undocumented immigrants.
The study group spawned an initiative, the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project, which seeks to provide legal representation for every poor immigrant facing deportation in New York.
But Judge Katzmann pressed for more: a national army of young lawyers in the style of public service programs like AmeriCorps Vista or the Peace Corps.
Robin Hood heard about the idea last spring and agreed to fund a planning process. Organizers decided to limit the project to New York City, at least until it had sufficient funding to expand nationally.
Nisha Agarwal, the executive director of the Immigrant Justice Corps, views the pilot project as something that could be replicated in other cities with large immigrant populations, and as a kind of feeder system for legal talent. “Maybe these fellows will leave these fellowships and go elsewhere in the country,” she said, “and be leaders in immigrant representation.”
Source:
Seeking Better Legal Help for Immigrants
Judge Robert A. Katzmann and the executive director of the Immigrant Justice Corps, Nisha Agarwal
The New York Times
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Blogging
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Most children and adults in the U.S. are getting less than the recommended amounts of whole grains and dietary fiber, according to a recent study.Researchers found people who
Americans need to eat more whole grains, study suggest
(Reuters Health) - Most children and adults in the U.S. are getting less than the recommended amounts of whole grains and dietary fiber, according to a recent study.
Researchers found people who did eat the recommended three or more servings of whole grains each day also tended to consume the most fiber.
Whole grains are present in some types of hot and cold cereal and bread. Previous studies have tied whole grain intake to a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease among adults. The health benefits are in part attributed to the fiber in whole grains.
"Most people do not consume whole grains in amounts that can be most beneficial, also many people, even health professionals, are confused about the relationship between whole grain and fiber," Marla Reicks told Reuters Health in an email. click: Marla M. Reicks : Department of Food Science and Nutrition
Reicks led the study at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. Her coauthors are all affiliated with General Mills, which funded the study.
Eating fiber, Reicks said, has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
Dietary guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services say at least half of all grains consumed should be whole grains. That works out to a minimum of three one-ounce servings per day for adults and some kids.
Fiber recommendations vary by age. Young kids need 19 to 25 grams of fiber each day while older kids, teens and adults need anywhere from 21 to 38 grams per day.
Reicks and her colleagues compared whole grain and dietary fiber intakes among Americans ages two and up using a large national nutrition and health survey. They included data from 9,042 people surveyed in 2009 and 2010.
The study team discovered 39 percent of children and teens and 42 percent of adults consumed no whole grains at all. Only 3 percent of children and teens and about 8 percent of adults ate at least the recommended three servings per day.
The researchers also found people who ate the most whole grains had the highest fiber intakes: on average, 24.5 grams per day for kids and 28 grams per day for adults, according to findings published in Nutrition Research.
Children who ate the recommended amount of whole grains were 59 times more likely to be in the top third of fiber consumers, compared to those who ate no whole grains. Adults who met the whole grain recommendations were 76 times more likely to get the most fiber.
Major sources of whole grains for study participants included breakfast cereal, breads and rolls, oatmeal and popcorn.
Reicks said people should strive to eat whole grain versions of breads, oatmeal and breakfast cereals when possible.
She said having only whole grain versions of those foods available at home will help children see that they are tasty, usual foods and build habits that may last into older childhood and adulthood.
Consumers can read labels and look for a special whole grain stamp when shopping.
"Some products indicate the whole grain content in grams on the label, which is very useful if you know how much whole grain is needed to count as a serving, and some use the whole grain stamp (The Whole Grains Council), but not all," Reicks said. Stamped products are explained on the group's Website here: bit.ly/1kchZ1J.
Reicks added that until labeling is made consistent, a good method is to look at a food's ingredient list. If the first ingredient is whole grain, the product will probably contain enough of it to count as a whole grain product.
"The study reinforces the preponderance of scientific evidence and supports the recommendations set forth by many dietary guidelines advisory committees within the U.S. and throughout the globe," Roger Clemens told Reuters Health in an email.
Clemens, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, was an adviser for the most recent government-backed U.S. dietary guidelines. He was not involved with the study.
Clemens said there are many reasons why people do not meet dietary recommendations for fiber, including taste and texture of whole grain products. Another reason is that high-fiber foods tend to cause gas.
He noted that different sources of dietary fiber contain different types of fiber, including soluble and insoluble fiber.
"This is important since different types of dietary fiber have different functions in our bodies," he said.
Whole grains are equally complex, Clemens added. He said oats are among the whole grains highest in fiber.
SOURCE: Click: bit.ly/1aolUp5 Nutrition Research, online January 17, 2014.
Click: Americans need to eat more whole grains, study suggests | Reuterswww.reuters.com/.../us-americans-whole-grains-idUSBREA141...
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Part B
Article in Press
Total dietary fiber intakes in the U.S. population are related to whole grain consumption: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2009–10
Abstract Whole grain (WG) foods have been shown to reduce chronic disease risk and overweight. Total dietary fiber is associated with WG and its health benefits. The purpose was to determine whether associations exist between WG intake (no WG intake - 0 ounce equivalent (ozeq); low - >0-<3ozeq; high - ≥3ozeq) and total dietary fiber intake among Americans 2 years and older. One-day food intake data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009–10 (n=9042) showed that only 2.9% and 7.7% of children/adolescents (2–18yr) and adults (≥19yr) consumed ≥3 WG oz eq/d, respectively. For children/adolescents and adults, individuals in the high WG intake group were 59 and 76 times more likely to fall in the 3rd fiber tertile, respectively, compared to those with no WG intake. Total dietary fiber intake from food sources varied by WG intake group for children/adolescents and adults with more total dietary fiber consumed from ready-to-eat (RTE) and hot cereals and yeast breads/rolls in the high WG intake group compared to the no WG intake group. Major WG sources for children/adolescents and adults included yeast bread/rolls (24% and 27%, respectively), RTE cereals (25% and 20%, respectively) and oatmeal (12% and 21%, respectively). Among those with the highest WG intake, WG RTE cereal with no added bran was the greatest contributor to total dietary fiber compared to other RTE cereal types. WG foods make a substantial contribution to total dietary fiber intake and should be promoted to meet recommendations.
Abbreviations: NCHS, National Center for Health Statistics, RTE, Ready-to-eat, NHANES, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,USDA, United States Department of Agriculture, ozeq, ounce equivalent, WG, whole grain
Key words: whole grain, total dietary fiber, NHANES, cross-sectional survey, children, adolescents, adults
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PART C
Another opinion
Dr. Pat McGuire‘s insight:
This above article talks about the benefits of whole grain and fiber in our lives, especially for diabetes and heart health. But what would be a good reason for promoting it for kids who don’t see those needs as important for them?
If you look only at the weight factor, taking in the recommended amounts of fiber per day for children will help keep their weight down. This will let them feel like they can keep up with their peers when playing. It will also be one less thing that bullies can pick on them about, thus helping their mental health and self esteem.
It also helps with normal bowel patterns so much less constipation. In kids this can lead to an increase of irritability and negative behavior because they just don’t feel good. But they most likely can’t relate it to how their bowels feel, so instead they get punished for their behavior or "attitude".
Fiber also helps maintain a more steady blood sugar. For kids this means that they have a more steady blood sugar (or glucose) level for their brain. Glucose is the primary energy source for the brain. If blood sugar drops, then they have a harder time focusing and concentrating. This leads to academic and behavior problems.
So let’s make a promise to increase the whole grain and fibers in our children’s diets. It will help them now and in the future.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Most children and adults in the U.S. are getting less than the recommended amounts of whole grains and dietary fiber, according to a recent study.Researchers found people who
Americans need to eat more whole grains, study suggest
(Reuters Health) - Most children and adults in the U.S. are getting less than the recommended amounts of whole grains and dietary fiber, according to a recent study.
Researchers found people who did eat the recommended three or more servings of whole grains each day also tended to consume the most fiber.
Whole grains are present in some types of hot and cold cereal and bread. Previous studies have tied whole grain intake to a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease among adults. The health benefits are in part attributed to the fiber in whole grains.
"Most people do not consume whole grains in amounts that can be most beneficial, also many people, even health professionals, are confused about the relationship between whole grain and fiber," Marla Reicks told Reuters Health in an email. click: Marla M. Reicks : Department of Food Science and Nutrition
Reicks led the study at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul. Her coauthors are all affiliated with General Mills, which funded the study.
Eating fiber, Reicks said, has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
Dietary guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services say at least half of all grains consumed should be whole grains. That works out to a minimum of three one-ounce servings per day for adults and some kids.
Fiber recommendations vary by age. Young kids need 19 to 25 grams of fiber each day while older kids, teens and adults need anywhere from 21 to 38 grams per day.
Reicks and her colleagues compared whole grain and dietary fiber intakes among Americans ages two and up using a large national nutrition and health survey. They included data from 9,042 people surveyed in 2009 and 2010.
The study team discovered 39 percent of children and teens and 42 percent of adults consumed no whole grains at all. Only 3 percent of children and teens and about 8 percent of adults ate at least the recommended three servings per day.
The researchers also found people who ate the most whole grains had the highest fiber intakes: on average, 24.5 grams per day for kids and 28 grams per day for adults, according to findings published in Nutrition Research.
Children who ate the recommended amount of whole grains were 59 times more likely to be in the top third of fiber consumers, compared to those who ate no whole grains. Adults who met the whole grain recommendations were 76 times more likely to get the most fiber.
Major sources of whole grains for study participants included breakfast cereal, breads and rolls, oatmeal and popcorn.
Reicks said people should strive to eat whole grain versions of breads, oatmeal and breakfast cereals when possible.
She said having only whole grain versions of those foods available at home will help children see that they are tasty, usual foods and build habits that may last into older childhood and adulthood.
Consumers can read labels and look for a special whole grain stamp when shopping.
"Some products indicate the whole grain content in grams on the label, which is very useful if you know how much whole grain is needed to count as a serving, and some use the whole grain stamp (The Whole Grains Council), but not all," Reicks said. Stamped products are explained on the group's Website here: bit.ly/1kchZ1J.
Reicks added that until labeling is made consistent, a good method is to look at a food's ingredient list. If the first ingredient is whole grain, the product will probably contain enough of it to count as a whole grain product.
"The study reinforces the preponderance of scientific evidence and supports the recommendations set forth by many dietary guidelines advisory committees within the U.S. and throughout the globe," Roger Clemens told Reuters Health in an email.
Clemens, from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, was an adviser for the most recent government-backed U.S. dietary guidelines. He was not involved with the study.
Clemens said there are many reasons why people do not meet dietary recommendations for fiber, including taste and texture of whole grain products. Another reason is that high-fiber foods tend to cause gas.
He noted that different sources of dietary fiber contain different types of fiber, including soluble and insoluble fiber.
"This is important since different types of dietary fiber have different functions in our bodies," he said.
Whole grains are equally complex, Clemens added. He said oats are among the whole grains highest in fiber.
SOURCE: Click: bit.ly/1aolUp5 Nutrition Research, online January 17, 2014.
Click: Americans need to eat more whole grains, study suggests | Reuterswww.reuters.com/.../us-americans-whole-grains-idUSBREA141...
_____________________________
Part B
Article in Press
Total dietary fiber intakes in the U.S. population are related to whole grain consumption: Results from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2009–10
Abstract Whole grain (WG) foods have been shown to reduce chronic disease risk and overweight. Total dietary fiber is associated with WG and its health benefits. The purpose was to determine whether associations exist between WG intake (no WG intake - 0 ounce equivalent (ozeq); low - >0-<3ozeq; high - ≥3ozeq) and total dietary fiber intake among Americans 2 years and older. One-day food intake data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009–10 (n=9042) showed that only 2.9% and 7.7% of children/adolescents (2–18yr) and adults (≥19yr) consumed ≥3 WG oz eq/d, respectively. For children/adolescents and adults, individuals in the high WG intake group were 59 and 76 times more likely to fall in the 3rd fiber tertile, respectively, compared to those with no WG intake. Total dietary fiber intake from food sources varied by WG intake group for children/adolescents and adults with more total dietary fiber consumed from ready-to-eat (RTE) and hot cereals and yeast breads/rolls in the high WG intake group compared to the no WG intake group. Major WG sources for children/adolescents and adults included yeast bread/rolls (24% and 27%, respectively), RTE cereals (25% and 20%, respectively) and oatmeal (12% and 21%, respectively). Among those with the highest WG intake, WG RTE cereal with no added bran was the greatest contributor to total dietary fiber compared to other RTE cereal types. WG foods make a substantial contribution to total dietary fiber intake and should be promoted to meet recommendations.
Abbreviations: NCHS, National Center for Health Statistics, RTE, Ready-to-eat, NHANES, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey,USDA, United States Department of Agriculture, ozeq, ounce equivalent, WG, whole grain
Key words: whole grain, total dietary fiber, NHANES, cross-sectional survey, children, adolescents, adults
_______________________________
PART C
Another opinion
Dr. Pat McGuire‘s insight:
This above article talks about the benefits of whole grain and fiber in our lives, especially for diabetes and heart health. But what would be a good reason for promoting it for kids who don’t see those needs as important for them?
If you look only at the weight factor, taking in the recommended amounts of fiber per day for children will help keep their weight down. This will let them feel like they can keep up with their peers when playing. It will also be one less thing that bullies can pick on them about, thus helping their mental health and self esteem.
It also helps with normal bowel patterns so much less constipation. In kids this can lead to an increase of irritability and negative behavior because they just don’t feel good. But they most likely can’t relate it to how their bowels feel, so instead they get punished for their behavior or "attitude".
Fiber also helps maintain a more steady blood sugar. For kids this means that they have a more steady blood sugar (or glucose) level for their brain. Glucose is the primary energy source for the brain. If blood sugar drops, then they have a harder time focusing and concentrating. This leads to academic and behavior problems.
So let’s make a promise to increase the whole grain and fibers in our children’s diets. It will help them now and in the future.
Related topics to the article below - click green title
Click: Bones and teenagers
A dramatic increase in bone growth, known as the pre-pubertal growth spurt occurs in girls at approximately 10 years old and 12 years old in boys. The teenage years therefore represent a very important time for bone growth and development as there is only a once in a life time opportunity to develop bone.
Approximately 30% of all mineral deposited in our bones throughout life, occurs during adolescence and 90% of our adult skeleton is formed by the age of 18 and even earlier in girls. This is reflected in the increased daily requirements for nutrients important to bone health, especially calcium, in adolescents.
Again, adequate intake of these nutrients through a healthy balanced diet, including milk and dairy products, and frequent weight bearing exercise, will help in the formation of strong healthy bones.
Click green title:
Click green title
Obesity Is Found to Gain Its Hold in Earliest Years
For many obese adults, the die was cast by the time they were 5 years old
Advice offered by a family doctor — if it is given at all — is usually ineffective
A major new click: study of more than 7,000 children has found that a third of children who were overweight in kindergarten were obese by eighth grade. And almost every child who was very obese remained that way.
Some obese or overweight kindergartners lost their excess weight, and some children of normal weight got fat over the years. But every year, the chances that a child would slide into or out of being overweight or obese diminished. By age 11, there were few additional changes: Those who were obese or overweight stayed that way, and those whose weight was normal did not become fat.
“The main message is that obesity is established very early in life, and that it basically tracks through adolescence to adulthood,” said Ruth Loos, a professor of preventive medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who was not involved in the study.
These results, surprising to many experts, arose from a rare study that tracked children’s body weight for years, from kindergarten through eighth grade. Experts say they may reshape approaches to combating the nation’s obesity epidemic, suggesting that efforts must start much earlier and focus more on the children at greatest risk.
A third of children who are overweight in kindergarten are obese by eighth grade, a study says. The findings, to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine, do not explain why the effect occurs. Researchers say it may be a combination of genetic predispositions to being heavy and environments that encourage overeating in those prone to it. But the results do provide a possible explanation for why efforts to help children lose weight have often had disappointing results. The steps may have aimed too broadly at all schoolchildren, rather than starting before children enrolled in kindergarten and concentrating on those who were already fat at very young ages.
Previous studies established how many children were fat at each age but not whether their weight changed as they grew up. While valuable in documenting the extent of childhood obesity, they gave an incomplete picture of how the condition developed, researchers said.
“What is striking is the relative decrease in incidence after that initial blast” of obesity that occurs by age 5, said Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, the vice president of the Emory Global Health Institute in Atlanta. “It is almost as if, if you can make it to kindergarten without the weight, your chances are immensely better.”
Dr. Koplan, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was not associated with the new study, although its lead author, Solveig A. Cunningham, is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health at Emory.
The study involved 7,738 children from a nationally representative sample. Researchers measured the children’s height and weight seven times from kindergarten to eighth grade.
When the children entered kindergarten, 12.4 percent were obese — defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile — and 14.9 percent were overweight, with a B.M.I. at or above the 85th percentile. By eighth grade, 20.8 percent were obese and 17 percent were overweight. Half of the obese kindergartners were obese when they were in eighth grade, and nearly three-quarters of the very obese kindergartners were obese in eighth grade. The risk that fat kindergartners would be obese in eighth grade was four to five times that of their thinner classmates, the study found.
Race, ethnicity and family income mattered in younger children, but by the time the overweight children were 5 years old, those factors no longer affected their risk of being fat in later years.
The study did not track the children before kindergarten, but the researchers had their birth weights. Overweight or obese children often were heavy babies, at least 8.8 pounds, something other studies have also found.
The study’s results, Dr. Koplan and others said, “help focus interventions.”
Most efforts to reduce childhood obesity concentrate on school-age children and apply the steps indiscriminately to all children, fat and thin — improving meals in schools, teaching nutrition and the importance of physical activity, getting rid of soda machines.
“This suggests that maybe one reason it didn’t work so well is that by the time kids are 5, the horse is out of the barn,” said Leann L. Birch, a professor in the department of foods and nutrition at the University of Georgia, who was not involved with the study.
The most rigorous studies of efforts for school-age children, conducted in the 1990s, randomly assigned thousands of children to either participate in intensive programs that encouraged them to exercise and improve their diets, or go on as usual.
Click: One study involved 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where most of the students were Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. A second study included 5,106 children in 96 schools in California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas.
Neither study found any effect on children’s weights.
Some obesity researchers said the new study following kindergartners over the years also hinted at another factor: the powerful influence of genetics on obesity, something that can be a challenge to overcome.
I see it happen all the time . A toddler sitting in a shopping cart and the adult with a little plastic bag of snacks giving them to the...
Genetic influences tend to show up early in life, said Dr. Stephen O’Rahilly, an obesity researcher who is a professor of clinical biochemistry and medicine at the University of Cambridge.
“We have known for 50 years that B.M.I. is highly heritable,” he said. “Surprise, surprise, if you tend to be fat, you tend to be fat at an early age.”
Body mass index is not quite as heritable as height, Dr. Loos said. But genes are not necessarily destiny. Exercise and a healthy diet can often reduce, but not completely overcome, the effects of genes.
Steven L. Gortmaker, a professor of the practice of health sociology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said he saw a bright side to the findings. Young children, he said, can cross a line between being fat or normal weight by gaining or losing just a few pounds. For adults, it can be 20 to 30 pounds, or even 40 to 50 pounds.
“It can take a long time to turn that around,” said Dr. Gortmaker, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study.
And, he said, a number of randomized studies involving young children have shown that it is possible to stop or reverse excess weight gain. One, for example, had some fat children ages 4 to 7 reduce their television and computer viewing time, and had others keep theirs the same. Children in the intervention group — especially those from poorer families — consumed fewer calories, and their body mass index fell.
But effective programs for young children involve time and effort, and the costs are not reimbursed by health insurers, said Denise Wilfley, an obesity researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.
“We can effectively treat these children,” Dr. Wilfley said. But other than entering children in research studies, parents can get help only by paying out of their pocket — about $1,500 to $3,000 for an intervention that usually lasts a year.
Advice offered by a family doctor — if it is given at all — is usually ineffective, Dr. Wilfley said. All too often, parents tell her, their worries about a child’s weight are dismissed.
“I just saw a mom who was in tears because her little girl, who is 11 years old, weighs 212 pounds,” Dr. Wilfley said. The child has been fat since she was a toddler, but, Dr. Wilfley said, “the provider told her mom she would outgrow it.”
Source:
(1) click: The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles ...www.nejm.org/
The New England Journa...
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research and review articles, and editorial ...
(2) STAF, Inc.
Click: Obesity Is Found to Gain Its Hold in Earliest Years
For many obese adults, the die was cast by the time they were 5 years old.
A major new study of more than 7,000 children has found that a third ...
=======================================================================================
RELATED LINKS - Click green title:
________________________________
- Gut microbe may fight obesity and diabetes
- Do gut bacteria worsen malnourishment?
- Microbiology: The new germ theory
Click: Bones and teenagers
A dramatic increase in bone growth, known as the pre-pubertal growth spurt occurs in girls at approximately 10 years old and 12 years old in boys. The teenage years therefore represent a very important time for bone growth and development as there is only a once in a life time opportunity to develop bone.
Approximately 30% of all mineral deposited in our bones throughout life, occurs during adolescence and 90% of our adult skeleton is formed by the age of 18 and even earlier in girls. This is reflected in the increased daily requirements for nutrients important to bone health, especially calcium, in adolescents.
Again, adequate intake of these nutrients through a healthy balanced diet, including milk and dairy products, and frequent weight bearing exercise, will help in the formation of strong healthy bones.
Click green title:
- Obesity may disturb bone growth during teen years | Reuterswww.reuters.com/.../us-obesity-teen-idUSBRE9BH0ZA201312...
Dec 18, 2013 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Obese teens might not develop sufficientbone mass relative to their body weight, according to a new study from ... - Obesity during childhood and adolescence augments bone mass ...ajcn.nutrition.org/content/80/.../514.abstra...
The American Journal of...
by MB Leonard - 2004 - Cited by 187 - Related articles
Obesity during childhood and adolescence augments bone mass and bone ... of the effect of childhood obesity on bone accrual during growth have yielded .... Bone Size and Bone Strength Are Increased in Obese Male Adolescents J. Clin.
Click green title
- Your Gut Bacteria May Predict Your Obesity Riskconsumer.healthday.com/.../your-gut-bacteria-may-be-key-t...
HealthDay
Aug 28, 2013 - Studies also found that high-fiber, low-fat diet can change bacteria ... 29 issue of the journal Nature, researchers analyzed the gut bacteria of 169 obese ... or that they can prevent obesity no matter how much someone eats, ... - Your Gut Bacteria May Predict Your Obesity Risk – WebMDwww.webmd.com/.../your-gut-bacteria-may-predict-your-obesi...
WebMD
Aug 28, 2013 - Studies also found that high-fiber, low-fat diet can change bacteria ... 29 issue of the journal Nature, researchers analyzed the gut bacteria of 169 obese ... or that they can prevent obesity no matter how much someone eats, ... =====================================================================
Obesity Is Found to Gain Its Hold in Earliest Years
For many obese adults, the die was cast by the time they were 5 years old
Advice offered by a family doctor — if it is given at all — is usually ineffective
A major new click: study of more than 7,000 children has found that a third of children who were overweight in kindergarten were obese by eighth grade. And almost every child who was very obese remained that way.
Some obese or overweight kindergartners lost their excess weight, and some children of normal weight got fat over the years. But every year, the chances that a child would slide into or out of being overweight or obese diminished. By age 11, there were few additional changes: Those who were obese or overweight stayed that way, and those whose weight was normal did not become fat.
“The main message is that obesity is established very early in life, and that it basically tracks through adolescence to adulthood,” said Ruth Loos, a professor of preventive medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who was not involved in the study.
These results, surprising to many experts, arose from a rare study that tracked children’s body weight for years, from kindergarten through eighth grade. Experts say they may reshape approaches to combating the nation’s obesity epidemic, suggesting that efforts must start much earlier and focus more on the children at greatest risk.
A third of children who are overweight in kindergarten are obese by eighth grade, a study says. The findings, to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine, do not explain why the effect occurs. Researchers say it may be a combination of genetic predispositions to being heavy and environments that encourage overeating in those prone to it. But the results do provide a possible explanation for why efforts to help children lose weight have often had disappointing results. The steps may have aimed too broadly at all schoolchildren, rather than starting before children enrolled in kindergarten and concentrating on those who were already fat at very young ages.
Previous studies established how many children were fat at each age but not whether their weight changed as they grew up. While valuable in documenting the extent of childhood obesity, they gave an incomplete picture of how the condition developed, researchers said.
“What is striking is the relative decrease in incidence after that initial blast” of obesity that occurs by age 5, said Dr. Jeffrey P. Koplan, the vice president of the Emory Global Health Institute in Atlanta. “It is almost as if, if you can make it to kindergarten without the weight, your chances are immensely better.”
Dr. Koplan, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was not associated with the new study, although its lead author, Solveig A. Cunningham, is an assistant professor in the School of Public Health at Emory.
The study involved 7,738 children from a nationally representative sample. Researchers measured the children’s height and weight seven times from kindergarten to eighth grade.
When the children entered kindergarten, 12.4 percent were obese — defined as having a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile — and 14.9 percent were overweight, with a B.M.I. at or above the 85th percentile. By eighth grade, 20.8 percent were obese and 17 percent were overweight. Half of the obese kindergartners were obese when they were in eighth grade, and nearly three-quarters of the very obese kindergartners were obese in eighth grade. The risk that fat kindergartners would be obese in eighth grade was four to five times that of their thinner classmates, the study found.
Race, ethnicity and family income mattered in younger children, but by the time the overweight children were 5 years old, those factors no longer affected their risk of being fat in later years.
The study did not track the children before kindergarten, but the researchers had their birth weights. Overweight or obese children often were heavy babies, at least 8.8 pounds, something other studies have also found.
The study’s results, Dr. Koplan and others said, “help focus interventions.”
Most efforts to reduce childhood obesity concentrate on school-age children and apply the steps indiscriminately to all children, fat and thin — improving meals in schools, teaching nutrition and the importance of physical activity, getting rid of soda machines.
“This suggests that maybe one reason it didn’t work so well is that by the time kids are 5, the horse is out of the barn,” said Leann L. Birch, a professor in the department of foods and nutrition at the University of Georgia, who was not involved with the study.
The most rigorous studies of efforts for school-age children, conducted in the 1990s, randomly assigned thousands of children to either participate in intensive programs that encouraged them to exercise and improve their diets, or go on as usual.
Click: One study involved 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where most of the students were Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. A second study included 5,106 children in 96 schools in California, Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas.
Neither study found any effect on children’s weights.
Some obesity researchers said the new study following kindergartners over the years also hinted at another factor: the powerful influence of genetics on obesity, something that can be a challenge to overcome.
I see it happen all the time . A toddler sitting in a shopping cart and the adult with a little plastic bag of snacks giving them to the...
Genetic influences tend to show up early in life, said Dr. Stephen O’Rahilly, an obesity researcher who is a professor of clinical biochemistry and medicine at the University of Cambridge.
“We have known for 50 years that B.M.I. is highly heritable,” he said. “Surprise, surprise, if you tend to be fat, you tend to be fat at an early age.”
Body mass index is not quite as heritable as height, Dr. Loos said. But genes are not necessarily destiny. Exercise and a healthy diet can often reduce, but not completely overcome, the effects of genes.
Steven L. Gortmaker, a professor of the practice of health sociology at the Harvard School of Public Health, said he saw a bright side to the findings. Young children, he said, can cross a line between being fat or normal weight by gaining or losing just a few pounds. For adults, it can be 20 to 30 pounds, or even 40 to 50 pounds.
“It can take a long time to turn that around,” said Dr. Gortmaker, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study.
And, he said, a number of randomized studies involving young children have shown that it is possible to stop or reverse excess weight gain. One, for example, had some fat children ages 4 to 7 reduce their television and computer viewing time, and had others keep theirs the same. Children in the intervention group — especially those from poorer families — consumed fewer calories, and their body mass index fell.
But effective programs for young children involve time and effort, and the costs are not reimbursed by health insurers, said Denise Wilfley, an obesity researcher at Washington University in St. Louis.
“We can effectively treat these children,” Dr. Wilfley said. But other than entering children in research studies, parents can get help only by paying out of their pocket — about $1,500 to $3,000 for an intervention that usually lasts a year.
Advice offered by a family doctor — if it is given at all — is usually ineffective, Dr. Wilfley said. All too often, parents tell her, their worries about a child’s weight are dismissed.
“I just saw a mom who was in tears because her little girl, who is 11 years old, weighs 212 pounds,” Dr. Wilfley said. The child has been fat since she was a toddler, but, Dr. Wilfley said, “the provider told her mom she would outgrow it.”
Source:
(1) click: The New England Journal of Medicine: Research & Review Articles ...www.nejm.org/
The New England Journa...
The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) is a weekly general medical journal that publishes new medical research and review articles, and editorial ...
(2) STAF, Inc.
Click: Obesity Is Found to Gain Its Hold in Earliest Years
For many obese adults, the die was cast by the time they were 5 years old.
A major new study of more than 7,000 children has found that a third ...
=======================================================================================
RELATED LINKS - Click green title:
- Your Gut Bacteria May Predict Your Obesity Riskconsumer.healthday.com/.../your-gut-bacteria-may-be-key-t...
HealthDay
Aug 28, 2013 - Studies also found that high-fiber, low-fat diet can change bacteria ... 29 issue of the journal Nature, researchers analyzed the gut bacteria of 169 obese ... or that they can prevent obesity no matter how much someone eats, ... - Your Gut Bacteria May Predict Your Obesity Risk – WebMDwww.webmd.com/.../your-gut-bacteria-may-predict-your-obesi...
WebMD
Aug 28, 2013 - Studies also found that high-fiber, low-fat diet can change bacteria ... 29 issue of the journal Nature, researchers analyzed the gut bacteria of 169 obese ... or that they can prevent obesity no matter how much someone eats, ... - Bacteria from lean cage-mates help mice stay slim : Nature News ...www.nature.com/.../bacteria-from-lean-cage-mates-help-mice-stay-s...Nature
Sep 5, 2013 - Gut bacteria from lean mice can invade the guts of obesity-prone ... set out to find direct evidence that gut bacteria have a role in obesity. - Mainstream science finally admitting that gut bacteria ... - Natural Newswww.naturalnews.com/042089_gut_bacteria_obesity_prevention_mainst...
Sep 17, 2013 - Mainstream science finally admitting that gut bacteria play a role inpreventing obesity. ... Tags: gut bacteria, obesity prevention, mainstream science ...This month's edition of the journal Science published the first study to confirm that ...As NaturalNews has previously reported, while diet can affect gut flora ... - Balancing gut flora can help you lose weight - NYR Natural Newswww.nyrnaturalnews.com/.../balancing-gut-flora-can-help-you-lose-wei...
Dec 19, 2012 - Natural Health News — Gut flora may have a crucial role to play in weight gain, ... study in the journal Current Opinion in Endocrinology, Diabetes &Obesity. ... In addition to probiotic therapy, you can reduce your weight and ... - Gut bacteria 'too low' in quarter of population - Medical News Todaywww.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265434.php
Medical News Today
Rating: 5 - 1 vote
Sep 1, 2013 - MNT ChoiceAcademic Journal ... Low gut bacteria more prominent inobese ... and find new interventions that could prevent obesity and type 2 diabetes. ...with metabolic markers, published online in Nature, August 28, 2013.
More by Honor Whiteman - in 44 Google+ circles - Gut Bacteria Prevents Obesity | Eco-Savyeco-savy.com/gut-bacteria-prevents-obesity/
Oct 9, 2013 - Scientists have discovered that gut microbes play a significant role inobesity! ... America's most prestigious scientific journal called Nature regardingobesity. ... It can be found at your local health food or grocery store, such as ...
________________________________
For BLOGGING
John La Puma is an internist and the author of “Refuel: A 24-Day Eating Plan to Shed Fat, Boost Testosterone, and Pump Up Strength and Stamina.”
The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health
The China Study Book - Amazon.com
El Estudio de China: El Estudio de Nutricion Mas Completo Realizado Hasta el Momento; Efectos Asombrosos En La... by T. Colin Campbell Ph.D. and M.D. Thomas M. Campbell II (May 29, 2012)
The Low-Carb Fraud by T. Colin Campbell and Howard Jacobson (Feb 25, 2014)
Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition by T. Colin Campbell and Howard Jacobson (May 7, 2013)
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Traveler: Altitude Awareness Info
I am headed to Bogota, Colombia, in a few weeks for a business trip. It is a very lush location right at the foothills of the Andes Mountains. However, since it is located 8,600 feet above sea level (2,625 meters), it is likely my fellow colleagues and I will have some symptoms of altitude sickness in the first few days. In this article I would like to share tips on how to handle visiting a high altitude location.
Research your locationBefore heading out the door for your trip, I would suggest doing Internet research about your destination to be aware of its altitude. There are some obvious locations we all know are extremely high, such as Machu Picchu in Peru or visiting Mount Everest in Nepal. However, there are other cities you don’t automatically equate to having a moderately higher altitude like Mexico City (7,943 feet or roughly 2,421 meters). It is better to know and be prepared than to be caught by surprise.
Take it easyIf you are planning to hike, sightsee on foot, or get in a workout at the hotel in a high altitude location, make sure you give yourself a few days to adjust before taking on too much strenuous activity. It typically takes about 24 – 36 hours to adjust, but everyone is different. Listen to your body and don’t push yourself too hard.
Limit alcohol, caffeine, and saltCommon symptoms of altitude sickness are shortness of breath, fast heartbeat, headache, nausea, and feeling easily exhausted. The last time I went to Bogota, the only thing I experienced was a bad headache for about two days, which slightly affected my ability to concentrate at work. Most websites I’ve read discussing this subject suggest limiting or totally eliminating alcohol, caffeine, and salt from your diet in the first few days to limit further dehydration. Consuming twice the amount of water you normally drink is also advised. If you still feel sick after three days, you should consider seeking medical assistance.
I wish you all the happiest & safest of travels.
____________________________
I am headed to Bogota, Colombia, in a few weeks for a business trip. It is a very lush location right at the foothills of the Andes Mountains. However, since it is located 8,600 feet above sea level (2,625 meters), it is likely my fellow colleagues and I will have some symptoms of altitude sickness in the first few days. In this article I would like to share tips on how to handle visiting a high altitude location.
Research your locationBefore heading out the door for your trip, I would suggest doing Internet research about your destination to be aware of its altitude. There are some obvious locations we all know are extremely high, such as Machu Picchu in Peru or visiting Mount Everest in Nepal. However, there are other cities you don’t automatically equate to having a moderately higher altitude like Mexico City (7,943 feet or roughly 2,421 meters). It is better to know and be prepared than to be caught by surprise.
Take it easyIf you are planning to hike, sightsee on foot, or get in a workout at the hotel in a high altitude location, make sure you give yourself a few days to adjust before taking on too much strenuous activity. It typically takes about 24 – 36 hours to adjust, but everyone is different. Listen to your body and don’t push yourself too hard.
Limit alcohol, caffeine, and saltCommon symptoms of altitude sickness are shortness of breath, fast heartbeat, headache, nausea, and feeling easily exhausted. The last time I went to Bogota, the only thing I experienced was a bad headache for about two days, which slightly affected my ability to concentrate at work. Most websites I’ve read discussing this subject suggest limiting or totally eliminating alcohol, caffeine, and salt from your diet in the first few days to limit further dehydration. Consuming twice the amount of water you normally drink is also advised. If you still feel sick after three days, you should consider seeking medical assistance.
I wish you all the happiest & safest of travels.
____________________________
When You Yell to Your Child You Can Ruin
His/Her Relationships & Marriage Happiness for Life
How to avoid yelling & secure a happier life for your child?
Nearly every parent loses control and screams at the children now and then. But what if you do it repeatedly?
Researchers suspect parents are yelling more. Parents have been conditioned to avoid spanking, so they vent their anger and frustration by shouting instead. Three out of four parents yell, scream or shout at their children or teens about once a month, on average, for misbehaving or making them angry, research shows. Increasingly, therapists and parenting experts are homing in on how it hurts a child, as well as how to stop it.
Raising your voice isn't always bad. Loudly describing a problem can call attention to it without hurting anyone, says Adele Faber, a parenting trainer in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., and co-author of "How to Be the Parent You Always Wanted to Be." For example: "I just mopped the kitchen floor and now it is covered with muddy footprints."
Yelling becomes damaging when it is a personal attack, belittling or blaming a child with statements such as "Why can't you ever remember?" or, "You always get this wrong!" Ms. Faber says.
Many parents lose control because they take children's misbehavior or rebellion personally, research shows: They feel attacked or think the child's actions reflect poorly on them. Parents who see a child's negative emotions as unexpected, overwhelming and upsetting tend to feel more threatened and frustrated with each new outburst, says a study published earlier this month in the Journal of Family Psychology. This pattern, called "emotional flooding," triggers a downward spiral in the relationship, disrupting the parent's problem-solving ability and fueling emotional reactions, such as yelling.
Teens whose parents use "harsh verbal discipline" such as shouting or insults are more likely to have behavior problems and depression symptoms, says a recent study of 976 middle-class adolescents and their parents, published online last September and led by Ming-Te Wang, an assistant professor of psychology and education at the University of Pittsburgh.
Another study suggests yelling at children may have consequences that go beyond those of spanking. Eight-year-olds whose parents disciplined them by yelling have less satisfying relationships with romantic partners and spouses at age 23, according to a 15-year study led by Stephanie Parade, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University. "Parents who yell may miss out on a chance to teach children to regulate their emotions," she says.
Spanking also predicted less satisfying adult relationships, but the negative effects were offset when parents praised their children at other times. The negative effects of yelling weren't erased by parental warmth, however. The negative problem-solving tactics that children learn when their parents yell may stick with them as adults, says the study, published in 2012 in Marriage & Family Review. Children also may expect others to treat them in a negative way, and unconsciously pick partners who fulfill that expectation.
"Yelling is where 90% of us do the most damage," says Julie Ann Barnhill, a speaker and author of "She's Gonna Blow," a book on parental anger that has sold 135,000 copies. Ms. Barnhill says she used to yell one to three times a week at her children when they were preschoolers. She got counseling, and learned to control her anger and discipline her kids in calmer, more positive ways, techniques she now teaches other parents in speeches and workshops.
Parents can learn to notice signs that a blowup is brewing and dial down their own tension. Warning signs can include: tightness in the throat or chest, shallow or rapid breathing, a clenching of the teeth or jaw, negative thoughts about oneself or feelings of being overwhelmed.
Deep breathing, envisioning a pleasant scene, counting to 10 or leaving the room can help. Ms. Barnhill advises practicing calming thoughts, such as "I'm having a miserable day, but getting angry will just make things worse."
Build a margin of spare time into daily routines to allow time for minor mishaps, such as spilled milk or lost jackets, says Jill Savage, author of "No More Perfect Moms." She adds, "If I have 20 minutes to clean up after dinner, I'm more likely to handle that spilled milk well."
Learning to start sentences with "I" rather than "you" can help parents shift from an angry attack to a teaching moment, Ms. Faber says. "Say what you don't like, then add what you would like or expect."
Leigh Fransen felt like yelling when her daughters, 10-year-old Alona and 8-year-old Elisha, forgot to feed the family dog, Balto, on two evenings in the same week. "This is a really important responsibility, and they're always asking me for more pets," says Ms. Fransen, of Fort Mill, S.C. "I wanted to yell, 'You're not getting any dinner tonight, because you didn't feed the dog, and you're going to know how it feels'—which would lead to nothing but tears and misery, and probably to me backing down."
Instead, she started her response with "I," saying, "I don't like seeing the dog not fed. Look at him: He is miserable. I expect him to be fed before you eat your own dinner," Ms. Fransen says. Alona and Elisha needed to be reminded of the deadline twice, but soon learned to remember on their own. Ms. Fransen praised them for taking responsibility and encouraged them to see that "Balto seems much happier now that he's getting dinner on time."
Many parents blow up because they have unrealistic expectations—such as assuming a 2-year-old shouldn't push parental limits, says Ms. Savage, chief executive of Hearts at Home, a Normal, Ill., nonprofit that runs conferences on parenting issues, including discipline. "We say to our children, 'Act your age,' and in reality, they are," she says. Not expecting children to be perfect, or nearly so, can calm parents' frustrations, Ms. Savage says. So can seeing a child's failure as an opportunity for him to learn.
Parents can turn a meltdown into a teaching moment by involving kids in finding solutions, Ms. Faber says. She suggests waiting for a calm moment and stating the rule the child violated. Then give the child a choice about how to prevent the misbehavior from happening again. Inviting a child to suggest solutions teaches problem-solving skills.
Sara Weingot of Baltimore used the technique after her 6-year-old son misbehaved during an outing in her minivan, kicking and pushing two other kids' booster seats. She later told him she never wanted it to happen again, then listened sympathetically as he explained that he had been squeezed too tightly between two other kids' car seats.
Ms. Weingot gave him a choice between staying home with a babysitter next time and finding another solution. He made a list from "get a better car" to taking turns with his siblings in more comfortable seats, an idea that worked, Ms. Weingot says.
Apologizing can help repair the damage after an outburst, says Ms. Barnhill, the author. She took her daughter aside in her teens and apologized for an explosive incident a few years earlier. "I have this memory of being in your face and yelling at you. I am so sorry, sweet girl," Ms. Barnhill says she told her.
Her daughter Kristen Draughan, who is now 25, married and studying for a master's degree in social work, says she doesn't remember her mother yelling much when she was a child. But Ms. Draughan does recall that her mother's remorse made her burst into tears. "It showed that she cared about my feelings," she says.
Source: (1) Journal of Family Psychology, (2) STAF, Inc.
Journal of Family Psychology® - American Psychological Associationwww.apa.org/pubs/journals/fam/
American Psychological...
This journal offers cutting-edge, groundbreaking, state-of-the-art, and innovative empirical research with real-world applicability in the field of family psychology.
______________________________________
His/Her Relationships & Marriage Happiness for Life
How to avoid yelling & secure a happier life for your child?
Nearly every parent loses control and screams at the children now and then. But what if you do it repeatedly?
Researchers suspect parents are yelling more. Parents have been conditioned to avoid spanking, so they vent their anger and frustration by shouting instead. Three out of four parents yell, scream or shout at their children or teens about once a month, on average, for misbehaving or making them angry, research shows. Increasingly, therapists and parenting experts are homing in on how it hurts a child, as well as how to stop it.
Raising your voice isn't always bad. Loudly describing a problem can call attention to it without hurting anyone, says Adele Faber, a parenting trainer in Roslyn Heights, N.Y., and co-author of "How to Be the Parent You Always Wanted to Be." For example: "I just mopped the kitchen floor and now it is covered with muddy footprints."
Yelling becomes damaging when it is a personal attack, belittling or blaming a child with statements such as "Why can't you ever remember?" or, "You always get this wrong!" Ms. Faber says.
Many parents lose control because they take children's misbehavior or rebellion personally, research shows: They feel attacked or think the child's actions reflect poorly on them. Parents who see a child's negative emotions as unexpected, overwhelming and upsetting tend to feel more threatened and frustrated with each new outburst, says a study published earlier this month in the Journal of Family Psychology. This pattern, called "emotional flooding," triggers a downward spiral in the relationship, disrupting the parent's problem-solving ability and fueling emotional reactions, such as yelling.
Teens whose parents use "harsh verbal discipline" such as shouting or insults are more likely to have behavior problems and depression symptoms, says a recent study of 976 middle-class adolescents and their parents, published online last September and led by Ming-Te Wang, an assistant professor of psychology and education at the University of Pittsburgh.
Another study suggests yelling at children may have consequences that go beyond those of spanking. Eight-year-olds whose parents disciplined them by yelling have less satisfying relationships with romantic partners and spouses at age 23, according to a 15-year study led by Stephanie Parade, an assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University. "Parents who yell may miss out on a chance to teach children to regulate their emotions," she says.
Spanking also predicted less satisfying adult relationships, but the negative effects were offset when parents praised their children at other times. The negative effects of yelling weren't erased by parental warmth, however. The negative problem-solving tactics that children learn when their parents yell may stick with them as adults, says the study, published in 2012 in Marriage & Family Review. Children also may expect others to treat them in a negative way, and unconsciously pick partners who fulfill that expectation.
"Yelling is where 90% of us do the most damage," says Julie Ann Barnhill, a speaker and author of "She's Gonna Blow," a book on parental anger that has sold 135,000 copies. Ms. Barnhill says she used to yell one to three times a week at her children when they were preschoolers. She got counseling, and learned to control her anger and discipline her kids in calmer, more positive ways, techniques she now teaches other parents in speeches and workshops.
Parents can learn to notice signs that a blowup is brewing and dial down their own tension. Warning signs can include: tightness in the throat or chest, shallow or rapid breathing, a clenching of the teeth or jaw, negative thoughts about oneself or feelings of being overwhelmed.
Deep breathing, envisioning a pleasant scene, counting to 10 or leaving the room can help. Ms. Barnhill advises practicing calming thoughts, such as "I'm having a miserable day, but getting angry will just make things worse."
Build a margin of spare time into daily routines to allow time for minor mishaps, such as spilled milk or lost jackets, says Jill Savage, author of "No More Perfect Moms." She adds, "If I have 20 minutes to clean up after dinner, I'm more likely to handle that spilled milk well."
Learning to start sentences with "I" rather than "you" can help parents shift from an angry attack to a teaching moment, Ms. Faber says. "Say what you don't like, then add what you would like or expect."
Leigh Fransen felt like yelling when her daughters, 10-year-old Alona and 8-year-old Elisha, forgot to feed the family dog, Balto, on two evenings in the same week. "This is a really important responsibility, and they're always asking me for more pets," says Ms. Fransen, of Fort Mill, S.C. "I wanted to yell, 'You're not getting any dinner tonight, because you didn't feed the dog, and you're going to know how it feels'—which would lead to nothing but tears and misery, and probably to me backing down."
Instead, she started her response with "I," saying, "I don't like seeing the dog not fed. Look at him: He is miserable. I expect him to be fed before you eat your own dinner," Ms. Fransen says. Alona and Elisha needed to be reminded of the deadline twice, but soon learned to remember on their own. Ms. Fransen praised them for taking responsibility and encouraged them to see that "Balto seems much happier now that he's getting dinner on time."
Many parents blow up because they have unrealistic expectations—such as assuming a 2-year-old shouldn't push parental limits, says Ms. Savage, chief executive of Hearts at Home, a Normal, Ill., nonprofit that runs conferences on parenting issues, including discipline. "We say to our children, 'Act your age,' and in reality, they are," she says. Not expecting children to be perfect, or nearly so, can calm parents' frustrations, Ms. Savage says. So can seeing a child's failure as an opportunity for him to learn.
Parents can turn a meltdown into a teaching moment by involving kids in finding solutions, Ms. Faber says. She suggests waiting for a calm moment and stating the rule the child violated. Then give the child a choice about how to prevent the misbehavior from happening again. Inviting a child to suggest solutions teaches problem-solving skills.
Sara Weingot of Baltimore used the technique after her 6-year-old son misbehaved during an outing in her minivan, kicking and pushing two other kids' booster seats. She later told him she never wanted it to happen again, then listened sympathetically as he explained that he had been squeezed too tightly between two other kids' car seats.
Ms. Weingot gave him a choice between staying home with a babysitter next time and finding another solution. He made a list from "get a better car" to taking turns with his siblings in more comfortable seats, an idea that worked, Ms. Weingot says.
Apologizing can help repair the damage after an outburst, says Ms. Barnhill, the author. She took her daughter aside in her teens and apologized for an explosive incident a few years earlier. "I have this memory of being in your face and yelling at you. I am so sorry, sweet girl," Ms. Barnhill says she told her.
Her daughter Kristen Draughan, who is now 25, married and studying for a master's degree in social work, says she doesn't remember her mother yelling much when she was a child. But Ms. Draughan does recall that her mother's remorse made her burst into tears. "It showed that she cared about my feelings," she says.
Source: (1) Journal of Family Psychology, (2) STAF, Inc.
Journal of Family Psychology® - American Psychological Associationwww.apa.org/pubs/journals/fam/
American Psychological...
This journal offers cutting-edge, groundbreaking, state-of-the-art, and innovative empirical research with real-world applicability in the field of family psychology.
______________________________________
3 Enemas Later, Still No Drugs
IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David Eckert, 54, was hiding drugs in his rectum.
Eckert is a shy junk dealer struggling to get by in Hidalgo County, N.M. He lives a working-class life, drives a 16-year-old pickup and was convicted in 2008 of methamphetamine possession. Click: Methamphetamine
Police officers, suspecting he might still be involved in drugs, asked him to step out of his pickup early last year after stopping him for a supposed traffic violation. No drugs or weapons were found on Eckert or in his truck, but a police dog showed interest in the vehicle and an officer wrote that Eckert’s posture was “erect and he kept his legs together.”
That led the police to speculate that he might be hiding drugs internally, so they took him in handcuffs to a nearby hospital emergency room and asked the doctor, Adam Ash, to conduct a forcible search of his rectum. Dr. Ash refused, saying it would be unethical.
“I was pretty sure it was the wrong thing to do,” Dr. Ash told me. “It was not medically indicated.”
Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn’t actually been arrested. The police then drove Eckert 50 miles to the emergency room of the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors took X-rays of Eckert’s abdomen and performed a rectal examination. No drugs were found, so doctors performed a second rectal exam, again unavailing.
Doctors then gave Eckert an enema and forced him to have a bowel movement in the presence of a nurse and policeman, according to a lawsuit that Eckert filed. When no narcotics were found, a second enema was administered. Then a third.
The police left the privacy curtain open, so that Eckert’s searches were public, the lawsuit says.
x
After hours of fruitless searches, police and doctors arranged another X-ray and finally anesthetized Eckert and performed a colonoscopy. Click: Colonoscopy
“Nothing was found inside of Mr. Eckert,” the police report notes. So after he woke up, he was released — after 13 hours, two rectal exams, three enemas, two X-rays and a colonoscopy.
The hospital ended up billing Eckert $6,000.
When I came across this case, it seemed far-fetched to me — more like rape than law enforcement. But the authorities, hospital and doctors all refused to comment, and, a few days ago, the city and county settled the lawsuit by paying Eckert $1.6 million.
This wasn’t a unique case. A few months earlier, a man named Timothy Young who lives nearby says that police officers pulled him over, forcibly strip-searched him in a parking lot and then took him to a hospital for a forced X-ray and rectal examination while he was handcuffed. Nothing was found, so he was released — only to receive a hospital bill.
And a few weeks before Eckert’s ordeal, a 54-year-old American woman crossing from Mexico into El Paso was strip-searched and taken to the University Medical Center of El Paso. She says in a lawsuit that, over six hours, she was shackled to an examination table and subjected to rectal and vaginal examinations — with the door open to compound her humiliation. After a final X-ray and CT scan, all of which turned up nothing, she was released — and billed for the procedures.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Eckert’s lawyer, notes that such abuses are not random but are disproportionately directed at those on the bottom rungs of society. “It’s a socioeconomic issue,” he said. “It’s the indignities forced on people who are not articulate, not educated and don’t have access to legal services.”
Police are caught in a difficult balancing act, and obviously the abuse of Eckert isn’t representative. But it is emblematic of something much larger in America, a kind of inequality that isn’t economic and that we don’t much talk about.
It’s the kind of inequality that lies behind police stops for “driving while black,” or unequal implementation of stop-and-frisk policies, or “zero tolerance” school discipline codes that lead many low-income children to be suspended.
This inequality has a racial element to it, but it is also about social class (Eckert is white but struggling financially). This is about Americans living in different worlds. If you’re a middle-class reader, you probably see the justice system as protective. If you’re a young man of color, you may see it as threatening.
So as we discuss inequality in America, let’s remember that the divide is measured in more than dollars. It’s also about something as fundamental as our dignity, our humanity and our access to justice; it’s about the right of working stiffs not to endure forced colonoscopies*)
*) visual examination of the colon (with a colonoscope) from the cecum to the rectum; requires sedation.
click: What Is a Colonoscopy?News for NYT 3 enemas later Still no drugs
_____________________________
IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David Eckert, 54, was hiding drugs in his rectum.
Eckert is a shy junk dealer struggling to get by in Hidalgo County, N.M. He lives a working-class life, drives a 16-year-old pickup and was convicted in 2008 of methamphetamine possession. Click: Methamphetamine
Police officers, suspecting he might still be involved in drugs, asked him to step out of his pickup early last year after stopping him for a supposed traffic violation. No drugs or weapons were found on Eckert or in his truck, but a police dog showed interest in the vehicle and an officer wrote that Eckert’s posture was “erect and he kept his legs together.”
That led the police to speculate that he might be hiding drugs internally, so they took him in handcuffs to a nearby hospital emergency room and asked the doctor, Adam Ash, to conduct a forcible search of his rectum. Dr. Ash refused, saying it would be unethical.
“I was pretty sure it was the wrong thing to do,” Dr. Ash told me. “It was not medically indicated.”
Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn’t actually been arrested. The police then drove Eckert 50 miles to the emergency room of the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors took X-rays of Eckert’s abdomen and performed a rectal examination. No drugs were found, so doctors performed a second rectal exam, again unavailing.
Doctors then gave Eckert an enema and forced him to have a bowel movement in the presence of a nurse and policeman, according to a lawsuit that Eckert filed. When no narcotics were found, a second enema was administered. Then a third.
The police left the privacy curtain open, so that Eckert’s searches were public, the lawsuit says.
x
After hours of fruitless searches, police and doctors arranged another X-ray and finally anesthetized Eckert and performed a colonoscopy. Click: Colonoscopy
“Nothing was found inside of Mr. Eckert,” the police report notes. So after he woke up, he was released — after 13 hours, two rectal exams, three enemas, two X-rays and a colonoscopy.
The hospital ended up billing Eckert $6,000.
When I came across this case, it seemed far-fetched to me — more like rape than law enforcement. But the authorities, hospital and doctors all refused to comment, and, a few days ago, the city and county settled the lawsuit by paying Eckert $1.6 million.
This wasn’t a unique case. A few months earlier, a man named Timothy Young who lives nearby says that police officers pulled him over, forcibly strip-searched him in a parking lot and then took him to a hospital for a forced X-ray and rectal examination while he was handcuffed. Nothing was found, so he was released — only to receive a hospital bill.
And a few weeks before Eckert’s ordeal, a 54-year-old American woman crossing from Mexico into El Paso was strip-searched and taken to the University Medical Center of El Paso. She says in a lawsuit that, over six hours, she was shackled to an examination table and subjected to rectal and vaginal examinations — with the door open to compound her humiliation. After a final X-ray and CT scan, all of which turned up nothing, she was released — and billed for the procedures.
Joseph P. Kennedy, Eckert’s lawyer, notes that such abuses are not random but are disproportionately directed at those on the bottom rungs of society. “It’s a socioeconomic issue,” he said. “It’s the indignities forced on people who are not articulate, not educated and don’t have access to legal services.”
Police are caught in a difficult balancing act, and obviously the abuse of Eckert isn’t representative. But it is emblematic of something much larger in America, a kind of inequality that isn’t economic and that we don’t much talk about.
It’s the kind of inequality that lies behind police stops for “driving while black,” or unequal implementation of stop-and-frisk policies, or “zero tolerance” school discipline codes that lead many low-income children to be suspended.
This inequality has a racial element to it, but it is also about social class (Eckert is white but struggling financially). This is about Americans living in different worlds. If you’re a middle-class reader, you probably see the justice system as protective. If you’re a young man of color, you may see it as threatening.
So as we discuss inequality in America, let’s remember that the divide is measured in more than dollars. It’s also about something as fundamental as our dignity, our humanity and our access to justice; it’s about the right of working stiffs not to endure forced colonoscopies*)
*) visual examination of the colon (with a colonoscope) from the cecum to the rectum; requires sedation.
click: What Is a Colonoscopy?News for NYT 3 enemas later Still no drugs
- 3 Enemas Later, Still No Drugs
New York Times - by Nicholas Kristof - 6 days ago
IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David ...
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- 3 Enemas Later, Still No Drugs - NYTimes.com
www.nytimes.com/.../kristof-3-enemas-lat...The New York Times
by Nicholas Kristof - in 1,269,475 Google+ circles
7 days ago - IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, listen to what unfolded when the police suspected that David ...- Stop and Frisk - The New York Times - Times Topicstopics.nytimes.com/top/.../s/stop_and_frisk/
The New York Times
ARTICLES ABOUT STOP AND FRISK ... 3 Enemas Later, Still No Drugs ... WithoutJury, Judge Warned That Stop-and-Frisk Ruling Would Be Disputed.
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Hatha Yoga Can Lower
Fatigue, Inflammation in Breast Cancer Survivors
Click: Hatha yoga
Each yoga group included between four and 20 women who practiced the same poses during 90-minute sessions twice a week. Researchers encouraged the women to practice at home, as well; participants logged their total weekly practice time.
Immediately after the active phase of the trial ended, the women in the yoga group reported, on average, a 41 percent drop in fatigue and a 12 percent higher vitality score compared to the non-yoga group.
To gauge the participants’ inflammation levels, the scientists measured the activation of three proteins in the blood that are markers of inflammation—called pro-inflammatory cytokines. They generated the protein activity by injecting a compound that stimulated an immune response. The proteins are interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1B) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-a).
Surprise Finding
At the three-month point immediately after the yoga sessions ended, all three pro-inflammatory cytokine levels were lower, on average, in the yoga group compared to the non-yoga group: TNF-a by 10 percent, IL-6 by 11 percent and IL-1B by 15 percent.
“We were really surprised by the data because some more recent studies on exercise have suggested that exercise interventions may not necessarily lower inflammation unless people are substantially overweight or have metabolic problems,” Kiecolt-Glaser said. “In this group, the women didn’t lose weight, but we saw really marked reductions in inflammation. So this was a particularly striking finding biologically.”
The more the women in the study practiced yoga, the better their results.
At the six-month point of the study—three months after the formal yoga practice had ended— results showed that on average, fatigue was 57 percent lower in women who had practiced yoga compared to the non-yoga group, and their inflammation was reduced by up to 20 percent.
The participants had completed all breast cancer treatments before the start of the study and only yoga novices were recruited for the randomized, controlled clinical trial.
Participants practiced yoga in small groups twice a week for 12 weeks. Women making up the control group were wait-listed to receive the same yoga sessions once the trial was over. During the study, they were instructed to go about their normal routines and not to do yoga.
“This showed that modest yoga practice over a period of several months could have substantial benefits for breast cancer survivors,” said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, professor of psychiatry and psychology at Ohio State University and lead author of the study.
“We also think the results could easily generalize to other groups of people who have issues with fatigue and inflammation,” said Kiecolt-Glaser, also an investigator in Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.
Though many studies have suggested that yoga has numerous benefits, this is the largest known randomized controlled trial that includes biological measures, Kiecolt-Glaser said. Researchers recruited 200 women for the study.
The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Fatigue and Inflammation
The research team focused on breast cancer survivors because the rigors of treatment can be so taxing on patients.
“One of the problems they face is a real reduction in cardiorespiratory fitness. The treatment is so debilitating and they are so tired, and the less you do physically, the less you’re able to do. It’s a downward spiral,” Kiecolt-Glaser said. “That’s one reason we think there are higher levels of inflammation in cancer survivors, meaning that an intervention that reduces inflammation could potentially be very beneficial.”
Chronic inflammation is linked to numerous health problems, including coronary heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as the frailty and functional decline that can accompany aging.
All women in the study completed a number of surveys assessing their fatigue, energy level, depressive symptoms, sleep quality, physical activities and food consumption. They also gave baseline blood samples that researchers used to measure levels of several inflammation-related proteins.
Participants ranged in age from 27 to 76 and were two months to three years past the latest surgical or radiation treatment. Kiecolt-Glaser and colleagues deliberately selected women of a variety of ages, stages of cancer (between 0 and 3A) and treatment methods so the results could be generalized to a broad population of cancer survivors, she said.
Source: The study is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Click:
Journal of Clinical Oncologyjco.ascopubs.org/
Journal of Clinical Oncolo...
Journal of Clinical Oncology serves its readers as the single most credible, authoritative resource for disseminating significant clinical oncology research. In print ...
Fighting Smoking, 50 Years Later
'Even 50 years after the first surgeon general's report on smoking and health, we're still finding out new ways that tobacco kills and maims*) people," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told me. "It's astonishing how bad it is."
*) to maim = :injure, wound, cripple, disable, incapacitate, impair, mar, mutilate,lacerate, disfigure, deform, mangle
Frieden and public health specialists everywhere are seeking better ways to help the 44 million Americans who still smoke to quit and to keep young people from getting hooked on cigarettes.
"Fewer than 2 percent of doctors smoke. Why can't we get to that rate in society as a whole?" he wondered.
One reason: Smoking rates are highest among the poor, poorly educated and people with mental illness, populations hard to reach with educational messages and quit-smoking aids.
But when I mentioned to Frieden, a former New York City health commissioner, that the city's streets are filled with young adult smokers who appear to be well-educated and well-dressed, he said television seems to have had an outsize influence.
Focus groups of girls in New York private schools have suggested a "Sex in the City" effect, he said: Girls think smoking makes them look sexy. In the past two years, middle-aged men, too, have begun smoking in increasing numbers after a half-century decline. Dr. Frieden cited "Mad Men," the popular TV series featuring admen in the early 1960s, when more than half of U.S. men smoked.
Frieden said that an anti-smoking effort begun in 2008 by the World Health Organization "can make a huge difference in curbing smoking, and we should fully implement what we know works."
The program is called Mpower:
•M stands for monitoring tobacco use and the effectiveness of prevention programs.
• P for protecting people from secondhand smoke. Half the country still lacks laws mandating smoke-free public places. About half of children from nonsmoking households have metabolites of tobacco in their blood, Frieden said.
•O for offering help to the 70 percent of smokers who say they would like to quit. Medical aids for quitting smoking, which can triple the likelihood of success, should become available, without a copay, to many more people under the Affordable Care Act, Frieden said.
• W for warning about smoking hazards through larger and more graphic messages on cigarette packs and paid advertising on radio and television.
• E for enforcing bans on tobacco marketing, advertising, promotion and sponsorships. Smoking is freely depicted in movies and popular TV shows.
• R for raising taxes, which studies have shown is the single most effective way to reduce smoking in the population, especially among teens.
President Barack Obama has proposed an additional 94-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes, which would yield $80 billion to fund universal prekindergarten.
"A higher cigarette tax is not a regressive tax, because it would help poor people even more than the well-to-do," Frieden noted.
Smokers ready to quit can choose from among a cornucopia of aids as wide-ranging as nicotine substitutes, low-dose antidepressants, hypnosis and acupuncture. While none by itself has a high rate of success, different methods have proved effective for different people. Many former smokers required several attempts before they managed to quit for good.
But quitting smoking does not necessarily require assistance. As two public health specialists, Andrea L. Smith and Simon Chapman at the University of Sydney in Australia, have pointed out, "The vast majority of quitters do so unaided."
A Gallup Poll conducted last year in the United States found that "only 8 percent of ex-smokers attributed their success to (nicotine replacement therapy) patches, gum or prescribed drugs," these experts noted. "In contrast, 48 percent attributed their success to quitting 'cold turkey' and 8 percent to willpower, commitment or 'mind over matter.' "
They added, "For many smokers, having a reason to quit (a why) was more important than having a method to quit (a how)."
For my husband, who smoked a pack a day for 50 years, the "why" was his distress at seeing two beautiful young nieces smoking; he made a pact with them to quit if they would, and he followed through.
Techniques that can help people trying to quit when troubled by the urge to smoke include waiting 10 minutes and distracting yourself; avoiding situations you associate with smoking, at least until you have become a committed ex-smoker; using stress reducers such as physical activity, yoga, deep breathing, muscle relaxation and self-hypnosis; seeking moral support from a nonsmoking friend, family member or online stop-smoking program; and oral distractions such as chewing sugarless gum or raw vegetables.
Electronic cigarettes are being promoted by some as a way to resist the real thing. E-cigarettes contain liquid nicotine that is heated to produce a vapor, not smoke. More than 200 brands are now on the market; they combine nicotine with flavorings like chocolate and tobacco.
But their contents are not regulated, and their long-term safety has not been established. In one study, 30 percent were found to produce known carcinogens. Frieden said that while e-cigarettes "have the potential to help some people quit," the method would backfire "if it gets kids to start smoking, gets smokers who would have quit to continue to smoke, gets ex-smokers to go back to smoking, or re-glamorizes smoking."
Nearly 2 million children in U.S. middle and high schools have already used e-cigarettes, Frieden said. In an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal last year, Dr. Matthew B. Stanbrook, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, suggested that fruit-flavored e-cigarettes and endorsements by movie stars could lure teens who would not otherwise smoke into acquiring a nicotine habit.
A survey in 2011 of 75,643 South Korean youths in Grades 7 through 12 by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, revealed that 4 of 5 e-cigarette users also smoked tobacco. It could happen here: Stanton A. Glantz, the study's senior author and a professor of medicine at the university, described e-cigarettes as "a new route to nicotine addiction for kids."
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
_______________________________________
'Even 50 years after the first surgeon general's report on smoking and health, we're still finding out new ways that tobacco kills and maims*) people," Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, recently told me. "It's astonishing how bad it is."
*) to maim = :injure, wound, cripple, disable, incapacitate, impair, mar, mutilate,lacerate, disfigure, deform, mangle
Frieden and public health specialists everywhere are seeking better ways to help the 44 million Americans who still smoke to quit and to keep young people from getting hooked on cigarettes.
"Fewer than 2 percent of doctors smoke. Why can't we get to that rate in society as a whole?" he wondered.
One reason: Smoking rates are highest among the poor, poorly educated and people with mental illness, populations hard to reach with educational messages and quit-smoking aids.
But when I mentioned to Frieden, a former New York City health commissioner, that the city's streets are filled with young adult smokers who appear to be well-educated and well-dressed, he said television seems to have had an outsize influence.
Focus groups of girls in New York private schools have suggested a "Sex in the City" effect, he said: Girls think smoking makes them look sexy. In the past two years, middle-aged men, too, have begun smoking in increasing numbers after a half-century decline. Dr. Frieden cited "Mad Men," the popular TV series featuring admen in the early 1960s, when more than half of U.S. men smoked.
Frieden said that an anti-smoking effort begun in 2008 by the World Health Organization "can make a huge difference in curbing smoking, and we should fully implement what we know works."
The program is called Mpower:
•M stands for monitoring tobacco use and the effectiveness of prevention programs.
• P for protecting people from secondhand smoke. Half the country still lacks laws mandating smoke-free public places. About half of children from nonsmoking households have metabolites of tobacco in their blood, Frieden said.
•O for offering help to the 70 percent of smokers who say they would like to quit. Medical aids for quitting smoking, which can triple the likelihood of success, should become available, without a copay, to many more people under the Affordable Care Act, Frieden said.
• W for warning about smoking hazards through larger and more graphic messages on cigarette packs and paid advertising on radio and television.
• E for enforcing bans on tobacco marketing, advertising, promotion and sponsorships. Smoking is freely depicted in movies and popular TV shows.
• R for raising taxes, which studies have shown is the single most effective way to reduce smoking in the population, especially among teens.
President Barack Obama has proposed an additional 94-cent-per-pack tax on cigarettes, which would yield $80 billion to fund universal prekindergarten.
"A higher cigarette tax is not a regressive tax, because it would help poor people even more than the well-to-do," Frieden noted.
Smokers ready to quit can choose from among a cornucopia of aids as wide-ranging as nicotine substitutes, low-dose antidepressants, hypnosis and acupuncture. While none by itself has a high rate of success, different methods have proved effective for different people. Many former smokers required several attempts before they managed to quit for good.
But quitting smoking does not necessarily require assistance. As two public health specialists, Andrea L. Smith and Simon Chapman at the University of Sydney in Australia, have pointed out, "The vast majority of quitters do so unaided."
A Gallup Poll conducted last year in the United States found that "only 8 percent of ex-smokers attributed their success to (nicotine replacement therapy) patches, gum or prescribed drugs," these experts noted. "In contrast, 48 percent attributed their success to quitting 'cold turkey' and 8 percent to willpower, commitment or 'mind over matter.' "
They added, "For many smokers, having a reason to quit (a why) was more important than having a method to quit (a how)."
For my husband, who smoked a pack a day for 50 years, the "why" was his distress at seeing two beautiful young nieces smoking; he made a pact with them to quit if they would, and he followed through.
Techniques that can help people trying to quit when troubled by the urge to smoke include waiting 10 minutes and distracting yourself; avoiding situations you associate with smoking, at least until you have become a committed ex-smoker; using stress reducers such as physical activity, yoga, deep breathing, muscle relaxation and self-hypnosis; seeking moral support from a nonsmoking friend, family member or online stop-smoking program; and oral distractions such as chewing sugarless gum or raw vegetables.
Electronic cigarettes are being promoted by some as a way to resist the real thing. E-cigarettes contain liquid nicotine that is heated to produce a vapor, not smoke. More than 200 brands are now on the market; they combine nicotine with flavorings like chocolate and tobacco.
But their contents are not regulated, and their long-term safety has not been established. In one study, 30 percent were found to produce known carcinogens. Frieden said that while e-cigarettes "have the potential to help some people quit," the method would backfire "if it gets kids to start smoking, gets smokers who would have quit to continue to smoke, gets ex-smokers to go back to smoking, or re-glamorizes smoking."
Nearly 2 million children in U.S. middle and high schools have already used e-cigarettes, Frieden said. In an editorial in the Canadian Medical Association Journal last year, Dr. Matthew B. Stanbrook, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Toronto, suggested that fruit-flavored e-cigarettes and endorsements by movie stars could lure teens who would not otherwise smoke into acquiring a nicotine habit.
A survey in 2011 of 75,643 South Korean youths in Grades 7 through 12 by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, revealed that 4 of 5 e-cigarette users also smoked tobacco. It could happen here: Stanton A. Glantz, the study's senior author and a professor of medicine at the university, described e-cigarettes as "a new route to nicotine addiction for kids."
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
_______________________________________
Q. Is it best to sleep on your back, side or stomach?
A. “This mainly matters if you have sleep apnea, which is often worse on your back,” said Dr. Carl W. Bazil, director of the division of epilepsy and sleep at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. “Snoring is often worse as well, as many bed partners can attest.”
click: Sleep apnea
click: What Is Sleep Apnea? - NHLBI, NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/.../sleepapnea/
Otherwise, for adults, it is much more important what position is most comfortable, Dr. Bazil said. Even in a favored position, though, nerve compression can occur if you do not move during sleep. That explains why you sometimes awaken with a bit of numbness for a few minutes. Fortunately, the body tends to reposition itself naturally.
For infants, the advice is different. Since 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said that babies should sleep on their backs, even if being put down for a short nap.
Although causality has not been shown, sleeping on the stomach is one of the known risk factors associated with sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, along with general stress, exposure to tobacco smoke and overheating.
After the academy’s widely publicized “Back to Sleep” campaign was begun in 1994, a 1998 study found that the prevalence of infants placed on their stomachs declined by 66 percent, and the rate of SIDS fell about 38 percent.
RELATED COVERAGE
Click green for tens of Q & A columns
A. “This mainly matters if you have sleep apnea, which is often worse on your back,” said Dr. Carl W. Bazil, director of the division of epilepsy and sleep at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center. “Snoring is often worse as well, as many bed partners can attest.”
click: Sleep apnea
click: What Is Sleep Apnea? - NHLBI, NIHwww.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/.../sleepapnea/
Otherwise, for adults, it is much more important what position is most comfortable, Dr. Bazil said. Even in a favored position, though, nerve compression can occur if you do not move during sleep. That explains why you sometimes awaken with a bit of numbness for a few minutes. Fortunately, the body tends to reposition itself naturally.
For infants, the advice is different. Since 1992, the American Academy of Pediatrics has said that babies should sleep on their backs, even if being put down for a short nap.
Although causality has not been shown, sleeping on the stomach is one of the known risk factors associated with sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, along with general stress, exposure to tobacco smoke and overheating.
After the academy’s widely publicized “Back to Sleep” campaign was begun in 1994, a 1998 study found that the prevalence of infants placed on their stomachs declined by 66 percent, and the rate of SIDS fell about 38 percent.
RELATED COVERAGE
Click green for tens of Q & A columns
- More Q & A Columns ____________________________________
The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind
People of a certain age (and we know who we are) don’t spend much leisure time reviewing the research into cognitive performance and aging. The story is grim, for one thing: Memory’s speed and accuracy begin to slip around age 25 and keep on slipping.
The story is familiar, too, for anyone who is over 50 and, having finally learned to live fully in the moment, discovers it’s a senior moment. The finding that the brain slows with age is one of the strongest in all of psychology.
Over the years, some scientists have questioned this dotage curve. But these challenges have had an ornery-old-person slant: that the tests were biased toward the young, for example. Or that older people have learned not to care about clearly trivial things, like memory tests. Or that an older mind must organize information differently from one attached to some 22-year-old who records his every Ultimate Frisbee move on Instagram.
Now comes a new kind of challenge to the evidence of a cognitive decline, from a decidedly digital quarter: data mining, based on theories of information processing. In a paper published in Topics in Cognitive Science, a team of linguistic researchers from the University of Tübingen in Germany used advanced learning models to search enormous databases of words and phrases.
Since educated older people generally know more words than younger people, simply by virtue of having been around longer, the experiment simulates what an older brain has to do to retrieve a word. And when the researchers incorporated that difference into the models, the aging “deficits” largely disappeared.
“What shocked me, to be honest, is that for the first half of the time we were doing this project, I totally bought into the idea of age-related cognitive decline in healthy adults,” the lead author, Michael Ramscar, said by email. But the simulations, he added, “fit so well to human data that it slowly forced me to entertain this idea that I didn’t need to invoke decline at all.”
Can it be? Digital tools have confounded predigital generations; now here they are, coming to the rescue. Or is it that younger scientists are simply pretesting excuses they can use in the future to cover their own golden-years lapses?
In fact, the new study is not likely to overturn 100 years of research, cognitive scientists say. Neuroscientists have some reason to believe that neural processing speed, like many reflexes, slows over the years; anatomical studies suggest that the brain also undergoes subtle structural changes that could affect memory.
Still, the new report will very likely add to a growing skepticism about how steep age-related decline really is. It goes without saying that many people remain disarmingly razor-witted well into their 90s; yet doubts about the average extent of the decline are rooted not in individual differences but in study methodology. Many studies comparing older and younger people, for instance, did not take into account the effects of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer’s disease, said Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at Stanford University.
Dr. Carstensen and others have found, too, that with age people become biased in their memory toward words and associations that have a positive connotation — the “age-related positivity effect,” as it’s known. This bias very likely applies when older people perform so-called paired-associate tests, a common measure that involves memorizing random word pairs, like ostrich and house.
“Given that most cognitive research asks participants to engage with neutral (and in emotion studies, negative) stimuli, the traditional research paradigm may put older people at a disadvantage,” Dr. Carstensen said by email.
The new data-mining analysis also raises questions about many of the measures scientists use. Dr. Ramscar and his colleagues applied leading learning models to an estimated pool of words and phrases that an educated 70-year-old would have seen, and another pool suitable for an educated 20-year-old. Their model accounted for more than 75 percent of the difference in scores between older and younger adults on items in a paired-associate test, he said.
That is to say, the larger the library you have in your head, the longer it usually takes to find a particular word (or pair).
Scientists who study thinking and memory often make a broad distinction between “fluid” and “crystallized” intelligence. The former includes short-term memory, like holding a phone number in mind, analytical reasoning, and the ability to tune out distractions, like ambient conversation. The latter is accumulated knowledge, vocabulary and expertise.
“In essence, what Ramscar’s group is arguing is that an increase in crystallized intelligence can account for a decrease in fluid intelligence,” saidZach Hambrick, a psychologist at Michigan State University. In a variety of experiments, Dr. Hambrick and Timothy A. Salthouse of the University of Virginia have shown that crystallized knowledge (as measured by New York Times crosswords, for example) climbs sharply between ages 20 and 50 and then plateaus, even as the fluid kind (like analytical reasoning) is dropping steadily — by more than 50 percent between ages 20 and 70 in some studies. “To know for sure whether the one affects the other, ideally we’d need to see it in human studies over time,” Dr. Hambrick said.
Dr. Ramscar’s report was a simulation and included no tested subjects, though he said he does have several memory studies with normal subjects on the way.
For the time being, this new digital-era challenge to “cognitive decline” can serve as a ready-made explanation for blank moments, whether senior or otherwise.
It’s not that you’re slow. It’s that you know so much.
Source:
News for NYT Older Mind may just be a fuller mind
- The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind
It's not so much that the mental faculties of older people are rapidly declining, it's that their databases are fuller, a new study suggests ________________________________________________________________________________
Gov. Christie of N.J. ‘Humiliated’ by Bridge Scandal
Full article below the comment in blue
Christie Fires Aide in Bridge Scandal as U.S. Opens Inquiry
Liar Liar Your Head's in Fire
The blue text below is STAF, Inc.'s opinion
www.staf1org.weebly.com
Most likely, Gov. Christie is not telling the truth - and he wants to run our country?
Gov. Christie did not have that much self-strength that he would have changed his wrong, unhealthy eating habits but instead asked a surgeon to tie his stomach = to make the stomach volume wise smaller so he would not eat that much. Any self-discipline?
Is that a good example from a "leader" to the people?
Is he saying "do as I say not as I do". He says to other fat-layered people "get rid of your overweight".
Shame - Shame - Shame - Shame
STAF, Inc. is a leading healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition specialist and can and will
help Gov. Christie to become stronger as a human being
Perhaps he then would be a better potential leader as the President of the U.S. as he wants to.
Does he now have the correct personality for that position. NO.
Can he develop it? YES. With STAF, Inc.'s specialists especially if and when
STAF, Inc.' founding President would be guiding him, helping him to manage his own mind better and become a model for a better human being deserving a better health and a better life.
Here starts the text in the New York Times
Gov. Chris Christie apologized to the people of New Jersey on Thursday, 1/8'13, saying that he was “embarrassed and humiliated” by revelations that a top aide and other close associates ordered lane closings on the George Washington Bridge to deliberately snarl traffic as an act of political vengeance.
He said he fired that aide, Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff, whom he called “stupid” and “deceitful.”
The revelations became public on Wednesday, when a series of emails and texts showed that members of his administration and others were deeply involved, contradicting the governor’s own earlier public statements on the matter.
“I am heartbroken that someone I permitted to be in that circle of trust for the past five years betrayed that trust,” he said.
In a somber and humbling news conference, Mr. Christie fielded pointed questions for almost two hours. He acknowledged that he would have to work to restore the trust of the people.
RELATED IN OPINION“I am very sad person today,” he said. “A person close to me betrayed me.”
Document: Emails Between Top Christie Aides and Port Authority Officials
For Mr. Christie, one of the leading figures in the Republican Party and a likely candidate for the party’s presidential nomination in 2016, the scandal represents the gravest challenge to his political career. Just as his news conference began, the United States attorney’s office announced that it would open a preliminary inquiry into the matter.
The United States attorney for New Jersey, Paul J. Fishman, opened an inquiry after the matter was referred to the office by the inspector general for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge. Mr. Christie, who recently elected chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said he had asked his two-time campaign manager, Bill Stepien, to step down as a consultant to the group and to withdraw his name from consideration to be the head of the state Republican Party.
Speaking from the State House in Trenton, Mr. Christie acknowledged that he misled the public, but he said he did so unwittingly. He said he was “blindsided” by the revelations, which he learned about only as they became public on Wednesday morning.
“I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution,” Mr. Christie said. “And I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here, regardless of what the facts ultimately uncover, this was handled in a callous and indifferent way.”
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a Story-Treasure
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handling different local, nationwide & worldwide topics
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How I Made It: Dr. Gary Michelson
The retired orthopedic surgeon has invented hundreds of instruments, implants and procedures to improve spinal surgeries. With his fortune he supports causes including animal welfare, medical research, online textbooks and tropical rain forests.
June 05, 2011|By Duke Helfand, Los Angeles Time
The gig: Dr. Gary K. Michelson, 62, is a billionaire inventor of surgical devices and a retired orthopedic surgeon who has devoted an estimated $300 million of his fortune to an assortment of causes. Topping the list: animal welfare, medical research, online textbooks and tropical rain forests.
An early influence: Michelson vividly recalls the childhood event in Philadelphia that set him on his path to medicine: His grandmother suffered from a crippling spinal deformity that made it impossible for her to distinguish between hot and cold in her extremities. One day she was in her kitchen preparing lunch for him when he smelled something bitter. His grandmother's hand, touching the stove's flame, had caught fire without her knowing. Michelson screamed. His grandmother doused her hand in water and delivered the words that would change his life - Gary K. Michelson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_K._Michelson
Dr. Gary K. Michelson (born January 14, 1949) is an American board certified orthopedic spinal surgeon and inventor. Contents. 1 Early life and education ...Early life and education - Medical innovations - Philanthropy - Personal life - Images for Dr, Gary Michelson - Report images
- Dr. Gary Michelson - Found Animalswww.foundanimals.org › About Us › Meet Us
Dr. Gary Michelson. Dr. Michelson was born in Philadelphia on January 14, 1949. He and his three brothers were raised by his mother and grandmother, who ... - Gary Michelson - Forbeswww.forbes.com/profile/gary-michelson/
Gary Michelson on Forbes - #352 Forbes 400, #1031 Billionaires. - How I Made It: Dr. Ga __________________________________
Important info for every person worldwide
How to Avoid
The Killing Devil in Your Home, Car, Office and Your Phone
Dirty Electricity Worse for Kids
Dangerous to Humans, Animals & Plants
What is dirty electricity:
High frequency energy that pollutes power lines. The what does that mean?
Below a full explanation. It is one of the reasons the mankind is getting sicker and sicker. What can be done?
See below. This info is something everyone must know. Especially our children are more in danger because they are still developing and their natural protection is weaker than in the adult population
Below additional links to study - see them all and save for your files and discuss this topic in your family and in your work place.
The sheer volume of modern electronics and appliances in homes and other settings has increased at a dizzying rate. While, this proliferation of electrical devices has made our lives more efficient and convenient, it has also contributed to a potentially harmful form of electro-pollution known as DIRTY ELECTRICITY.
Dirty electricity is unusable electromagnetic energy that is created by many electrical devices as they operate. It’s caused by interruptions in the flow of normal 60-Hertz AC (alternating current) power traveling through wires and electrical systems in homes and other buildings. These interruptions result in voltage spikes, or surges, as well as frequency variations (also called high frequency voltage transients) that combine to form a complex and potentially harmful electromagnetic field.
Common Sources
Many devices generate this dirty power, including compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), traditional fluorescent lighting, light dimmer switches, computers, printers, plasma televisions, stereo equipment, video game systems, cordless (DECT) telephones, battery/device chargers, kitchen appliances, washers/dryers, variable speed fans, hair dryers, SMART meters, and Wi-Fi systems
How do electronic devices contribute to dirty electricity?
Many modern electronics and appliances include ballasts, or transformers, (either internally or within an adapter on the power cord) that convert the AC power in a building’s wiring to the DC power needed to run electronics and appliances. During this conversion process, interruptions in electrical current flow occur.
In addition, many modern electronic devices (e.g., light dimmer switches, compact fluorescent light bulbs, equipment that use switch mode power supplies) utilize power in a more complicated way than more “old-fashioned” electronics and equipment. These devices are actually designed to operate with interrupted electric current flow. Rather than draw power continuously, they do so intermittently in variable amounts at a high frequency, primarily for efficiency.
While this can save energy, it involves frequent interruptions in electric current flow. For example, a compact fluorescent light bulb saves energy by turning itself on and off repeatedly, thousands of times per second. Regular interruptions like these create transients (i.e., voltage spikes/surges and frequency variations) that “dirty” the normal electricity flowing along wires.
What happens to dirty electricity once it is generated?
Once it’s created it’s circulated throughout the building, and even to other buildings in the neighborhood, via wiring. It radiates into the immediate environment via outlets, power strips, electronic devices, and cords/wires, exposing the humans inside to electromagnetic pollution.
Click: Greenwave filters
can help reduce dirty electricity in homes and other settings, thereby lowering individuals’ exposure to this unhealthy electromagnetic energy.
Earlier reports prove that dirty electricity—generated by computers and other electrical devices, has been linked to unexplained aches and pains, depression, sleepiness, ringing in the ears, headaches, and a foggy brain. An international group of scientists believes that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from dirty electricity can cause an increase in brain malignancy.
Dirty electricity is produced when transformers convert clean 60-Hertz household current into low-voltage power for electronic devices. This creates micro surges of electricity that contain up to 2,500 times the energy of a conventional 60-Hertz system. This electrical pollution causes a negative effect on our health.
Dirty electricity is bad for everyone, particularly children. A Swedish study reported that teens who use cell phones have a five-times greater chance of developing brain cancer than adult users. Since children’s skulls are thinner, cell phone radiation penetrates a far-larger proportion of brain tissue.
Click: World Health Organization: WHOwww.who.int/ Publication catalog, media resources, health articles, and current health news. List of upcoming health events, conferences, and summits.
In May 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a 10-year study into cell phone use and cancer rates.
The WHO recognized a significant correlation between malignant brain tumors and people who used their cell phones, wireless home phones, and Wi-Fi connected for more than 30 minutes combined daily.
Since everyone, including children, will continue to use cell phones,
what can be done to decrease the risk of dirty electricity?
Precautions to Decrease Dirty Energy
Parents can practice what is known in Europe as the “precautionary principle,” which means using old-fashioned horse sense. For a start, it’s prudent not to expose your family to unnecessary radiation such as purchasing a home near a cell-phone tower.Replace all the dimmer switches in your home with regular ones. Even when turned fully on, dimmers contaminate an entire home’s electrical wiring with dangerous high-frequency energy. Avoid low-voltage halogen tubes and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting. Virtually all of these technologies create dirty electricity.
Replace your TV monitor and TV with a new LCD as they emit much less EMR. If you can’t live without a microwave oven, stand at least five feet away when it’s on or better still, get out of the kitchen. And get rid of cordless phones, which constantly emit dirty electricity even when not in use.
Teach your children to use cell phones very, very carefully. For instance, it’s dangerous that some teenagers are actually sleeping with cell phones under their pillows. This subjects them to radiation for hours at close quarters. Stress that it’s important to turn on cell phones only to check messages and return calls. Carrying a cell phone in a pocket can decrease sperm count.
Use the speaker on the cell phone to keep it away from your head. Being just a short distance away can decrease radiation exposure from 1,000 to 10,000 times.
Remember that texting with a phone exposes a person to the same radiation as talking on the phone. This practice just radiates a different part of the body.
For years I’ve urged readers to guard against the dangers of needless radiation. This has not made me popular with some organizations. But whether you’re dealing with cell phones or other medical problems, rule No. 1 is to always practice prevention.
Unless we get smart with cell phone use, we may have a tsunami of brain cancers years from now, as damaged DNA takes years to cause malignancy.
ADDED LINKS
For more information
Copy the title below (1) & (2) and search the web with the title for several studies of this topic:
(1) it may connect directly to the article you want OR (2) it may first connect to another internet link with the same title visible, click and up comes a list of several articles, there click the square in front of the article title you want - notice there may be, on the same list, additional articles to your interest relating to these topics
(1) "Biological Effects of Dirty Electricity with Emphasis on Diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis by Magda Havas "
(2) "Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity"
Click the green link below & save for your files- you need this info:
click: http://www.wireless-precaution.com/main/glossary.php
Source: Several (1) science publications, (2) internet articles and (3) internet links (4) STAF, Inc.
____________________________
Article 2 of 2 below
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This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
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The new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
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Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
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Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
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or search the internet with:
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Respectfully,
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STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
_________________________
How to Avoid
The Killing Devil in Your Home, Car, Office and Your Phone
Dirty Electricity Worse for Kids
Dangerous to Humans, Animals & Plants
What is dirty electricity:
High frequency energy that pollutes power lines. The what does that mean?
Below a full explanation. It is one of the reasons the mankind is getting sicker and sicker. What can be done?
See below. This info is something everyone must know. Especially our children are more in danger because they are still developing and their natural protection is weaker than in the adult population
Below additional links to study - see them all and save for your files and discuss this topic in your family and in your work place.
The sheer volume of modern electronics and appliances in homes and other settings has increased at a dizzying rate. While, this proliferation of electrical devices has made our lives more efficient and convenient, it has also contributed to a potentially harmful form of electro-pollution known as DIRTY ELECTRICITY.
Dirty electricity is unusable electromagnetic energy that is created by many electrical devices as they operate. It’s caused by interruptions in the flow of normal 60-Hertz AC (alternating current) power traveling through wires and electrical systems in homes and other buildings. These interruptions result in voltage spikes, or surges, as well as frequency variations (also called high frequency voltage transients) that combine to form a complex and potentially harmful electromagnetic field.
Common Sources
Many devices generate this dirty power, including compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), traditional fluorescent lighting, light dimmer switches, computers, printers, plasma televisions, stereo equipment, video game systems, cordless (DECT) telephones, battery/device chargers, kitchen appliances, washers/dryers, variable speed fans, hair dryers, SMART meters, and Wi-Fi systems
How do electronic devices contribute to dirty electricity?
Many modern electronics and appliances include ballasts, or transformers, (either internally or within an adapter on the power cord) that convert the AC power in a building’s wiring to the DC power needed to run electronics and appliances. During this conversion process, interruptions in electrical current flow occur.
In addition, many modern electronic devices (e.g., light dimmer switches, compact fluorescent light bulbs, equipment that use switch mode power supplies) utilize power in a more complicated way than more “old-fashioned” electronics and equipment. These devices are actually designed to operate with interrupted electric current flow. Rather than draw power continuously, they do so intermittently in variable amounts at a high frequency, primarily for efficiency.
While this can save energy, it involves frequent interruptions in electric current flow. For example, a compact fluorescent light bulb saves energy by turning itself on and off repeatedly, thousands of times per second. Regular interruptions like these create transients (i.e., voltage spikes/surges and frequency variations) that “dirty” the normal electricity flowing along wires.
What happens to dirty electricity once it is generated?
Once it’s created it’s circulated throughout the building, and even to other buildings in the neighborhood, via wiring. It radiates into the immediate environment via outlets, power strips, electronic devices, and cords/wires, exposing the humans inside to electromagnetic pollution.
Click: Greenwave filters
can help reduce dirty electricity in homes and other settings, thereby lowering individuals’ exposure to this unhealthy electromagnetic energy.
Earlier reports prove that dirty electricity—generated by computers and other electrical devices, has been linked to unexplained aches and pains, depression, sleepiness, ringing in the ears, headaches, and a foggy brain. An international group of scientists believes that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from dirty electricity can cause an increase in brain malignancy.
Dirty electricity is produced when transformers convert clean 60-Hertz household current into low-voltage power for electronic devices. This creates micro surges of electricity that contain up to 2,500 times the energy of a conventional 60-Hertz system. This electrical pollution causes a negative effect on our health.
Dirty electricity is bad for everyone, particularly children. A Swedish study reported that teens who use cell phones have a five-times greater chance of developing brain cancer than adult users. Since children’s skulls are thinner, cell phone radiation penetrates a far-larger proportion of brain tissue.
Click: World Health Organization: WHOwww.who.int/ Publication catalog, media resources, health articles, and current health news. List of upcoming health events, conferences, and summits.
In May 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a 10-year study into cell phone use and cancer rates.
The WHO recognized a significant correlation between malignant brain tumors and people who used their cell phones, wireless home phones, and Wi-Fi connected for more than 30 minutes combined daily.
Since everyone, including children, will continue to use cell phones,
what can be done to decrease the risk of dirty electricity?
Precautions to Decrease Dirty Energy
Parents can practice what is known in Europe as the “precautionary principle,” which means using old-fashioned horse sense. For a start, it’s prudent not to expose your family to unnecessary radiation such as purchasing a home near a cell-phone tower.Replace all the dimmer switches in your home with regular ones. Even when turned fully on, dimmers contaminate an entire home’s electrical wiring with dangerous high-frequency energy. Avoid low-voltage halogen tubes and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting. Virtually all of these technologies create dirty electricity.
Replace your TV monitor and TV with a new LCD as they emit much less EMR. If you can’t live without a microwave oven, stand at least five feet away when it’s on or better still, get out of the kitchen. And get rid of cordless phones, which constantly emit dirty electricity even when not in use.
Teach your children to use cell phones very, very carefully. For instance, it’s dangerous that some teenagers are actually sleeping with cell phones under their pillows. This subjects them to radiation for hours at close quarters. Stress that it’s important to turn on cell phones only to check messages and return calls. Carrying a cell phone in a pocket can decrease sperm count.
Use the speaker on the cell phone to keep it away from your head. Being just a short distance away can decrease radiation exposure from 1,000 to 10,000 times.
Remember that texting with a phone exposes a person to the same radiation as talking on the phone. This practice just radiates a different part of the body.
For years I’ve urged readers to guard against the dangers of needless radiation. This has not made me popular with some organizations. But whether you’re dealing with cell phones or other medical problems, rule No. 1 is to always practice prevention.
Unless we get smart with cell phone use, we may have a tsunami of brain cancers years from now, as damaged DNA takes years to cause malignancy.
ADDED LINKS
For more information
Copy the title below (1) & (2) and search the web with the title for several studies of this topic:
(1) it may connect directly to the article you want OR (2) it may first connect to another internet link with the same title visible, click and up comes a list of several articles, there click the square in front of the article title you want - notice there may be, on the same list, additional articles to your interest relating to these topics
(1) "Biological Effects of Dirty Electricity with Emphasis on Diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis by Magda Havas "
(2) "Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity"
Click the green link below & save for your files- you need this info:
click: http://www.wireless-precaution.com/main/glossary.php
Source: Several (1) science publications, (2) internet articles and (3) internet links (4) STAF, Inc.
____________________________
Article 2 of 2 below
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This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
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STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
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- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
_________________________
Quotation
"Of all the injustices in the world, injustice in health is the most inhumane."
— Dr. Martin Luther King
New on the MedlinePlus Healthy Living page:
Experts Urge 'Seismic Shift' in Approach to Better U.S. Health Care
01/15/2014
"Seismic Shift" = change in many areas of life
Improving education, social services can help Americans live longer, healthier lives, panel says
Medicine alone cannot improve the health of the nation -- not when one in five Americans lives in unsafe neighborhoods where pollution, crime and joblessness are prevalent; nutritious food is scarce; and the well-being of young people is at risk, an expert panel reports.
What's needed is a "seismic shift" in the way the nation approaches health care, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America.
The panel's exhaustive report urges leaders in public, private, nonprofit and academic settings to work together to address social and environmental factors that impact people's health.
___________________________
Experts Urge 'Seismic Shift' in Approach to Better U.S. Health Care
Improving education, social services can help Americans live longer, healthier lives, panel says
By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 15, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Medicine alone cannot improve the health of the nation -- not when one in five Americans lives in unsafe neighborhoods where pollution, crime and joblessness are prevalent; nutritious food is scarce; and the well-being of young people is at risk, an expert panel reports.
What's needed is a "seismic shift" in the way the nation approaches health care, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America.
The panel's exhaustive report urges leaders in public, private, nonprofit and academic settings to work together to address social and environmental factors that impact people's health.
"We must put just as much energy into creating conditions that will keep people well in the first place as we do into providing treatment when it is needed," the commission wrote.
The 16-member panel, led by Dr. Mark McClellan, former administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, identified three areas for improvement:
"Consumers know full well that the realities of their everyday lives -- where they live, the food they eat, whether they can pay their bills at the end of the month -- impact their health," said commission member Rebecca Onie, co-founder and CEO of Boston-based Health Leads.
"Each of us has a responsibility to make healthy choices, but ... for many folks that's just harder to do because they don't have access to the resources they need to be healthy," said Onie, whose organization connects low-income patients with food, heat and other basic needs.
The Commission to Build a Healthier America issued its first recommendations in 2009. The new analysis, released Monday, builds on that work by providing specific advice for advancing the nation's health and highlighting community-based initiatives.
Carol Naughton, senior vice president of Purpose Built Communities, an Atlanta-based nonprofit consulting group that helps local leaders across the country rebuild struggling neighborhoods, praised the commission's report.
"I think this is going to be a real call to action, and it provides good granular examples of what you can do to get better outcomes," Naughton said.
The revitalization of Atlanta's East Lake neighborhood serves as a model for change. Community leaders replaced poverty-stricken housing with high-quality, mixed-income apartments. They also opened the city's first charter school, which is now ranked first among Atlanta's schools. And they partnered with the YMCA, which provides physical-education classes.
Thanks to safe sidewalks, about half of the school's 1,300 children walk to school each day, Naughton said. A cycling club was launched, healthy breakfasts and lunches are served, and students are much trimmer than when the school first opened, she said.
Investing in America's youth should be a national priority, the commission said. Yet the United States ranks 25th out of 29 industrialized countries in early childhood education.
According to the latest research, children exposed to the stress of poverty "grow up to be adults with very unhealthy outcomes," said Jessie Rasmussen, president of the Buffet Early Childhood Fund in Omaha, Neb.
Enter Educare, a network of full-day, year-round schools serving at-risk children from birth to age 5, one of several model programs mentioned in the report.
Kids at Educare schools get high-quality early learning opportunities and access to health, nutrition and mental-health consultants. That offsets the negative effects of stress, said Rasmussen, whose nonprofit organization partners with the Chicago-based Ounce of Prevention Fund, which created the Educare model.
One of the three main recommendations from the Commission to Build a Healthier America targets the medical community. The commission said health care providers should work more closely with community organizations to help link patients with nonmedical services.
It's not just the poorest of the poor who need help, but people working two or three jobs to make ends meet, Onie said. Health Leads recently began working with a new clinic in Boston, at which 59 percent of patients reported having an unmet resource need.
"They were reporting, for example, that they couldn't refrigerate their diabetes medications because the utilities company had cut off their electricity," Onie said. "Or they couldn't afford heat at home even though the cold air was triggering their asthma."
The commission did not determine the cost of the proposed reforms, but it might require making tough decisions on how to redeploy existing resources to yield the greatest impact on health, Onie said.
This much is clear: The United States cannot afford to devote increasing levels of spending to medical care, especially for preventable health conditions, the panel said.
Avis Vidal, a professor of urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit, said not all health interventions are costly. "Moms walking kids to school isn't expensive if moms are not employed in full-time jobs," she said.
"But things like [making] sure all assisted low-income housing developments are near good public transportation -- that's big bucks," Vidal said.
Read more about building a healthier America at the click: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
SOURCES: Rebecca Onie, co-founder and CEO, Health Leads, Boston; Carol Naughton, senior vice president, Purpose Built Communities, Atlanta; Jessie Rasmussen, president, Buffet Early Childhood Fund, Omaha, Neb.; Avis Vidal, Ph.D., professor of urban planning, department of urban studies and planning, Wayne State University, Detroit; Time to Act: Investing in the Health of Our Children and Communities, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America, January 2014
Last Updated: Jan 15, 2014
___________________________________________
"Of all the injustices in the world, injustice in health is the most inhumane."
— Dr. Martin Luther King
New on the MedlinePlus Healthy Living page:
Experts Urge 'Seismic Shift' in Approach to Better U.S. Health Care
01/15/2014
"Seismic Shift" = change in many areas of life
Improving education, social services can help Americans live longer, healthier lives, panel says
Medicine alone cannot improve the health of the nation -- not when one in five Americans lives in unsafe neighborhoods where pollution, crime and joblessness are prevalent; nutritious food is scarce; and the well-being of young people is at risk, an expert panel reports.
What's needed is a "seismic shift" in the way the nation approaches health care, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America.
The panel's exhaustive report urges leaders in public, private, nonprofit and academic settings to work together to address social and environmental factors that impact people's health.
___________________________
Experts Urge 'Seismic Shift' in Approach to Better U.S. Health Care
Improving education, social services can help Americans live longer, healthier lives, panel says
By Karen Pallarito
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, Jan. 15, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Medicine alone cannot improve the health of the nation -- not when one in five Americans lives in unsafe neighborhoods where pollution, crime and joblessness are prevalent; nutritious food is scarce; and the well-being of young people is at risk, an expert panel reports.
What's needed is a "seismic shift" in the way the nation approaches health care, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America.
The panel's exhaustive report urges leaders in public, private, nonprofit and academic settings to work together to address social and environmental factors that impact people's health.
"We must put just as much energy into creating conditions that will keep people well in the first place as we do into providing treatment when it is needed," the commission wrote.
The 16-member panel, led by Dr. Mark McClellan, former administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and Alice Rivlin, former director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, identified three areas for improvement:
- Investment in early childhood education.
- Development of safe housing.
- Incentives for medical providers to address nonmedical factors that impact health.
"Consumers know full well that the realities of their everyday lives -- where they live, the food they eat, whether they can pay their bills at the end of the month -- impact their health," said commission member Rebecca Onie, co-founder and CEO of Boston-based Health Leads.
"Each of us has a responsibility to make healthy choices, but ... for many folks that's just harder to do because they don't have access to the resources they need to be healthy," said Onie, whose organization connects low-income patients with food, heat and other basic needs.
The Commission to Build a Healthier America issued its first recommendations in 2009. The new analysis, released Monday, builds on that work by providing specific advice for advancing the nation's health and highlighting community-based initiatives.
Carol Naughton, senior vice president of Purpose Built Communities, an Atlanta-based nonprofit consulting group that helps local leaders across the country rebuild struggling neighborhoods, praised the commission's report.
"I think this is going to be a real call to action, and it provides good granular examples of what you can do to get better outcomes," Naughton said.
The revitalization of Atlanta's East Lake neighborhood serves as a model for change. Community leaders replaced poverty-stricken housing with high-quality, mixed-income apartments. They also opened the city's first charter school, which is now ranked first among Atlanta's schools. And they partnered with the YMCA, which provides physical-education classes.
Thanks to safe sidewalks, about half of the school's 1,300 children walk to school each day, Naughton said. A cycling club was launched, healthy breakfasts and lunches are served, and students are much trimmer than when the school first opened, she said.
Investing in America's youth should be a national priority, the commission said. Yet the United States ranks 25th out of 29 industrialized countries in early childhood education.
According to the latest research, children exposed to the stress of poverty "grow up to be adults with very unhealthy outcomes," said Jessie Rasmussen, president of the Buffet Early Childhood Fund in Omaha, Neb.
Enter Educare, a network of full-day, year-round schools serving at-risk children from birth to age 5, one of several model programs mentioned in the report.
Kids at Educare schools get high-quality early learning opportunities and access to health, nutrition and mental-health consultants. That offsets the negative effects of stress, said Rasmussen, whose nonprofit organization partners with the Chicago-based Ounce of Prevention Fund, which created the Educare model.
One of the three main recommendations from the Commission to Build a Healthier America targets the medical community. The commission said health care providers should work more closely with community organizations to help link patients with nonmedical services.
It's not just the poorest of the poor who need help, but people working two or three jobs to make ends meet, Onie said. Health Leads recently began working with a new clinic in Boston, at which 59 percent of patients reported having an unmet resource need.
"They were reporting, for example, that they couldn't refrigerate their diabetes medications because the utilities company had cut off their electricity," Onie said. "Or they couldn't afford heat at home even though the cold air was triggering their asthma."
The commission did not determine the cost of the proposed reforms, but it might require making tough decisions on how to redeploy existing resources to yield the greatest impact on health, Onie said.
This much is clear: The United States cannot afford to devote increasing levels of spending to medical care, especially for preventable health conditions, the panel said.
Avis Vidal, a professor of urban planning at Wayne State University in Detroit, said not all health interventions are costly. "Moms walking kids to school isn't expensive if moms are not employed in full-time jobs," she said.
"But things like [making] sure all assisted low-income housing developments are near good public transportation -- that's big bucks," Vidal said.
Read more about building a healthier America at the click: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
SOURCES: Rebecca Onie, co-founder and CEO, Health Leads, Boston; Carol Naughton, senior vice president, Purpose Built Communities, Atlanta; Jessie Rasmussen, president, Buffet Early Childhood Fund, Omaha, Neb.; Avis Vidal, Ph.D., professor of urban planning, department of urban studies and planning, Wayne State University, Detroit; Time to Act: Investing in the Health of Our Children and Communities, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Commission to Build a Healthier America, January 2014
Last Updated: Jan 15, 2014
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The Latest Science for How to Use The Suncsreen Safely
There is no question most skin cancers are related to sun exposure,
yet wee need sun to make vitamin D for us
Click green for further info
With sunscreen sales approaching $1 billion a year, skin cancer rates continue to climb.Melanoma diagnoses have risen nearly 2 percent a year since 2000 and are increasing even more among young white women.
Some experts blame inappropriate use of sunscreen, saying that people do not apply enough lotion (a golfball-size dollop) or do not reapply it every two hours as instructed. But there’s another major concern: Until recently, many sunscreens with a high sun protection factor, or SPF, were designed primarily to protect people from ultraviolet B rays,
click: Ultraviolet the main cause of (click this and all green: sunburn.
These sunscreens may have enabled users to stay out longer but did not necessarily protect them from ultraviolet A rays. These are associated with aging and skin damage, but some experts believe they may also be implicated in skin cancer.
Experts are urging people to limit their time in the sun, especially at midday, and protect their skin with hats, shirts and cover-ups instead of relying exclusively on sunscreen.
“Sunscreen is not a magic bullet,” said Dr. Steven Q. Wang, director of dermatologic surgery and dermatology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Basking Ridge, N.J., and a spokesman for the Skin Cancer Foundation, which receives funding from sunscreen manufacturers. “It’s just one of the defenses against the harmful effect of UV radiation, and that message gets lost.”
This summer, most of the sunscreen on store shelves must conform to new Food and Drug Administration labeling rules that may help remedy consumer misperceptions. Still, concerns remain about ingredients in some sunscreens.
Use of the label “broad spectrum protection” now means the sunscreen has been proved to protect against both UVA and UVB rays, although the UVA protection may be comparatively weaker. Any product with an SPF lower than 15 must carry a label warning that it will not protect against skin cancer. Products cannot claim to be waterproof, only water-resistant, and labels must note a time limit of either 40 or 80 minutes before the sunscreen is ineffective. Manufacturers can still sell sunscreens with SPFs that exceed 50, though F.D.A. officials are evaluating whether they should remain on the market, said Reynold Tan, a scientist in the agency’s Division of Nonprescription Regulation Development. It’s not clear that sunscreens with higher SPFs actually are more effective, and consumers may not apply them as frequently.
Advocates like Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst for the Environmental Working Group and an author of its report on sunscreen, have criticized the F.D.A. for backing away from some of its own proposals, like putting in place a star system that would give consumers more information about UVA and UVB protection, capping the SPF values allowed on the market at 50, and banning sunscreen sprays, which may not work as well to prevent sunburn.
Europe and Canada have tougher standards, Ms. Lunder said. “In the U.S., you can make a bad sunscreen and just not call it ‘broad spectrum,’ but still sell it,” she said. “In Europe, the pass-fail test is stronger, and it must protect against both UVA and UVB.”
Here is some advice to bear in mind when selecting sunscreen:
■ Look for products with an SPF of 15 to 50, and that are labeled “broad spectrum protection,” meaning they protect against both UVA and UVB rays. Higher SPF values are misleading. “It’s like the gas mileage sticker on a car. It’s based on test conditions that you’ll never achieve in the real world,” said Ms. Lunder.
■ Keep babies younger than 6 months out of the sun, as their skin is especially sensitive. Sunscreen click: should not be used on infants. If they are outdoors, keep them completely covered and in the shade.
■ Try to keep older children inside when the sun is harshest, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. A bad sunburn in childhood or adolescence doubles the risk of melanoma later in life, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation.
■ Avoid sunscreen sprays. The F.D.A. has banned sunscreen powders (though some products may still be available) and has asked for more data on sprays. The concern is twofold: that not enough sunscreen makes it onto the skin, and that the spray may be inhaled into the lungs.
■ Avoid products with vitamin A, retinol or its derivatives, such as retinyl palmitate and retinyl acetate. At the moment, the F.D.A. says there isn’t enough evidence to suggest these are harmful, but the Canadian health authorities appear to be concerned that the additives increase sun sensitivity. They have proposed requiring that sunscreens with retinyl palmitate carry a warning saying they can increase the possibility of a sunburn for up to a week.
■ The Environmental Working Group recommends avoiding products with oxybenzone, a chemical that may disrupt hormones. Though research has found this effect, many scientists say the effect is so weak as to be insignificant. The advocacy group, however, recommends products that use zinc oxide and titanium dioxide as active ingredients. (These products may leave a milky white film on the skin.)
■ Look for fragrance-free products. Scents bring more unnecessary chemicals and potential allergens to the mix.
■ Take endorsements and seals of approval with a grain of salt. The Skin Cancer Foundation gives a “seal of recommendation” to sunscreens, but only if their manufacturer has donated $10,000 to become a member of the organization.
Click green for further info
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
The New Rules for Sunscreen - NYTimes.comwell.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/the-new-rules-for-sunscreen - There is no question most skin cancers are related to sun exposure, yet even with sunscreen sales ....
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Sunshine May Benefit Blood Pressure
Exposure to sunlight may be a factor in lowering blood pressure.
Studies have shown that in people with mild hypertension, blood pressure tends to be lower in the summer than in the winter, and that both average blood pressure and the incidence of cardiovascular disease tend to increase with distance from the equator.
Researchers exposed 24 healthy volunteers to ultraviolet A radiation for 30 minutes with an intensity comparable to noon on a sunny day in Southern Europe. The exposure caused a small but significant drop in blood pressure compared with when the same people were exposed to sham UVA radiation (the same amount of heat and light, but no UVA exposure).
Blood tests showed that UVA exposure caused a release of nitric oxide from the skin into the bloodstream. Nitric oxide causes arteries to dilate, and this, the scientists believe, accounts for the effect. The click study appears in The Journal of Investigative Dermatology.
The senior author, Dr. Richard B. Weller, a dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said that the modest effect of sunlight is significant on a population level, where small reductions in average blood pressure can have vast public health benefits.
But for an individual with high blood pressure sunbathing is not the solution. “Getting sunlight is not enough if your blood pressure is high. And if you have high blood pressure,” Dr. Weller said, “you need to get it controlled.”
Click green for further info
Source: The Journal of Investigative Dermatology
Sunshine May Benefit Blood Pressure
New York Times (blog) - 3 days ago
The exposure caused a small but significant drop in blood pressurecompared with when the
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How Inactivity Changes the Brain - This is Your Brain on The Couch
SCIENCE TIMES: JAN. 28, 2014 Beings Not Made for Space
By KENNETH CHANG
=============================
MIND
The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind
By BENEDICT CAREY It’s not so much that the mental faculties of older people are rapidly declining, it’s that their databases are fuller, a new study suggests.
=============================
MORE SCIENCE NEWS
Genetic Weapon Against Insects Raises Hope and Fear in Farming
By ANDREW POLLACK
Monsanto is exploring the use of RNA interference to kill a mite that may play a role in bee die-offs.
Scientists, looking for new weapons against insect pests in farming, have developed gene-silencing agents. But skeptics are concerned about potential threats to nontarget insects and even humans.
=============================Antibiotics in Animals Tied to Risk of Human Infection
By SABRINA TAVERNISE A federal analysis of 30 antibiotics used in animal feed found that the majority of them were likely to be contributing to bacterial infections that are resistant to treatment in people, according to documents released by a health advocacy group.
===========================
Inside New York City’s Water Tanks, Layers of Neglect
By RAY RIVERA, FRANK G. RUNYEON and RUSS BUETTNER Many of New York City’s iconic water towers have not been cleaned or inspected in years, and regulations governing the tanks are rarely enforced, an examination shows.
============================
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GLOBAL HEALTH
No Longer Leading Killer, Plague Still Raises Fears
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. History tells us that the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death each took a large fraction of the earth’s population. Science tells us that the plague is still out there.
plague = a contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium, typically with the formation of buboes (see bubonic plague) and sometimes infection of the lungs ( pneumonic plague ).
"an outbreak of plague"A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasturella ) pestis, is transmitted primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms.
bubon′ic plague′
n.a severe infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, characterized by the formation of buboes at the armpits and groin. Compare Black Death.Black Deathn.An outbreak of bubonic plague that was pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia in the 14th century.
1. (Historical Terms) the Black Death a form of bubonic plague pandemic in Europe and Asia during the 14th century, when it killed over 50 million people. See bubonic plague
Black′ Death′
n.an outbreak of bubonic plague that spread over Europe and Asia in the 14th century and killed an estimated quarter of the population.
==========
No Longer Leading Killer, Plague Still Raises Fears
JAN. 27, 2014
Bubonic plague, caused by the rodent-borne bacterium Yersinia pestis, has killed a large fraction of the earth’s population at least twice — (1) most famously in the medieval Black Death, 14th century,
but before that in the (2) Plague of Justinian, which began in A.D. 541. That pandemic, named for the Byzantine emperor, may have killed half of Europe and Asia; it hastened the collapse of the Roman Empire’s remnants and ushered in the Dark Ages.
Plague is no longer a leading killer, but it is still with us. There are 155 known strains in circulation, said Hendrik N. Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Ontario. A recent outbreak in Madagascar killed 20 residents of one village in a week.
In a study published Monday by Lancet Infectious Diseases, Dr. Poinar and colleagues describe rebuilding the genome of the Justinian strain from fragments found in teeth from bodies in a sixth-century graveyard in what is now Bavaria. That strain apparently died out, he said, while all modern ones are descended from the Black Death strain.
The plague genome goes through “rapid-fire boom and bust” mutation cycles, he said. It “sits quietly in rodents” between sudden widespread animal outbreaks, during which it may change 10 percent of its genes.
Although most modern human cases can be cured with antibiotics and the Black Death strain has been shown to be susceptible to tetracycline, newantibiotic-resistant strains have emerged recently.
“I wouldn’t turn a blind eye to it,” Dr. Poinar said.
A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2014, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: No Longer Leading Killer, Plague Still Raises Fears. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
==========================================
By KENNETH CHANG
=============================
MIND
The Older Mind May Just Be a Fuller Mind
By BENEDICT CAREY It’s not so much that the mental faculties of older people are rapidly declining, it’s that their databases are fuller, a new study suggests.
=============================
MORE SCIENCE NEWS
Genetic Weapon Against Insects Raises Hope and Fear in Farming
By ANDREW POLLACK
Monsanto is exploring the use of RNA interference to kill a mite that may play a role in bee die-offs.
Scientists, looking for new weapons against insect pests in farming, have developed gene-silencing agents. But skeptics are concerned about potential threats to nontarget insects and even humans.
=============================Antibiotics in Animals Tied to Risk of Human Infection
By SABRINA TAVERNISE A federal analysis of 30 antibiotics used in animal feed found that the majority of them were likely to be contributing to bacterial infections that are resistant to treatment in people, according to documents released by a health advocacy group.
===========================
Inside New York City’s Water Tanks, Layers of Neglect
By RAY RIVERA, FRANK G. RUNYEON and RUSS BUETTNER Many of New York City’s iconic water towers have not been cleaned or inspected in years, and regulations governing the tanks are rarely enforced, an examination shows.
============================
============================
GLOBAL HEALTH
No Longer Leading Killer, Plague Still Raises Fears
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. History tells us that the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death each took a large fraction of the earth’s population. Science tells us that the plague is still out there.
plague = a contagious bacterial disease characterized by fever and delirium, typically with the formation of buboes (see bubonic plague) and sometimes infection of the lungs ( pneumonic plague ).
"an outbreak of plague"A highly fatal infectious disease that is caused by the bacterium Yersinia (syn. Pasturella ) pestis, is transmitted primarily by the bite of a rat flea, and occurs in bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic forms.
bubon′ic plague′
n.a severe infection caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, characterized by the formation of buboes at the armpits and groin. Compare Black Death.Black Deathn.An outbreak of bubonic plague that was pandemic throughout Europe and much of Asia in the 14th century.
1. (Historical Terms) the Black Death a form of bubonic plague pandemic in Europe and Asia during the 14th century, when it killed over 50 million people. See bubonic plague
Black′ Death′
n.an outbreak of bubonic plague that spread over Europe and Asia in the 14th century and killed an estimated quarter of the population.
==========
No Longer Leading Killer, Plague Still Raises Fears
JAN. 27, 2014
Bubonic plague, caused by the rodent-borne bacterium Yersinia pestis, has killed a large fraction of the earth’s population at least twice — (1) most famously in the medieval Black Death, 14th century,
but before that in the (2) Plague of Justinian, which began in A.D. 541. That pandemic, named for the Byzantine emperor, may have killed half of Europe and Asia; it hastened the collapse of the Roman Empire’s remnants and ushered in the Dark Ages.
Plague is no longer a leading killer, but it is still with us. There are 155 known strains in circulation, said Hendrik N. Poinar, an evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Ontario. A recent outbreak in Madagascar killed 20 residents of one village in a week.
In a study published Monday by Lancet Infectious Diseases, Dr. Poinar and colleagues describe rebuilding the genome of the Justinian strain from fragments found in teeth from bodies in a sixth-century graveyard in what is now Bavaria. That strain apparently died out, he said, while all modern ones are descended from the Black Death strain.
The plague genome goes through “rapid-fire boom and bust” mutation cycles, he said. It “sits quietly in rodents” between sudden widespread animal outbreaks, during which it may change 10 percent of its genes.
Although most modern human cases can be cured with antibiotics and the Black Death strain has been shown to be susceptible to tetracycline, newantibiotic-resistant strains have emerged recently.
“I wouldn’t turn a blind eye to it,” Dr. Poinar said.
A version of this article appears in print on January 28, 2014, on page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: No Longer Leading Killer, Plague Still Raises Fears. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
==========================================
You Don’t Have to Be Jewish
to Love a Kosher Prison Meal
The cost of three kosher meals in Florida is $7 a day, a big jump from the $1.54 for standard meals
Kosher = of food, or premises in which food is sold, cooked, or eaten satisfying the requirements of Jewish law
click: Kosher foods
MIAMI — Captive diners know that a good meal is hard to find.
Airplane passengers, for instance, have been known to order kosher meals, even if they are not Jewish, in the hope of getting a fresher, tastier, more tolerable tray of food. It turns out that prison inmates are no different.
Florida is now under a court order to begin serving kosher food to eligible inmates, a routine and court-tested practice in most states. But state prison officials expressed alarm recently over the surge in prisoners, many of them gentiles (= not Jewish), who have stated an interest in going kosher.
Their concern: The cost of religious meals is four times as much as the standard fare, said Michael D. Crews, who is expected to be confirmed as secretary of the Department of Corrections in March.
“The last number I saw Monday was 4,417,” Mr. Crews said of inmate requests at his recent confirmation hearing before a State Senate committee. “Once they start having the meals, we could see the number balloon.”
To which, Senator Greg Evers, the Republican chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee remarked: “Is bread and water considered kosher? Just a thought. Just a thought.”
Kosher meals in Florida cost $7 a day; standard costs $1.54. Florida, a state with a substantial Jewish population and the third-largest prison system, stopped serving a religious diet to inmates in 2007, saying it cost too much and was unfair to other prisoners. Several inmates have challenged the move with little success. Last year, though, the United States Department of Justice sued Florida for violating a 2000 law intended to protect inmates’ religious freedom. The federal judge in the case issued a temporary injunction*) in December, forcing the state to begin serving kosher meals by July until the issue is decided at trial. Florida is one of only 15 states that do not offer inmates a kosher diet systemwide. *) = injunction = an authoritative warning or order; synonyms:order, ruling, directive, command, instruction
Kosher food in prisons has long served as fodder for lawsuits around the country, with most courts coming down firmly on the side of inmates. As long as inmates say they hold a sincere belief in Judaism — a deeply forgiving standard — they are entitled to kosher meals, even if it takes a little chutzpah (= amount of courage) to make the request.
“Florida is an outlier,” said Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented inmates around the country. “It’s a holdout. I don’t know why it’s being a holdout. It is strange that Florida, of all places, is placing a special burden on Jewish inmates. It’s just stubbornness.”
In Florida’s prison system, which faces a $58 million deficit, money is the easy answer for the battle against kosher food. The cost of three kosher meals in Florida is $7 a day, a big jump from the $1.54 for standard meals, Mr. Crews said. In New York State, where 1,500 inmates out of about 56,000 keep kosher, the cost of a kosher meal is $5 a person. In California, where some prisons have kosher kitchens, the price tag is $8, and the meals are served to 0.7 percent of about 120,000 inmates.
Last April, facing an inmate lawsuit, Florida began a pilot program for the religious diet at Union Correctional Facility near Jacksonville. Initially, some 250 inmates signed up, Mr. Crews said. But once other inmates spied the individually boxed lunches, 863 expressed a sudden interest in keeping kosher.
Prison officials began to fret that if those numbers held, the cost of the kosher program could reach $54.1 million statewide. “You are talking about a lot of money,” Mr. Crews said.
But lawyers and chaplains said prison officials were inflating the numbers as a scare tactic, a common move in some states. “They are trying to make the problem bigger than it is,” Mr. Rassbach said.
And even if it did cost $54.1 million, budget anxiety is not a compelling enough reason to deprive an inmate of a kosher meal, the courts have ruled.
When the meals are first offered in prisons, demand for them jumps and then begins to wane. For some, the choice is genuinely religious.
But some inmates, gentile or otherwise, have been known to profess a belief in Judaism for decidedly secular reasons, chaplains said.
In a world of few choices, the meals are a novelty, a chance to break from the usual ritual of prison life. Others believe the kosher turkey cutlets and spaghetti and meatballs simply taste better. But some see it as a safer bet.
“Inmates have a lot of paranoia about what they are being fed,” said Gary Friedman, a chaplain who is chairman of Jewish Prisoner Services International and has dealt with the issue of kosher prison meals for more than two decades. “About how the food could be adulterated, how the prison uses out-of-date products, how they use things that don’t meet U.S.D.A. standards, how sex offenders may be handling their food.”
“If they are using prepackaged, sealed meals, the inmates believe they are safer,” he said.
In the past, some gang members have declared themselves Jewish so they could sit apart, in the kosher meal section, and talk business. The meals are sometimes bartered for coveted items.
Eventually, inmates grow bored with the narrower offerings. “And then what happens?” Mr. Friedman said. “It drops off.”
But the question of who gets a kosher meal is tricky. In all, less than 1.5 percent of the country’s 1.9 million inmates are Jewish, according to the Aleph Institute, a social services organization, and many do not even request kosher meals. “Who is a Jew?” Mr. Rassbach said. “People disagree about who is a Jew.”
The courts steer clear of that perilous debate. Instead, inmates need only say they have a “sincerely held” religious belief.
Attempts by prison officials and rabbis to quiz prisoners about the Torah and the rules of keeping kosher were ruled not kosher. Tracing maternal lineage was similarly viewed unfavorably.
“Knowledge does not equal sincerity,” Mr. Friedman said.
Some states, like New York, do nothing to try to discern who is feigning Jewishness. In California, inmates talk with a rabbi who will gauge, very generally, a prisoner’s actual interest.
But some Jewish groups in Florida are pushing for greater control, which may pose a difficult legal hurdle.
“There should be a way to ascertain who really does require a kosher meal for their religious belief,” said Rabbi Menachem M. Katz, director of prison and military outreach for the Aleph Institute in South Florida, “and who is just gaming the system.”
Source: (1) A version of this article appears in print on January 21, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love a Kosher Prison Meal, (2) STAF, Inc.
___________________________
to Love a Kosher Prison Meal
The cost of three kosher meals in Florida is $7 a day, a big jump from the $1.54 for standard meals
Kosher = of food, or premises in which food is sold, cooked, or eaten satisfying the requirements of Jewish law
click: Kosher foods
MIAMI — Captive diners know that a good meal is hard to find.
Airplane passengers, for instance, have been known to order kosher meals, even if they are not Jewish, in the hope of getting a fresher, tastier, more tolerable tray of food. It turns out that prison inmates are no different.
Florida is now under a court order to begin serving kosher food to eligible inmates, a routine and court-tested practice in most states. But state prison officials expressed alarm recently over the surge in prisoners, many of them gentiles (= not Jewish), who have stated an interest in going kosher.
Their concern: The cost of religious meals is four times as much as the standard fare, said Michael D. Crews, who is expected to be confirmed as secretary of the Department of Corrections in March.
“The last number I saw Monday was 4,417,” Mr. Crews said of inmate requests at his recent confirmation hearing before a State Senate committee. “Once they start having the meals, we could see the number balloon.”
To which, Senator Greg Evers, the Republican chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee remarked: “Is bread and water considered kosher? Just a thought. Just a thought.”
Kosher meals in Florida cost $7 a day; standard costs $1.54. Florida, a state with a substantial Jewish population and the third-largest prison system, stopped serving a religious diet to inmates in 2007, saying it cost too much and was unfair to other prisoners. Several inmates have challenged the move with little success. Last year, though, the United States Department of Justice sued Florida for violating a 2000 law intended to protect inmates’ religious freedom. The federal judge in the case issued a temporary injunction*) in December, forcing the state to begin serving kosher meals by July until the issue is decided at trial. Florida is one of only 15 states that do not offer inmates a kosher diet systemwide. *) = injunction = an authoritative warning or order; synonyms:order, ruling, directive, command, instruction
Kosher food in prisons has long served as fodder for lawsuits around the country, with most courts coming down firmly on the side of inmates. As long as inmates say they hold a sincere belief in Judaism — a deeply forgiving standard — they are entitled to kosher meals, even if it takes a little chutzpah (= amount of courage) to make the request.
“Florida is an outlier,” said Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has represented inmates around the country. “It’s a holdout. I don’t know why it’s being a holdout. It is strange that Florida, of all places, is placing a special burden on Jewish inmates. It’s just stubbornness.”
In Florida’s prison system, which faces a $58 million deficit, money is the easy answer for the battle against kosher food. The cost of three kosher meals in Florida is $7 a day, a big jump from the $1.54 for standard meals, Mr. Crews said. In New York State, where 1,500 inmates out of about 56,000 keep kosher, the cost of a kosher meal is $5 a person. In California, where some prisons have kosher kitchens, the price tag is $8, and the meals are served to 0.7 percent of about 120,000 inmates.
Last April, facing an inmate lawsuit, Florida began a pilot program for the religious diet at Union Correctional Facility near Jacksonville. Initially, some 250 inmates signed up, Mr. Crews said. But once other inmates spied the individually boxed lunches, 863 expressed a sudden interest in keeping kosher.
Prison officials began to fret that if those numbers held, the cost of the kosher program could reach $54.1 million statewide. “You are talking about a lot of money,” Mr. Crews said.
But lawyers and chaplains said prison officials were inflating the numbers as a scare tactic, a common move in some states. “They are trying to make the problem bigger than it is,” Mr. Rassbach said.
And even if it did cost $54.1 million, budget anxiety is not a compelling enough reason to deprive an inmate of a kosher meal, the courts have ruled.
When the meals are first offered in prisons, demand for them jumps and then begins to wane. For some, the choice is genuinely religious.
But some inmates, gentile or otherwise, have been known to profess a belief in Judaism for decidedly secular reasons, chaplains said.
In a world of few choices, the meals are a novelty, a chance to break from the usual ritual of prison life. Others believe the kosher turkey cutlets and spaghetti and meatballs simply taste better. But some see it as a safer bet.
“Inmates have a lot of paranoia about what they are being fed,” said Gary Friedman, a chaplain who is chairman of Jewish Prisoner Services International and has dealt with the issue of kosher prison meals for more than two decades. “About how the food could be adulterated, how the prison uses out-of-date products, how they use things that don’t meet U.S.D.A. standards, how sex offenders may be handling their food.”
“If they are using prepackaged, sealed meals, the inmates believe they are safer,” he said.
In the past, some gang members have declared themselves Jewish so they could sit apart, in the kosher meal section, and talk business. The meals are sometimes bartered for coveted items.
Eventually, inmates grow bored with the narrower offerings. “And then what happens?” Mr. Friedman said. “It drops off.”
But the question of who gets a kosher meal is tricky. In all, less than 1.5 percent of the country’s 1.9 million inmates are Jewish, according to the Aleph Institute, a social services organization, and many do not even request kosher meals. “Who is a Jew?” Mr. Rassbach said. “People disagree about who is a Jew.”
The courts steer clear of that perilous debate. Instead, inmates need only say they have a “sincerely held” religious belief.
Attempts by prison officials and rabbis to quiz prisoners about the Torah and the rules of keeping kosher were ruled not kosher. Tracing maternal lineage was similarly viewed unfavorably.
“Knowledge does not equal sincerity,” Mr. Friedman said.
Some states, like New York, do nothing to try to discern who is feigning Jewishness. In California, inmates talk with a rabbi who will gauge, very generally, a prisoner’s actual interest.
But some Jewish groups in Florida are pushing for greater control, which may pose a difficult legal hurdle.
“There should be a way to ascertain who really does require a kosher meal for their religious belief,” said Rabbi Menachem M. Katz, director of prison and military outreach for the Aleph Institute in South Florida, “and who is just gaming the system.”
Source: (1) A version of this article appears in print on January 21, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Love a Kosher Prison Meal, (2) STAF, Inc.
___________________________
Blog, Sat. 1/18/14
A better life for everyone in the U.S. and Worldwide - "Seismic Shift" is needed
A better life for everyone in the U.S. and Worldwide - "Seismic Shift" is needed
"Seismic Shift" means: change in many areas of life.
Improving general education, nutrition education & social services can help everyone live longer, healthier lives.
Medicine alone cannot improve the health of any nation -- not when one in five Americans lives in unsafe neighborhoods where pollution, crime and joblessness are prevalent; nutritious food is scarce; and the well-being of young people is at risk, an expert panel reports. Not in any other country where the circumstances are even worse.
What's needed is a "seismic shift" in the way the nations approach health care, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America. Click: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Homewww.rwjf.org/ The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted solely to the public's health.
The panel's exhaustive report urges leaders in public, private, nonprofit and academic settings to work together to address social and environmental factors that impact people's health.
Another private not-for-profit organization working on all these topics, including on the Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition is Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit - introduced below in the article 2 of 2
web: (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Article 2 of 2 below
Quotation
"Of all the injustices in the world,
injustice in health is the most inhumane."
Dr. Martin Luther King
Click: Martin Luther King, Jr.
World's # 1 free advice website for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Free Q & A service - see our website
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about
$95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
The new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
_________________________
To finish the title article
click: Experts Urge 'Seismic Shift' in Approach to Better U.S. Health Care
_____________________________________________________________________
Blogging topics article Thursday 1/23/14
with renewed STAF PLAN (off word "diet")
Old McDonald’s
Our Selfish 'Public Servants'
Blogging: January 21/2014
This article is about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life.
What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual.
You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's. Is it different in any country or is the same dark, selfish game going on worldwide? E.g., Gov. Chris Christie's problem isn't that he's a bully, it's that he's selfish.
Quote
“Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.”
― Ouida (click)
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe ; their views and actions should be assumed to be more keenly directed toward the broad public good. But no one expects that of politicians anymore, and they know it and use the knowledge to justify being even worse than they'd normally be. "If I have the name, I might as well have the game."
They are the locus of selfishness in the modern world.
Click green for additional articles relating to Barack Obama
President President Brack Obama isn't stupid and therefore the maker of mayhem.
Quote
“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin (click)
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's.
The former defense secretary, Bob Gates, has written a whole book about it, and the passages in which he speaks most plainly read like a cry from the heart. The chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, made news a few months ago because he'd taken to praying that the character of our representatives be improved. "Save us from the madness," he prayed one morning last October.
Quote
“I once watched several criminals engage in an organized argument, while an audience of supporters cheered them on, but I was so disgusted that I had to turn off the political debate. ”
― Jarod Kintz (click)
"We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness." The single most memorable thing I ever heard from a Wall Streeter was from one of its great men, who blandly explained to me one day why certain wealthy individuals were taking an action that was both greedy and personally inconvenient to them. "Everyone wants more," he said, not in a castigating way but as one explains certain essentials to a child.
Quote
“Insider trading is a serious crime. Do you know what the penalty for doing it is? Nothing, if you’re a member of Congress. ”
― Jarod Kintz (click)
And the serious quote last
Quote
“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton (click)
(The article continues -
to read the whole title article click the link below at the end of the article 2 of 2 )
_________________________
Article 2 of 2 STAF COMMENT: Thursday 1/23/14 = best
- not a diet
ADD: click when green info to click
World's # 1 free advice website for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A - built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Free Q & A service - see our website
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best diet plan. The Dash Diet Plan is NOT the best diet plan. The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan is the best because:
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. (Above additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy and a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe; their views and actions should ...
________________________________
Our Selfish 'Public Servants'
From the White House to the schoolhouse to the George Washington Bridge
This article is about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life. What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual. You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
There isn't a staffer*) on the Hill**) who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's.
*) staffer = a member of the staff of an organization
**) Hill = short for Capitol Hill, a hill in Washington, D.C., where the Capitol Building sits and Congress meets;
e.g.:"they are debating the budget today on Capitol Hill"
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe ; their views and actions should be assumed to be more keenly directed toward the broad public good. But no one expects that of politicians anymore, and they know it and use the knowledge to justify being even worse than they'd normally be. "If I have the name, I might as well have the game."
They are the locus*) of selfishness in the modern world.
*) locus = a particular position, point, or place.
e.g.: "it is impossible to specify the exact locus in the brain of these neural events"
Chris Christie's problem isn't that he's a bully, it's that he's selfish. Barack Obama isn't stupid and therefore the maker of mayhem*), he's selfish.*) mayhem = damaging disorder; chaos
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's. The former defense secretary, Bob Gates, has written a whole book about it, and the passages in which he speaks most plainly read like a cry from the heart. The chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, made news a few months ago because he'd taken to praying that the character of our representatives be improved. "Save us from the madness," he prayed one morning last October. "We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness." The single most memorable thing I ever heard from a Wall Streeter was from one of its great men, who blandly explained to me one day why certain wealthy individuals were taking an action that was both greedy and personally inconvenient to them. "Everyone wants more," he said, not in a castigating way but as one explains certain essentials to a child.
People in public life have become more grasping, and less embarrassed by it. But the odd thing, the destabilizing thing as you think about it, is that we're in a crisis. We've been in it since at least 2008 and the crash, and the wars. We are in unprecedented trouble. Citizens know this. It's why they buy guns. They see unfixable America around them, they think it's all going to fall apart. In Washington (and New York) they huff and puff their disapproval: Those Americans with their guns, they're causing a lot of trouble. But Americans think they're in trouble because their leaders are too selfish to face challenges that will do us in.
What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual. You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
Mr. Christie is a great talent, a political figure of real and natural gifts. What has jeopardized his position is not that he's gruff, in-your-face, insistent—a bully. It's that he's been selfish. In 2012 he was given a star role, keynote speaker at the GOP national convention. His speech was strong, funny and ran about 2,340 words. But it took around 2,000 of them before he got to a guy named Romney. Everything else was "The greatest lesson that mom ever taught me . . . When I came into office . . . I have an answer." The GOP nominee needed a boost from blue-state man, but there wasn't much in it for blue-state man. He'd only get Republican cooties on him. So he played it like a vanity production and made a speech about himself.
That wasn't a major sin—it's only politics, not policy. But it fit in with his effusive embrace of Mr. Obama in the days before the 2012 election. Any governor would show strategic warmth for a president in charge of ladling out federal money after disaster. But Jersey was about to re-elect president Obama by nearly 18 points, and Mr. Christie wanted to win over Democrats when he ran the next year.
He was already going to win big. But he had to win bigger, had to have more.
Again, not much of a sin. But when Bridgegate (= refers to Gov. Chris Christie & the George Washington Bridge in January 2014) came, it seemed to fit the pattern—he'll ding you when he doesn't have to, even if it makes local citizens cry, to gain an advantage, to get more. Whoever made the call, selfishness is at the heart of the scandal.
There's an increasing sense in our political life that in both parties politicians call themselves public servants but act like bosses who think the voters work for them. Physicians who routinely help the needy and the uninsured do not call themselves servants. They get to be called the 1%. Politicians who jerk around doctors, nurses and health systems call themselves servants, when of course they look more like little kings and queens instructing the grudging peasants in how to arrange their affairs.
Which gets us, inevitably, to the King of I, who unselfconsciously claims ownership of . . . everything. "My military," "my White House," "my cabinet," "my secretary." The president does first person singular more than Mr. Christie does. But his actions are so much more consequential, because they're national and because they play out in the area of policy.
The president's health-insurance reform had to be breathtaking, mind-bending, historic. It had to be a Democratic Party initiative only. It required a few major lies to gain passage, but what the heck.
It was political selfishness that blew up the American health-care system. And it's the public, in this and other messes, that's left holding the bag. But as government gets bigger the bag gets bigger, and people will get tired of carrying it. They're already tired.
I close with the selfishness story of the week, the stunning New York Post expose on Public School 106 in Far Rockaway, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens. The grade school is a poster child for the indifference of those who are supposed to be helping the country. There are no gym or art classes, the Post's Susan Edelman reported. The library is a junk room; the nurse's office lacks essentials; there are no math or reading books for the Common Core curriculum. Kids are left to watch movies. Kindergartners are shunted off to dilapidated trailers. The principal, Marcella Sills, often doesn't show up for work, or swans in near the end of the day. School staff were afraid to speak up because they feared retribution from Ms. Sills or the teachers union.
When the Post broke the story, the city's Department of Education sent an inspector. The principal actually showed up early that day. The school took delivery of some books. Everyone was in high spin mode.
The union will look to the union's interests, Ms. Sills will no doubt see to hers, the new city administration will try to limit embarrassment, handle the fallout and change the subject. But you couldn't read the stories without thinking: Who's looking out for the kids? And what's happening to us?
Someday history will write of our era, and to history the biggest scandal will be the thing we all accepted in our leaders, chronic and endemic selfishness. History will be hard on us for that.
======================
The Selfish 'Public Servants' - The Politicians - Bad or Good Angels ?
This article is about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life.
What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual.
You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's. Is it different in any country or is the same dark, selfish game going on worldwide?
Quote
“Insider trading is a serious crime. Do you know what the penalty for doing it is?
Nothing, if you’re a member of Congress. ”
― Jarod Kintz
Quote
“Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.”
― Ouida (click)
Quote
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
― George Bernard Shaw (click)
Quote“I once watched several criminals engage in an organized argument, while an audience of supporters cheered them on, but I was so disgusted that I had to turn off the political debate. ”
― Jarod Kintz (click)
Quote
“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin (click)
Quote
“Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. ”
― Gore Vidal (click)
Quote
“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton (click)
Quotation
“Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.”
― Ouida, Wanda (click)
______________________________________________
with renewed STAF PLAN (off word "diet")
Old McDonald’s
Our Selfish 'Public Servants'
Blogging: January 21/2014
This article is about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life.
What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual.
You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's. Is it different in any country or is the same dark, selfish game going on worldwide? E.g., Gov. Chris Christie's problem isn't that he's a bully, it's that he's selfish.
Quote
“Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.”
― Ouida (click)
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe ; their views and actions should be assumed to be more keenly directed toward the broad public good. But no one expects that of politicians anymore, and they know it and use the knowledge to justify being even worse than they'd normally be. "If I have the name, I might as well have the game."
They are the locus of selfishness in the modern world.
Click green for additional articles relating to Barack Obama
President President Brack Obama isn't stupid and therefore the maker of mayhem.
Quote
“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin (click)
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's.
The former defense secretary, Bob Gates, has written a whole book about it, and the passages in which he speaks most plainly read like a cry from the heart. The chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, made news a few months ago because he'd taken to praying that the character of our representatives be improved. "Save us from the madness," he prayed one morning last October.
Quote
“I once watched several criminals engage in an organized argument, while an audience of supporters cheered them on, but I was so disgusted that I had to turn off the political debate. ”
― Jarod Kintz (click)
"We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness." The single most memorable thing I ever heard from a Wall Streeter was from one of its great men, who blandly explained to me one day why certain wealthy individuals were taking an action that was both greedy and personally inconvenient to them. "Everyone wants more," he said, not in a castigating way but as one explains certain essentials to a child.
Quote
“Insider trading is a serious crime. Do you know what the penalty for doing it is? Nothing, if you’re a member of Congress. ”
― Jarod Kintz (click)
And the serious quote last
Quote
“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton (click)
(The article continues -
to read the whole title article click the link below at the end of the article 2 of 2 )
_________________________
Article 2 of 2 STAF COMMENT: Thursday 1/23/14 = best
- not a diet
ADD: click when green info to click
World's # 1 free advice website for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A - built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Free Q & A service - see our website
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best diet plan. The Dash Diet Plan is NOT the best diet plan. The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan is the best because:
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. (Above additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy and a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe; their views and actions should ...
________________________________
Our Selfish 'Public Servants'
From the White House to the schoolhouse to the George Washington Bridge
This article is about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life. What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual. You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
There isn't a staffer*) on the Hill**) who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's.
*) staffer = a member of the staff of an organization
**) Hill = short for Capitol Hill, a hill in Washington, D.C., where the Capitol Building sits and Congress meets;
e.g.:"they are debating the budget today on Capitol Hill"
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe ; their views and actions should be assumed to be more keenly directed toward the broad public good. But no one expects that of politicians anymore, and they know it and use the knowledge to justify being even worse than they'd normally be. "If I have the name, I might as well have the game."
They are the locus*) of selfishness in the modern world.
*) locus = a particular position, point, or place.
e.g.: "it is impossible to specify the exact locus in the brain of these neural events"
Chris Christie's problem isn't that he's a bully, it's that he's selfish. Barack Obama isn't stupid and therefore the maker of mayhem*), he's selfish.*) mayhem = damaging disorder; chaos
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's. The former defense secretary, Bob Gates, has written a whole book about it, and the passages in which he speaks most plainly read like a cry from the heart. The chaplain of the Senate, Barry Black, made news a few months ago because he'd taken to praying that the character of our representatives be improved. "Save us from the madness," he prayed one morning last October. "We acknowledge our transgressions, our shortcomings, our smugness, our selfishness." The single most memorable thing I ever heard from a Wall Streeter was from one of its great men, who blandly explained to me one day why certain wealthy individuals were taking an action that was both greedy and personally inconvenient to them. "Everyone wants more," he said, not in a castigating way but as one explains certain essentials to a child.
People in public life have become more grasping, and less embarrassed by it. But the odd thing, the destabilizing thing as you think about it, is that we're in a crisis. We've been in it since at least 2008 and the crash, and the wars. We are in unprecedented trouble. Citizens know this. It's why they buy guns. They see unfixable America around them, they think it's all going to fall apart. In Washington (and New York) they huff and puff their disapproval: Those Americans with their guns, they're causing a lot of trouble. But Americans think they're in trouble because their leaders are too selfish to face challenges that will do us in.
What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual. You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
Mr. Christie is a great talent, a political figure of real and natural gifts. What has jeopardized his position is not that he's gruff, in-your-face, insistent—a bully. It's that he's been selfish. In 2012 he was given a star role, keynote speaker at the GOP national convention. His speech was strong, funny and ran about 2,340 words. But it took around 2,000 of them before he got to a guy named Romney. Everything else was "The greatest lesson that mom ever taught me . . . When I came into office . . . I have an answer." The GOP nominee needed a boost from blue-state man, but there wasn't much in it for blue-state man. He'd only get Republican cooties on him. So he played it like a vanity production and made a speech about himself.
That wasn't a major sin—it's only politics, not policy. But it fit in with his effusive embrace of Mr. Obama in the days before the 2012 election. Any governor would show strategic warmth for a president in charge of ladling out federal money after disaster. But Jersey was about to re-elect president Obama by nearly 18 points, and Mr. Christie wanted to win over Democrats when he ran the next year.
He was already going to win big. But he had to win bigger, had to have more.
Again, not much of a sin. But when Bridgegate (= refers to Gov. Chris Christie & the George Washington Bridge in January 2014) came, it seemed to fit the pattern—he'll ding you when he doesn't have to, even if it makes local citizens cry, to gain an advantage, to get more. Whoever made the call, selfishness is at the heart of the scandal.
There's an increasing sense in our political life that in both parties politicians call themselves public servants but act like bosses who think the voters work for them. Physicians who routinely help the needy and the uninsured do not call themselves servants. They get to be called the 1%. Politicians who jerk around doctors, nurses and health systems call themselves servants, when of course they look more like little kings and queens instructing the grudging peasants in how to arrange their affairs.
Which gets us, inevitably, to the King of I, who unselfconsciously claims ownership of . . . everything. "My military," "my White House," "my cabinet," "my secretary." The president does first person singular more than Mr. Christie does. But his actions are so much more consequential, because they're national and because they play out in the area of policy.
The president's health-insurance reform had to be breathtaking, mind-bending, historic. It had to be a Democratic Party initiative only. It required a few major lies to gain passage, but what the heck.
It was political selfishness that blew up the American health-care system. And it's the public, in this and other messes, that's left holding the bag. But as government gets bigger the bag gets bigger, and people will get tired of carrying it. They're already tired.
I close with the selfishness story of the week, the stunning New York Post expose on Public School 106 in Far Rockaway, a neighborhood in the borough of Queens. The grade school is a poster child for the indifference of those who are supposed to be helping the country. There are no gym or art classes, the Post's Susan Edelman reported. The library is a junk room; the nurse's office lacks essentials; there are no math or reading books for the Common Core curriculum. Kids are left to watch movies. Kindergartners are shunted off to dilapidated trailers. The principal, Marcella Sills, often doesn't show up for work, or swans in near the end of the day. School staff were afraid to speak up because they feared retribution from Ms. Sills or the teachers union.
When the Post broke the story, the city's Department of Education sent an inspector. The principal actually showed up early that day. The school took delivery of some books. Everyone was in high spin mode.
The union will look to the union's interests, Ms. Sills will no doubt see to hers, the new city administration will try to limit embarrassment, handle the fallout and change the subject. But you couldn't read the stories without thinking: Who's looking out for the kids? And what's happening to us?
Someday history will write of our era, and to history the biggest scandal will be the thing we all accepted in our leaders, chronic and endemic selfishness. History will be hard on us for that.
======================
- Our Selfish 'Public Servants'
Wall Street Journal - 2 days ago
Politicians call themselves public servants, so they should be expected to be less selfish than the average Joe; their views and actions should ...
The Selfish 'Public Servants' - The Politicians - Bad or Good Angels ?
This article is about the destructive force of selfishness in our political life.
What's most striking is that in a crisis, you don't expect business as usual.
You expect something better from leaders, you expect them to try to meet the moment.
There isn't a staffer on the Hill who won't tell you 90% of members are driven by their own needs, wants and interests, not America's. Is it different in any country or is the same dark, selfish game going on worldwide?
Quote
“Insider trading is a serious crime. Do you know what the penalty for doing it is?
Nothing, if you’re a member of Congress. ”
― Jarod Kintz
Quote
“Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.”
― Ouida (click)
Quote
“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”
― George Bernard Shaw (click)
Quote“I once watched several criminals engage in an organized argument, while an audience of supporters cheered them on, but I was so disgusted that I had to turn off the political debate. ”
― Jarod Kintz (click)
Quote
“Politicians were mostly people who'd had too little morals and ethics to stay lawyers.”
― George R.R. Martin (click)
Quote
“Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either. ”
― Gore Vidal (click)
Quote
“The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation”
― Hillary Rodham Clinton (click)
Quotation
“Intensely selfish people are always very decided as to what they wish. They do not waste their energies in considering the good of others.”
― Ouida, Wanda (click)
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Staf, Inc. has demanded the same things for every school
"These subjects need to be addressed as early as
possible,ideally in high school" Scott Gamm, author
Resolutions for teens: Save money, eat better
Teens will likely have New Year's resolutions for 2014, just like adults. Maybe they are determined to put away money for college or to eat more healthfully.
Two young Long Islanders who have been in their shoes have written books to help them meet their goals. Scott Gamm, who graduated from Syosset High School in 2010 and is now a senior at the Stern School of Business at New York University, has written "More Money Please: The Financial Secrets You Never Learned in School" (Plume, $15). And Samantha Bonilla, who lost 40 pounds when she was a high school sophomore living in Holbrook, is marketing her self-published "Teenage Survival Guide to Losing Weight" (Llumina Press, $15).
Here are some tips for high school kids from Gamm and Bonilla:
On money
"Money is a subject that everyone is going to have to deal with, no matter what field you're in," Gamm says. Yet high schools don't usually require personal finance classes, he says.
That's where he hopes his book can help, with chapters including "Never Pay Full Price for Anything: Negotiating 101" and "Paying for College." He also launched a website when he was 17 called helpsavemydollars .com, and he works with
H & R Block's hrblockdollarsandsense.com website.
He recommends that in the coming year, high school students:
-Consider getting a part-time or summer job. Save to help cover college expenses such as books.
-Educate themselves about credit cards. "Kids are going to get older and they're going to get swamped with credit card offers," Gamm says. They should learn how detrimental it is to rack up debt or pay only the minimum monthly payment on purchases, he says.
-Track spending. Apps such as onereceipt let users collect information on where their money is going -- when they see how much they're spending every month on lattes, they may cut back.
-Master the art of negotiation. Gamm politely asks sales associates or managers for a lower price or to throw in an extra on bigger purchases such as a laptop.
Gamm also suggests that parents get involved in the money lessons. "By the time they get to college, it's trial and error," Gamm says. "These subjects need to be addressed as early as possible, ideally in high school."
On health
"One day I looked in the mirror and I just wasn't happy with myself," says Bonilla, who is 5 feet tall and weighed 150 pounds when she was 14 and in 10th grade at Sachem North High School. She also wanted more energy.
It took about 10 months to a year for Bonilla to lose 40 pounds. "There is no quick fix to losing weight," says Bonilla, now a 19-year-old art history major at LIU Post in Brookville. She wasn't super-strict, she says, but she recommends these steps:
-Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.
-Drink lots of water -- Bonilla tries to drink up to six bottles a day.
-Exercise. That doesn't have to involve a gym -- it can be playing sports or running with friends.
-Prepare healthy snacks such as nuts, Greek yogurt or low-fat cheese.
-Switch to whole grains.
Even implementing a couple of the above can make a difference, she says. Bonilla's book, which is a slim handbook, is covered in camouflage pattern to represent the "survival guide" aspect. She is working on a sequel about keeping the weight off. "It's one thing to lose it, but it's another thing to maintain it," she says.
________________________________________
"These subjects need to be addressed as early as
possible,ideally in high school" Scott Gamm, author
Resolutions for teens: Save money, eat better
Teens will likely have New Year's resolutions for 2014, just like adults. Maybe they are determined to put away money for college or to eat more healthfully.
Two young Long Islanders who have been in their shoes have written books to help them meet their goals. Scott Gamm, who graduated from Syosset High School in 2010 and is now a senior at the Stern School of Business at New York University, has written "More Money Please: The Financial Secrets You Never Learned in School" (Plume, $15). And Samantha Bonilla, who lost 40 pounds when she was a high school sophomore living in Holbrook, is marketing her self-published "Teenage Survival Guide to Losing Weight" (Llumina Press, $15).
Here are some tips for high school kids from Gamm and Bonilla:
On money
"Money is a subject that everyone is going to have to deal with, no matter what field you're in," Gamm says. Yet high schools don't usually require personal finance classes, he says.
That's where he hopes his book can help, with chapters including "Never Pay Full Price for Anything: Negotiating 101" and "Paying for College." He also launched a website when he was 17 called helpsavemydollars .com, and he works with
H & R Block's hrblockdollarsandsense.com website.
He recommends that in the coming year, high school students:
-Consider getting a part-time or summer job. Save to help cover college expenses such as books.
-Educate themselves about credit cards. "Kids are going to get older and they're going to get swamped with credit card offers," Gamm says. They should learn how detrimental it is to rack up debt or pay only the minimum monthly payment on purchases, he says.
-Track spending. Apps such as onereceipt let users collect information on where their money is going -- when they see how much they're spending every month on lattes, they may cut back.
-Master the art of negotiation. Gamm politely asks sales associates or managers for a lower price or to throw in an extra on bigger purchases such as a laptop.
Gamm also suggests that parents get involved in the money lessons. "By the time they get to college, it's trial and error," Gamm says. "These subjects need to be addressed as early as possible, ideally in high school."
On health
"One day I looked in the mirror and I just wasn't happy with myself," says Bonilla, who is 5 feet tall and weighed 150 pounds when she was 14 and in 10th grade at Sachem North High School. She also wanted more energy.
It took about 10 months to a year for Bonilla to lose 40 pounds. "There is no quick fix to losing weight," says Bonilla, now a 19-year-old art history major at LIU Post in Brookville. She wasn't super-strict, she says, but she recommends these steps:
-Eat lots of fruits and vegetables.
-Drink lots of water -- Bonilla tries to drink up to six bottles a day.
-Exercise. That doesn't have to involve a gym -- it can be playing sports or running with friends.
-Prepare healthy snacks such as nuts, Greek yogurt or low-fat cheese.
-Switch to whole grains.
Even implementing a couple of the above can make a difference, she says. Bonilla's book, which is a slim handbook, is covered in camouflage pattern to represent the "survival guide" aspect. She is working on a sequel about keeping the weight off. "It's one thing to lose it, but it's another thing to maintain it," she says.
________________________________________
- For New York City’s First Lady, a Chief of Staff but Still No Defined Role
- A top aide to the Rev. Al Sharpton will serve as the chief of staff to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, as the couple finalizes plans for Ms. McCray to take an unusually active role in her husband’s administration.The appointment of the aide, Rachel Noerdlinger, alongtime gatekeeper and political adviser to Mr. Sharpton, signaled the ambition and scope of Ms. McCray’s yet-to-be-announced position, which is likely to include an office in City Hall, a rarity for a first lady, according to people briefed on the matter.
Within her husband’s administration, Ms. McCray has discussed the possibility of a policy portfolio that includes family and children’s issues, according to people briefed on the conversations, who requested anonymity because the discussions were intended to be private. On Monday, Ms. Noerdlinger said she would assist Ms. McCray with outreach efforts in neighborhoods around the city.
RELATED COVERAGE
De Blasio Picks Mark Peters, a Former Prosecutor, to Oversee InvestigationsJAN. 18, 2014
De Blasio Names Ex-Bloomberg Official as Health Chief, but Vows New ApproachJAN. 16, 2014
As Ms. McCray’s chief of staff, Ms. Noerdlinger will be paid $170,000 annually, placing her in a financial echelon reserved for the highest-ranking officials in City Hall.
There is recent precedent for a New York first lady to employ a small staff.
Donna Hanover, the former wife of Rudolph W. Giuliani, had four aides, whose combined annual salaries cost more than $200,000, and kept an office in Gracie Mansion, although she focused on social and charity causes and played little to no role in setting city policy.
Supporters of the couple have hinted Ms. McCray’s role will be far more prominent.
Mr. Sharpton, who announced Ms. Noerdlinger’s position on Monday in Harlem, was nearly drowned out by applause as he introduced the mayor and his wife.
“We need a city that is led by this couple,” Mr. Sharpton said, as the two beamed by his side.
Mr. de Blasio and Ms. McCray have not been shy about the close-knit nature of their political partnership. They met while working in the administration of Mayor David N. Dinkins, and Ms. McCray, a poet, speechwriter and liberal activist, has long advised her husband on job candidates, policy decisions and campaign strategy.
The mayor has a history of including his family in his political life: He prominently featured his teenage children, Dante and Chiara, in television ads last year. But he can also be fiercely protective, and his aides have occasionally chastised journalists for reporting about his family that they considered unwelcome.
Speaking with reporters on Monday, Mr. de Blasio was visibly irked when asked about a poll showing two-thirds of New Yorkers preferred that the mayor’s spouse play little or no policy-making role in City Hall.
Still, Mr. de Blasio said he expected a degree of scrutiny for his family. He recalled that his daughter, as a young child, handed out pamphlets during his first campaign, for a seat on a Brooklyn school board.
“At the age of 4, she was already leafleting,” Mr. de Blasio said with a smile. He added: “This has been the water we swim in. This has been our lives, and we’re comfortable with that.” - For New York City's First Lady, a Chief of Staff but Still No Defined ...www.nytimes.com/.../for-new-york-citys-first-lady-...The New York Times
Source: NYT _______________________________________ - Search Results
- Thomas Chrystie, Creator of Cash Management Account, Dies at 80 ...www.bloomberg.com/.../thomas-chrystie-creator-of-ca...
Bloomberg L.P.
Jan 6, 2014 - Thomas Chrystie, the Merrill Lynch & Co. executive who developed the ...from Alzheimer's disease, according to his daughter, Helen C. Hipp. ________________________________________________________
- Thomas Chrystie, Creator of Cash Management Account, Dies at 80 ...www.bloomberg.com/.../thomas-chrystie-creator-of-ca...
ALL BLOGGINGS STARTING 2014
This Internet Seminar has
Three parts - all based on the most recent science
(1) Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy (Article 1 of 3),
(2) Complete Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan for your pregnancy, for your baby, for the parents, and for the whole family (Article 2 of 3),
(3) Introduction to Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.'s nationwide-worldwide services to ease human suffering and search for the good life
(Article 3 of 3)
(4) At the end additional information for lifetime opportunities
________________________
Article 1 of 3
(Articles 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 next below)
Throughout all 3 articles click green for further info
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Founding President of STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
________________
Updated: March 28, 2014
Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy Internet Seminar
Foreword
This internet seminar is written for both parents.
When both parents are involved in every step of the pregnancy & monitoring the mother's and the baby's safety, the wife-husband bond and the parents - new child bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Also, this complete guide is written for your possible children. If you do not have children, read this foreword anyway for the future use for your children and take from this text the ideas that fit now for your present family situation. The study instructions are still the same for the two of you to do together now. Save this seminar for your future children and teach them a few years from now.
Have your children (of any age) living with you involved daily in every step of the pregnancy - then the whole family bond will get stronger and your children will learn valuable healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles. Your children would also learn early on how to have healthy babies when their own time comes. Handle and discuss this guide material in a weekly family meeting during the pregnancy months - anyone who can read should study this guide and prepare pre-agreed text parts for meetings. Have your children of any age present in the family meetings, even the toddlers. The more new words your child learns early in life, the better chances for higher success in the future. Go through the whole guide step by step together as a family.
(click: Your Toddler's & Child's Success = the article "Tips for your child's success" - see what else is there to your interest - the link has text, voice, videos - American Academy of Pediatrics)
In addition to the basic text, this internet seminar has plenty of web links. For proper learning every member of your family who can read will study also the web link articles. Some links may be sensitive and may need added parental guidance during the family meetings.
The weekly meetings can be done at home or (depending on the season) as a family pick-nick trip to your favorite park or to other outdoors place - the nature has plenty of fresh oxygen (good for the new mother and for everyone), it will be relaxing, refreshing, beautiful & healthy for the body & mind. Some outdoors locations may not have access to the internet - those links can be viewed at home. During the colder months you may have another inside destination with privacy to have pick-nick & your weekly family learning meeting.
The more different experiences your family has together also outside the home, the deeper the family bonds and the more successful your children will be in their adult lives. A weekly family meeting, no matter how small or big your family, will create miracles - you'll see. You and your children will value these weekly family outings and meetings for learning. You all will remember them forever as a pleasure. As the result your family bonds will be strong forever.
Guide your children to learn all what this internet seminar teaches. Your children will remember this as a well-appreciated gift given by their parents for life.
During the pregnancy it is especially important that the mother (1) eats healthy food & keeps herself away from all harmful ingredients, (2) keeps herself well hydrated with plain water, (3) keeps her body & mind in top-condition, (4) sleeps enough hours and (5) sees her pediatrician and/or her primary care physician as required. When the pregnant mother asks the other family members to help her remember what to do to stay healthy and the new baby to stay healthy, everyone learns at the same time.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
When you involve your children to help you to stay healthy, they will gladly do it, remind you enthusiastically and then they will easily copy what the mother and the father do. The children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do. With all these actions the family union gets healthier and stronger. Then your children can much easier resist the wrong models outside their loving home. That's an important benefit for everyone in your family. The earlier you involve your children to learn the health & success rules for life, the easier they can avoid harmful habits and the more successful they will become in life.
After the delivery it is as important as during the pregnancy to continue applying healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for the breastfeeding milk quality and for the mother's own health safety for life. Then your children see that healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition is not only for being pregnant but is the basic success principle for the whole life.
A big blessing for all of you.
As the whole family, apply all information in this seminar guide - then you give the gift of good health and successful, long life to all of you.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
One more final thing: Negotiate with your delivery doctor how to have your whole family best involved in the actual delivery process in the hospital. What does the mother want? Whom does the doctor & the hospital allow to be in the delivery room, etc.? The whole family being involved is best for everyone because it will be a learning process and will strengthen your family ties.
It's also important to realize that this internet seminar is not written to give you medical guidance - only your pediatrician or primary care physician who know you can do that. This seminar guides you in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition and is written for educational purposes. The web links are provided for additional detailed information.
When your new baby is safely in the family and you all have studied together this whole seminar, then, all of you in your family, keep applying the life-quality lifting healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for a better, richer and longer life.
Then next:
Let us at STAF, Inc. know how many family members (girls/boys plus their first name & age) are studying/studied this seminar "Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents"
A girl or a boy? Let us know your new baby's name & birthday & birth weight and please, mail us
a picture of your new baby. In an old-fashioned manner, mail us a postal letter and use our
NYC mailing address at the very end of this internet seminar. On the envelope write also
"New Baby". In your letter add your email address so we can email our suggestion for your next
STAF, Inc.'s Internet Seminar.
Make your weekend family meetings a permanent event. It is worth it.
STAF, Inc.'s postal mailing address is at the very end of this internet seminar.
____________
The Internet Seminar
A Well-Balanced Diet (1) Before & (2) During Pregnancy Will Lower The Risk of Preterm Delivery and (3) After Pregnancy Will Give More Nutrients in Your Baby's Breastfeeding & Improving Your Baby's Health for Life
Notice: The level of both parents' health at the time of
the conception will to a great extent affect the baby's future health.
A guide how to be fully prepared for your baby's best.
A well-balanced diet
means getting the right types & right amounts of food to supply nutrition & energy for maintaining body cells, tissues & organs, and for supporting normal growth & development, getting enough water for proper hydration and
giving the immune system strength to fight any disease.
(Throughout the text click green for further info)
The opposite:
An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases including (click each): high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal blood lipids*), overweight/obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and any other deadly disease. *) Lipids: Another word for "fats."
This seminar text continues below after the event with The Earth Day deadline
______________________________
Before we go forward in this seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
we place next a temporary text
Do this important thing before
April 22, 2014, The Earth Day:
(this matter also relates to your baby having a healthier life)
Sign online to demand The U.S. Congress
to take action to protect the human life
(Links & info below)
This April 22, 2014 topic concerns everyone and every family including YOUR family.
1st example: According to experts at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over 300 (three-hundred) toxic chemicals are showing up in our umbilical cords.
click: Umbilical cord care: Do's and don'ts for parents
click: Images for Umbilical cord
2nd example: Women put, on a daily basis, an average of 515 toxic chemicals on their faces alone. That is 515 too many.
That has contributed (1) to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women, (2) to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age and (3) to in growing numbers to adult women starting menopause 10-15 years earlier. These facts point to a shorter life span. click: Menopause
3rd example: Most of our daily food we all eat, no matter what the food origin, has hundreds harmful chemicals. The air, the water, the ground - they are all more or less polluted with environmental toxins. Not even the organic products are fully safe. Is it then a wonder that our modern lifestyle kills over half of the population at the half-life.
We can still clean up this earth - but we all must change our lifestyle.
The governments must create effective regulations (based on science, not on politics) leading to cleaning, not to more greed and not to additional environmental, killing toxins.
Latest on April 22, 2014, give your signature to fight back - that is for everyone's best.
Environmental toxins in pregnancy and in every day life
click: Wikipedia - Environmental toxins & Fetal Development
(with info how to avoid some of the toxins) - click: Fetus
click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC www.cdc.gov
click: Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals - CDC
click: Updated Tables - National Report on Human exposure
to environmental chemicals - CDC
Poisonous stuff
that can hurt our nervous systems, mess with our developing brains and lower our IQs. Really bad stuff that's also linked to cancer, birth defects and asthma.
Fight back - help to bring the U.S. Congress to its knees. You have the power to do so - to make them listen and take action.
It's time for the lawmakers to do something about all the bad chemicals out there. Because that stuff ends up in our babies, in hour homes, in all our bodies, we must have a real change in this very wrong situation creating human suffering, costing lives and endangering our future generations.
FIGHTTOXINS.COM will gather 100,000 signatures by Earth Day,
April 22, 2014, and force a discussion with the government to get protective legislation to save human lives.
Click: How e-petitions works - e-petitions - HM Government e-petitions
Take a swing at these dangerous chemicals,
visit (copy & paste) fighttoxins.com
& sign the petition latest on the Earth day, April 22, 2014
click: Earth Day
If you & your family lives in another country, you can be involved and sign the petition as this concerns the whole world - put your voice up - it matters.
As Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. is one important organization to help your family to a better life the U.S. or worldwide,
we would appreciate if you could send us a letter in an old-fashioned manner via the postal service and let us know (1) if you & your family(including your children), signed the 100,000 petition (how many in your family signed), (2) your opinion about this FIGHTTOXINS.COM petition to fight the chemicals and
(3) we would appreciate if you could enclose a donation (as paper money) to STAF, Inc. - we do need your donation as a not-for-profit organization.
Our extensive, "World's # 1 advice website in all family matters for the good life" has everything your family needs for healthier, financially richer life.
When you, based on our guidance, reach your new goals, we at STAF, Inc. would like to know your family's success story in a new letter.
Mailing address: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_____________The End of The Earth Day Event ______________
The Internet Seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
Continues:
*) Lipids: Another word for "fats." Lipids can be more formally defined as substances such as a fat, oil or wax that dissolves in alcohol but not in water.
Lipids contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen but have far less oxygen proportionally than carbohydrates click: Carbohydrates
Lipids are an important part of living cells. Together with carbohydrates and proteins, lipids are the main constituents of plant and animal cells.
Click: Cholesterol and click: triglycerides are lipids. Lipids are easily stored in the body. They serve as a source of fuel and are an important constituent of the structure of cells.
Etymology of the word lipid
Whereas the everyday term "fat" comes from the Old English (from "faett" meaning crammed = completely full), the more scientific term "lipid" comes from the Greek "lipos" which referred to animal fat or vegetable oil.
Increasing intake of healthy foods before & during pregnancy
is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, not only during the pregnancy but also important before conceiving and also important after the delivery because good breastfeeding can be based only on correct, healthy nutrition.
The breastfeeding should go on at least the first six months - the longer beyond 6 months the better - you want the best for your baby. Your baby gets the best nutrients in a correct combination and the best, lasting protection against sickness from your breastfeeding efforts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that breastfeeding continue for at least twelve (12) months.
click: American Academy of Pediatrics www.aap.org
If for some reason the mother cannot breastfeed, other safe, natural solutions are introduced in the Healthy Eating Plan below.
It is not recommended to use formula as several worldwide studies show they can cause serious dangers to the baby because they are man-made, factory products with non-natural ingredients.
A brief quote of one of the earliest formula study:
"Decades of bottle-feeding, formula babies may have left a costly legacy, in both human and financial terms, of a generation of adults at higher risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke than they should be, according to research published in the Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, establishes beyond doubt that breastfed babies become healthier adults."
This Lancet study was published already 20 years ago and even though tens of other studies after the Lancet have the same findings, the man-made formula is still widely & strongly pretending being suitable for a baby - it is not.
There are other safe choices.
Best is the breastfeeding , the 2nd best introduced below - the man-made formulas cannot have what the nature can provide.
The easy-to-remember truth for the adult, teenager, child, toddler & for the baby food is in this
Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(click: Michael Pollan)
The mother's milk is perfect food for the baby- it is made of what the mother eats. For the safety of the baby the mother needs to eat food that the nature has made - not the processed, factory made disguise.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
Below detailed information what not to and what to eat.
Any questions after studying all information below, ask free via email
(contact info below).
Click for the Lancet article: Bottle-fed babies 'face higher risks
One more important area of facts:
It is understandable that we all know that the mother's health condition
matters when planning for a pregnancy. But it is now known that the father's health condition also matters as well.
This first link has info for both of you - even though it states as the source:
Office of Women's Health - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services -
Click: Preconception health
Click: Future fathers: 10 ways to help her get pregnant
___________________
Definition
Preterm Delivery
By Mayo Clinic Staff
A preterm/premature birth is a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the baby is due — in other words, after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, which usually lasts about 40 weeks.
Premature birth gives the baby less time to develop in the womb. Premature babies, especially those born earliest, often have complicated medical problems.
Depending on how early a baby is born, he or she may be:
(1) Late preterm, born between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy
(2) Very preterm, born at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy
(3) Extremely preterm, born at less than 25 weeks of pregnancy
Most premature births occur in the late preterm stage.
_________
When you're pregnant, eating healthy foods is more important than ever.
You need more protein, iron, calcium, and click: folic acid than you did before
pregnancy.
Folic acid is a B vitamin. It helps the body make healthy new cells. Everyone needs folic acid. For women who may get pregnant, it is really important. Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can prevent major birth click: defects of the baby's brain or spine.
Foods with folic acid in them include
You also need more calories. But "eating for two" doesn't mean eating twice as much. It means that the foods you eat are the main source of nutrients for your baby. Sensible, balanced meals will be best for you and your baby.You should gain weight gradually during your pregnancy, with most of the weight gained in the last trimester. Generally, doctors suggest women gain weight at the following rate:
Expectant mothers are often told to eat lots of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, and a new study adds to evidence that a healthy diet is linked to a reduced risk of premature birth.
Researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 66,000 pregnant women in Norway between 2002 and 2008. Premature birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) occurred in slightly more than 5 percent of the pregnancies.
Women who ate a "prudent" diet that included plenty of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and water had a much lower risk of preterm delivery, as did those with a traditional Norwegian diet of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables, the investigators found.
The study was published online March 4, 2014 in the journal BMJ (= British Medical Journal).
click: BMJ: Home
STAF, Inc.'s comment: The Western diet causes more health risks in the pregnant mother including diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Your baby needs healthy foods that are packed with nutrients - you also need the same healthy foods. When you breastfeed your baby the milk must be healthy - it can be healthy milk only if and when the mother has eaten healthy, natural food. Human milk is the most perfect food but must be clean and have no poisonous chemicals.
Thus, eat in the manner during your pregnancy that is safe for your baby and for you as the mother. All needed guidance is in this compact healthy lifestyle guide.
However, increasing consumption of healthy foods is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, the researchers said because every pregnant woman has sometimes unhealthy cravings and may forget to let them pass.
The findings also support advice given to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet that includes (more detailed 'what to eat' info in article 2 of 2):
(1) variety of fresh fruits (not from cans), (2) variety of fresh (or steamed) vegetables, (3) whole grains, fish (best: Atlantic salmon from Alaska, mackerel & sardines - these 3 fish types all can be from a can = low price & suitable as human food as long the label states: Wild Caught), (4) and drink enough plain water - enough is most likely more than you may be used to: drink daily fresh water the same amount in liquid oz. as your "normal healthy weight" is in lbs (not the overweight lbs). Drink no soda (no sugary, no diet - both with their chemicals harmful), no energy drinks (full of harmful chemicals), no energy bars (too sugary, partially processed, dead calories, they are candy bars in disguise), no chips (dead, processed calories, too salty with many other unhealthy ingredients).
AND: of course, during pregnancy: (1) no smoking, (2) no alcohol, no wine either, (3) avoid caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate have caffeine), (4) keep your
system hydrated = drink water daily as instructed a few lines above. Our human body is about 70 % made of water, blood and brains, both about 90+ % water - thus it is important to have enough water every day.
This Healthy Eating Guide gives all necessary details - apply the advice in every detail. You will be glad you did - the desired results will be there. These these same principles in full to your children - they will be glad you did. The weekly family meeting is the way to teach them as instructed in this guide.
However, although the study found an association between eating a healthy diet during pregnancy and a lower risk of preterm delivery, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study authors said premature birth can lead to major short- and long-term health problems, and it accounts for nearly 75 percent of all newborn deaths.
Healthy eating during pregnancy is always a good idea, according to an accompanying editorial by Lucilla Poston, of King's College London.
Poston said several studies have suggested that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent premature birth. "[Health professionals] would therefore be well advised to reinforce the message that pregnant women eat a healthy diet," she said.
There is more to study for your precious baby's best:
See the important 3 links next below as an important part of this Article 1 of 3
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Links to additional pregnancy topics
Both parents need to study these six (6) links below and together monitor that everything above and in these links is applied - give a safe start to your precious baby.
Notice:
When both parents care for the baby, before and after the baby's birth, the emotional parent-child bond and the wife-husband bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Click each:
(1) Getting pregnant
(2) Pregnancy week by week
(3) Labor & delivery, postpartum care
(LAT. post = after; partum = childbirth)
(4) Breastfeeding - American Academy of Pediatrics
Click: Breast-feeding twins
Click: Breast-feeding: Pumping tips
Click: More - several links
(5) Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for
Obesity: Study
Click: Infant development: Birth to 3 months
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics
SOURCES:
(1) BMJ (British Medical Journal), news release, March 4, 2014,
(2) NIH: National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements,
(3) Mayo Clinic,
(4) Medline,
(5) Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health,
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics,
(7) United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - www.cdc.gov
(8) STAF, Inc.
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The next article 2 of 3 is for every member of your family - study & handle together in your weekly family meeting. Give your children the most precious gift: health for life.
Article 2 of 3
How to maintain your health -
How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages.
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit, is the leading, new organization for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
_______________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering
& turns lives to victory *
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your name & email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
___________________________
This information is suitable advice for everyone 2 years or older
The Abbreviated (yet comprehensive) Guide for Healthy Lifestyle, Correct Nutrition & with a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
developed by STAF, Inc. (1) for the U.S. gov. use as a program in the new health care system as the tested solution to our overweight & obesity problems and to our rampant sickness level, also (2) to-be published as a how-to book for the worldwide market as STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life ©
This program is at the same time an automatic,
"Aaahh!Finally-the-results"© Weight loss program, no calorie counting, just follow the new program's instructions for easy, natural food preparing - nothing else to do. Nothing else to buy - no gimmicks, no "miracle" powders,
no pills, no new "discovery berries" from the world's jungles - just plain & simple correct, natural, real food combined with healthy habits meant originally for the human body & mind to stay beaming wit good health and leading to a healthy & longer life without further suffering.
Everyone can afford this program as we do not sell you food - we guide you to buy the ingredients in your own supermarket and prepare the food in your very own kitchen - based on all new, delicious recipes. As the result, your new, lasting health will cost less than ever before. See the amazingly low monthly food cost below in the article 2 of 2. The savings is "found money" - you invest it to become a millionaire (not a joke - that plan is part of this new program).
The full program has step-by-step guidance for "How to become financially independent, also potentially a (multi)millionaire, starting with $50 a month". Preliminary, brief investment info in this website, tab: credit & credit cards. Nothing like this never existed before - suitable for everyone nationwide and worldwide.
Below detailed info, for you and for your whole family, what to drink & eat for your improved health and for your longer life.
This guide is kept up with the latest research info - thus it is a good idea to study this again if you studied it sometimes in the even a close past.
Repetitio est mater studiorum (Latin)
(Repetition is the mother of study)
© Copyrights STAF, Inc. 2014
_______________________
Instructions for how to study
this Health Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide
Because this information can provide you excellent health leading to a longer, more enjoyable life, this guide may be the most important material for you and for your whole family.
This guide is fit for every family in the U.S. and for every family worldwide.
The purpose of this material is to guide you and your family
(1) to maintain your health and
(2) to restore your possible lost health due to an unhealthy lifestyle and to incorrect nutrition.
Every family member should be involved in this learning process.
To master the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition principles early in life could easily be the best gift you, as the parent(s), can give to your children for life.
Become a healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition inspirator for your children.
Your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Obtaining this information based on the natural health laws will save potentially plenty in (1) sickness care, (2) will eliminate pain and suffering (that have been based on a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition) and (3) provide for every family member a longer, more enjoyable life.
Even though this could be called "a-mini-guide" it has a substantial amount information, probably more than you expect. This guide has the basic healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles in a compact form, yet it is quite comprehensive.
Instructions: how to gain a healthy, meaningful life
It is important to follow the detailed instructions
(1) First read through the whole text in the article 1 (above) and in the article 2 (= this part in front of you is part 2).
During the first reading do NOT click any of the web links (basic text in black, the web links mostly in green , also in other color, with the preceding word click:) - read the full text in both articles 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 to get an idea what you and your family can expect to learn. Every family member should be involved and follow these instructions - as a group everyone learns better and sticks to the guidance to gain a better, healthier life and also all together building a million or more in the bank.
(2) When every family member has done the first reading, have a family meeting to decide together how you are going to proceed best as a family.
(3) During the 2nd reading, which is now the learning process, take notes, click every web link and study the link material as broadly as you see suitable.
In most links there are several pages to your interest. The better & wider job you do in learning, the better your health will be and the longer you will enjoy your life.
(4) Based on the guide instructions organize your weekly family learning meeting to discuss the material and deciding together how you are going to apply the material together in your family to build a better, healthier, richer & longer life for everyone.
(5) When your lives start improving let us at the STAF, Inc. know your success stories either by postal mail or via email. Contact info in this guide text and in
STAF, Inc.'s website, home page. Any questions via email.
e: [email protected]
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization,
needs & will appreciate your donations
Your donations will ease human suffering nation/worldwide
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
_____________
STAF, Inc. has developed a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program for the U.S. gov. use with the main title
STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Big Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
Will also be published as a book - all suitable for every country's needs worldwide.
This Internet seminar is abbreviated from the same material.
_____________
This guide fits women, men & children (min. 2 years old)
The 2 starting statements
(1) About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle and wrong nutrition.
(2) Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed
and do not necessarily automatically become part of our golden years.
Introduction
In the past in our human history, people died mostly in pandemics.
A pandemic (from Greek pan "all" and demos "people") is click: an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.
(epidemic from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people")(throughout the text click green for further info)
Plague (Lat. plaga = wound) click: Plague - Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the
most notorious disease episodes in history.
The Black Death peaking in Europe in the years around 1350 CE. (CE = common era - also Current Era or Christian Era ) was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of 50 % oof the population an estimated 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1348–50 CE. click: Wikipedia
E.g., still in the World War One 1914 - 1918 many times more soldiers died because of the infections due to low sanitary safety than died in the actual war actions.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate (= winner of a Nobel prize) Alexander Fleming in 1928. click: Nobel
Penicillin antibiotics were among the first drugs to be effective against many previously serious diseases. E.g. The famous British Prime Minister Churchill saved his life with Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery, click: Sir Winston Churchill
When in comes to food & nutrition,
in the past generations people ate FOOD = REAL food, prepared in their own home kitchen using natural ingredients.
Today most people do not any more know what real food is - the results: sickness & suffering & early death.
E.g., based on study, click and read: Fast Food Hamburgers Could be as Little as 2% ACTUAL Meat - and many call it "food".
(Yes, you saw it correctly 2 (two) % - no misprint)
Real Food & Enzymes
Real food suitable for us human or suitable for our pets, IS NOT the modern food-like stuff that is processed, "fortified" with chemicals, poisonous for the human body and lacking in life preserving nutrients.
E.g. the enzymes, large biological molecules responsible for the thousands of metabolic processes that sustain life, die at the temperature of about 132 F = 55 C.
Yet, the chemicalized food processing industry uses even higher temperatures - the results:
very little (if any) life-sustaining enzymes left. Click: Pasteurization
Notice: Without enzymes, life, as we know it, would not exist.
At any given moment, all of the work being done inside any cell is being done by enzymes. Processed "food-like non-food" does not have enough healthy enzymes - that's why eating unhealthy food leads to sickness, suffering and to a shorter life.
Only real, NATURAL, unprocessed food can deliver proper enzymes to maintain the human health and the human life.
To help you to realize the truth in these 3 quotations they are repeated 'here and there'. Many people place them on their refrigerator door.
(1) "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, don't"
Click: Michael Pollan
(2) "To stay healthy and have a long life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(3) "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
"Flash-card" - REAL FOOD
Daily main parts - %-wise in this order:
(1) fresh, raw, unprocessed fruit, berries & vegetables,
(2) unprocessed, full grains,
(3) unprocessed fish or lean meat,
(4) tree-nuts, peanuts & seeds (not roasted, not salted) - if any allergy, replace daily with extra fresh fruit & fresh vegetables,
(5) cold pressed oils,
(6) enough water; coffee, tea counts as water (no diet or sugary sodas, no energy drinks) (in oz. the same amount of water as your normal weight (not overweight) is in lbs,
(7) physical & mental exercise (walk 25K steps daily) &
(8) enough sleep (adults 7-8 h / teenagers 10 h / child 10 - 12 h / toddlers 12-15 h/ babies sleep almost 24 h- the life sustaining growth hormone develops in all humans when we sleep and the brains clean themselves from poisons while we sleep - click: Goodnight. Sleep Clean
If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 1/11/14.
This keeps you on the right road to your better health.
All related, detailed instructions are in this compact guide.
Then there may be areas only your primary care physician can advice you to do
(because he/she knows you personally).
Enzymes are the tools of nature.
Enzymes cut and paste products such as nutrients. They speed up all vital biological processes.
The enzymes in the stomach, for instance, ensure that food is cut into tiny particles that can be converted into energy in the body. Wherever one substance needs to be transformed into another, nature uses enzymes to speed up the process.
That's why eating enzyme-dead or enzyme-low, processed or fast food
(= bad food) causes overweight because there are not enough enzymes in the digestive system to break the food into tiny particles our body system could absorb. Then the partially digested food sits inside the body and in the weakened immune system & starts rotting. Next the harmful, deadly germs & bacteria attack our cells infecting our body finally leading to any disease. Overweight lbs are made of this poisonous stuff rutting in the body because the person kept eating enzyme-dead processed or fast-food (= bad-food). That's why even a minor overweight can lead to any sickness, suffering and to an early death. A major overweight & high obesity is a sure killer.
STAF, Inc.'s tested, new methods are the solutions to guide you and anyone back to good health leading to an enjoyable life without suffering.
WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE? Eat food or poison? Life or death?
If you are overweight more or less (75 % of the population is), study this compact healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition guide again and again until you do all it teaches. To apply the information can return & maintain your health & reduce suffering and even save your life.
When you succeed in your efforts, email us to STAF, Inc. your success story so you can further help other people get motivated to accept the same knowledge as the road to their new, healthy life.
(The e-mail & postal address in the home page).
For additional info click: What are enzymes?
Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. If you have metabolic syndrome or any of the components of metabolic syndrome, aggressive lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent the development of serious health problems.
This Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide in front of you is your solution to your and your family's good health.
Study well every detail in this guide, handle everything in your weekly family meeting and guide everyone in your family to apply the information.
Quotation: "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Give yourself, your spouse and your children the best gift in life: good health.
Your good health leads to a longer, healthier, financially richer & happier life.
When the enzyme molecules are gone in the modern food-killing process, is it then a wonder that worldwide a wide part of the population suffer of click: Metabolic Syndrome storing larger and larger amounts of toxins in every cell of the body and finally developing all possible killer sicknesses: cancer, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. - just name any sickness - it's endless.
Sickness care (wrongly called health care) costs go up, human suffering gets wider, early deaths become more common. We at the STAF guide you in health care: we guide you and everyone willing to learn to restore & keep the precious base element: health - and based on health have a long, happy life.
The industrial age with its chemicals brought us all these "innovations".
Still in the 1950' - 1960's the advertisements touted "Health through the modern chemicals". Smoking was glorified publicly and still in the 1950's, 1960's believed being healthy for us human. That wrong belief was because smoking raises the heart beating rate as does exercise so the logical "science" thinking was "smoking is healthy". Still in the 50's and early 60's the tobacco commercials had medical doctors smoking and stating "I, Dr. X smoke Life*) - it is for my health". *) "Life" was a cigarette brand.
Today the use of pesticides has destroyed the healthy ground. The land, air & water are polluted as the result of wide use of chemicals once defined as a life & health improving solution for everyone worldwide.
Today the animals grown for food are fed with harmful chemicals
& click: Antibiotics ending in the food chain in the humans, in our pets and in everything including polluting the oceans and all elements.
Greed & The Modern Cattle Care - a life danger in our world and in our food
Rampant, irresponsible greed has widely destroyed in our modern times the proper, humane care of the animals meant for the human food.
The wide overuse of click: Antibiotics to make the animals grow faster is endangering also the human health by ending in our drinking water and in us when eating the meat - we develop resistance and the antibiotics do not work when needed in an emergency situation. CDC - The U.S. Centers of Disease Control, states "it can be lethal".
Click: Antibiotics: Misuse puts you and others at risk - Mayo Clinic
Physical exercise in us humans makes us stronger by expelling toxins out from our body - we stay healthier. The immune system does not have a pump to get rid of the toxins - our physical movements work as its pump.
Yet, most of the animals used as the human food live in a small space where they cannot hardly move around. It is like living our whole human life in the economy class airplane seat - what would our human body condition be if that would be our destiny? What about our mental condition? Our whole lifetime would be painful torturing.
Yet, our legislation still accepts that the animals we eat in our human food chain
can be living their whole life in similar terrifying conditions without any possibility to exercise and pump out the toxic from their muscles.
Is that kind of an animal meat, filled with toxins, really healthy for us humans?
Every living creature has emotions in addition to the physical pain.
The emotional pain feeds additional toxic chemicals into the animal'' meat and we humans eat it.
In the past the cattle grew outside freely roaming happily around eating fresh grass and enjoying the nature.
Now we give them an airline economy seat to live their whole life inside and expect them staying healthy without much physical exercise to keep the body & mind healthy. This is the background for the overuse of the antibiotics in the animal industry.
Often the slaughterhouses process knowingly (greed) or unknowingly (ignorance) sick animals. Anyone would understand that meat from sick sources is not suitable for us humans and not suitable for our pets.
Quotation "For greed all nature is too little"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca click: Seneca
One example of class 1 meat recall - class 1 = high health risk
In this case Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds of beef because it processed diseased and
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. The huge amount of recalled meat was supposed to be extra healthy "Fancy grass-fed Beef".
Is this a greed based decision to process the contaminated meat or did they really not know that the animals were diseased and unsound. You be the judge.
click: Class 1 – High Risk Recall - click: Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef
What about milk and eggs if the cows and the chickens are not allowed to move around?
Cow's Milk
Is there pus in the cow's milk produced in the U.S. ?
Pus = dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
Pus is a sign the cow having an infection in the udder (= the baglike organ where the milk is). Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to click: epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness*) (= difficulties in walking) click: lameness in cows and mastitis (udder infections) click: Mastitis in dairy cows, are the two click: leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States.
*) Lameness is a clinical sign of a more severe disorder that results in a disturbance in the gait (= manner ow walking) and the ability to move the body about, typically in response to pain, injury, or abnormal anatomy
click: Bovine Growth Hormone (bovine = relating to cow & cattle)
There is also an agreement how much pus is allowed to be in the U.S.
The 2003 FDA click: Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) PDF (3.5MB) sets the maximum level of somatic cells allowed in Grade A milk at 750,000 cells per. milliliter - a level that has been in effect since at least 1999
Read the health-related facts in this article: click: How much pus is there in milk? | NutritionFacts.org
Then read this article - all necessary facts out together
click: The Dangers of Drinking Cow's Milk
The dairy products, when they are clean have beneficial nutrients - but remember: where does the cow get the nutrients? From eating the grass outside
(= "vegetable") or eating soy, corn, hay (dried "grass")*) - all vegetables. So will you get them from eating a variety of vegetables daily - eat a variety of fresh fruit daily also. Thus one can live healthy without dairy products. Some are allergic to dairy and live happily healthy when eating vegetables & fresh fruit. Cheese in moderation is a treat if you are not allergic to it. *)click Hay -
Milk has calcium is touted (= to convince) - so do vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts - without any side effects.
click: Top 10 Foods Highest in Calcium
People who are lactose intolerant have trouble digesting the milk sugar lactose. Lactase is an enzyme that splits the milk sugar lactose, to produce the sugars glucose and galactose. Often these individuals have no problems with goats milk.
Goat's Milk -
a healthier, more nutritious option for any age - also for your baby because goat’s milk is closest in structure to human milk = closest to the mother's breast milk
Goat's milk has more beneficial nutrients in a cleaner form than cow's milk does.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow's milk can enjoy goat's milk.
Goat's milk is also more suitable for a baby because goat’s milk is closest in its structure to human milk.
Your pediatrician should know these fact - if not, it's time to find a more knowledgeable baby doctor.
Goat milk industry is smaller and is not so corrupted with the use of hormones and other harmful chemicals/medicines as the cow milk industry is.
Goats are not standing in an economy class seat their whole life - they are moving & jumping around often year round as they can take any weather better than the cows. They eat healthie natural grass & leaves outside much more than the cows.
That's why the goats produce much cleaner, safer and nutrition wise more valuable milk.
click: The Health Benefits of Goat's Milk
One more article explaining the differences between goat's & cow's milk - it is good to compare different texts:
click: Goat's Milk vs. Cow's Milk
No one can deny that goat's milk is a safer, cleaner, more upscale & healthier product than cow's milk - STAF, Inc. endorses the use of goat milk at least
(1) for the babies and for (2) people who cannot tolerate cow's milk.
If you can afford the smallish price difference for the whole family, be blessed
& go for the goat!
click also this link: cow’s milk to see the facts why cow's milk is secondary to goat's milk.
Sheep's Milk
Then there is the sheep's milk - a small niche (= a specialty segment of a market) , more expensive and not everywhere available (except with the modern "same-day-next-day delivery" = gets more expensive, no need pay more - instead invest the saved money - use goat's milk - if you can afford sheep's milk, buy and use it in addition to using the goat's milk). Sheep's milk has little more nutrients than goat's milk and much more than cow's milk and is safe for your baby.
To look further click: Sheep 101
What milk for your newborn, your baby?
Mother's milk is the most perfect food - breastfeed as long as you can - minimum 6 months - up to 12 months if you can - talk to you baby doctor. Breastfeeding is healthier for the mother and healthier for the baby.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
The mutual mental-emotional benefits are more rewarding when breast-feeding. Any sickness in the mother? - Talk to you baby doctor. Any sickness in the baby? - A sick baby needs more mother's milk (because it is perfect food & healing), not less, is the principle, but talk to your baby doctor because all depends on "what sickness".
Click: The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov.
The health outcomes in the developed countries differ substantially who
formula feed compared with those who breastfeed.
If he mother has difficulties developing enough beast milk, breast milk can also be bought, but: warning - there may be health risks (contamination, the source is not always the healthiest & it is quite expensive) - talk to your baby doctor.
Goat's milk click: Goat's Milk for Babies and sheep's milk click: Sheep's Milk are both close to the mother's milk and suitable for the baby - talk to you baby doctor.
Whole FRESH food and the blender for your baby - prepare your own FRESH baby food
It saves your money, yet gives better quality food and secures better health for your baby.
To prepare your own baby food takes less time than you may think and gives you peace of mind because you know that you are doing the right thing when giving the healthiest food to your precious baby.
Your baby deserves real fresh food, not commercial imitation or poisoned with added preservatives & other harmful chemicals.
In most cases the fine-blended (= use the blender - instructions in article 2 of 3 what kind) whole food can be added in milk or water earlier than many opinions state - talk to your baby doctor.
Fresh orange, apple, banana & berries blended fine can be given quite early.
Banana should be ripe (= the peel with brown spots or even darker is a ripe banana) - less ripe (harder) banana easily gives constipation, especially to your baby. Ripe banana can also be spoon-fed. Most people eat and feed their babies harder (= not ripe) bananas and then blame the banana for giving constipation.
Bananas are among the most common foods worldwide. By weight bananas are among the lowest priced foods and offer a high nutritional value.
Fine-blended soft-steamed*) potatoes & soft-steamed vegetables & soft-steamed beans can be given to the baby earlier than is common but talk to your baby doctor before you do. *) steaming keeps 30 - 50 % more more nutrients than boiling - adopt steaming also for your whole family needs.
NOTICE: Do not mix fruits and vegetables or other foods in the same bottle - can cause stomach ache, gas, constipation, crying and suffering - same with the adults.
Feed fresh fruit as their own category - feed potatoes & other vegetables as their own category - feed steamed/boiled beans as their own category - do not mix different categories.
Reminder: many baby doctors do NOT have much or even enough training in nutrition, thus asking a baby doctor guidance in nutrition is often similar to asking a street beggar guidance for how to become a milloinaire - but she/he knows your baby's development level for different common fruits, vegetables, berries & other food. In addition, still too many baby doctors believe in commercially made "food".
Eggs
The free-ranged chickens lay eggs that have much more healthy nutrients than the chickens kept in small boxes without any chance for moving around to exercise. California has a new legislation for healthier chicken to produce healthier eggs. The new CA law gives several times more space to all their chickens than most other states do. click: They Are Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens - The New York Times, March 3, 2014
The Past and The Present
In the past human history the infectious disease pandemics killed people, often a half or more of the population.
Today's pandemic
is the the way most people worldwide eat in a unhealthy manner stuff that has not much to do with food. Then they get sick, suffer and leave this life much too soon.
During the past worst pandemics about half of the population died.
The same thing now: over half of the population in the U.S. and worldwide is overweight or obese. Overweight & obesity kills by causing killer-sicknesses.
Today's pandemic is our wrong food which is not natural food and does not maintain the human health.
Snacking
Definition of snacking = a small amount of food eaten between meals; notice the three important words: (1+2) small amount, (3) food. You know what "small amount means" - the definition of "food" is in this quotation:
Quotation "If it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (click: Michael Pollan) and here is another as a warning:
Quotation "Keep snacking real food, not poison, or I keep nagging"
(Dr. Christian, author of this health-success guide, STAF, Inc.)
Food is something that comes from a plant - it is NOT made in a plant.
This means you will be snacking on - none of these from cans - all fresh:
(1) fresh fruit (not from cans filled with sugary syrup - that's pure poison), (2) fresh berries, (3) fresh vegetables, (4)variety of unsalted, unroasted nuts, (5) unroasted, unsalted peanuts (= peanuts are actually legumes; unpeeled = eat with the brown inner peel because they also have nutrients like all peels do - the outer shell is uneatable as raw - more about that in another occasion), (6) bread, snack only on full-grain bread. No soda (not even diet soda - it has harmful chemicals affecting your and your baby's health). Drink only plain water, coffee or tea. Drink water (coffee & tea counts) daily in liquid oz. the same amount as your normal weight (not overweight) would be in lbs.
Notice: Fresh above (as in "fresh fruit") means: not handled in any manner, not in cans with sugary syrup the same with any other snack "fresh, in their natural form with noting added. Eat apples (wash well with soap) with their peels - most nutritious part is inside under the peel.
It is good good to snack = to eat something little every couple of hours - it helps keep the body system balanced and helps even in weight loss. The modern problem is that there are too many unhealthy snacks on the market advertised being sooooo.... good and sooooo..... dishonestly healthy - ONLY REAL, natural food can be and is healthy for us humans and also for our pets.
Do NOT snack on these popular processed, factory-made items:
no energy drinks (dangerous chemicals), no energy bars (they are about the same as a candy-bar), no vitamin waters (they are nothing else than water + a vitamin pill - waste of your money), no chips (filled with unhealthy chemicals and waste of your money - and many other similar.
To see 10 energy drinks dangers click: Dangers
Snack on real food originating from a plant not on any imitation food that is made in a plant. How could "anything made in a plant" be food?
EAT real, clean FOOD, not any food-like processed killing stuff. If what you aim to eat is made in a plant, do NOT eat it - it kills, eat only what came from a plant and is not processed at all - all original & natural, nothing added, nothing taken out.
In addition
nowadays, the environmental pollution click: Environmental Pollution
is another challenge to our bodies
but: even that poison our immune system can eliminate when we give it a chance with
(1) a fully healthy lifestyle;
(2) feeding us with REAL food and correct nutrition;
(3) exercising enough (a fee-free, enjoyable solution: walk 25K steps daily
click Pedometer;
(4) no smoking/no drugs/no sugary drinks.
click: Environmental Pollution and Impacts on Public Health: - UNEP
To motivate you, the parents, and your children to walk & exercise
it is stated several times in this guide that
the immune system has no pump to pump out the garbage - your physical movements function as its pump.
Thus, sit less, stand up, exercise, do hatha *)yoga & walk more as instructed- 25K steps daily+ walk up the stairs (click: Pedometer). *) Hatha yoga is focusing on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures.
click: Hatha Yoga - Yoga Journal . Click: How Yoga Improves Health
Click: American Osteopathic Association - Benefits of Yoga
(Osteopathic = Greek: osteon = bone; Greek: pathos = disease)
STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-min. exercise program meant to be done among the first things in the morning before your breakfast. Contact STAF, Inc. to download it. It has similar health benefits as hatha yoga does. The program is called:
"This 7-minutes Yabbanetics© keeps you fit, healthy & attractive".
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Scientific Meditation In addition to our physical exercise you, I, and all of us, need to exercise our mind to teach it to calm down, unwind and to avoid mental stress. Stress is a killer as it affects the whole body, its immune system, its every organ, and its nervous system. In your family meeting take up the scientific meditation topic and guide every member of your family to learn it - takes only 15 min. a day to practice.
Learn more about scientific meditation click: Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress - Harvard www.health.harvard.edu. Harvard University
STAF, Inc. has also developed an effective scientific meditation method titled
Mplus™
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Physical exercise, walking, hatha yoga & meditation combined with correct nutrition and with overall healthy lifestyle will reduce stress. Stress
The shortest definition for stress can be "Stress is unfinished business".
Think about that statement. Stress is a killer as it weakens the immune system and can lead to diseases. E.g. certain life situations, challenges in relationships, financial matters, procrastination, etc. life difficulties can cause stress.
Procrastination
creates stress. The majority of people are procrastinators
Procrastinating is the action of delaying or postponing something.
By undoing procrastination we have less stress. Do things now when you can, not "tomorrow". It may be in this aspect that "the tomorrow" never comes. That creates even more stress. Make a plan to clear any matter now and if not possible, make a plan immediately OR a flash-note to remember to make the plan. Keep your flash-notes always in the same place to later know where they are so you can handle them: when, what, how, whom you have to contact, and stick to the plan. Train your mind to handle things "now" or at the first proper moment/time, not "tomorrow".
Another stress builder is a common habit to say
"I'll try"
instead of stating "I will do this...'. Trying is not doing.
Take this test: Drop a pen on the floor and tell yourself "try to lift up that pen". If you lifted it up, you did not try, you did it - you lifted it up - doing and trying are two different things, not the same. Now throw the pen again on the floor and this time "try" to lift it up: try, yes try, try, try" - but do not lift just "try" to lift it and YOU CANNOT lift because you are 'trying' (not doing).
Have you noticed that most of the time when someone will say"I'll try ..." they never get it done". You invite someone to a party, the other person says
"I'll try to come" - and he/she never comes.
Trying and doing are two different things. Teach this to your children in your family meetings. The key is "what you say or think, your mind will listen and do what you say or think of doing". What you tell your mind, will manifest. You say "I will try..", the results are not there. Say "I will do "X" and finish doing it - the results will be there. To execute a plan is to make a plan and do what must be done to get the goal materialized. What you tell your mind is what the reality will be.
Quotation "What your mind can conceive, you can achieve" (Napoleon Hill)
Click: Napoleon Hill
That quotation is a good reminder when materializing your plans.
Your children do what they see you doing, not what you tell them to do. Thus, become a doer if you have been a "try-er" - and you will have less stress, you will also become & stay healthier and you will create much more financial freedom.
Again stress is a killer - you will get rid of it when you apply the above info.
Planning to have a baby?
Before getting pregnant read this article (the green link next below) - Your baby can inherit your stress.
Take the above guidance seriously learn to get rid of your stress, give your baby the best start for life.
click: Inheriting Stress
If the link has expired search the New York Times with the title"Inheriting Stress" or search the internet for the same topic
It is said "We can have a long life and die healthy" - when we respect life and accept a healthy lifestyle, we can have a long, healthy life.
Quotation: "You respect you keep, you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To state it briefly: we are ready to move to heaven when the telomeres are "gone" - yes, the science may estimate when it is our time "to go" - when we probably drop dead.
(throughout the text click green for further info)
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. click: Telomere Wikipedia
To keep your telomeres for your healthier, longer life you need to accept and learn a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition. Start with this mini-fast-track 12 step guide and the continue to study & apply the complete STAF Plan at a later time
(see article 2 of 2).
The more effectively your immune system functions ,
the healthier you are and the less you will suffer. It is your choice based on how healthy your lifestyle is. This guide is a good starting point.
A suitable quotation as a reminder:
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Have mercy on yourself, your family & on your children,
and organize your life in such a manner that you all can learn to apply everything this compact guide teaches.
Give the best gift to yourself, to your family and to your children:
good, healthy, long, meaningful, financially rich life.
Help your immune system to stay clean(er)
by doing what this 12-step guide shows. Help your whole family, including your children, learn these health restoring & maintaining principles.
(1) Sleep enough (see below the needed hours) - everyone in your family, read the 7+ sleep articles kept in click: www.staf1org.weebly.com - there in the left hand side "blog" tab close to the tab's top; Hours to sleep: (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours, (4) adults 7-8 hours.
(2) Drink plain water portionally during the day in oz. the same amount as your normal weight is in lbs.; coffee & tea counts as water (no sugary or diet sodas).
Aim to drink the daily plain water mostly when your stomach is empty, otherwise it may dilute the natural digestive "chemicals" and can slow down the digestion.
Briefly: your stomach is "empty" in 30 min. after eating plain fresh fruit, in 90 min. after eating plain grains, in 180 min. after eating anything else.
When you start drinking more water be also prepared to urinate more often and more. Urinating more is a good thing because the water cleans your pipes and flushes out more toxic stuff, thus providing you (and your family) better health leading to less suffering, more enjoyable & longer life.
Carry a suitable-size plastic bottle with you to pee "secretly" in a "must-pee-now" situation. Night-time it would be a good idea to keep a capped container for each person next to the bed to avoid walking to the bathroom to pee. The walking takes us out from the proper sleep waves lowering the quality of our sleep. If you live in a house and have a garden, you can use the human urea as the garden fertilizer and in the composting process. Saves money - brings good, natural results without unnatural cancer causing chemicals.
click: Human Urine is shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer; Scientific American
click: Compost - Human urine can be used directly as fertilizer or can be put onto compost
Guide your children in the urine monitoring and related facts.
Monitor the color of your urine - it tells your health. The clearer the urine during daytime hours, the better chances you, your children and your family will have a enjoyable health. The darker the urine daytime color, the more your health is challenged. In the morning, just after you get up, the urine can be darker.
If your daytime urine is dark in color you MUST drink more water until it shows a clearer color. Teach your children to monitor their pee.
Eat as STAF, Inc. guides: The a,b,c:
(a) "if it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't, it kills",
(b) no fast food = bad-food,
(c) prepare your daily food in your own kitchen based on the STAF Plan
(3) Exercise enough (daily walking 25K steps will do)(click: Pedometer);
(4) Keep your mind clean - how? - Sleep enough, drink enough plain water,
eat healthy, walk & some other physical exercises as you wish - if you can afford, in addition to walking the 25K steps daily, hire a personal trainer to do also strength training. It is a type of click: physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance to induce click: muscular contraction which builds the click: strength, click: anaerobic endurance, click:size of click: skeletal muscles.
When we get older our muscles will shrink - a personal trainer can build them safely back to strengthen your health. Never use any drugs - use healthy food to feed your cells safely. STAF, Inc.'s Plans teach the healthy nutrition.
About the healthy sleep.
Most recent studies show that the brains clean themselves during steady, unfragmented sleep, thus making us more intelligent.
Study (you & your family) the sleep articles # 2 "Sleep - The Ultimate Brain Cleaner" and # 4 "Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth & Other Sicknesses" - both articles close to the beginning of the left-side hand blog in this website. It would be beneficial to study all sleep-related articles in the location - over ten
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free fast-track guide - fits for women, men & children (2 years +)
Study and apply the information in the article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
STAF, Inc. has develop a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program - info below in article 2 of 2
Quotation
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Fast-Track Guide
This is a shortened, compact fast-track guide.
Start your new life from this guide & apply the information in your and your family's life. Have your children involved - you give them the best gift for life.
Arrange regular weekly family meetings and handle then, as a family including the babies & the toddlers, the material you had together agreed to study that past week. Decide in the meeting how you all are going to apply the information in your daily life for your better health and success.
Click & study each web link in full and well, take notes, involve your.
The deeper you study and learn the info in all links the better your life.
This 12-step mini-guide alone is a treasure for your and your family's better life quality with less sickness risks.
This whole extensive website is another story - it would take 5 years to go through.
This website is world's # 1 advice website in all family matters, in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition topics and guides you to enter the good life.
STAF, Inc. has developed a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program called also "The STAF Plan". That's a full-size book long and originally took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
Below, in article 2 of 2 more information about the full-size STAF Plan.
To stay healthy physically & mentally follow the instruction in fast-track mini-guide as a whole family
* Realize: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition principles are NOT taught properly in most schools nationwide - worldwide. Yet, it is the most important topic for us humans -our health & life depend on the correct facts . We also need to know how to feed our pets - not taught in schools either - out pets are getting sicker & sicker as we humans are. All because of our lacking knowledge.
Only by teaching the correct eating skills we can lower our high sickness costs, avoid human suffering, stay healthy & fully enjoy our time on this earth.
STAF, Inc. is the new, nationwide & worldwide leading organization in these topics in addition to handling all family & life success topics. STAF, Inc. has developed effective teaching programs fit for every country, every school and for every individual.
About Water
Most people do not realize that water is a vital nutrient.
Vital nutrients are life-sustaining and necessary to the continuation of life.
Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water
in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda, sugary or diet).
Roll the water in your mouth to mix it with saliva - the digestive process starts always in your mouth, click: Saliva and Your Mouth
Saliva is an important part of a healthy body. It is mostly made of water, like our whole body is (70 %). Saliva also contains important substances that your body needs to digest food.
Water is essential for the human body to function and to perform virtually every metabolic process.
As said, the human body is about 70 % water.
Notice:
The web links in this fast-track guide give detailed info what sources have the nutrients our bodies need - what to eat to get all needed natural
(1) vitamins (the drug store vitamins have almost no nutritional value and they can be toxic),
(2) minerals (only the natural ones can be properly digested by the human body),
(3) essential & non-essential amino acids (web links below),
(4) protein (links below),
(5) carbohydrates (links below) and
(6) what else is needed to keep your body & mind healthy.
About Vitamins - About Minerals
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are 13 vitamins your body needs.
They are click: Vitamins: MedlinePlus
NOTICE:
The next link to Harvard School of Public Health
has all information (1) about everything you need to eat and (2) what sources will provide the most natural nutrients - study all and do it with your whole family.
On the website, on the left-hand side, is a topic list - click each topic on the list, study well and apply- a real treasure for your and your family's health - and for the good life.
About Amino Acids - About Protein
click: Protein | The Nutrition Source
Harvard School of Public Health
About Carbohydrates
click: Carbohydrates | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
Twenty-two essential and non-essential amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins. When taken up into the human body from the diet, the 22 standard amino acids either are used to synthesize
(= make) proteins and other biomolecules or are oxidized to urea and carbon dioxide as a source of energy.
9 of these 22 are called click: essential amino acids because the human body cannot synthesize them from other compounds at the level needed for normal growth, so they must be obtained from food.
Notice: in this same link you also see (1) the recommended daily amounts
and (2) the main food sources for the 9 essential amino acids - notice: listed there are also the two common, easy-to-get, low-priced sources that have all these nine essential amino acids: (1) soy beans and (2) eggs. In addition, e.g.
hemp & quinoa have all 9 amino acids - they may be less common and also more expensive - click: Hemp - click: Quinoa
STAF, Inc.'s advice: always buy the cheaper products (in this case the soy beans) to save more cash for investing and step-by-step becoming a (multi-)millionaire. STAF, Inc. has a program for it also.
One egg a day, no more, except in rare occasions; eat the whole egg, the egg white & the yellow yolk - they function together well as a perfect nutrition source.
As a click: food, the yellow yolks are a major source of click: vitamins and minerals click: minerals
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Steam the eggs in their shells for saving the most egg nutrients including vitamins & minerals.
The scrambled eggs may have some harmful bacteria left because the heating process is quite short. Steaming 20 min. makes the yolk hard and kills the possible harmful bacteria.
click: essential amino acids
As long as you consume adequate levels of
(1) protein and (2) carbohydrates each day,
your cells will either have or make enough non-essential amino acids to support tissue growth and repair, immune function, red blood cell formation and hormone synthesis. Both plant- and animal-based proteins are rich sources of non-essential amino acids, and, although you can manufacture the non-essential amino acids, including a variety of protein sources in your diet helps ensure you have all the starting materials you need to keep the process running smoothly if your diet ever runs low on this particular nutrient.
Question:
In what proportions to eat daily proteins, carbohydrates, oils and other nutrients?
The answer next below in "The Healthy Eating Plate"
Realize that, according to the Harvard University leading specialists, you do not have to eat animal meat if you do not want - you will get the proteins from other sources (see below, e.g.: soy beans & other beans, eggs, some vegetables, etc.).
The Healthy Eating Plate,
created by the nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health and by the editors at Harvard Health Publications, was designed to address deficiencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s MyPlate.
The Healthy Eating Plate provides detailed guidance, in a simple format, to help people make the best eating choices and see in what proportions to eat different food types
Click: Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health...www.hsph.harvard.edu
Then:
Click the next line to make The Healthy Eating Plate bigger and esier to study
click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
_______
Now click to see how the most recent
U.S. gov. "Food Plate" the previous "Food Pyramid" look click: Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler plate. Each 3 pictures you can enlarge by clicking the picture or clicking the "enlarge the image" note next to each picture -
All these pictures: (1) click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
and (2) The U.S. gov. Nutrition Plate .& the Food Pyramid
show (1) what and (2) in what proportions to eat
Start today - stay healthy tomorrow
* avoid sickness * live longer
__________
The Fast-Track Guide to a better-quality life
Continues
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen. Eat full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry or at least any poultry - cage-free can be more costly; very little or no red meat, no pork), one egg daily. Eat nuts, peanuts (with their thin inner brown peel - peanut is a legume click Beans & legumes). Eat all nuts & peanuts raw - not salted & not roasted. Eat berries, fruit, vegetables, olive oil (cold-pressed, virgin, 1 - 2 spoonfuls a day) and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle of this quotation:
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(Quotation by click: Michael Pollan).
The science of food combining is helpful in avoiding heartburn, stomach aches, and other digestive pain & suffering.
The food combining principles will be introduced in full in the full-size STAF Plan.
Briefly: (1) eat smaller amounts every 3 - 4 hours rather than 1 - 2 times a day, (2) proteins & vegetables combine well, (3) eat fresh fruit alone (combine with nothing else), (4) eat other carbohydrates alone.
The heartburn medicines can actually make the heartburn worse when used continuously. As a natural first aid eat fresh celery or fresh cucumber to still heart burn - no negative side effects.
Sleep on one side - test what side works for you - it can still the heartburn and you can fall asleep.
_____________
About fish
Fish oils come from fatty fish, also known as oily fish, specifically the tissue of fatty fish, such as trout, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, and salmon.
The bigger the fish in wild the more it can have sea/ocean/river pollutants
(= harmful industrial waste), mercury, etc., thus a smaller fatty fish can be safer to eat. Why has the bigger fish more mercury & other pollutants? Because the bigger fish eats smaller fish (the smaller fish, of course, also has mercury, etc.) and the big(ger) fish gets more and more mercury, etc. in its system.
Plankton & phytoplankton are a key food item in both click: aquaculture
& click: mariculture.
Little fish eat (phyto)plankton because they are the base of the food chain. Small fish eat (phyto)plankton, medium fish eat small fish, and big fish eat medium fish. Humans eat the big fish & fish of all sizes. That is the (phyto)plankton cycle.
click: Plankton
click: Phytoplankton
Farm raised fish is a good idea but the fish farms can be filthy affecting negatively the safety quality for human consumption.
Trout is not so common on the market and can be priced higher than their value. click: Trout
Pricewise the canned Alaskan salmon (wild caught) is a good source for nutrition click: Alaskan salmon
Also canned, wild caught mackerel (small) or jack-mackerel (bigger) or king-mackerel (biggest) - more than half of the salmon price in cans - no need to buy fresh files - too expensive. Canned Alaskan salmon and canned mackerel are acceptable. Mackerel is a good fish to eat. Buy the smallest size mackerel if available, otherwise buy any of the three. If available, stack up mostly with the smallest mackerel. (1) Alaskan salmon, (2) small mackerel & (3) sardines (see below) are the basic fish items to buy - as said: buy in cans (wild caught) - least expensive. click: Mackerel
In any food item, shop around for the lowest prices, see the weekly on-sale offers, stack up & save. Invest your savings as guided in this website in tab: more, sub-tab: credit & credit cards. Learn to become an active investor - a millionaire is then a realistic goal.
Avoid tuna or have small amounts because: The bigger the fish, the more mercury & other pollutants - because the more the big fish eats smaller fish that all have certain amounts of pollutants). click: Tuna
Sardines - the European sardines are the real sardines and can be expensive outside Europe (in Europe they are quite low-priced). As wild caught the sardines are oily, healthy and delicious. click: Sardines
The American/Canadian sardines are low-priced and good, oily fish
(less oily than salmon or mackerel) and they are small in size = less polluted. These are not really sardines. In the past an agreement was made that all American & Canadian small ocean fish will be called "sardines".
Once more: Alaskan salmon, mackerel & sardines (all wild caught - the sardine cans may not state "wild caught" because they are basically always wild caught) are the three most economical and health-wise acceptable fish items to buy - all in cans
(lowest price - stack up when on sale).
Notice: Eat only fish that has a backbone & scales (notice: & = and - not either one but both at the same time in the same fish) when it still swims in the ocean, river or lake (e.g., do not eat eel click: Eel and not catfish click: Catfish, etc. similar).
The other fish or seafood without backbone & scales are not the best for us humans because they are in the ocean ecology the poison eaters and can safely digest the poisonous material that can harm other sea/river/lake animals. The poison-eating sea/river/lake creatures keep the water clean for other water species. That's how the nature operates.
The seafood & fish without a backbone & scales are the cleaners of the waters.
The poison only these poison cleaners can digest will end as health-threatening poison in your system if you eat such a "cleaning lady".
The cleaning ladies you must not eat (to keep your health safely) are e.g. crayfish & crabs, lobsters, oysters & all sea, river, lake creatures including fish that have no back bone & no scales (both at the same time in the same creature).
Next two article links relating to fish:
(1) Mercury and (2) Sorting out the risks of fish
(the link next a few lines below after another link).
Realize: not all that swims in the water is meant for us humans to eat as is explained in the paragraph just next above ( if you do not remember what it states, please, for your, your children's and your family's safety, study the paragraph above again before reading the next article).
Eat only fish which has a backbone AND scales (when still swimming around, e.g. do not eat eel, not catfish, not lobsters, not crab, etc.). These two article links are placed for you to get more information about the mercury in fish. Pregnancy & mercury do not go together. Mercury is dangerous to everyone in every age.
A little mercury can be "OK" - thus, avoid big fish as they have more mercury and other pollutants because the bigger fish eats smaller fish and thus accumulates more toxins.
click: Mercury - March of Dimes
Next click: Sorting Out the Risks of Fish
About eggs
It is said that the egg is the perfect food. The eggs have all nine essential amino acids as do also soy beans - two excellent foods, available & low-price.
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Brown eggs vs. White eggs - any difference?
The color differences in eggs are simply from the breed of the hens they come from. Brown eggs are laid by larger red-feathered hens with red earlobes, and white-feathered hens with white earlobes produce white eggs. When it comes to the nutritional value, however, brown eggs are more or less the same as white eggs.
The healthiest way is to steam whole eggs in their full shell 15- 20 minutes (until the yellow part is hard). To scramble the eggs does not give enough time for the possible harmful bacteria in them to get neutralized. In a big enough a pan steam the eggs for every family member for the whole week to save time - they stay well in the refrigerator.
Steaming kills the bacteria more effectively AND saves more healthy nutrients in the shelled egg. The Cage free eggs are healthier, they have less pollution and they have more nutrients BUT they are also much more expensive. As money may be the issue in most families it is still better to buy the cheaper eggs as it is said that the egg is the most perfect food. Not too many, though, max. one egg a day.
Why is the age-free egg (and the cage free chicken meat) healthier, less polluted and has more nutrients?
Because a chicken in the cage cannot move so much and the digestive waste is not eliminated so well by the immune system but stays partially in the chicken body and goes then also into the egg.
The same in the human being: that is why the exercise movements help the immune system (which has no pump) throw out our digestive & other toxins more effectively.
If a human being is not physically moving much, the toxins stay in the body cells leading to multitudes of sicknesses and to an early death. Walking (see blow how much daily) is one of the easiest way to help our immune system to clean our insides and our cells well to keep us healthy and give us a long life.
About full grains
and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
Whole Grains and Fish Highly Protective against Childhood Asthma
According to the American Lung Association, almost 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, which is reported to be responsible for over 14 million lost school days in children, and an annual economic cost of more than $16.1 billion.
Increasing consumption of whole grains and fish could reduce the risk of childhood asthma by about 50%, suggests the International Study on Allergy and Asthma in Childhood (Tabak C, Wijga AH, Thorax). click: Diet and asthma
click: American Lung Association
What Is a Whole Grain? - All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
In the morning the healthy breakfast
is the 5-full-grain hot home-cooked hot cereal as instructed below.
This 5-grain cereal is real delicious - there is not one person who would not like it.
In addition, our bodies like it.
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In this case you and your body will like every morning the 5 -grain cereal.
Have everyone involved, including your children, in the weekly preparation (for the whole week) - then the children and everyone immediately like the new 5 hot cereal.
However, the first thing in the morning, before enjoying the cereal, is to drink (as instructed below in # 2) 15 min. after the hot water/lemon-lime drinking below in # (2) is the way to start your day - then the cereal 15 min. after drinking the water/lemon-lime.
The cereal is for every family member over 1 year old (for the age use your own judgement).
Eat only whole-grain bread - find the best deals. Stack up when on sale.
Prepare multi-grain hot cereal for your family. Cook more for several days. If you can manage to cook the breakfast full-multi-grain hot cereal once a week (weekend?) for the whole week it would save your time. Keep in your refrigerator(s) - stays well for one week.
This is the 5-grain hot cereal
Stack up the different ingredients when on sale - buy in big packages/sacks - store in a DRY place and cover well to:
(1) oats; steal-cut healthiest; click: Steel-cut oats & any rolled oats will do;
click: Rolled oats,
(2) par-boiled rice; par-boiled means "partially boiled" click: in the click: husk
(husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed) cooking time shortened, about 15-20 min. click: Parboiled rice,
(3) brown rice; brown rice is whole grain rice, cooking (=simmering) time about 2-3 h = brown rice has 30 % more nutrients than an other rice type,
click: Brown rice
(4) barley - click: Barley - The World's Healthiest Foods - there you can also find a brief guide
"How to select & buy barley"
Pearl barley (or pearled barley) is dehulled barley which has been steam processed further to remove the bran. click: Barley
(5) buckwheat. (Buckwheat is not really cereal but but can be combined with cereal - click: Buckwheat)
Buy all cereals when they are on sale (stack up), buy big sacks 20 lbs & up - store in dry place away from all pests (mice & rats, ants, etc.).
The proportions of the 5 cereals for cooking are, e.g.
(1) 5 lbs oats, (2) 4 lbs par-boiled rice, (3) 2 lbs brown rice, (4) 3 lbs barley
(5) 1 lb buckwheat
Keeping the pan covered while cooking helps to keep up to 25 % more of the nutrients in the cereal.
Each cereal has their own cooking time
Follow the cooking time instructions on the packages or study the internet.
Soak each grain overnight in cold water in their own pan and cook in the morning each in their own pan.
Save the soaking water for the cooking and add water as needed.
Hint: keep a separate pan for heating boiled water during the cooking period as you will need to add water. When you add boiling water the cooking process will not stop (as it would for a while if you added cold water) - it will save your time as you do not need to stand and watch all the time the pans to avoid spilling over or to avoid burning. Best is to keep every cereal simmering as it would also retain more nutrient & vitamins (keep the pan cover on) and would allow you to do other things also. Avoid any cereal getting burned in the pan by using good-quality steel pans (buy them when on sale). To use aluminum pans will easily burn the cereal and would take much more of your time for watching & cleaning. Do not use non-sticky pans as their surface will leak poisonous chemicals . Use only high-quality steel pans. (Buy them when on sale - often the saving can be 50 %.)
Cook every grain in their own pot as they each have a different cooking time and at the end, when they are all cooked, mix them in correct proportions together as one 5-cereal combination to keep in your refrigerator for the week's breakfasts.
The two important kitchen "tools" for your & your family's good health are:
(1) big refrigerators & (2) several good blenders.
The Crown Prince of the home blenders is Vitamix - click: Vitamix
The prince of the cheaper home blenders is Proctor Silex - Hamilton Beach (same company)
Click: Proctor Silex - there click: Kitchen Appliances / Blenders
Proctor Silex models are lower in price than Hamilton Beach products, yet are of good quality with a good warranty.
Buy the blenders Proctor Silex calls "Space Saving Blenders" - you need several in your kitchen to save your time. When you learn to use the blenders more, you can use several blenders at the same time. Keep always at least one new, unopened blender package in case some blender breaks. Study the warranty time 3, 6 or 12 months (with Proctor Silex) - the company sends a free blender to your house during the warranty time. Vitamix warranty is several years, some models up to seven years. If you can afford 1- 2 Vitamix blenders (they do a much finer job, helpful for your digestive system and thus good for your health) and then you add a few Proctor Silex blenders (each only about $25).
It is said "the blender is the key to our good health".
You need to learn to use the blender(s) for an easier digestive process - that equals to a healthier body & to a healthier mind.
Use the blenders as much as you can as the blended food will digest easier in your system, use less energy for digestion - the saved energy keeps your body functioning more effectively giving you a better health.
You can blend anything and take with you in thick glass or thick plastic bottles
and "drink" your lunch or dinner - but when eating/drinking mix it well with the saliva by rolling the "liquidized food" in your mouth, click: Saliva.
Avoid hot material in any plastic bottle as the heat will make harmful chemicals leak and enter your system.
STAF, Inc.'s full-size STAF Plan guides further in the blender use.
HAVE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE CEREAL PREPARATION - then everyone will eat and enjoy the delicious 5-grain hot cereal every morning.
Especially children are much more eager to eat "new" food when they are involved in the preparation & the cooking process.
Realize: children do/eat what they see their parents doing/eating, not what they are told to do/to eat.
If someone in your family has any allergies (e.g. gluten sensitivity, click: Gluten sensitivity) see your gluten specialist health care provider or otherwise, based on your reliable information, solve the situation in your family.
Before making any appointment, confirm that the Dr. is a gluten issues specialist OR call your insurance company to locate a specialist or call your city/town/village health office or Community Health Center for (free) guidance/information; do the same when dealing with any other health question. Not just any Dr. knows every topic.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda).
First in the morning (your stomach still empty) drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below). Guide your children and your toddlers do the same - the babies have a different agenda.
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money - the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Do not boil the lemon/lime, boil only the plain water first. Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be frozen. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma).
Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
About your mouth & teeth hygiene
Why here next to the stroke & heart attack topics? Because your mouth may have a direct link to your heart & brain health - and even broader: take care of your teeth and you whole body will benefit.
When your teeth are not in the best condition, the potentially destructive mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
Professor Nairn Wilson click: Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee states: "There are still many unknown elements in these matters, but one thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing (soft bristles) your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being." click: BDA (British Dental Association)
- Health and Science
We at STAF, Inc. purposely repeat this often: Have your children involved in learning this guide info & studying all given web links including the mouth & teeth hygiene facts. To give yourself and to your children the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition info for life is the best gift to have.Click: Healthy dental care toothbrushes - American Dental Association - ADA.org
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Salt & Sugar & Honey
& Artificial Sweeteners
Salt
Salt & Sugar & Honey
& Artificial Sweeteners
Salt
Click green for further info
We all need salt in small amounts, much smaller than is commonly used.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA)1, click: sodium consumption should not exceed 1.5g per day(3.75g of salt), and that even includes healthy people without click: high blood pressure, click: diabetes or cardiovascular diseases click: Cardiovascular disease
Use only Iodized (or: Iodised) salt with added iodine click: Iodine。
Without iodine we humans tend to develop goiter click: Goiter and other sicknesses. Taking too much iodine can also cause problems click: Iodine Deficiency & other facts
Sea salt is natural and has some iodine - click: WHO | Iodization of salt
NOTICE: Iodized salt is NOT the only source for the important iodine. Iodine is e.g. in these food sources: potatoes, beans, strawberries, cranberries, yogurt, saltwater fish, sea vegetables, seaweed including kelp, arame, hiziki, kombu, and wakame - click: Common Foods Rich in Iodine (in this link the word "organic“ is not the key - the key is to study the food item and its qualities).
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iodine is 150 micrograms daily for adults & everyone over the age of 14. The RDA for children ages 1-8 is 90/mcg every day, ages 9-13 is 120/mcg every day.
If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, it is recommended that you get 290/mcg every day (talk to your pediatrician or primary care physician - STAF, Inc. is not giving medical advice in its seminars but info for educational & motivati0nal purposes).
E.g. 4 ounces of cranberries has 400 mcg of iodine (mcg=microgram) - 1 mcg: a unit of mass or weight equal to one millionth of a gram.
Sugar
White sugar (or any sugar) - the sweetest poison of all - do not keep in your house - pure poison. Do not eat. Do not add in your home-made daily food. Do not add in your coffee, tea, do not drink sugary drinks. Occasionally eating a sugary pastry or peace of sugary cake will not kill, but do not eat them daily.
Sugar & Pregnancy & Breastfeeding
Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation*) can influence muscle force production in offspring *) lactation - formation of mother's milk in breastfeeding
click: 143 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health (with the reference to scientific studies)
Get your sugar from FRESH fruit (not canned, fresh). Eat fruit mostly as plain fruit (= not combined with any other food types) and when your stomach is empty because fruit needs much less digestive time than other food items. If the fruit stays in your stomach together with protein or carbohydrates the results will easily lead to digestive difficulties. This is because different foods (1) need different lengths of time in the stomach and (2) need different digestive chemicals (alkaline or acidy). As a mess-up of different digestive chemical needs a process of food rotting starts in the digestive system leading to toxins in the immune system and finally in every cell of the body. Signs for this are bad breath (= a sign of rotting food items in the digestive system), heartburn, skin itching (because the body eliminates poisons also through the skin pores - our skin is our largest organ) and, as one sign, the lack of energy. Finally, when the body systems cannot handle the continuously growing toxic material, this situation will lead, sooner or later, to different sicknesses including to cancer.
It is not what we eat but what we digest and assimilate*) that adds to our health, strength and usefulness. *) to assimilate = to take in and utilize as nourishment & to absorb into the system. For a good assimilation a proper application of food combining rules is a must. These facts just stated in the few above lines belong to the area of the food combining science. In this internet seminar we will not handle the food combining rules any further than to how to eat fruit (see above). The healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition book to be published will have a whole chapter about food combining facts. Meanwhile, eat all fruit when your stomach is empty and do not combine fruit with any other food category as explained above. Aim to eat sweat fruit and more sour fruit also as their own category not combining sweat and sour.
STILL EDITING - RE-VISIT AFTER 2 HOURS.-
H0ney
Honey is a sugar, so use it sparingly. It has a high caloric value and will put you on a sugar high and low. Most honey is pasteurized - that process kills the most beneficial nutrients in honey. Raw, unpasteurized honey is available but for a higher price and may not be safe because of the transportation challenges.
If you are interested, have your own honey production - can be done in a city also - then you'll get fresh honey.
click: Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees
Many cities have an association for beekeeping - take their training. Search the web for contacts.
Do not feed honey to infants. Spores of Clostridium botulinum have been found in a small percentage of honey in North America. This is not dangerous to adults and older children, but infants can have a serious reaction of illness in the first year click: Infant botulism
Do not add honey to baby food or use as a soother to quiet a fussy or colicky baby. colic (noun), colicky (adj.) - colic = severe, often fluctuating pain in the abdomen caused by intestinal gas or obstruction in the intestines and suffered esp. by babies (also by adults) - somewhat similar to constipation. Most colicky pain is caused by unhealthy food given to the baby (and an adult eating in an unhealthy manner - also some medication can cause colic ): bottle feeding & other commercial baby food instead of breast feeding, feeding bananas that are not ripe enough (ripe = the banana peel is dark) and some other food items too early. Consult your pediatrician as needed click:
click: Colic Definition - Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinicclick: Colic in Adults
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Health, Income, and Inequality NBER Reporter: Research Summary Spring 2003Search Results
This Internet Seminar has
Three parts - all based on the most recent science
(1) Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy (Article 1 of 3),
(2) Complete Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan for your pregnancy, for your baby, for the parents, and for the whole family (Article 2 of 3),
(3) Introduction to Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.'s nationwide-worldwide services to ease human suffering and search for the good life
(Article 3 of 3)
(4) At the end additional information for lifetime opportunities
________________________
Article 1 of 3
(Articles 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 next below)
Throughout all 3 articles click green for further info
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Founding President of STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
________________
Updated: March 28, 2014
Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy Internet Seminar
Foreword
This internet seminar is written for both parents.
When both parents are involved in every step of the pregnancy & monitoring the mother's and the baby's safety, the wife-husband bond and the parents - new child bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Also, this complete guide is written for your possible children. If you do not have children, read this foreword anyway for the future use for your children and take from this text the ideas that fit now for your present family situation. The study instructions are still the same for the two of you to do together now. Save this seminar for your future children and teach them a few years from now.
Have your children (of any age) living with you involved daily in every step of the pregnancy - then the whole family bond will get stronger and your children will learn valuable healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles. Your children would also learn early on how to have healthy babies when their own time comes. Handle and discuss this guide material in a weekly family meeting during the pregnancy months - anyone who can read should study this guide and prepare pre-agreed text parts for meetings. Have your children of any age present in the family meetings, even the toddlers. The more new words your child learns early in life, the better chances for higher success in the future. Go through the whole guide step by step together as a family.
(click: Your Toddler's & Child's Success = the article "Tips for your child's success" - see what else is there to your interest - the link has text, voice, videos - American Academy of Pediatrics)
In addition to the basic text, this internet seminar has plenty of web links. For proper learning every member of your family who can read will study also the web link articles. Some links may be sensitive and may need added parental guidance during the family meetings.
The weekly meetings can be done at home or (depending on the season) as a family pick-nick trip to your favorite park or to other outdoors place - the nature has plenty of fresh oxygen (good for the new mother and for everyone), it will be relaxing, refreshing, beautiful & healthy for the body & mind. Some outdoors locations may not have access to the internet - those links can be viewed at home. During the colder months you may have another inside destination with privacy to have pick-nick & your weekly family learning meeting.
The more different experiences your family has together also outside the home, the deeper the family bonds and the more successful your children will be in their adult lives. A weekly family meeting, no matter how small or big your family, will create miracles - you'll see. You and your children will value these weekly family outings and meetings for learning. You all will remember them forever as a pleasure. As the result your family bonds will be strong forever.
Guide your children to learn all what this internet seminar teaches. Your children will remember this as a well-appreciated gift given by their parents for life.
During the pregnancy it is especially important that the mother (1) eats healthy food & keeps herself away from all harmful ingredients, (2) keeps herself well hydrated with plain water, (3) keeps her body & mind in top-condition, (4) sleeps enough hours and (5) sees her pediatrician and/or her primary care physician as required. When the pregnant mother asks the other family members to help her remember what to do to stay healthy and the new baby to stay healthy, everyone learns at the same time.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
When you involve your children to help you to stay healthy, they will gladly do it, remind you enthusiastically and then they will easily copy what the mother and the father do. The children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do. With all these actions the family union gets healthier and stronger. Then your children can much easier resist the wrong models outside their loving home. That's an important benefit for everyone in your family. The earlier you involve your children to learn the health & success rules for life, the easier they can avoid harmful habits and the more successful they will become in life.
After the delivery it is as important as during the pregnancy to continue applying healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for the breastfeeding milk quality and for the mother's own health safety for life. Then your children see that healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition is not only for being pregnant but is the basic success principle for the whole life.
A big blessing for all of you.
As the whole family, apply all information in this seminar guide - then you give the gift of good health and successful, long life to all of you.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
One more final thing: Negotiate with your delivery doctor how to have your whole family best involved in the actual delivery process in the hospital. What does the mother want? Whom does the doctor & the hospital allow to be in the delivery room, etc.? The whole family being involved is best for everyone because it will be a learning process and will strengthen your family ties.
It's also important to realize that this internet seminar is not written to give you medical guidance - only your pediatrician or primary care physician who know you can do that. This seminar guides you in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition and is written for educational purposes. The web links are provided for additional detailed information.
When your new baby is safely in the family and you all have studied together this whole seminar, then, all of you in your family, keep applying the life-quality lifting healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for a better, richer and longer life.
Then next:
Let us at STAF, Inc. know how many family members (girls/boys plus their first name & age) are studying/studied this seminar "Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents"
A girl or a boy? Let us know your new baby's name & birthday & birth weight and please, mail us
a picture of your new baby. In an old-fashioned manner, mail us a postal letter and use our
NYC mailing address at the very end of this internet seminar. On the envelope write also
"New Baby". In your letter add your email address so we can email our suggestion for your next
STAF, Inc.'s Internet Seminar.
Make your weekend family meetings a permanent event. It is worth it.
STAF, Inc.'s postal mailing address is at the very end of this internet seminar.
____________
The Internet Seminar
A Well-Balanced Diet (1) Before & (2) During Pregnancy Will Lower The Risk of Preterm Delivery and (3) After Pregnancy Will Give More Nutrients in Your Baby's Breastfeeding & Improving Your Baby's Health for Life
Notice: The level of both parents' health at the time of
the conception will to a great extent affect the baby's future health.
A guide how to be fully prepared for your baby's best.
A well-balanced diet
means getting the right types & right amounts of food to supply nutrition & energy for maintaining body cells, tissues & organs, and for supporting normal growth & development, getting enough water for proper hydration and
giving the immune system strength to fight any disease.
(Throughout the text click green for further info)
The opposite:
An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases including (click each): high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal blood lipids*), overweight/obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and any other deadly disease. *) Lipids: Another word for "fats."
This seminar text continues below after the event with The Earth Day deadline
______________________________
Before we go forward in this seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
we place next a temporary text
Do this important thing before
April 22, 2014, The Earth Day:
(this matter also relates to your baby having a healthier life)
Sign online to demand The U.S. Congress
to take action to protect the human life
(Links & info below)
This April 22, 2014 topic concerns everyone and every family including YOUR family.
1st example: According to experts at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over 300 (three-hundred) toxic chemicals are showing up in our umbilical cords.
click: Umbilical cord care: Do's and don'ts for parents
click: Images for Umbilical cord
2nd example: Women put, on a daily basis, an average of 515 toxic chemicals on their faces alone. That is 515 too many.
That has contributed (1) to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women, (2) to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age and (3) to in growing numbers to adult women starting menopause 10-15 years earlier. These facts point to a shorter life span. click: Menopause
3rd example: Most of our daily food we all eat, no matter what the food origin, has hundreds harmful chemicals. The air, the water, the ground - they are all more or less polluted with environmental toxins. Not even the organic products are fully safe. Is it then a wonder that our modern lifestyle kills over half of the population at the half-life.
We can still clean up this earth - but we all must change our lifestyle.
The governments must create effective regulations (based on science, not on politics) leading to cleaning, not to more greed and not to additional environmental, killing toxins.
Latest on April 22, 2014, give your signature to fight back - that is for everyone's best.
Environmental toxins in pregnancy and in every day life
click: Wikipedia - Environmental toxins & Fetal Development
(with info how to avoid some of the toxins) - click: Fetus
click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC www.cdc.gov
click: Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals - CDC
click: Updated Tables - National Report on Human exposure
to environmental chemicals - CDC
Poisonous stuff
that can hurt our nervous systems, mess with our developing brains and lower our IQs. Really bad stuff that's also linked to cancer, birth defects and asthma.
Fight back - help to bring the U.S. Congress to its knees. You have the power to do so - to make them listen and take action.
It's time for the lawmakers to do something about all the bad chemicals out there. Because that stuff ends up in our babies, in hour homes, in all our bodies, we must have a real change in this very wrong situation creating human suffering, costing lives and endangering our future generations.
FIGHTTOXINS.COM will gather 100,000 signatures by Earth Day,
April 22, 2014, and force a discussion with the government to get protective legislation to save human lives.
Click: How e-petitions works - e-petitions - HM Government e-petitions
Take a swing at these dangerous chemicals,
visit (copy & paste) fighttoxins.com
& sign the petition latest on the Earth day, April 22, 2014
click: Earth Day
If you & your family lives in another country, you can be involved and sign the petition as this concerns the whole world - put your voice up - it matters.
As Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. is one important organization to help your family to a better life the U.S. or worldwide,
we would appreciate if you could send us a letter in an old-fashioned manner via the postal service and let us know (1) if you & your family(including your children), signed the 100,000 petition (how many in your family signed), (2) your opinion about this FIGHTTOXINS.COM petition to fight the chemicals and
(3) we would appreciate if you could enclose a donation (as paper money) to STAF, Inc. - we do need your donation as a not-for-profit organization.
Our extensive, "World's # 1 advice website in all family matters for the good life" has everything your family needs for healthier, financially richer life.
When you, based on our guidance, reach your new goals, we at STAF, Inc. would like to know your family's success story in a new letter.
Mailing address: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_____________The End of The Earth Day Event ______________
The Internet Seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
Continues:
*) Lipids: Another word for "fats." Lipids can be more formally defined as substances such as a fat, oil or wax that dissolves in alcohol but not in water.
Lipids contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen but have far less oxygen proportionally than carbohydrates click: Carbohydrates
Lipids are an important part of living cells. Together with carbohydrates and proteins, lipids are the main constituents of plant and animal cells.
Click: Cholesterol and click: triglycerides are lipids. Lipids are easily stored in the body. They serve as a source of fuel and are an important constituent of the structure of cells.
Etymology of the word lipid
Whereas the everyday term "fat" comes from the Old English (from "faett" meaning crammed = completely full), the more scientific term "lipid" comes from the Greek "lipos" which referred to animal fat or vegetable oil.
Increasing intake of healthy foods before & during pregnancy
is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, not only during the pregnancy but also important before conceiving and also important after the delivery because good breastfeeding can be based only on correct, healthy nutrition.
The breastfeeding should go on at least the first six months - the longer beyond 6 months the better - you want the best for your baby. Your baby gets the best nutrients in a correct combination and the best, lasting protection against sickness from your breastfeeding efforts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that breastfeeding continue for at least twelve (12) months.
click: American Academy of Pediatrics www.aap.org
If for some reason the mother cannot breastfeed, other safe, natural solutions are introduced in the Healthy Eating Plan below.
It is not recommended to use formula as several worldwide studies show they can cause serious dangers to the baby because they are man-made, factory products with non-natural ingredients.
A brief quote of one of the earliest formula study:
"Decades of bottle-feeding, formula babies may have left a costly legacy, in both human and financial terms, of a generation of adults at higher risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke than they should be, according to research published in the Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, establishes beyond doubt that breastfed babies become healthier adults."
This Lancet study was published already 20 years ago and even though tens of other studies after the Lancet have the same findings, the man-made formula is still widely & strongly pretending being suitable for a baby - it is not.
There are other safe choices.
Best is the breastfeeding , the 2nd best introduced below - the man-made formulas cannot have what the nature can provide.
The easy-to-remember truth for the adult, teenager, child, toddler & for the baby food is in this
Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(click: Michael Pollan)
The mother's milk is perfect food for the baby- it is made of what the mother eats. For the safety of the baby the mother needs to eat food that the nature has made - not the processed, factory made disguise.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
Below detailed information what not to and what to eat.
Any questions after studying all information below, ask free via email
(contact info below).
Click for the Lancet article: Bottle-fed babies 'face higher risks
One more important area of facts:
It is understandable that we all know that the mother's health condition
matters when planning for a pregnancy. But it is now known that the father's health condition also matters as well.
This first link has info for both of you - even though it states as the source:
Office of Women's Health - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services -
Click: Preconception health
Click: Future fathers: 10 ways to help her get pregnant
___________________
Definition
Preterm Delivery
By Mayo Clinic Staff
A preterm/premature birth is a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the baby is due — in other words, after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, which usually lasts about 40 weeks.
Premature birth gives the baby less time to develop in the womb. Premature babies, especially those born earliest, often have complicated medical problems.
Depending on how early a baby is born, he or she may be:
(1) Late preterm, born between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy
(2) Very preterm, born at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy
(3) Extremely preterm, born at less than 25 weeks of pregnancy
Most premature births occur in the late preterm stage.
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When you're pregnant, eating healthy foods is more important than ever.
You need more protein, iron, calcium, and click: folic acid than you did before
pregnancy.
Folic acid is a B vitamin. It helps the body make healthy new cells. Everyone needs folic acid. For women who may get pregnant, it is really important. Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can prevent major birth click: defects of the baby's brain or spine.
Foods with folic acid in them include
- Leafy green vegetables
- Fruits (fresh, not from a can)
- Dried beans, peas, peanuts & nuts (not roasted, no salt)
- Full grain breads, full grain, unprocessed cereals and other full grain products
You also need more calories. But "eating for two" doesn't mean eating twice as much. It means that the foods you eat are the main source of nutrients for your baby. Sensible, balanced meals will be best for you and your baby.You should gain weight gradually during your pregnancy, with most of the weight gained in the last trimester. Generally, doctors suggest women gain weight at the following rate:
- 2 to 4 pounds total during the first trimester
- 3 to 4 pounds per month for the second and third trimesters
Expectant mothers are often told to eat lots of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, and a new study adds to evidence that a healthy diet is linked to a reduced risk of premature birth.
Researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 66,000 pregnant women in Norway between 2002 and 2008. Premature birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) occurred in slightly more than 5 percent of the pregnancies.
Women who ate a "prudent" diet that included plenty of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and water had a much lower risk of preterm delivery, as did those with a traditional Norwegian diet of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables, the investigators found.
The study was published online March 4, 2014 in the journal BMJ (= British Medical Journal).
click: BMJ: Home
STAF, Inc.'s comment: The Western diet causes more health risks in the pregnant mother including diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Your baby needs healthy foods that are packed with nutrients - you also need the same healthy foods. When you breastfeed your baby the milk must be healthy - it can be healthy milk only if and when the mother has eaten healthy, natural food. Human milk is the most perfect food but must be clean and have no poisonous chemicals.
Thus, eat in the manner during your pregnancy that is safe for your baby and for you as the mother. All needed guidance is in this compact healthy lifestyle guide.
However, increasing consumption of healthy foods is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, the researchers said because every pregnant woman has sometimes unhealthy cravings and may forget to let them pass.
The findings also support advice given to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet that includes (more detailed 'what to eat' info in article 2 of 2):
(1) variety of fresh fruits (not from cans), (2) variety of fresh (or steamed) vegetables, (3) whole grains, fish (best: Atlantic salmon from Alaska, mackerel & sardines - these 3 fish types all can be from a can = low price & suitable as human food as long the label states: Wild Caught), (4) and drink enough plain water - enough is most likely more than you may be used to: drink daily fresh water the same amount in liquid oz. as your "normal healthy weight" is in lbs (not the overweight lbs). Drink no soda (no sugary, no diet - both with their chemicals harmful), no energy drinks (full of harmful chemicals), no energy bars (too sugary, partially processed, dead calories, they are candy bars in disguise), no chips (dead, processed calories, too salty with many other unhealthy ingredients).
AND: of course, during pregnancy: (1) no smoking, (2) no alcohol, no wine either, (3) avoid caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate have caffeine), (4) keep your
system hydrated = drink water daily as instructed a few lines above. Our human body is about 70 % made of water, blood and brains, both about 90+ % water - thus it is important to have enough water every day.
This Healthy Eating Guide gives all necessary details - apply the advice in every detail. You will be glad you did - the desired results will be there. These these same principles in full to your children - they will be glad you did. The weekly family meeting is the way to teach them as instructed in this guide.
However, although the study found an association between eating a healthy diet during pregnancy and a lower risk of preterm delivery, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study authors said premature birth can lead to major short- and long-term health problems, and it accounts for nearly 75 percent of all newborn deaths.
Healthy eating during pregnancy is always a good idea, according to an accompanying editorial by Lucilla Poston, of King's College London.
Poston said several studies have suggested that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent premature birth. "[Health professionals] would therefore be well advised to reinforce the message that pregnant women eat a healthy diet," she said.
There is more to study for your precious baby's best:
See the important 3 links next below as an important part of this Article 1 of 3
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Links to additional pregnancy topics
Both parents need to study these six (6) links below and together monitor that everything above and in these links is applied - give a safe start to your precious baby.
Notice:
When both parents care for the baby, before and after the baby's birth, the emotional parent-child bond and the wife-husband bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Click each:
(1) Getting pregnant
(2) Pregnancy week by week
(3) Labor & delivery, postpartum care
(LAT. post = after; partum = childbirth)
(4) Breastfeeding - American Academy of Pediatrics
Click: Breast-feeding twins
Click: Breast-feeding: Pumping tips
Click: More - several links
(5) Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for
Obesity: Study
Click: Infant development: Birth to 3 months
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics
SOURCES:
(1) BMJ (British Medical Journal), news release, March 4, 2014,
(2) NIH: National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements,
(3) Mayo Clinic,
(4) Medline,
(5) Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health,
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics,
(7) United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - www.cdc.gov
(8) STAF, Inc.
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The next article 2 of 3 is for every member of your family - study & handle together in your weekly family meeting. Give your children the most precious gift: health for life.
Article 2 of 3
How to maintain your health -
How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages.
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit, is the leading, new organization for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
_______________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering
& turns lives to victory *
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your name & email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
___________________________
This information is suitable advice for everyone 2 years or older
The Abbreviated (yet comprehensive) Guide for Healthy Lifestyle, Correct Nutrition & with a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
developed by STAF, Inc. (1) for the U.S. gov. use as a program in the new health care system as the tested solution to our overweight & obesity problems and to our rampant sickness level, also (2) to-be published as a how-to book for the worldwide market as STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life ©
This program is at the same time an automatic,
"Aaahh!Finally-the-results"© Weight loss program, no calorie counting, just follow the new program's instructions for easy, natural food preparing - nothing else to do. Nothing else to buy - no gimmicks, no "miracle" powders,
no pills, no new "discovery berries" from the world's jungles - just plain & simple correct, natural, real food combined with healthy habits meant originally for the human body & mind to stay beaming wit good health and leading to a healthy & longer life without further suffering.
Everyone can afford this program as we do not sell you food - we guide you to buy the ingredients in your own supermarket and prepare the food in your very own kitchen - based on all new, delicious recipes. As the result, your new, lasting health will cost less than ever before. See the amazingly low monthly food cost below in the article 2 of 2. The savings is "found money" - you invest it to become a millionaire (not a joke - that plan is part of this new program).
The full program has step-by-step guidance for "How to become financially independent, also potentially a (multi)millionaire, starting with $50 a month". Preliminary, brief investment info in this website, tab: credit & credit cards. Nothing like this never existed before - suitable for everyone nationwide and worldwide.
Below detailed info, for you and for your whole family, what to drink & eat for your improved health and for your longer life.
This guide is kept up with the latest research info - thus it is a good idea to study this again if you studied it sometimes in the even a close past.
Repetitio est mater studiorum (Latin)
(Repetition is the mother of study)
© Copyrights STAF, Inc. 2014
_______________________
Instructions for how to study
this Health Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide
Because this information can provide you excellent health leading to a longer, more enjoyable life, this guide may be the most important material for you and for your whole family.
This guide is fit for every family in the U.S. and for every family worldwide.
The purpose of this material is to guide you and your family
(1) to maintain your health and
(2) to restore your possible lost health due to an unhealthy lifestyle and to incorrect nutrition.
Every family member should be involved in this learning process.
To master the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition principles early in life could easily be the best gift you, as the parent(s), can give to your children for life.
Become a healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition inspirator for your children.
Your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Obtaining this information based on the natural health laws will save potentially plenty in (1) sickness care, (2) will eliminate pain and suffering (that have been based on a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition) and (3) provide for every family member a longer, more enjoyable life.
Even though this could be called "a-mini-guide" it has a substantial amount information, probably more than you expect. This guide has the basic healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles in a compact form, yet it is quite comprehensive.
Instructions: how to gain a healthy, meaningful life
It is important to follow the detailed instructions
(1) First read through the whole text in the article 1 (above) and in the article 2 (= this part in front of you is part 2).
During the first reading do NOT click any of the web links (basic text in black, the web links mostly in green , also in other color, with the preceding word click:) - read the full text in both articles 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 to get an idea what you and your family can expect to learn. Every family member should be involved and follow these instructions - as a group everyone learns better and sticks to the guidance to gain a better, healthier life and also all together building a million or more in the bank.
(2) When every family member has done the first reading, have a family meeting to decide together how you are going to proceed best as a family.
(3) During the 2nd reading, which is now the learning process, take notes, click every web link and study the link material as broadly as you see suitable.
In most links there are several pages to your interest. The better & wider job you do in learning, the better your health will be and the longer you will enjoy your life.
(4) Based on the guide instructions organize your weekly family learning meeting to discuss the material and deciding together how you are going to apply the material together in your family to build a better, healthier, richer & longer life for everyone.
(5) When your lives start improving let us at the STAF, Inc. know your success stories either by postal mail or via email. Contact info in this guide text and in
STAF, Inc.'s website, home page. Any questions via email.
e: [email protected]
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization,
needs & will appreciate your donations
Your donations will ease human suffering nation/worldwide
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
Include your email address in the envelope
STAF, Inc. will email a receipt for your donation
_____________
STAF, Inc. has developed a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program for the U.S. gov. use with the main title
STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Big Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
Will also be published as a book - all suitable for every country's needs worldwide.
This Internet seminar is abbreviated from the same material.
_____________
This guide fits women, men & children (min. 2 years old)
The 2 starting statements
(1) About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle and wrong nutrition.
(2) Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed
and do not necessarily automatically become part of our golden years.
Introduction
In the past in our human history, people died mostly in pandemics.
A pandemic (from Greek pan "all" and demos "people") is click: an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.
(epidemic from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people")(throughout the text click green for further info)
Plague (Lat. plaga = wound) click: Plague - Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the
most notorious disease episodes in history.
The Black Death peaking in Europe in the years around 1350 CE. (CE = common era - also Current Era or Christian Era ) was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of 50 % oof the population an estimated 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1348–50 CE. click: Wikipedia
E.g., still in the World War One 1914 - 1918 many times more soldiers died because of the infections due to low sanitary safety than died in the actual war actions.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate (= winner of a Nobel prize) Alexander Fleming in 1928. click: Nobel
Penicillin antibiotics were among the first drugs to be effective against many previously serious diseases. E.g. The famous British Prime Minister Churchill saved his life with Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery, click: Sir Winston Churchill
When in comes to food & nutrition,
in the past generations people ate FOOD = REAL food, prepared in their own home kitchen using natural ingredients.
Today most people do not any more know what real food is - the results: sickness & suffering & early death.
E.g., based on study, click and read: Fast Food Hamburgers Could be as Little as 2% ACTUAL Meat - and many call it "food".
(Yes, you saw it correctly 2 (two) % - no misprint)
Real Food & Enzymes
Real food suitable for us human or suitable for our pets, IS NOT the modern food-like stuff that is processed, "fortified" with chemicals, poisonous for the human body and lacking in life preserving nutrients.
E.g. the enzymes, large biological molecules responsible for the thousands of metabolic processes that sustain life, die at the temperature of about 132 F = 55 C.
Yet, the chemicalized food processing industry uses even higher temperatures - the results:
very little (if any) life-sustaining enzymes left. Click: Pasteurization
Notice: Without enzymes, life, as we know it, would not exist.
At any given moment, all of the work being done inside any cell is being done by enzymes. Processed "food-like non-food" does not have enough healthy enzymes - that's why eating unhealthy food leads to sickness, suffering and to a shorter life.
Only real, NATURAL, unprocessed food can deliver proper enzymes to maintain the human health and the human life.
To help you to realize the truth in these 3 quotations they are repeated 'here and there'. Many people place them on their refrigerator door.
(1) "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, don't"
Click: Michael Pollan
(2) "To stay healthy and have a long life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(3) "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
"Flash-card" - REAL FOOD
Daily main parts - %-wise in this order:
(1) fresh, raw, unprocessed fruit, berries & vegetables,
(2) unprocessed, full grains,
(3) unprocessed fish or lean meat,
(4) tree-nuts, peanuts & seeds (not roasted, not salted) - if any allergy, replace daily with extra fresh fruit & fresh vegetables,
(5) cold pressed oils,
(6) enough water; coffee, tea counts as water (no diet or sugary sodas, no energy drinks) (in oz. the same amount of water as your normal weight (not overweight) is in lbs,
(7) physical & mental exercise (walk 25K steps daily) &
(8) enough sleep (adults 7-8 h / teenagers 10 h / child 10 - 12 h / toddlers 12-15 h/ babies sleep almost 24 h- the life sustaining growth hormone develops in all humans when we sleep and the brains clean themselves from poisons while we sleep - click: Goodnight. Sleep Clean
If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 1/11/14.
This keeps you on the right road to your better health.
All related, detailed instructions are in this compact guide.
Then there may be areas only your primary care physician can advice you to do
(because he/she knows you personally).
Enzymes are the tools of nature.
Enzymes cut and paste products such as nutrients. They speed up all vital biological processes.
The enzymes in the stomach, for instance, ensure that food is cut into tiny particles that can be converted into energy in the body. Wherever one substance needs to be transformed into another, nature uses enzymes to speed up the process.
That's why eating enzyme-dead or enzyme-low, processed or fast food
(= bad food) causes overweight because there are not enough enzymes in the digestive system to break the food into tiny particles our body system could absorb. Then the partially digested food sits inside the body and in the weakened immune system & starts rotting. Next the harmful, deadly germs & bacteria attack our cells infecting our body finally leading to any disease. Overweight lbs are made of this poisonous stuff rutting in the body because the person kept eating enzyme-dead processed or fast-food (= bad-food). That's why even a minor overweight can lead to any sickness, suffering and to an early death. A major overweight & high obesity is a sure killer.
STAF, Inc.'s tested, new methods are the solutions to guide you and anyone back to good health leading to an enjoyable life without suffering.
WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE? Eat food or poison? Life or death?
If you are overweight more or less (75 % of the population is), study this compact healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition guide again and again until you do all it teaches. To apply the information can return & maintain your health & reduce suffering and even save your life.
When you succeed in your efforts, email us to STAF, Inc. your success story so you can further help other people get motivated to accept the same knowledge as the road to their new, healthy life.
(The e-mail & postal address in the home page).
For additional info click: What are enzymes?
Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. If you have metabolic syndrome or any of the components of metabolic syndrome, aggressive lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent the development of serious health problems.
This Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide in front of you is your solution to your and your family's good health.
Study well every detail in this guide, handle everything in your weekly family meeting and guide everyone in your family to apply the information.
Quotation: "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Give yourself, your spouse and your children the best gift in life: good health.
Your good health leads to a longer, healthier, financially richer & happier life.
When the enzyme molecules are gone in the modern food-killing process, is it then a wonder that worldwide a wide part of the population suffer of click: Metabolic Syndrome storing larger and larger amounts of toxins in every cell of the body and finally developing all possible killer sicknesses: cancer, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. - just name any sickness - it's endless.
Sickness care (wrongly called health care) costs go up, human suffering gets wider, early deaths become more common. We at the STAF guide you in health care: we guide you and everyone willing to learn to restore & keep the precious base element: health - and based on health have a long, happy life.
The industrial age with its chemicals brought us all these "innovations".
Still in the 1950' - 1960's the advertisements touted "Health through the modern chemicals". Smoking was glorified publicly and still in the 1950's, 1960's believed being healthy for us human. That wrong belief was because smoking raises the heart beating rate as does exercise so the logical "science" thinking was "smoking is healthy". Still in the 50's and early 60's the tobacco commercials had medical doctors smoking and stating "I, Dr. X smoke Life*) - it is for my health". *) "Life" was a cigarette brand.
Today the use of pesticides has destroyed the healthy ground. The land, air & water are polluted as the result of wide use of chemicals once defined as a life & health improving solution for everyone worldwide.
Today the animals grown for food are fed with harmful chemicals
& click: Antibiotics ending in the food chain in the humans, in our pets and in everything including polluting the oceans and all elements.
Greed & The Modern Cattle Care - a life danger in our world and in our food
Rampant, irresponsible greed has widely destroyed in our modern times the proper, humane care of the animals meant for the human food.
The wide overuse of click: Antibiotics to make the animals grow faster is endangering also the human health by ending in our drinking water and in us when eating the meat - we develop resistance and the antibiotics do not work when needed in an emergency situation. CDC - The U.S. Centers of Disease Control, states "it can be lethal".
Click: Antibiotics: Misuse puts you and others at risk - Mayo Clinic
Physical exercise in us humans makes us stronger by expelling toxins out from our body - we stay healthier. The immune system does not have a pump to get rid of the toxins - our physical movements work as its pump.
Yet, most of the animals used as the human food live in a small space where they cannot hardly move around. It is like living our whole human life in the economy class airplane seat - what would our human body condition be if that would be our destiny? What about our mental condition? Our whole lifetime would be painful torturing.
Yet, our legislation still accepts that the animals we eat in our human food chain
can be living their whole life in similar terrifying conditions without any possibility to exercise and pump out the toxic from their muscles.
Is that kind of an animal meat, filled with toxins, really healthy for us humans?
Every living creature has emotions in addition to the physical pain.
The emotional pain feeds additional toxic chemicals into the animal'' meat and we humans eat it.
In the past the cattle grew outside freely roaming happily around eating fresh grass and enjoying the nature.
Now we give them an airline economy seat to live their whole life inside and expect them staying healthy without much physical exercise to keep the body & mind healthy. This is the background for the overuse of the antibiotics in the animal industry.
Often the slaughterhouses process knowingly (greed) or unknowingly (ignorance) sick animals. Anyone would understand that meat from sick sources is not suitable for us humans and not suitable for our pets.
Quotation "For greed all nature is too little"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca click: Seneca
One example of class 1 meat recall - class 1 = high health risk
In this case Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds of beef because it processed diseased and
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. The huge amount of recalled meat was supposed to be extra healthy "Fancy grass-fed Beef".
Is this a greed based decision to process the contaminated meat or did they really not know that the animals were diseased and unsound. You be the judge.
click: Class 1 – High Risk Recall - click: Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef
What about milk and eggs if the cows and the chickens are not allowed to move around?
Cow's Milk
Is there pus in the cow's milk produced in the U.S. ?
Pus = dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
Pus is a sign the cow having an infection in the udder (= the baglike organ where the milk is). Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to click: epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness*) (= difficulties in walking) click: lameness in cows and mastitis (udder infections) click: Mastitis in dairy cows, are the two click: leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States.
*) Lameness is a clinical sign of a more severe disorder that results in a disturbance in the gait (= manner ow walking) and the ability to move the body about, typically in response to pain, injury, or abnormal anatomy
click: Bovine Growth Hormone (bovine = relating to cow & cattle)
There is also an agreement how much pus is allowed to be in the U.S.
The 2003 FDA click: Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) PDF (3.5MB) sets the maximum level of somatic cells allowed in Grade A milk at 750,000 cells per. milliliter - a level that has been in effect since at least 1999
Read the health-related facts in this article: click: How much pus is there in milk? | NutritionFacts.org
Then read this article - all necessary facts out together
click: The Dangers of Drinking Cow's Milk
The dairy products, when they are clean have beneficial nutrients - but remember: where does the cow get the nutrients? From eating the grass outside
(= "vegetable") or eating soy, corn, hay (dried "grass")*) - all vegetables. So will you get them from eating a variety of vegetables daily - eat a variety of fresh fruit daily also. Thus one can live healthy without dairy products. Some are allergic to dairy and live happily healthy when eating vegetables & fresh fruit. Cheese in moderation is a treat if you are not allergic to it. *)click Hay -
Milk has calcium is touted (= to convince) - so do vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts - without any side effects.
click: Top 10 Foods Highest in Calcium
People who are lactose intolerant have trouble digesting the milk sugar lactose. Lactase is an enzyme that splits the milk sugar lactose, to produce the sugars glucose and galactose. Often these individuals have no problems with goats milk.
Goat's Milk -
a healthier, more nutritious option for any age - also for your baby because goat’s milk is closest in structure to human milk = closest to the mother's breast milk
Goat's milk has more beneficial nutrients in a cleaner form than cow's milk does.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow's milk can enjoy goat's milk.
Goat's milk is also more suitable for a baby because goat’s milk is closest in its structure to human milk.
Your pediatrician should know these fact - if not, it's time to find a more knowledgeable baby doctor.
Goat milk industry is smaller and is not so corrupted with the use of hormones and other harmful chemicals/medicines as the cow milk industry is.
Goats are not standing in an economy class seat their whole life - they are moving & jumping around often year round as they can take any weather better than the cows. They eat healthie natural grass & leaves outside much more than the cows.
That's why the goats produce much cleaner, safer and nutrition wise more valuable milk.
click: The Health Benefits of Goat's Milk
One more article explaining the differences between goat's & cow's milk - it is good to compare different texts:
click: Goat's Milk vs. Cow's Milk
No one can deny that goat's milk is a safer, cleaner, more upscale & healthier product than cow's milk - STAF, Inc. endorses the use of goat milk at least
(1) for the babies and for (2) people who cannot tolerate cow's milk.
If you can afford the smallish price difference for the whole family, be blessed
& go for the goat!
click also this link: cow’s milk to see the facts why cow's milk is secondary to goat's milk.
Sheep's Milk
Then there is the sheep's milk - a small niche (= a specialty segment of a market) , more expensive and not everywhere available (except with the modern "same-day-next-day delivery" = gets more expensive, no need pay more - instead invest the saved money - use goat's milk - if you can afford sheep's milk, buy and use it in addition to using the goat's milk). Sheep's milk has little more nutrients than goat's milk and much more than cow's milk and is safe for your baby.
To look further click: Sheep 101
What milk for your newborn, your baby?
Mother's milk is the most perfect food - breastfeed as long as you can - minimum 6 months - up to 12 months if you can - talk to you baby doctor. Breastfeeding is healthier for the mother and healthier for the baby.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
The mutual mental-emotional benefits are more rewarding when breast-feeding. Any sickness in the mother? - Talk to you baby doctor. Any sickness in the baby? - A sick baby needs more mother's milk (because it is perfect food & healing), not less, is the principle, but talk to your baby doctor because all depends on "what sickness".
Click: The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov.
The health outcomes in the developed countries differ substantially who
formula feed compared with those who breastfeed.
If he mother has difficulties developing enough beast milk, breast milk can also be bought, but: warning - there may be health risks (contamination, the source is not always the healthiest & it is quite expensive) - talk to your baby doctor.
Goat's milk click: Goat's Milk for Babies and sheep's milk click: Sheep's Milk are both close to the mother's milk and suitable for the baby - talk to you baby doctor.
Whole FRESH food and the blender for your baby - prepare your own FRESH baby food
It saves your money, yet gives better quality food and secures better health for your baby.
To prepare your own baby food takes less time than you may think and gives you peace of mind because you know that you are doing the right thing when giving the healthiest food to your precious baby.
Your baby deserves real fresh food, not commercial imitation or poisoned with added preservatives & other harmful chemicals.
In most cases the fine-blended (= use the blender - instructions in article 2 of 3 what kind) whole food can be added in milk or water earlier than many opinions state - talk to your baby doctor.
Fresh orange, apple, banana & berries blended fine can be given quite early.
Banana should be ripe (= the peel with brown spots or even darker is a ripe banana) - less ripe (harder) banana easily gives constipation, especially to your baby. Ripe banana can also be spoon-fed. Most people eat and feed their babies harder (= not ripe) bananas and then blame the banana for giving constipation.
Bananas are among the most common foods worldwide. By weight bananas are among the lowest priced foods and offer a high nutritional value.
Fine-blended soft-steamed*) potatoes & soft-steamed vegetables & soft-steamed beans can be given to the baby earlier than is common but talk to your baby doctor before you do. *) steaming keeps 30 - 50 % more more nutrients than boiling - adopt steaming also for your whole family needs.
NOTICE: Do not mix fruits and vegetables or other foods in the same bottle - can cause stomach ache, gas, constipation, crying and suffering - same with the adults.
Feed fresh fruit as their own category - feed potatoes & other vegetables as their own category - feed steamed/boiled beans as their own category - do not mix different categories.
Reminder: many baby doctors do NOT have much or even enough training in nutrition, thus asking a baby doctor guidance in nutrition is often similar to asking a street beggar guidance for how to become a milloinaire - but she/he knows your baby's development level for different common fruits, vegetables, berries & other food. In addition, still too many baby doctors believe in commercially made "food".
Eggs
The free-ranged chickens lay eggs that have much more healthy nutrients than the chickens kept in small boxes without any chance for moving around to exercise. California has a new legislation for healthier chicken to produce healthier eggs. The new CA law gives several times more space to all their chickens than most other states do. click: They Are Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens - The New York Times, March 3, 2014
The Past and The Present
In the past human history the infectious disease pandemics killed people, often a half or more of the population.
Today's pandemic
is the the way most people worldwide eat in a unhealthy manner stuff that has not much to do with food. Then they get sick, suffer and leave this life much too soon.
During the past worst pandemics about half of the population died.
The same thing now: over half of the population in the U.S. and worldwide is overweight or obese. Overweight & obesity kills by causing killer-sicknesses.
Today's pandemic is our wrong food which is not natural food and does not maintain the human health.
Snacking
Definition of snacking = a small amount of food eaten between meals; notice the three important words: (1+2) small amount, (3) food. You know what "small amount means" - the definition of "food" is in this quotation:
Quotation "If it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (click: Michael Pollan) and here is another as a warning:
Quotation "Keep snacking real food, not poison, or I keep nagging"
(Dr. Christian, author of this health-success guide, STAF, Inc.)
Food is something that comes from a plant - it is NOT made in a plant.
This means you will be snacking on - none of these from cans - all fresh:
(1) fresh fruit (not from cans filled with sugary syrup - that's pure poison), (2) fresh berries, (3) fresh vegetables, (4)variety of unsalted, unroasted nuts, (5) unroasted, unsalted peanuts (= peanuts are actually legumes; unpeeled = eat with the brown inner peel because they also have nutrients like all peels do - the outer shell is uneatable as raw - more about that in another occasion), (6) bread, snack only on full-grain bread. No soda (not even diet soda - it has harmful chemicals affecting your and your baby's health). Drink only plain water, coffee or tea. Drink water (coffee & tea counts) daily in liquid oz. the same amount as your normal weight (not overweight) would be in lbs.
Notice: Fresh above (as in "fresh fruit") means: not handled in any manner, not in cans with sugary syrup the same with any other snack "fresh, in their natural form with noting added. Eat apples (wash well with soap) with their peels - most nutritious part is inside under the peel.
It is good good to snack = to eat something little every couple of hours - it helps keep the body system balanced and helps even in weight loss. The modern problem is that there are too many unhealthy snacks on the market advertised being sooooo.... good and sooooo..... dishonestly healthy - ONLY REAL, natural food can be and is healthy for us humans and also for our pets.
Do NOT snack on these popular processed, factory-made items:
no energy drinks (dangerous chemicals), no energy bars (they are about the same as a candy-bar), no vitamin waters (they are nothing else than water + a vitamin pill - waste of your money), no chips (filled with unhealthy chemicals and waste of your money - and many other similar.
To see 10 energy drinks dangers click: Dangers
Snack on real food originating from a plant not on any imitation food that is made in a plant. How could "anything made in a plant" be food?
EAT real, clean FOOD, not any food-like processed killing stuff. If what you aim to eat is made in a plant, do NOT eat it - it kills, eat only what came from a plant and is not processed at all - all original & natural, nothing added, nothing taken out.
In addition
nowadays, the environmental pollution click: Environmental Pollution
is another challenge to our bodies
but: even that poison our immune system can eliminate when we give it a chance with
(1) a fully healthy lifestyle;
(2) feeding us with REAL food and correct nutrition;
(3) exercising enough (a fee-free, enjoyable solution: walk 25K steps daily
click Pedometer;
(4) no smoking/no drugs/no sugary drinks.
click: Environmental Pollution and Impacts on Public Health: - UNEP
To motivate you, the parents, and your children to walk & exercise
it is stated several times in this guide that
the immune system has no pump to pump out the garbage - your physical movements function as its pump.
Thus, sit less, stand up, exercise, do hatha *)yoga & walk more as instructed- 25K steps daily+ walk up the stairs (click: Pedometer). *) Hatha yoga is focusing on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures.
click: Hatha Yoga - Yoga Journal . Click: How Yoga Improves Health
Click: American Osteopathic Association - Benefits of Yoga
(Osteopathic = Greek: osteon = bone; Greek: pathos = disease)
STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-min. exercise program meant to be done among the first things in the morning before your breakfast. Contact STAF, Inc. to download it. It has similar health benefits as hatha yoga does. The program is called:
"This 7-minutes Yabbanetics© keeps you fit, healthy & attractive".
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Scientific Meditation In addition to our physical exercise you, I, and all of us, need to exercise our mind to teach it to calm down, unwind and to avoid mental stress. Stress is a killer as it affects the whole body, its immune system, its every organ, and its nervous system. In your family meeting take up the scientific meditation topic and guide every member of your family to learn it - takes only 15 min. a day to practice.
Learn more about scientific meditation click: Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress - Harvard www.health.harvard.edu. Harvard University
STAF, Inc. has also developed an effective scientific meditation method titled
Mplus™
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Physical exercise, walking, hatha yoga & meditation combined with correct nutrition and with overall healthy lifestyle will reduce stress. Stress
The shortest definition for stress can be "Stress is unfinished business".
Think about that statement. Stress is a killer as it weakens the immune system and can lead to diseases. E.g. certain life situations, challenges in relationships, financial matters, procrastination, etc. life difficulties can cause stress.
Procrastination
creates stress. The majority of people are procrastinators
Procrastinating is the action of delaying or postponing something.
By undoing procrastination we have less stress. Do things now when you can, not "tomorrow". It may be in this aspect that "the tomorrow" never comes. That creates even more stress. Make a plan to clear any matter now and if not possible, make a plan immediately OR a flash-note to remember to make the plan. Keep your flash-notes always in the same place to later know where they are so you can handle them: when, what, how, whom you have to contact, and stick to the plan. Train your mind to handle things "now" or at the first proper moment/time, not "tomorrow".
Another stress builder is a common habit to say
"I'll try"
instead of stating "I will do this...'. Trying is not doing.
Take this test: Drop a pen on the floor and tell yourself "try to lift up that pen". If you lifted it up, you did not try, you did it - you lifted it up - doing and trying are two different things, not the same. Now throw the pen again on the floor and this time "try" to lift it up: try, yes try, try, try" - but do not lift just "try" to lift it and YOU CANNOT lift because you are 'trying' (not doing).
Have you noticed that most of the time when someone will say"I'll try ..." they never get it done". You invite someone to a party, the other person says
"I'll try to come" - and he/she never comes.
Trying and doing are two different things. Teach this to your children in your family meetings. The key is "what you say or think, your mind will listen and do what you say or think of doing". What you tell your mind, will manifest. You say "I will try..", the results are not there. Say "I will do "X" and finish doing it - the results will be there. To execute a plan is to make a plan and do what must be done to get the goal materialized. What you tell your mind is what the reality will be.
Quotation "What your mind can conceive, you can achieve" (Napoleon Hill)
Click: Napoleon Hill
That quotation is a good reminder when materializing your plans.
Your children do what they see you doing, not what you tell them to do. Thus, become a doer if you have been a "try-er" - and you will have less stress, you will also become & stay healthier and you will create much more financial freedom.
Again stress is a killer - you will get rid of it when you apply the above info.
Planning to have a baby?
Before getting pregnant read this article (the green link next below) - Your baby can inherit your stress.
Take the above guidance seriously learn to get rid of your stress, give your baby the best start for life.
click: Inheriting Stress
If the link has expired search the New York Times with the title"Inheriting Stress" or search the internet for the same topic
It is said "We can have a long life and die healthy" - when we respect life and accept a healthy lifestyle, we can have a long, healthy life.
Quotation: "You respect you keep, you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To state it briefly: we are ready to move to heaven when the telomeres are "gone" - yes, the science may estimate when it is our time "to go" - when we probably drop dead.
(throughout the text click green for further info)
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. click: Telomere Wikipedia
To keep your telomeres for your healthier, longer life you need to accept and learn a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition. Start with this mini-fast-track 12 step guide and the continue to study & apply the complete STAF Plan at a later time
(see article 2 of 2).
The more effectively your immune system functions ,
the healthier you are and the less you will suffer. It is your choice based on how healthy your lifestyle is. This guide is a good starting point.
A suitable quotation as a reminder:
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Have mercy on yourself, your family & on your children,
and organize your life in such a manner that you all can learn to apply everything this compact guide teaches.
Give the best gift to yourself, to your family and to your children:
good, healthy, long, meaningful, financially rich life.
Help your immune system to stay clean(er)
by doing what this 12-step guide shows. Help your whole family, including your children, learn these health restoring & maintaining principles.
(1) Sleep enough (see below the needed hours) - everyone in your family, read the 7+ sleep articles kept in click: www.staf1org.weebly.com - there in the left hand side "blog" tab close to the tab's top; Hours to sleep: (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours, (4) adults 7-8 hours.
(2) Drink plain water portionally during the day in oz. the same amount as your normal weight is in lbs.; coffee & tea counts as water (no sugary or diet sodas).
Aim to drink the daily plain water mostly when your stomach is empty, otherwise it may dilute the natural digestive "chemicals" and can slow down the digestion.
Briefly: your stomach is "empty" in 30 min. after eating plain fresh fruit, in 90 min. after eating plain grains, in 180 min. after eating anything else.
When you start drinking more water be also prepared to urinate more often and more. Urinating more is a good thing because the water cleans your pipes and flushes out more toxic stuff, thus providing you (and your family) better health leading to less suffering, more enjoyable & longer life.
Carry a suitable-size plastic bottle with you to pee "secretly" in a "must-pee-now" situation. Night-time it would be a good idea to keep a capped container for each person next to the bed to avoid walking to the bathroom to pee. The walking takes us out from the proper sleep waves lowering the quality of our sleep. If you live in a house and have a garden, you can use the human urea as the garden fertilizer and in the composting process. Saves money - brings good, natural results without unnatural cancer causing chemicals.
click: Human Urine is shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer; Scientific American
click: Compost - Human urine can be used directly as fertilizer or can be put onto compost
Guide your children in the urine monitoring and related facts.
Monitor the color of your urine - it tells your health. The clearer the urine during daytime hours, the better chances you, your children and your family will have a enjoyable health. The darker the urine daytime color, the more your health is challenged. In the morning, just after you get up, the urine can be darker.
If your daytime urine is dark in color you MUST drink more water until it shows a clearer color. Teach your children to monitor their pee.
Eat as STAF, Inc. guides: The a,b,c:
(a) "if it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't, it kills",
(b) no fast food = bad-food,
(c) prepare your daily food in your own kitchen based on the STAF Plan
(3) Exercise enough (daily walking 25K steps will do)(click: Pedometer);
(4) Keep your mind clean - how? - Sleep enough, drink enough plain water,
eat healthy, walk & some other physical exercises as you wish - if you can afford, in addition to walking the 25K steps daily, hire a personal trainer to do also strength training. It is a type of click: physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance to induce click: muscular contraction which builds the click: strength, click: anaerobic endurance, click:size of click: skeletal muscles.
When we get older our muscles will shrink - a personal trainer can build them safely back to strengthen your health. Never use any drugs - use healthy food to feed your cells safely. STAF, Inc.'s Plans teach the healthy nutrition.
About the healthy sleep.
Most recent studies show that the brains clean themselves during steady, unfragmented sleep, thus making us more intelligent.
Study (you & your family) the sleep articles # 2 "Sleep - The Ultimate Brain Cleaner" and # 4 "Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth & Other Sicknesses" - both articles close to the beginning of the left-side hand blog in this website. It would be beneficial to study all sleep-related articles in the location - over ten
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free fast-track guide - fits for women, men & children (2 years +)
Study and apply the information in the article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
STAF, Inc. has develop a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program - info below in article 2 of 2
Quotation
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Fast-Track Guide
This is a shortened, compact fast-track guide.
Start your new life from this guide & apply the information in your and your family's life. Have your children involved - you give them the best gift for life.
Arrange regular weekly family meetings and handle then, as a family including the babies & the toddlers, the material you had together agreed to study that past week. Decide in the meeting how you all are going to apply the information in your daily life for your better health and success.
Click & study each web link in full and well, take notes, involve your.
The deeper you study and learn the info in all links the better your life.
This 12-step mini-guide alone is a treasure for your and your family's better life quality with less sickness risks.
This whole extensive website is another story - it would take 5 years to go through.
This website is world's # 1 advice website in all family matters, in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition topics and guides you to enter the good life.
STAF, Inc. has developed a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program called also "The STAF Plan". That's a full-size book long and originally took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
Below, in article 2 of 2 more information about the full-size STAF Plan.
To stay healthy physically & mentally follow the instruction in fast-track mini-guide as a whole family
* Realize: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition principles are NOT taught properly in most schools nationwide - worldwide. Yet, it is the most important topic for us humans -our health & life depend on the correct facts . We also need to know how to feed our pets - not taught in schools either - out pets are getting sicker & sicker as we humans are. All because of our lacking knowledge.
Only by teaching the correct eating skills we can lower our high sickness costs, avoid human suffering, stay healthy & fully enjoy our time on this earth.
STAF, Inc. is the new, nationwide & worldwide leading organization in these topics in addition to handling all family & life success topics. STAF, Inc. has developed effective teaching programs fit for every country, every school and for every individual.
About Water
Most people do not realize that water is a vital nutrient.
Vital nutrients are life-sustaining and necessary to the continuation of life.
Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water
in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda, sugary or diet).
Roll the water in your mouth to mix it with saliva - the digestive process starts always in your mouth, click: Saliva and Your Mouth
Saliva is an important part of a healthy body. It is mostly made of water, like our whole body is (70 %). Saliva also contains important substances that your body needs to digest food.
Water is essential for the human body to function and to perform virtually every metabolic process.
As said, the human body is about 70 % water.
Notice:
The web links in this fast-track guide give detailed info what sources have the nutrients our bodies need - what to eat to get all needed natural
(1) vitamins (the drug store vitamins have almost no nutritional value and they can be toxic),
(2) minerals (only the natural ones can be properly digested by the human body),
(3) essential & non-essential amino acids (web links below),
(4) protein (links below),
(5) carbohydrates (links below) and
(6) what else is needed to keep your body & mind healthy.
About Vitamins - About Minerals
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are 13 vitamins your body needs.
They are click: Vitamins: MedlinePlus
- click: Vitamins and Minerals: How to Get What You Need by American Academy of Family Physicians
- Also available in Spanish Vitaminas y minerales: cómo obtener lo que usted necesita clic: Spanish - por American Academy of Family Physicians
NOTICE:
The next link to Harvard School of Public Health
has all information (1) about everything you need to eat and (2) what sources will provide the most natural nutrients - study all and do it with your whole family.
On the website, on the left-hand side, is a topic list - click each topic on the list, study well and apply- a real treasure for your and your family's health - and for the good life.
About Amino Acids - About Protein
click: Protein | The Nutrition Source
Harvard School of Public Health
About Carbohydrates
click: Carbohydrates | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
Twenty-two essential and non-essential amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins. When taken up into the human body from the diet, the 22 standard amino acids either are used to synthesize
(= make) proteins and other biomolecules or are oxidized to urea and carbon dioxide as a source of energy.
9 of these 22 are called click: essential amino acids because the human body cannot synthesize them from other compounds at the level needed for normal growth, so they must be obtained from food.
Notice: in this same link you also see (1) the recommended daily amounts
and (2) the main food sources for the 9 essential amino acids - notice: listed there are also the two common, easy-to-get, low-priced sources that have all these nine essential amino acids: (1) soy beans and (2) eggs. In addition, e.g.
hemp & quinoa have all 9 amino acids - they may be less common and also more expensive - click: Hemp - click: Quinoa
STAF, Inc.'s advice: always buy the cheaper products (in this case the soy beans) to save more cash for investing and step-by-step becoming a (multi-)millionaire. STAF, Inc. has a program for it also.
One egg a day, no more, except in rare occasions; eat the whole egg, the egg white & the yellow yolk - they function together well as a perfect nutrition source.
As a click: food, the yellow yolks are a major source of click: vitamins and minerals click: minerals
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Steam the eggs in their shells for saving the most egg nutrients including vitamins & minerals.
The scrambled eggs may have some harmful bacteria left because the heating process is quite short. Steaming 20 min. makes the yolk hard and kills the possible harmful bacteria.
click: essential amino acids
As long as you consume adequate levels of
(1) protein and (2) carbohydrates each day,
your cells will either have or make enough non-essential amino acids to support tissue growth and repair, immune function, red blood cell formation and hormone synthesis. Both plant- and animal-based proteins are rich sources of non-essential amino acids, and, although you can manufacture the non-essential amino acids, including a variety of protein sources in your diet helps ensure you have all the starting materials you need to keep the process running smoothly if your diet ever runs low on this particular nutrient.
Question:
In what proportions to eat daily proteins, carbohydrates, oils and other nutrients?
The answer next below in "The Healthy Eating Plate"
Realize that, according to the Harvard University leading specialists, you do not have to eat animal meat if you do not want - you will get the proteins from other sources (see below, e.g.: soy beans & other beans, eggs, some vegetables, etc.).
The Healthy Eating Plate,
created by the nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health and by the editors at Harvard Health Publications, was designed to address deficiencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s MyPlate.
The Healthy Eating Plate provides detailed guidance, in a simple format, to help people make the best eating choices and see in what proportions to eat different food types
Click: Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health...www.hsph.harvard.edu
Then:
Click the next line to make The Healthy Eating Plate bigger and esier to study
click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
_______
Now click to see how the most recent
U.S. gov. "Food Plate" the previous "Food Pyramid" look click: Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler plate. Each 3 pictures you can enlarge by clicking the picture or clicking the "enlarge the image" note next to each picture -
All these pictures: (1) click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
and (2) The U.S. gov. Nutrition Plate .& the Food Pyramid
show (1) what and (2) in what proportions to eat
Start today - stay healthy tomorrow
* avoid sickness * live longer
__________
The Fast-Track Guide to a better-quality life
Continues
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen. Eat full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry or at least any poultry - cage-free can be more costly; very little or no red meat, no pork), one egg daily. Eat nuts, peanuts (with their thin inner brown peel - peanut is a legume click Beans & legumes). Eat all nuts & peanuts raw - not salted & not roasted. Eat berries, fruit, vegetables, olive oil (cold-pressed, virgin, 1 - 2 spoonfuls a day) and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle of this quotation:
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(Quotation by click: Michael Pollan).
The science of food combining is helpful in avoiding heartburn, stomach aches, and other digestive pain & suffering.
The food combining principles will be introduced in full in the full-size STAF Plan.
Briefly: (1) eat smaller amounts every 3 - 4 hours rather than 1 - 2 times a day, (2) proteins & vegetables combine well, (3) eat fresh fruit alone (combine with nothing else), (4) eat other carbohydrates alone.
The heartburn medicines can actually make the heartburn worse when used continuously. As a natural first aid eat fresh celery or fresh cucumber to still heart burn - no negative side effects.
Sleep on one side - test what side works for you - it can still the heartburn and you can fall asleep.
_____________
About fish
Fish oils come from fatty fish, also known as oily fish, specifically the tissue of fatty fish, such as trout, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, and salmon.
The bigger the fish in wild the more it can have sea/ocean/river pollutants
(= harmful industrial waste), mercury, etc., thus a smaller fatty fish can be safer to eat. Why has the bigger fish more mercury & other pollutants? Because the bigger fish eats smaller fish (the smaller fish, of course, also has mercury, etc.) and the big(ger) fish gets more and more mercury, etc. in its system.
Plankton & phytoplankton are a key food item in both click: aquaculture
& click: mariculture.
Little fish eat (phyto)plankton because they are the base of the food chain. Small fish eat (phyto)plankton, medium fish eat small fish, and big fish eat medium fish. Humans eat the big fish & fish of all sizes. That is the (phyto)plankton cycle.
click: Plankton
click: Phytoplankton
Farm raised fish is a good idea but the fish farms can be filthy affecting negatively the safety quality for human consumption.
Trout is not so common on the market and can be priced higher than their value. click: Trout
Pricewise the canned Alaskan salmon (wild caught) is a good source for nutrition click: Alaskan salmon
Also canned, wild caught mackerel (small) or jack-mackerel (bigger) or king-mackerel (biggest) - more than half of the salmon price in cans - no need to buy fresh files - too expensive. Canned Alaskan salmon and canned mackerel are acceptable. Mackerel is a good fish to eat. Buy the smallest size mackerel if available, otherwise buy any of the three. If available, stack up mostly with the smallest mackerel. (1) Alaskan salmon, (2) small mackerel & (3) sardines (see below) are the basic fish items to buy - as said: buy in cans (wild caught) - least expensive. click: Mackerel
In any food item, shop around for the lowest prices, see the weekly on-sale offers, stack up & save. Invest your savings as guided in this website in tab: more, sub-tab: credit & credit cards. Learn to become an active investor - a millionaire is then a realistic goal.
Avoid tuna or have small amounts because: The bigger the fish, the more mercury & other pollutants - because the more the big fish eats smaller fish that all have certain amounts of pollutants). click: Tuna
Sardines - the European sardines are the real sardines and can be expensive outside Europe (in Europe they are quite low-priced). As wild caught the sardines are oily, healthy and delicious. click: Sardines
The American/Canadian sardines are low-priced and good, oily fish
(less oily than salmon or mackerel) and they are small in size = less polluted. These are not really sardines. In the past an agreement was made that all American & Canadian small ocean fish will be called "sardines".
Once more: Alaskan salmon, mackerel & sardines (all wild caught - the sardine cans may not state "wild caught" because they are basically always wild caught) are the three most economical and health-wise acceptable fish items to buy - all in cans
(lowest price - stack up when on sale).
Notice: Eat only fish that has a backbone & scales (notice: & = and - not either one but both at the same time in the same fish) when it still swims in the ocean, river or lake (e.g., do not eat eel click: Eel and not catfish click: Catfish, etc. similar).
The other fish or seafood without backbone & scales are not the best for us humans because they are in the ocean ecology the poison eaters and can safely digest the poisonous material that can harm other sea/river/lake animals. The poison-eating sea/river/lake creatures keep the water clean for other water species. That's how the nature operates.
The seafood & fish without a backbone & scales are the cleaners of the waters.
The poison only these poison cleaners can digest will end as health-threatening poison in your system if you eat such a "cleaning lady".
The cleaning ladies you must not eat (to keep your health safely) are e.g. crayfish & crabs, lobsters, oysters & all sea, river, lake creatures including fish that have no back bone & no scales (both at the same time in the same creature).
Next two article links relating to fish:
(1) Mercury and (2) Sorting out the risks of fish
(the link next a few lines below after another link).
Realize: not all that swims in the water is meant for us humans to eat as is explained in the paragraph just next above ( if you do not remember what it states, please, for your, your children's and your family's safety, study the paragraph above again before reading the next article).
Eat only fish which has a backbone AND scales (when still swimming around, e.g. do not eat eel, not catfish, not lobsters, not crab, etc.). These two article links are placed for you to get more information about the mercury in fish. Pregnancy & mercury do not go together. Mercury is dangerous to everyone in every age.
A little mercury can be "OK" - thus, avoid big fish as they have more mercury and other pollutants because the bigger fish eats smaller fish and thus accumulates more toxins.
click: Mercury - March of Dimes
Next click: Sorting Out the Risks of Fish
About eggs
It is said that the egg is the perfect food. The eggs have all nine essential amino acids as do also soy beans - two excellent foods, available & low-price.
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Brown eggs vs. White eggs - any difference?
The color differences in eggs are simply from the breed of the hens they come from. Brown eggs are laid by larger red-feathered hens with red earlobes, and white-feathered hens with white earlobes produce white eggs. When it comes to the nutritional value, however, brown eggs are more or less the same as white eggs.
The healthiest way is to steam whole eggs in their full shell 15- 20 minutes (until the yellow part is hard). To scramble the eggs does not give enough time for the possible harmful bacteria in them to get neutralized. In a big enough a pan steam the eggs for every family member for the whole week to save time - they stay well in the refrigerator.
Steaming kills the bacteria more effectively AND saves more healthy nutrients in the shelled egg. The Cage free eggs are healthier, they have less pollution and they have more nutrients BUT they are also much more expensive. As money may be the issue in most families it is still better to buy the cheaper eggs as it is said that the egg is the most perfect food. Not too many, though, max. one egg a day.
Why is the age-free egg (and the cage free chicken meat) healthier, less polluted and has more nutrients?
Because a chicken in the cage cannot move so much and the digestive waste is not eliminated so well by the immune system but stays partially in the chicken body and goes then also into the egg.
The same in the human being: that is why the exercise movements help the immune system (which has no pump) throw out our digestive & other toxins more effectively.
If a human being is not physically moving much, the toxins stay in the body cells leading to multitudes of sicknesses and to an early death. Walking (see blow how much daily) is one of the easiest way to help our immune system to clean our insides and our cells well to keep us healthy and give us a long life.
About full grains
and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
Whole Grains and Fish Highly Protective against Childhood Asthma
According to the American Lung Association, almost 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, which is reported to be responsible for over 14 million lost school days in children, and an annual economic cost of more than $16.1 billion.
Increasing consumption of whole grains and fish could reduce the risk of childhood asthma by about 50%, suggests the International Study on Allergy and Asthma in Childhood (Tabak C, Wijga AH, Thorax). click: Diet and asthma
click: American Lung Association
What Is a Whole Grain? - All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
In the morning the healthy breakfast
is the 5-full-grain hot home-cooked hot cereal as instructed below.
This 5-grain cereal is real delicious - there is not one person who would not like it.
In addition, our bodies like it.
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In this case you and your body will like every morning the 5 -grain cereal.
Have everyone involved, including your children, in the weekly preparation (for the whole week) - then the children and everyone immediately like the new 5 hot cereal.
However, the first thing in the morning, before enjoying the cereal, is to drink (as instructed below in # 2) 15 min. after the hot water/lemon-lime drinking below in # (2) is the way to start your day - then the cereal 15 min. after drinking the water/lemon-lime.
The cereal is for every family member over 1 year old (for the age use your own judgement).
Eat only whole-grain bread - find the best deals. Stack up when on sale.
Prepare multi-grain hot cereal for your family. Cook more for several days. If you can manage to cook the breakfast full-multi-grain hot cereal once a week (weekend?) for the whole week it would save your time. Keep in your refrigerator(s) - stays well for one week.
This is the 5-grain hot cereal
Stack up the different ingredients when on sale - buy in big packages/sacks - store in a DRY place and cover well to:
(1) oats; steal-cut healthiest; click: Steel-cut oats & any rolled oats will do;
click: Rolled oats,
(2) par-boiled rice; par-boiled means "partially boiled" click: in the click: husk
(husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed) cooking time shortened, about 15-20 min. click: Parboiled rice,
(3) brown rice; brown rice is whole grain rice, cooking (=simmering) time about 2-3 h = brown rice has 30 % more nutrients than an other rice type,
click: Brown rice
(4) barley - click: Barley - The World's Healthiest Foods - there you can also find a brief guide
"How to select & buy barley"
Pearl barley (or pearled barley) is dehulled barley which has been steam processed further to remove the bran. click: Barley
(5) buckwheat. (Buckwheat is not really cereal but but can be combined with cereal - click: Buckwheat)
Buy all cereals when they are on sale (stack up), buy big sacks 20 lbs & up - store in dry place away from all pests (mice & rats, ants, etc.).
The proportions of the 5 cereals for cooking are, e.g.
(1) 5 lbs oats, (2) 4 lbs par-boiled rice, (3) 2 lbs brown rice, (4) 3 lbs barley
(5) 1 lb buckwheat
Keeping the pan covered while cooking helps to keep up to 25 % more of the nutrients in the cereal.
Each cereal has their own cooking time
Follow the cooking time instructions on the packages or study the internet.
Soak each grain overnight in cold water in their own pan and cook in the morning each in their own pan.
Save the soaking water for the cooking and add water as needed.
Hint: keep a separate pan for heating boiled water during the cooking period as you will need to add water. When you add boiling water the cooking process will not stop (as it would for a while if you added cold water) - it will save your time as you do not need to stand and watch all the time the pans to avoid spilling over or to avoid burning. Best is to keep every cereal simmering as it would also retain more nutrient & vitamins (keep the pan cover on) and would allow you to do other things also. Avoid any cereal getting burned in the pan by using good-quality steel pans (buy them when on sale). To use aluminum pans will easily burn the cereal and would take much more of your time for watching & cleaning. Do not use non-sticky pans as their surface will leak poisonous chemicals . Use only high-quality steel pans. (Buy them when on sale - often the saving can be 50 %.)
Cook every grain in their own pot as they each have a different cooking time and at the end, when they are all cooked, mix them in correct proportions together as one 5-cereal combination to keep in your refrigerator for the week's breakfasts.
The two important kitchen "tools" for your & your family's good health are:
(1) big refrigerators & (2) several good blenders.
The Crown Prince of the home blenders is Vitamix - click: Vitamix
The prince of the cheaper home blenders is Proctor Silex - Hamilton Beach (same company)
Click: Proctor Silex - there click: Kitchen Appliances / Blenders
Proctor Silex models are lower in price than Hamilton Beach products, yet are of good quality with a good warranty.
Buy the blenders Proctor Silex calls "Space Saving Blenders" - you need several in your kitchen to save your time. When you learn to use the blenders more, you can use several blenders at the same time. Keep always at least one new, unopened blender package in case some blender breaks. Study the warranty time 3, 6 or 12 months (with Proctor Silex) - the company sends a free blender to your house during the warranty time. Vitamix warranty is several years, some models up to seven years. If you can afford 1- 2 Vitamix blenders (they do a much finer job, helpful for your digestive system and thus good for your health) and then you add a few Proctor Silex blenders (each only about $25).
It is said "the blender is the key to our good health".
You need to learn to use the blender(s) for an easier digestive process - that equals to a healthier body & to a healthier mind.
Use the blenders as much as you can as the blended food will digest easier in your system, use less energy for digestion - the saved energy keeps your body functioning more effectively giving you a better health.
You can blend anything and take with you in thick glass or thick plastic bottles
and "drink" your lunch or dinner - but when eating/drinking mix it well with the saliva by rolling the "liquidized food" in your mouth, click: Saliva.
Avoid hot material in any plastic bottle as the heat will make harmful chemicals leak and enter your system.
STAF, Inc.'s full-size STAF Plan guides further in the blender use.
HAVE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE CEREAL PREPARATION - then everyone will eat and enjoy the delicious 5-grain hot cereal every morning.
Especially children are much more eager to eat "new" food when they are involved in the preparation & the cooking process.
Realize: children do/eat what they see their parents doing/eating, not what they are told to do/to eat.
If someone in your family has any allergies (e.g. gluten sensitivity, click: Gluten sensitivity) see your gluten specialist health care provider or otherwise, based on your reliable information, solve the situation in your family.
Before making any appointment, confirm that the Dr. is a gluten issues specialist OR call your insurance company to locate a specialist or call your city/town/village health office or Community Health Center for (free) guidance/information; do the same when dealing with any other health question. Not just any Dr. knows every topic.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda).
First in the morning (your stomach still empty) drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below). Guide your children and your toddlers do the same - the babies have a different agenda.
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money - the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Do not boil the lemon/lime, boil only the plain water first. Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be frozen. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma).
Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
About your mouth & teeth hygiene
Why here next to the stroke & heart attack topics? Because your mouth may have a direct link to your heart & brain health - and even broader: take care of your teeth and you whole body will benefit.
When your teeth are not in the best condition, the potentially destructive mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
Professor Nairn Wilson click: Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee states: "There are still many unknown elements in these matters, but one thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing (soft bristles) your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being." click: BDA (British Dental Association)
- Health and Science
We at STAF, Inc. purposely repeat this often: Have your children involved in learning this guide info & studying all given web links including the mouth & teeth hygiene facts. To give yourself and to your children the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition info for life is the best gift to have.Click: Healthy dental care toothbrushes - American Dental Association - ADA.org
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Salt & Sugar & Honey
& Artificial Sweeteners
Salt
Salt & Sugar & Honey
& Artificial Sweeteners
Salt
Click green for further info
We all need salt in small amounts, much smaller than is commonly used.
According to the American Heart Association (AHA)1, click: sodium consumption should not exceed 1.5g per day(3.75g of salt), and that even includes healthy people without click: high blood pressure, click: diabetes or cardiovascular diseases click: Cardiovascular disease
Use only Iodized (or: Iodised) salt with added iodine click: Iodine。
Without iodine we humans tend to develop goiter click: Goiter and other sicknesses. Taking too much iodine can also cause problems click: Iodine Deficiency & other facts
Sea salt is natural and has some iodine - click: WHO | Iodization of salt
NOTICE: Iodized salt is NOT the only source for the important iodine. Iodine is e.g. in these food sources: potatoes, beans, strawberries, cranberries, yogurt, saltwater fish, sea vegetables, seaweed including kelp, arame, hiziki, kombu, and wakame - click: Common Foods Rich in Iodine (in this link the word "organic“ is not the key - the key is to study the food item and its qualities).
The Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for iodine is 150 micrograms daily for adults & everyone over the age of 14. The RDA for children ages 1-8 is 90/mcg every day, ages 9-13 is 120/mcg every day.
If you’re pregnant or breastfeeding, it is recommended that you get 290/mcg every day (talk to your pediatrician or primary care physician - STAF, Inc. is not giving medical advice in its seminars but info for educational & motivati0nal purposes).
E.g. 4 ounces of cranberries has 400 mcg of iodine (mcg=microgram) - 1 mcg: a unit of mass or weight equal to one millionth of a gram.
Sugar
White sugar (or any sugar) - the sweetest poison of all - do not keep in your house - pure poison. Do not eat. Do not add in your home-made daily food. Do not add in your coffee, tea, do not drink sugary drinks. Occasionally eating a sugary pastry or peace of sugary cake will not kill, but do not eat them daily.
Sugar & Pregnancy & Breastfeeding
Sugar eaten during pregnancy and lactation*) can influence muscle force production in offspring *) lactation - formation of mother's milk in breastfeeding
click: 143 Reasons Sugar Ruins Your Health (with the reference to scientific studies)
Get your sugar from FRESH fruit (not canned, fresh). Eat fruit mostly as plain fruit (= not combined with any other food types) and when your stomach is empty because fruit needs much less digestive time than other food items. If the fruit stays in your stomach together with protein or carbohydrates the results will easily lead to digestive difficulties. This is because different foods (1) need different lengths of time in the stomach and (2) need different digestive chemicals (alkaline or acidy). As a mess-up of different digestive chemical needs a process of food rotting starts in the digestive system leading to toxins in the immune system and finally in every cell of the body. Signs for this are bad breath (= a sign of rotting food items in the digestive system), heartburn, skin itching (because the body eliminates poisons also through the skin pores - our skin is our largest organ) and, as one sign, the lack of energy. Finally, when the body systems cannot handle the continuously growing toxic material, this situation will lead, sooner or later, to different sicknesses including to cancer.
It is not what we eat but what we digest and assimilate*) that adds to our health, strength and usefulness. *) to assimilate = to take in and utilize as nourishment & to absorb into the system. For a good assimilation a proper application of food combining rules is a must. These facts just stated in the few above lines belong to the area of the food combining science. In this internet seminar we will not handle the food combining rules any further than to how to eat fruit (see above). The healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition book to be published will have a whole chapter about food combining facts. Meanwhile, eat all fruit when your stomach is empty and do not combine fruit with any other food category as explained above. Aim to eat sweat fruit and more sour fruit also as their own category not combining sweat and sour.
STILL EDITING - RE-VISIT AFTER 2 HOURS.-
H0ney
Honey is a sugar, so use it sparingly. It has a high caloric value and will put you on a sugar high and low. Most honey is pasteurized - that process kills the most beneficial nutrients in honey. Raw, unpasteurized honey is available but for a higher price and may not be safe because of the transportation challenges.
If you are interested, have your own honey production - can be done in a city also - then you'll get fresh honey.
click: Successful Beekeeping with Your Own Honeybees
Many cities have an association for beekeeping - take their training. Search the web for contacts.
Do not feed honey to infants. Spores of Clostridium botulinum have been found in a small percentage of honey in North America. This is not dangerous to adults and older children, but infants can have a serious reaction of illness in the first year click: Infant botulism
Do not add honey to baby food or use as a soother to quiet a fussy or colicky baby. colic (noun), colicky (adj.) - colic = severe, often fluctuating pain in the abdomen caused by intestinal gas or obstruction in the intestines and suffered esp. by babies (also by adults) - somewhat similar to constipation. Most colicky pain is caused by unhealthy food given to the baby (and an adult eating in an unhealthy manner - also some medication can cause colic ): bottle feeding & other commercial baby food instead of breast feeding, feeding bananas that are not ripe enough (ripe = the banana peel is dark) and some other food items too early. Consult your pediatrician as needed click:
click: Colic Definition - Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinicclick: Colic in Adults
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Health, Income, and Inequality NBER Reporter: Research Summary Spring 2003Search Results
- The N0ational Bureau of Economic Researchwww.nber.org/
National Bureau of Econo...
A research organization dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of how the economy works. The NBER is committed to undertaking and disseminating ...
Richer Life? How? - How Inactivity Changes the Brain
Low Amount of Physical Activity Is Linked to Less Income & Lower Financial Success
Sub-title: Your Brains Shrink When Couch Potatoing Is Your Primary Exercise
A number of studies have shown that exercise can remodel the brain by prompting the creation of new brain cells and inducing other changes. Now it appears that inactivity, too, can remodel the brain, according to a notable new report.
The study, which was conducted in rats but likely has implications for people too, the researchers say, found that being sedentary changes the shape of certain neurons in ways that significantly affect not just the brain but the heart as well. The findings may help to explain, in part, why a sedentary lifestyle is so bad for us.
Until about 20 years ago, most scientists believed that the brain’s structure was fixed by adulthood, that you couldn’t create new brain cells, alter the shape of those that existed or in any other way change your mind physically after adolescence.
But in the years since, neurological studies have established that the brain retains plasticity, or the capacity to be reshaped, throughout our lifetimes. Exercise appears to be particularly adept at remodeling the brain, studies showed.
But little has been known about whether inactivity likewise alters the structure of the brain and, if so, what the consequences might be.
So for a study recently published in The Journal of Comparative Neurology, scientists at Wayne State University School of Medicine and other institutions gathered a dozen rats. They settled half of them in cages with running wheels and let the animals run at will. Rats like running, and these animals were soon covering about three miles a day on their wheels.
The other rats were housed in cages without wheels and remained sedentary.
After almost three months of resting or running, the animals were injected with a special dye that colors certain neurons in the brain. In this case, the scientists wanted to mark neurons in the animals’ rostral ventrolateral medulla, an obscure portion of the brain that controls breathing and other unconscious activities central to our existence.
The rostral ventrolateral medulla commands the body’s sympathetic nervous system, which among other things controls blood pressure on a minute-by-minute basis by altering blood-vessel constriction. Although most of the science related to the rostral ventrolateral medulla has been completed using animals, imaging studies in people suggest that we have the same brain region and it functions similarly.
A well-regulated sympathetic nervous system correctly directs blood vessels to widen or contract as needed and blood to flow, so that you can, say, scurry away from a predator or rise from your office chair without fainting. But an overly responsive sympathetic nervous system is problematic, said Patrick Mueller, an associate professor of physiology at Wayne State University who oversaw the new study. Recent science shows that “overactivity of the sympathetic nervous system contributes to cardiovascular disease,” he said, by stimulating blood vessels to constrict too much, too little or too often, leading to high blood pressure and cardiovascular damage.
The sympathetic nervous system will respond erratically and dangerously, scientists theorize, if it is receiving too many and possibly garbled messages from neurons in the rostral ventrolateral medulla.
And, as it turned out, when the scientists looked inside the brains of their rats after the animals had been active or sedentary for about 12 weeks, they found noticeable differences between the two groups in the shape of some of the neurons in that region of the brain.
Using a computerized digitizing program to recreate the inside of the animals’ brains, the scientists established that the neurons in the brains of the running rats were still shaped much as they had been at the start of the study and were functioning normally.
But many of the neurons in the brains of the sedentary rats had sprouted far more new tentacle-like arms known as branches. Branches connect healthy neurons into the nervous system. But these neurons now had more branches than normal neurons would have, making them more sensitive to stimuli and apt to zap scattershot messages into the nervous system.
In effect, these neurons had changed in ways that made them likely to overstimulate the sympathetic nervous system, potentially increasing blood pressure and contributing to the development of heart disease.
This finding is important because it adds to our understanding of how, at a cellular level, inactivity increases the risk of heart disease, Dr. Mueller said. But even more intriguing, the results underscore that inactivity can change the structure and functioning of the brain, just as activity does.
Of course, rats are not people, and this is a small, short-term study. But already one takeaway is that not moving has wide-ranging physiological effects. In upcoming presentations, Dr. Mueller said, he plans to show slides of the different rat neurons and, echoing the old anti-drug message, point out that “‘this is your brain.’ And this is your brain on the couch.”
A version of this article appears in print on 01/28/2014, on page D4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: This Is Your Brain on the Couch.
Low Amount of Physical Activity Is Linked to Less Income & Lower Financial Success
Sub-title: Your Brains Shrink When Couch Potatoing Is Your Primary Exercise
A number of studies have shown that exercise can remodel the brain by prompting the creation of new brain cells and inducing other changes. Now it appears that inactivity, too, can remodel the brain, according to a notable new report.
The study, which was conducted in rats but likely has implications for people too, the researchers say, found that being sedentary changes the shape of certain neurons in ways that significantly affect not just the brain but the heart as well. The findings may help to explain, in part, why a sedentary lifestyle is so bad for us.
Until about 20 years ago, most scientists believed that the brain’s structure was fixed by adulthood, that you couldn’t create new brain cells, alter the shape of those that existed or in any other way change your mind physically after adolescence.
But in the years since, neurological studies have established that the brain retains plasticity, or the capacity to be reshaped, throughout our lifetimes. Exercise appears to be particularly adept at remodeling the brain, studies showed.
But little has been known about whether inactivity likewise alters the structure of the brain and, if so, what the consequences might be.
So for a study recently published in The Journal of Comparative Neurology, scientists at Wayne State University School of Medicine and other institutions gathered a dozen rats. They settled half of them in cages with running wheels and let the animals run at will. Rats like running, and these animals were soon covering about three miles a day on their wheels.
The other rats were housed in cages without wheels and remained sedentary.
After almost three months of resting or running, the animals were injected with a special dye that colors certain neurons in the brain. In this case, the scientists wanted to mark neurons in the animals’ rostral ventrolateral medulla, an obscure portion of the brain that controls breathing and other unconscious activities central to our existence.
The rostral ventrolateral medulla commands the body’s sympathetic nervous system, which among other things controls blood pressure on a minute-by-minute basis by altering blood-vessel constriction. Although most of the science related to the rostral ventrolateral medulla has been completed using animals, imaging studies in people suggest that we have the same brain region and it functions similarly.
A well-regulated sympathetic nervous system correctly directs blood vessels to widen or contract as needed and blood to flow, so that you can, say, scurry away from a predator or rise from your office chair without fainting. But an overly responsive sympathetic nervous system is problematic, said Patrick Mueller, an associate professor of physiology at Wayne State University who oversaw the new study. Recent science shows that “overactivity of the sympathetic nervous system contributes to cardiovascular disease,” he said, by stimulating blood vessels to constrict too much, too little or too often, leading to high blood pressure and cardiovascular damage.
The sympathetic nervous system will respond erratically and dangerously, scientists theorize, if it is receiving too many and possibly garbled messages from neurons in the rostral ventrolateral medulla.
And, as it turned out, when the scientists looked inside the brains of their rats after the animals had been active or sedentary for about 12 weeks, they found noticeable differences between the two groups in the shape of some of the neurons in that region of the brain.
Using a computerized digitizing program to recreate the inside of the animals’ brains, the scientists established that the neurons in the brains of the running rats were still shaped much as they had been at the start of the study and were functioning normally.
But many of the neurons in the brains of the sedentary rats had sprouted far more new tentacle-like arms known as branches. Branches connect healthy neurons into the nervous system. But these neurons now had more branches than normal neurons would have, making them more sensitive to stimuli and apt to zap scattershot messages into the nervous system.
In effect, these neurons had changed in ways that made them likely to overstimulate the sympathetic nervous system, potentially increasing blood pressure and contributing to the development of heart disease.
This finding is important because it adds to our understanding of how, at a cellular level, inactivity increases the risk of heart disease, Dr. Mueller said. But even more intriguing, the results underscore that inactivity can change the structure and functioning of the brain, just as activity does.
Of course, rats are not people, and this is a small, short-term study. But already one takeaway is that not moving has wide-ranging physiological effects. In upcoming presentations, Dr. Mueller said, he plans to show slides of the different rat neurons and, echoing the old anti-drug message, point out that “‘this is your brain.’ And this is your brain on the couch.”
A version of this article appears in print on 01/28/2014, on page D4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: This Is Your Brain on the Couch.
Blogging topics article Thursday 1/23/14
with renewed STAF PLAN (off word "diet")
Old McDonald’s
THERE’S an old Italian saying, “A tavola non si invecchia,” which means: At the table, you don’t grow old. All of us, of whatever age, need to socialize in public places to feel connected and alive.
That sense of shared conviviality was notably absent recently when police officers removed loiterers, many of them elderly Korean-Americans, from a McDonald’s restaurant in Queens. The slew of comments that followed a report of the dispute were unsympathetic to those who whiled away their hours there.
One New York Times reader commented, “It is only in the inner city that McDonald’s and Starbucks are the gathering places for the unwashed, elderly, incompetent and infirm. I suppose this is the price for being a city dweller. These people ruin everything!” Others offered proposals to “solve” the problem by making the seating uncomfortable or removing it altogether, suing the elderly customers or playing blaring rap music to drive them away.
Older patrons may test the limits of public dawdling, but this phenomenon — call it loitering or community building — is essential for the survival of many people 65 and older. According to the last census, seniors constitute 12 percent of New York City’s population. Many of them are single, sometimes far from family, and have lived in their localities for decades, their entire lives even. For the past four years, I have studied how neighborhood public places help older Manhattan residents avoid isolation and develop social ties that offer support, ranging from a sympathetic ear to a small emergency loan.
Like the teenagers who linger over sticky tabletops at Burger King and McDonald’s, these older people have reached a time when their lives do not revolve around work and family. In the absence of those, these public places can anchor routines and provide a sense of structure and belonging.
A Manhattan bakery I observed had served as a de facto senior center for decades. The owner allowed customers to linger; many stopped in more than once a day. The bakery hummed with conversation: It felt more like a social club than a business, with a cup of coffee being the modest price of admission.
Yet the elderly are often now hindered by the loss of neighborhood places that have closed because of gentrification and rising retail rents. When that West Side bakery was shuttered, its patrons were forced to regroup in other neighborhood locales, including a nearby McDonald’s.
For retirees on fixed incomes who may have difficulty walking more than a few blocks, McDonald’s restaurants remain among the most democratic, freely accessible spaces. Much of the appeal lies in the fact that, as an elderly patron said to me, “you can sit all day and nobody bothers you.” At the branch I observed, the tolerance for older New Yorkers also extended to the homeless, people who appeared mentally unstable and teenagers who congregated after school — even when they occasionally flung ice cubes at one another.
An afternoon at McDonald’s opens up a world of people-watching opportunities. One elderly regular I observed sat an entire day and greeted a changing cast of passers-by, acquaintances and friends — a welcome alternative to sitting alone in her apartment with worsening dementia.
Ray Oldenburg, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of West Florida, calls these gathering spots “third places,” in contrast to the institutions of work and family that organize “first” and “second” places. He sees bookstores, cafes and fast food joints as necessary yet endangered meeting points that foster community, often among diverse people. The Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson likens public settings such as Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia to a “cosmopolitan canopy,” where people act with civility and converse with others to whom they might never otherwise speak.
The care-taking performed by such places extends to all kinds of groups. A professor of sociology at Princeton, Mitchell Duneier, has found a Chicago cafeteria that supports older working-class African-American men in this way. I have interviewed people who tell me they don’t like senior centers because “they’re depressing”; in these cafes, they can form emotional attachments with a wider mix of people.
Centers offer vital services, but McDonald’s offers an alternative that doesn’t segregate people from intergenerational contact. “I hate old people,” one 89-year-old man told me.
We should praise companies that allow loitering and devise public-private partnerships that benefit both older adults and business owners: I can imagine tax breaks for franchises that serve a high proportion of older adults and discounts to encourage patronage at off-peak hours. And we could replicate the “Café Plus” model of the Chicago nonprofit group Mather Life Ways in 30 American cities. These attractive coffee shops not only offer older customers who dislike traditional senior centers a 75-cent bottomless cup of coffee, but also welcome customers of all ages.
The Queens dispute has been settled, for now, by a compromise that allows the elderly Korean-American customers to linger, provided they vacate during the lunchtime rush. Battles over public space are as old as the city itself, but we have an opportunity to reimagine overlooked resources like McDonald’s as new generations of older people find themselves needing places to hang out.
The Chosun Ilbo
Old McDonald'sNew York Times-Jan 21, 2014
Old McDonald's ... One New York Times reader commented, “It is only in the inner city ... Fighting a McDonald's in Queens for the Right to Sit
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with renewed STAF PLAN (off word "diet")
Old McDonald’s
THERE’S an old Italian saying, “A tavola non si invecchia,” which means: At the table, you don’t grow old. All of us, of whatever age, need to socialize in public places to feel connected and alive.
That sense of shared conviviality was notably absent recently when police officers removed loiterers, many of them elderly Korean-Americans, from a McDonald’s restaurant in Queens. The slew of comments that followed a report of the dispute were unsympathetic to those who whiled away their hours there.
One New York Times reader commented, “It is only in the inner city that McDonald’s and Starbucks are the gathering places for the unwashed, elderly, incompetent and infirm. I suppose this is the price for being a city dweller. These people ruin everything!” Others offered proposals to “solve” the problem by making the seating uncomfortable or removing it altogether, suing the elderly customers or playing blaring rap music to drive them away.
Older patrons may test the limits of public dawdling, but this phenomenon — call it loitering or community building — is essential for the survival of many people 65 and older. According to the last census, seniors constitute 12 percent of New York City’s population. Many of them are single, sometimes far from family, and have lived in their localities for decades, their entire lives even. For the past four years, I have studied how neighborhood public places help older Manhattan residents avoid isolation and develop social ties that offer support, ranging from a sympathetic ear to a small emergency loan.
Like the teenagers who linger over sticky tabletops at Burger King and McDonald’s, these older people have reached a time when their lives do not revolve around work and family. In the absence of those, these public places can anchor routines and provide a sense of structure and belonging.
A Manhattan bakery I observed had served as a de facto senior center for decades. The owner allowed customers to linger; many stopped in more than once a day. The bakery hummed with conversation: It felt more like a social club than a business, with a cup of coffee being the modest price of admission.
Yet the elderly are often now hindered by the loss of neighborhood places that have closed because of gentrification and rising retail rents. When that West Side bakery was shuttered, its patrons were forced to regroup in other neighborhood locales, including a nearby McDonald’s.
For retirees on fixed incomes who may have difficulty walking more than a few blocks, McDonald’s restaurants remain among the most democratic, freely accessible spaces. Much of the appeal lies in the fact that, as an elderly patron said to me, “you can sit all day and nobody bothers you.” At the branch I observed, the tolerance for older New Yorkers also extended to the homeless, people who appeared mentally unstable and teenagers who congregated after school — even when they occasionally flung ice cubes at one another.
An afternoon at McDonald’s opens up a world of people-watching opportunities. One elderly regular I observed sat an entire day and greeted a changing cast of passers-by, acquaintances and friends — a welcome alternative to sitting alone in her apartment with worsening dementia.
Ray Oldenburg, a professor emeritus of sociology at the University of West Florida, calls these gathering spots “third places,” in contrast to the institutions of work and family that organize “first” and “second” places. He sees bookstores, cafes and fast food joints as necessary yet endangered meeting points that foster community, often among diverse people. The Yale sociologist Elijah Anderson likens public settings such as Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia to a “cosmopolitan canopy,” where people act with civility and converse with others to whom they might never otherwise speak.
The care-taking performed by such places extends to all kinds of groups. A professor of sociology at Princeton, Mitchell Duneier, has found a Chicago cafeteria that supports older working-class African-American men in this way. I have interviewed people who tell me they don’t like senior centers because “they’re depressing”; in these cafes, they can form emotional attachments with a wider mix of people.
Centers offer vital services, but McDonald’s offers an alternative that doesn’t segregate people from intergenerational contact. “I hate old people,” one 89-year-old man told me.
We should praise companies that allow loitering and devise public-private partnerships that benefit both older adults and business owners: I can imagine tax breaks for franchises that serve a high proportion of older adults and discounts to encourage patronage at off-peak hours. And we could replicate the “Café Plus” model of the Chicago nonprofit group Mather Life Ways in 30 American cities. These attractive coffee shops not only offer older customers who dislike traditional senior centers a 75-cent bottomless cup of coffee, but also welcome customers of all ages.
The Queens dispute has been settled, for now, by a compromise that allows the elderly Korean-American customers to linger, provided they vacate during the lunchtime rush. Battles over public space are as old as the city itself, but we have an opportunity to reimagine overlooked resources like McDonald’s as new generations of older people find themselves needing places to hang out.
The Chosun Ilbo
Old McDonald'sNew York Times-Jan 21, 2014
Old McDonald's ... One New York Times reader commented, “It is only in the inner city ... Fighting a McDonald's in Queens for the Right to Sit
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- The Accelerators: How to Attract and Keep Top Talent - WSJ.comonline.wsj.com/.../SB2000142405270230485...
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- Card-Theft Software Grew in Internet's Dark Alleys
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The malicious software that infected Target popped up in January 2013 with a price tag of $2000 and spent nearly a year evolving in the ...
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Card-Theft Software Grew in Internet's Dark Alleys
Version of Malware Used Against Target Was for Sale for $2,000 a Year AgoThe malicious software that infected Target Corp. TGT -0.97% popped up in January 2013 with a price tag of $2,000 and spent nearly a year evolving in the Internet's black markets before an unknown attacker slipped it into the retailer's computer systems.
That life cycle, pieced together by security firms that track down and identify dangerous software, shows the new nature of the threat faced by American retailers hoping to defend themselves from attacks like that at Target, which compromised 40 million credit and debit cards over the holidays.
Security experts say computer intrusion has evolved from one of solitary hackers or groups of hackers into an industry where rogue programmers are developing tools they can sell on an increasingly formal online marketplace. The buyers, often tied to organized crime, are in turn bringing greater sophistication and ambition to their efforts.
The targets, increasingly, are American retailers, which continue to rely on magnetic-stripe credit-card technology, which is less secure than the chip-based cards that have been used for years in Europe. Luxury retailer Neiman Marcus Group also suffered a data breach over the holidays. On Tuesday, sporting-goods maker Easton-Bell Sports Inc. said it too was attacked, with data from around 6,000 online shoppers stolen during December.
The new trend "is to move directly against these massive storage databases for credit cards," said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer of security firm Crowdstrike Inc., and an expert in Russian-speaking cybercriminals. In the past, Russian-speaking hackers tended to focus on fraud through email scams or other unsophisticated attacks, he said.
The malicious software that infected Target spent nearly a year evolving in the Internet's black markets before an unknown attacker slipped it into the retailer's computer systems. Charles Levinson reports. Photo: Getty Images.
An early version of the malicious computer code that many experts believe hackers used on Target's sales terminals was spotted in January 2013 by computer security firm Symantec Corp.SYMC -1.06% and multiple security firms familiar with the retail hacks.
Symantec dubbed the malware Reedum. Other security firms that spotted it took to calling it Kaptoxa, a Russian slang word for potato. By February, a version of the software was being offered on hacker forums for around $2,000, advertised for stealing payment-card numbers, according to cybersecurity experts who were tracking the malware.
The Reedum malware worked like a Trojan horse by hiding its malicious nature and compromising systems from inside. According to iSight Partners Inc., once injected into retailers' computer systems, the software would seek out payment programs and monitor for the data on cards' magnetic stripes, which during the authorization process would be unencrypted and stored in the payment system's memory.
The data would be scraped and stashed on another compromised server—but only during the prime business hours of 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., allowing it to blend in with normal traffic. The hackers would later harvest that data from the retailer's server.
As the malware grew in popularity in the underground fraud community and spread during early 2013, cybersecurity firms learned what to look for and developed defenses. But the hackers adapted and modified the software, according to people tracking the software.
According to iSight, software for attacking point-of-sale systems is widely available under names like Dexter, vSkimmer and BlackPOS, of which the Target malware is a variant.
That commercialization could make it easier for attacks to take place.
"It really could lower the barrier to entry," said Tiffany Jones, a senior vice president at iSight and its chief revenue officer. "It's going to drive cheaper prices, larger user bases and at the end of the day there's a growing demand."
It isn't clear how the hackers got Malware into Target's internal network. There is a good chance they lured an unsuspecting employee into clicking on an infected link through a bogus email disguised to look genuine, according to several security experts. The other likely scenario, according to experts, is that the attackers found a vulnerability in one of Target's public websites.
ISight, hired by the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security to help with the investigation, said the bug had a "zero percent antivirus detection rate," meaning even updated security software couldn't tell it was harmful.
The hack involved several tools, iSight said. The Trojan horse scanned the point-of-sale system's memory for card data. Another logged when the stolen data was stashed inside Target's network. Yet another sent the stolen data to a computer outside the company. The coordination of those functions was complex and sophisticated, the firm said.
The breach began on Nov. 27, as shoppers prepared to swarm Target's nearly 1,800 U.S. stores to snag Black Friday weekend deals. It transmitted the first payload to a hijacked external computer on Dec. 2, and then repeated the process over the next two weeks, according to a report by the Israeli security firm Seculert, which analyzed the software.
A Target spokeswoman declined to comment on specific details of the attack, citing the investigation.
It wasn't long before fraudulent transactions involving the stolen card numbers started showing up.
In early December, an online hacking forum known as rescator.la began offering a massive batch of stolen credit cards for sale, according to online security expert and blogger Brian Krebs, who broke the news of the Target attack on his blog Dec. 18, a day before Target disclosed the breach.
The seller gave the fresh batch a nickname, according to Mr. Krebs: "Tortuga," Spanish for tortoise, and the name of a notorious pirate island referenced by Jack Sparrow in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean." Tortuga is also a near anagram for Target.
The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting the country's financial infrastructure and payment systems as well as the president, started noticing a flood of new stolen cards entering the market—a quarter-million to a half-million dropped at a time, way more than usual—and bought some of them, a person familiar with the matter said.
The Secret Service contacted Target about the fraudulent activity a few days before Dec. 15, people familiar with the matter said. At that point, Target's team began investigating and informing relevant executives, including CEO Gregg Steinhafel, one of the people said.
The Secret Service declined to comment.
On Dec. 15, Target determined it had indeed been breached, but four days passed before it disclosed the news. In an interview on CNBC, Mr. Steinhafel said the company had to first plug the hole in its systems and prepare to handle what could be millions of calls from customers. It shut down portals through which vendors and employees could access internal websites over the Internet.
The attackers did leave some clues. Embedded in the code found at Target was a string of text left in the malware's metadata, including the word "Rescator," the name of one of the online forums used to sell the cards, according to Messrs. Krebs and Alperovitch, as well as security firm McAfee, a unit of Intel Corp. That raises the possibility that the person or people running the forum where the cards are sold were also somehow involved in the attack, security experts say.The attack isn't likely to be the last.
—Paul Ziobro and Robin Sidel contributed to this article.
Write to Charles Levinson at [email protected] and Danny Yadron at[email protected]
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- What 'To Be Honest' and Other Verbal Tics SayJanuary 20, 2014 05:39 p.m.Coming before another statement, these phrases often signal that bad news, or even some dishonesty on the part of the speaker, will follow.
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Boy, 4, found dead in Manhattan bathtub
'was burned and beaten by transgender babysitter for weeks after he was left by his dad'
STAF, Inc. demands that training for babysitting must be provided and the babysitting service must licenced
No one is born with child care knowledge - things go wrong too often when the training is missing
Myles Dobson, boy, 4, found dead in Manhattan bathtub 'was burned and beaten by transgender babysitter for weeks after he was left by his dad'
- Myles Dobson was found unconscious and later died
- Babysitter Janaie Jones told police she left him alone and heard a 'thud'
- She 'later admitted she had beat him with a belt, burned him with cigarettes and locked him alone in the bathroom to control his behavior'
- She had been caring for Myles since his father was arrested and taken to jail; his mother's whereabouts are not known
- Any charges will be filed following the autopsy
A four-year-old boy found dead in a Manhattan bathtub suffered excruciating torture at the hands of his babysitter for weeks after his dad left, she allegedly told police.
Myles Dobson was covered with bruises and burns over his arms, legs and genitals when he was found unconscious in Janaie Jones' apartment at the The Ritz Plaza in Midtown.
The 37-year-old told authorities that she was trying to discipline the young boy after she assumed care of the boy on December 18 when his father, Okee Wade, 37, was sent to jail.
'I was giving him corporal punishment,' Jones, a transgender performer who uses the name Kryzie King, allegedly admitted to police 'I was trying to control him.'
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- Letting Go of a 4-Year-Old Who Was Beaten and Burned - NYTimes ...www.nytimes.com/.../letting-go-of-a-4-year-old-w...The New York Times
2 days ago - A funeral was held Tuesday for Myls Dobson, 4, who died in the care of a woman his father knew. She has been charged in Myls's death. ________________________________________________________________
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Jun 27, 2013 - Concerns about vaccines and the neurological disorder Guillain-Barré syndrome arose after the swine ... How long is flu vaccination effective? _____________________________________ Giving Vaccines Together Increases Fever Risk Some children get a moderate fever after a vaccination for flu or pneumococcal disease. But when the vaccinations are given together, the risk of fever increases significantly.Researchers studied 530 children, 6 months to 2 years old, who got their shots at three clinics in New York City. On the first day after the flu vaccination alone, 7.5 percent of the children had a fever, as did 9.5 percent of those who got the pneumococcal shot alone.
But the study, published online in JAMA Pediatrics, found that 37.6 percent of children who got both shots at the same visit developed a fever within a day. After day one, there was no increased risk of fever in getting the two shots at once.
These findings are not a reason to avoid the vaccines, according to the lead author. Dr. Melissa S. Stockwell, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Medical Center. Getting the vaccines at the same visit increases the time of protection, and eliminates the problem of failing to return for the second shot.
“We think it’s important that children be vaccinated,” she said. “And when you weigh the risks and benefits, the vast majority of children should get the vaccines together. It’s the best way to protect them against these serious diseases.” - CDC - Pneumococcal Disease Fact Sheet for Parents - Vaccineswww.cdc.gov/vaccines/.../fs-parents.html
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Counterintuitive Advice
When You Hear ‘Fire!’ in a High-Rise: Stay Put
counterintuitive = contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation (but often nevertheless true)
stay put = remain somewhere without moving or being moved
The first clang of the alarm came as many residents of the modern high-rise in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, were sitting down to brunch or opening the Sunday paper. Quickly came the screams — “Fire!”— and an acrid smoke that blackened windows and seeped under doors and through air vents. Few knew exactly where in the 42-story building the fire was. Some tried and failed to reach 911 operators, who were overwhelmed by calls. Many decided to flee.
Daniel McClung was one of them. He and his husband, Michael Cohen, scooped up their two dogs and left their 38th-floor apartment. They reached only the 31st floor before they were overcome by smoke, fire officials said.
Mr. McClung, a 27-year-old playwright, died. As of Monday, Mr. Cohen, 32, an online video producer, remained in intensive care at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. Their two dogs, Schooner and Georgia, also died.
It is a basic human instinct reinforced by countless grade-school fire drills: When you see flames or smell smoke, get out. In New York, where the reminders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack are omnipresent, the fates of those who waited and became trapped in the burning towers serve as a lesson for many, not least the people who live in high-rises like the Strand, the site of the Jan. 5 fire that killed Mr. McClung. But in modern high-rise buildings, fire safety experts say, flight can be deadly.
As they raced down the stairs, the couple ran into a suffocating plume of smoke sucked upward as if through a chimney when firefighters opened the stairwell door and pushed into the burning apartment.
Had the couple remained in their home, Mr. McClung would have survived, officials said. The fire turned out to be isolated to an apartment 18 floors below where the couple lived. Because the building was constructed of fire-resistant materials, the blaze barely spread. Even residents who remained in apartments directly next door to the fire emerged unscathed.
A fire safety notice that is supposed to be affixed to every entry door makes clear that staying in place is often the safest strategy during a fire. Most residents interviewed after the fire said they had never seen the notice, had seen it long ago, lost it, or, treated it like a safety information card on an airplane, and simply did not read it.
Even among those who knew the rule, many said the first impulse was to run.
“The idea of staying in your apartment when there’s a fire sounds wrong,” said George Hahn, 43, who fled with his dog, Smokey, when the fire alarm sounded.
Since the invention of the fire hydrant and in-home smoke detector, advances in technology have drastically decreased the risk of dying in a fire. In recent decades, buildings have been constructed with flame-resistant materials, and metal, self-closing doors meant to isolate fires once they break out.
Of the 67 fire deaths in the city last year, only 18 occurred in such buildings, almost all of them in the apartment that was actually on fire, according to the Fire Department.
Even so, no building is completely safe, and officials periodically update standards to deal with new problems or take advantage of new technology.
Click: Graphic: A Tragedy on 10th Avenue
In 1998, four people died from smoke inhalation in a stairwell of an Upper West Side apartment tower under conditions similar to those that killed Mr. McClung. After that fire, which broke out in the apartment where the family of the actor Macaulay Culkin lived, a law was passed requiring all new high-rises and those undergoing major renovation to have sprinkler systems. A 2008 law required new buildings over 125 feet tall to have emergency intercom systems.
The Sept. 11 attack and the advent of residential supertowers, some exceeding 100 stories, have prompted engineers and fire officials to take a fresh look at fire safety in tall buildings, said Chris Jelenewicz, an engineering program manager at the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, based in Maryland.
Wider stairwells, advanced sprinkler systems and alarms that give precise instructions during an emergency would make buildings safer, he said. Someday, he said, elevators designed to withstand fires and earthquakes could be used to quickly evacuate buildings during an emergency.
In any case, Mr. Jelenewicz said, information is key.
“To really make these systems work you really need to educate the occupants,” he said.
The Strand, which opened in the late 1980s, was built with fire-resistant materials, plasterboard walls and metal doors designed to withstand a blaze for up to three hours, the Fire Department said. It does not have sprinklers or an intercom system.
After the fire there, friends of Mr. McClung and Mr. Cohen created apetition on the website change.org calling for legislation that would require residential high-rise buildings to have public address systems to provide timely information in case of an emergency. Corey Johnson, a City Council member whose district includes Hell’s Kitchen, has proposed a bill that would require such systems in buildings over six stories.
“Many people don’t know whether they live in a fireproof building and don’t know whether they should stay or go during an emergency,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference last week. “Daniel’s life would have been saved if he had stayed in his apartment, but he wasn’t given proper instructions when the fire broke out.”
Launch media viewer
The fire-damaged stairwell on the 20th floor of the Strand, where a man died trying to escape. Michael Appleton for The New York TimesWhen the fire alarms sounded in the Strand about 11 a.m. that chilly Sunday morning, reactions varied. Some stayed in place and hoped for the best, stuffing wet towels into air vents and the spaces under doors. Others threw on clothes, grabbed children and pets and ran. One man in an apartment a floor above the fire was seen furiously scrubbing the railings and glass of his terrace with a rag apparently trying to keep the soot at bay.
Another resident, Nina Regevik, a physician who is a member of an emergency response team created in New Jersey after the Sept. 11 attack, said she was fully aware of the fire safety procedures in her building. But when someone outside her apartment yelled “Fire!” and told everyone to evacuate, she said she defied her training, picked up her cat and fled with her partner.
“Despite how many years of training and hearing what one should do, that was totally trumped by hearing someone in a very worrisome voice saying ‘Get out, get out, fire,’ ” she said.
At one point a jet of flame shot out over 10th Avenue and white-hot metal rained down on the street, witnesses said. The fire burned about two hours.
With their two dogs, Mr. McClung and Mr. Cohen rushed into Stair A, one of two stairwells in the building. Though they had no way of knowing it, this was a serious mistake.
Because Stair A housed the building’s red-painted standpipe, an innovation in tall buildings that feeds water to fire hoses, firefighters designated it their “attack” stairway, said Francis X. Gribbon, the Fire Department’s chief spokesman.
Mr. McClung and Mr. Cohen were probably overcome after the firefighters opened the door from the stairwell to smoke coming from the partly opened door of the burning apartment.
If evacuation is imperative, Mr. Gribbon said, as a general rule, a stairwell without a standpipe should be used. In the Strand, the second stairwell, Stair B, remained largely free of smoke during the fire.
Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said he was creating a task force that would meet with residents of high-rise buildings about proper safety procedures.
At the Strand last week, workers scrubbed the walls of Stair A, which was still coated in soot. Mr. Cohen, who remains sedated, has not yet been told of his husband’s death, said Javier Morgado, a close friend of the couple’s.
“The emotional toll of this has yet to even begin as far as it concerns Michael,” he said.
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF
__________________________________
When You Hear ‘Fire!’ in a High-Rise: Stay Put
counterintuitive = contrary to intuition or to common-sense expectation (but often nevertheless true)
stay put = remain somewhere without moving or being moved
The first clang of the alarm came as many residents of the modern high-rise in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, were sitting down to brunch or opening the Sunday paper. Quickly came the screams — “Fire!”— and an acrid smoke that blackened windows and seeped under doors and through air vents. Few knew exactly where in the 42-story building the fire was. Some tried and failed to reach 911 operators, who were overwhelmed by calls. Many decided to flee.
Daniel McClung was one of them. He and his husband, Michael Cohen, scooped up their two dogs and left their 38th-floor apartment. They reached only the 31st floor before they were overcome by smoke, fire officials said.
Mr. McClung, a 27-year-old playwright, died. As of Monday, Mr. Cohen, 32, an online video producer, remained in intensive care at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. Their two dogs, Schooner and Georgia, also died.
It is a basic human instinct reinforced by countless grade-school fire drills: When you see flames or smell smoke, get out. In New York, where the reminders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack are omnipresent, the fates of those who waited and became trapped in the burning towers serve as a lesson for many, not least the people who live in high-rises like the Strand, the site of the Jan. 5 fire that killed Mr. McClung. But in modern high-rise buildings, fire safety experts say, flight can be deadly.
As they raced down the stairs, the couple ran into a suffocating plume of smoke sucked upward as if through a chimney when firefighters opened the stairwell door and pushed into the burning apartment.
Had the couple remained in their home, Mr. McClung would have survived, officials said. The fire turned out to be isolated to an apartment 18 floors below where the couple lived. Because the building was constructed of fire-resistant materials, the blaze barely spread. Even residents who remained in apartments directly next door to the fire emerged unscathed.
A fire safety notice that is supposed to be affixed to every entry door makes clear that staying in place is often the safest strategy during a fire. Most residents interviewed after the fire said they had never seen the notice, had seen it long ago, lost it, or, treated it like a safety information card on an airplane, and simply did not read it.
Even among those who knew the rule, many said the first impulse was to run.
“The idea of staying in your apartment when there’s a fire sounds wrong,” said George Hahn, 43, who fled with his dog, Smokey, when the fire alarm sounded.
Since the invention of the fire hydrant and in-home smoke detector, advances in technology have drastically decreased the risk of dying in a fire. In recent decades, buildings have been constructed with flame-resistant materials, and metal, self-closing doors meant to isolate fires once they break out.
Of the 67 fire deaths in the city last year, only 18 occurred in such buildings, almost all of them in the apartment that was actually on fire, according to the Fire Department.
Even so, no building is completely safe, and officials periodically update standards to deal with new problems or take advantage of new technology.
Click: Graphic: A Tragedy on 10th Avenue
In 1998, four people died from smoke inhalation in a stairwell of an Upper West Side apartment tower under conditions similar to those that killed Mr. McClung. After that fire, which broke out in the apartment where the family of the actor Macaulay Culkin lived, a law was passed requiring all new high-rises and those undergoing major renovation to have sprinkler systems. A 2008 law required new buildings over 125 feet tall to have emergency intercom systems.
The Sept. 11 attack and the advent of residential supertowers, some exceeding 100 stories, have prompted engineers and fire officials to take a fresh look at fire safety in tall buildings, said Chris Jelenewicz, an engineering program manager at the Society of Fire Protection Engineers, based in Maryland.
Wider stairwells, advanced sprinkler systems and alarms that give precise instructions during an emergency would make buildings safer, he said. Someday, he said, elevators designed to withstand fires and earthquakes could be used to quickly evacuate buildings during an emergency.
In any case, Mr. Jelenewicz said, information is key.
“To really make these systems work you really need to educate the occupants,” he said.
The Strand, which opened in the late 1980s, was built with fire-resistant materials, plasterboard walls and metal doors designed to withstand a blaze for up to three hours, the Fire Department said. It does not have sprinklers or an intercom system.
After the fire there, friends of Mr. McClung and Mr. Cohen created apetition on the website change.org calling for legislation that would require residential high-rise buildings to have public address systems to provide timely information in case of an emergency. Corey Johnson, a City Council member whose district includes Hell’s Kitchen, has proposed a bill that would require such systems in buildings over six stories.
“Many people don’t know whether they live in a fireproof building and don’t know whether they should stay or go during an emergency,” Mr. Johnson said at a news conference last week. “Daniel’s life would have been saved if he had stayed in his apartment, but he wasn’t given proper instructions when the fire broke out.”
Launch media viewer
The fire-damaged stairwell on the 20th floor of the Strand, where a man died trying to escape. Michael Appleton for The New York TimesWhen the fire alarms sounded in the Strand about 11 a.m. that chilly Sunday morning, reactions varied. Some stayed in place and hoped for the best, stuffing wet towels into air vents and the spaces under doors. Others threw on clothes, grabbed children and pets and ran. One man in an apartment a floor above the fire was seen furiously scrubbing the railings and glass of his terrace with a rag apparently trying to keep the soot at bay.
Another resident, Nina Regevik, a physician who is a member of an emergency response team created in New Jersey after the Sept. 11 attack, said she was fully aware of the fire safety procedures in her building. But when someone outside her apartment yelled “Fire!” and told everyone to evacuate, she said she defied her training, picked up her cat and fled with her partner.
“Despite how many years of training and hearing what one should do, that was totally trumped by hearing someone in a very worrisome voice saying ‘Get out, get out, fire,’ ” she said.
At one point a jet of flame shot out over 10th Avenue and white-hot metal rained down on the street, witnesses said. The fire burned about two hours.
With their two dogs, Mr. McClung and Mr. Cohen rushed into Stair A, one of two stairwells in the building. Though they had no way of knowing it, this was a serious mistake.
Because Stair A housed the building’s red-painted standpipe, an innovation in tall buildings that feeds water to fire hoses, firefighters designated it their “attack” stairway, said Francis X. Gribbon, the Fire Department’s chief spokesman.
Mr. McClung and Mr. Cohen were probably overcome after the firefighters opened the door from the stairwell to smoke coming from the partly opened door of the burning apartment.
If evacuation is imperative, Mr. Gribbon said, as a general rule, a stairwell without a standpipe should be used. In the Strand, the second stairwell, Stair B, remained largely free of smoke during the fire.
Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said he was creating a task force that would meet with residents of high-rise buildings about proper safety procedures.
At the Strand last week, workers scrubbed the walls of Stair A, which was still coated in soot. Mr. Cohen, who remains sedated, has not yet been told of his husband’s death, said Javier Morgado, a close friend of the couple’s.
“The emotional toll of this has yet to even begin as far as it concerns Michael,” he said.
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF
__________________________________
Australian scientists microchip bees
to map movements, halt diseases
(Reuters) - Australian scientists are gluing tiny sensors onto thousands of honey bees to track their movements in a trial aimed at halting the spread of diseases that have wiped out populations in the northern hemisphere.
Scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, said the microchips could help tackle so-called colony collapse disorder, a situation where bees mysteriously disappear from hives, and the encroachment of the parasitic varroa mite.
Scientists will use tweezers to glue on the sensors, weighing about 5 milligrams and measuring 2.5 millimeters (a little more than 1/16 of an inch) square, after soothing the bees to sleep by refrigeration.
Some young bees, which tend to be hairier than older bees, need to be shaved before the sensor can be glued on.
Scientists will examine the effectiveness of pesticides in protecting the bees from colony collapse disorder and varroa mite.
The study will also enable farmers and fruit growers to understand and manage their crops, given the honey bee's crucial role in the pollination of crops globally, the CSIRO said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
"Honey bees play a vital role in the landscape through a free pollination service for agriculture, which various crops rely on to increase yields," the CSIRO's Paulo de Souza, who is leading the project, said in the statement.
"Using this technology, we aim to understand the bee's relationship with its environment."
Scientists plan to fit sensors on 5,000 bees in the southern island state of Tasmania over the Australian summer.
The radio frequency identification sensors work like an electronic tag for cars on a toll road, recording when insects pass a checkpoint. That will allow scientists to build a three-dimensional image of the insects' movements, a process described as "swarm sensing".
The scientists are working on shrinking the sensor to 1 mm square so they can be attached to smaller insects, including mosquitoes.
Source: Internet news
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to map movements, halt diseases
(Reuters) - Australian scientists are gluing tiny sensors onto thousands of honey bees to track their movements in a trial aimed at halting the spread of diseases that have wiped out populations in the northern hemisphere.
Scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, said the microchips could help tackle so-called colony collapse disorder, a situation where bees mysteriously disappear from hives, and the encroachment of the parasitic varroa mite.
Scientists will use tweezers to glue on the sensors, weighing about 5 milligrams and measuring 2.5 millimeters (a little more than 1/16 of an inch) square, after soothing the bees to sleep by refrigeration.
Some young bees, which tend to be hairier than older bees, need to be shaved before the sensor can be glued on.
Scientists will examine the effectiveness of pesticides in protecting the bees from colony collapse disorder and varroa mite.
The study will also enable farmers and fruit growers to understand and manage their crops, given the honey bee's crucial role in the pollination of crops globally, the CSIRO said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
"Honey bees play a vital role in the landscape through a free pollination service for agriculture, which various crops rely on to increase yields," the CSIRO's Paulo de Souza, who is leading the project, said in the statement.
"Using this technology, we aim to understand the bee's relationship with its environment."
Scientists plan to fit sensors on 5,000 bees in the southern island state of Tasmania over the Australian summer.
The radio frequency identification sensors work like an electronic tag for cars on a toll road, recording when insects pass a checkpoint. That will allow scientists to build a three-dimensional image of the insects' movements, a process described as "swarm sensing".
The scientists are working on shrinking the sensor to 1 mm square so they can be attached to smaller insects, including mosquitoes.
Source: Internet news
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More, more & more similar bullying news reports
relating to Gov. Christie of NJ
reprisal = an act of retaliation= revenge, vengeance, retribution, requital;
Click: Jersey City Home Pagewww.cityofjerseycity.com/Official site with an introduction to the mayor, news items, and contacts.
Now in News:
Declining to Endorse Gov. Christie, Jersey City, NJ, Felt Reprisal
________________________________________
Now in News:
Aide fired by Gov. Christi is called "Team Player", not ______________________________________________
Now in News
The "I", "I", "I", In Gov. Christie's Storm
POLITICS boils down to three pronouns: I, you, we. The politician who has them in balance goes a long way.
From the “I” comes the lust for attention necessary to face all the cameras, hear all the clamoring, weather all the commentary. From the “I” comes the yearning to be celebrated and, because celebration often hinges on accomplishment, the drive to get things done. Personal glory and public good dovetail. What we call narcissism overlaps with what we call altruism, neither of which is as tidy as we make it out to be.
“You” matters just as much in this transactional age. A politician must promise measurable improvement to each and every voter’s life. That’s what President Obama was trying to do with his pitch for the Affordable Care Act; he just went way too far. He became utterly fixated on the individual “you,” when the best argument for universal health insurance was and is about the communal us.
“We” is essential. It must be in the mix. A politician who can cast his or her mission as our mission not only finds the cloak in which self-regard is most fetchingly wrapped but also creates the sense of collective purpose that’s vital to progress.
Can Gov. Chris Christie do that?
Can he fit the “we” into me, me, me?
The above is the beginning of the article in The New York Times -
click green to see the full article The 'I' in Christie's Storm
The New York Times
____________________________________
Christie's Gift to Hillary
'Bridgegate' has overshadowed the revelation that Hillary Clinton opposed the surge in Iraq for political reasons
When revelations emerged this week about the involvement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's staff in an episode of nasty political payback against a mayor who hadn't supported the governor, political observers called the controversy a "gift" to Hillary Clinton. After all, Mr. Christie and Mrs. Clinton are expected to run for president in 2016, and until the past few days, he was the only Republican candidate polling ahead of her.
The pundits are right. The vindictive traffic-lane shutdown was a gift to Mrs. Clinton—but not for the reasons generally supposed. The brouhaha about Mr. Christie did her a major favor by overshadowing news that had just broken about a forthcoming memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, which relates an episode about Mrs. Clinton that ought to alarm even her most ardent supporters.
Just to review: Mr. Gates served in President Obama's cabinet alongside Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state. In his book, Mr. Gates recalls that in a 2009 discussion about President George W. Bush's decision to commit more troops to Iraq, Mrs. Clinton "told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary." President Obama then "conceded vaguely" that he opposed the surge for similar reasons.
The revelation caused a brief bit of media consternation. Here was a first-hand account of a possible presidential contender saying she had, for strictly political reasons, opposed a change in military policy that ultimately saved the lives of countless U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens. Yet the story was basically a one-day affair. The arrival of the Christie news seemed to be greeted with almost undisguised relief by mainstream reporters and pundits alike.
Soon the story was: Should the governor step down? Over on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow raked through conspiracy theories about what the closure of traffic lanes near the George Washington Bridge was really about.
This isn't to minimize what happened in New Jersey. A bald political move inconvenienced many drivers. That's not good, and Mr. Christie fired the guilty parties and castigated them for "callous and indifferent behavior."
Callous and indifferent . . . that has a nice ring as the description of a politician with an eye on the Iowa caucuses making a political calculation about military policy when our troops were suffering ghastly losses.
If, as Mr. Gates writes, President Bush risked "political ruin . . . on a single decision he believed was the right thing for the country," Mrs. Clinton confronted that same decision and chose presidential ambition over the national interest.
Source: (1) WSJ & (2) Mr. Hirsch is a student at Yale Law School and a former staff editor at Foreign Affairs.
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'Bridgegate' has overshadowed the revelation that Hillary Clinton opposed the surge in Iraq for political reasons
When revelations emerged this week about the involvement of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's staff in an episode of nasty political payback against a mayor who hadn't supported the governor, political observers called the controversy a "gift" to Hillary Clinton. After all, Mr. Christie and Mrs. Clinton are expected to run for president in 2016, and until the past few days, he was the only Republican candidate polling ahead of her.
The pundits are right. The vindictive traffic-lane shutdown was a gift to Mrs. Clinton—but not for the reasons generally supposed. The brouhaha about Mr. Christie did her a major favor by overshadowing news that had just broken about a forthcoming memoir by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, which relates an episode about Mrs. Clinton that ought to alarm even her most ardent supporters.
Just to review: Mr. Gates served in President Obama's cabinet alongside Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state. In his book, Mr. Gates recalls that in a 2009 discussion about President George W. Bush's decision to commit more troops to Iraq, Mrs. Clinton "told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary." President Obama then "conceded vaguely" that he opposed the surge for similar reasons.
The revelation caused a brief bit of media consternation. Here was a first-hand account of a possible presidential contender saying she had, for strictly political reasons, opposed a change in military policy that ultimately saved the lives of countless U.S. troops and Iraqi citizens. Yet the story was basically a one-day affair. The arrival of the Christie news seemed to be greeted with almost undisguised relief by mainstream reporters and pundits alike.
Soon the story was: Should the governor step down? Over on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow raked through conspiracy theories about what the closure of traffic lanes near the George Washington Bridge was really about.
This isn't to minimize what happened in New Jersey. A bald political move inconvenienced many drivers. That's not good, and Mr. Christie fired the guilty parties and castigated them for "callous and indifferent behavior."
Callous and indifferent . . . that has a nice ring as the description of a politician with an eye on the Iowa caucuses making a political calculation about military policy when our troops were suffering ghastly losses.
If, as Mr. Gates writes, President Bush risked "political ruin . . . on a single decision he believed was the right thing for the country," Mrs. Clinton confronted that same decision and chose presidential ambition over the national interest.
Source: (1) WSJ & (2) Mr. Hirsch is a student at Yale Law School and a former staff editor at Foreign Affairs.
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The Civil Rights of Children T A New York Times Editorial, Date: January 12, 2014
Most school officials try to apply disciplinary policies fairly and in compliance with federal laws that forbid racial discrimination. Even so, a large and troubling body of data — some if it gathered by the federal government — shows that black and Hispanic students are disproportionately and unjustifiably subjected to suspension, expulsion or even arrest for nonviolent offenses that should be dealt with in the principal’s office.
As a result, minority children who are already at greater risk of dropping out are being ejected from school and denied the right to an effective public education.
Over the last several years, civil rights officials in the Obama administration have begun to focus on this problem, increasing civil rights investigations and forcing school districts to revise disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect minorities. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, for example, has reached such agreements with school districts in Los Angeles; in Oakland, Calif.; and in Delaware.
Last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division took another welcome step. The agencies jointly click: issued an extensive set of guidance documents, informing school districts of the law and showing them how to identify, avoid and remedy discriminatory disciplinary policies.
The guidance documents included striking data on racial inequities. For example, African-American students represent only 15 percent of public school students, but they make of 35 percent of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and 36 percent of those expelled. Statistical information does not in itself prove discrimination. But research has shown that black students do not engage in more serious or more frequent misbehavior than other students.
The treatment of disabled students should be a source of national shame: They represent 12 percent of students in the country, but they make up 25 percent of students receiving multiple out-of-school suspensions and 23 percent of students subjected to a school-related arrest.
Investigations in this area have found two kinds of discrimination: cases in which African-American students are treated more harshly and disciplined more frequently than white students who engage in similar misbehavior; and cases where policies — like mandatory suspension, expulsion or ticketing — are administered in a race-neutral manner but have a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.
To prevent bad practices, the new federal guidance urges schools to train teachers more intensively in classroom management; to ensure that teachers and administrators know they, rather than security or law-enforcement officers, are responsible for routine discipline; to collect data on disciplinary actions and monitor the actions of security officers; and to emphasize policies that reinforce positive behavior over tactics that drive students out of school.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was on the mark last week when he said, “A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct.” By making suspension and arrest a last resort, school districts can avoid federal civil rights sanctions and move away from destructive policies that seriously harm the most vulnerable students.
Source: NYT
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Most school officials try to apply disciplinary policies fairly and in compliance with federal laws that forbid racial discrimination. Even so, a large and troubling body of data — some if it gathered by the federal government — shows that black and Hispanic students are disproportionately and unjustifiably subjected to suspension, expulsion or even arrest for nonviolent offenses that should be dealt with in the principal’s office.
As a result, minority children who are already at greater risk of dropping out are being ejected from school and denied the right to an effective public education.
Over the last several years, civil rights officials in the Obama administration have begun to focus on this problem, increasing civil rights investigations and forcing school districts to revise disciplinary policies that disproportionately affect minorities. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, for example, has reached such agreements with school districts in Los Angeles; in Oakland, Calif.; and in Delaware.
Last week, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division took another welcome step. The agencies jointly click: issued an extensive set of guidance documents, informing school districts of the law and showing them how to identify, avoid and remedy discriminatory disciplinary policies.
The guidance documents included striking data on racial inequities. For example, African-American students represent only 15 percent of public school students, but they make of 35 percent of students suspended once, 44 percent of those suspended more than once and 36 percent of those expelled. Statistical information does not in itself prove discrimination. But research has shown that black students do not engage in more serious or more frequent misbehavior than other students.
The treatment of disabled students should be a source of national shame: They represent 12 percent of students in the country, but they make up 25 percent of students receiving multiple out-of-school suspensions and 23 percent of students subjected to a school-related arrest.
Investigations in this area have found two kinds of discrimination: cases in which African-American students are treated more harshly and disciplined more frequently than white students who engage in similar misbehavior; and cases where policies — like mandatory suspension, expulsion or ticketing — are administered in a race-neutral manner but have a disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.
To prevent bad practices, the new federal guidance urges schools to train teachers more intensively in classroom management; to ensure that teachers and administrators know they, rather than security or law-enforcement officers, are responsible for routine discipline; to collect data on disciplinary actions and monitor the actions of security officers; and to emphasize policies that reinforce positive behavior over tactics that drive students out of school.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. was on the mark last week when he said, “A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct.” By making suspension and arrest a last resort, school districts can avoid federal civil rights sanctions and move away from destructive policies that seriously harm the most vulnerable students.
Source: NYT
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New Breast Milk Bank For Hospitalized Babies Breast Milk Can Save a Baby's life
Breast feeding is also beneficial for the mother's health
PITTSBURGH—Working as a lactation consultant*) for the past decade, Denise O’Connor was well aware of the benefits of breast milk—particularly for premature babies in intensive care units. She is planning a new milk donation organization
She knew that babies in Pittsburgh-area hospitals who couldn’t get their mother’s breast milk were receiving formula, instead of “donor” breast milk available in other parts of the country.
*) A Lactation Consultant is an allied health**) professional who specializes in the clinical management of breastfeeding. Lactation consultants commonly work in hospitals, physician or midwife practices, public health programs, and private practice. click:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactation_consultant
**) Allied health professions are health care professions distinct from nursing, medicine, and pharmacy.[1] One estimate reported allied health professionals make up 60 percent of the total health workforce.[2] They work in health care teams to make the health care system function by providing a range of diagnostic, technical, therapeutic and direct patient care and support services that are critical to the other health professionals they work with and the patients they serve. click: Allied health
But it wasn’t until she saw a news report that mentioned the closest milk bank was in Columbus, Ohio, that she decided she would be the one to do something about it.
O’Connor set out to create a milk bank in Pittsburgh, where mothers with extra breast milk could donate to sick babies in hospitals. Breast feeding is better for the baby and for the mother (see link at the end of this article). Breast milk is healthier nutrition for the baby than the formula. Brest milk can even save a baby's life (pointed out in this article, also).
Less than six months later, the Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank is on its way to becoming a reality. “It’s beyond my wildest expectations how far we’ve gotten,” O’Connor said. “The time was just right.”
Thanks to a $5,000 donation from the doctors at West Penn Hospital, the milk bank has now applied for official recognition from the Human Milk Banking Association of North America (HMBANA).
Benefits of Breast Milk
Breast milk is recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics for babies. But for those born prematurely and at low birth weights, breast milk can literally be life-saving, said O’Connor. For that reason, the AAP adopted a new standard of care last year recommending that all premature infants receive human milk, including pasteurized donor milk if their own mother’s milk is unavailable.
At least 42 percent of neonatal intensive care units around the country now provide donor milk to premature babies, according to a study this year in Pediatrics. But no Pittsburgh-area hospitals currently do so, in part because there is no milk bank nearby. The Pittsburgh milk bank will be the second closest bank to New York City, the closest is in Massachusetts, according to the HMBANA website.
HMBANA = Human Milk Banking Association of North America
4455 Camp Bowie Blvd., Suite 114-88, Fort Worth, TX 76107 - (817) 810-9984 - [email protected]
Click: HMBANAhttps://www.hmbana.org/
HMBANA promotes and supports donor milk banking in Canada, Mexico and the United States. Information about membership, milk banks, their publications and history.
Pittsburgh hospitals say that thus far, the cost of donor milk has been an obstacle. Breast milk from a bank costs around $4.50 per ounce, and is not separately reimbursed by health insurers. Breast milk banks affiliated with HMBANA are nonprofit organizations, but blood tests to screen donors are costly, as is pasteurizing and shipping milk.
For the hospitals, “we’re hoping that we can bring down the cost a little bit having one in the area,” said Jennifer Kloesz, medical director of the neonatal intensive care unit at Magee-Womens Hospital of University of Pittsburg Medical Center.
Preventing Stomach Infection
Breast milk is most promising for premature infants in preventing a stomach infection called necrotizing enterocolitis*)—”the big bad wolf in the NICU,” said O’Connor. (NICU = click: Neonatal intensive care unit)
Necrotizing enterocolitis, known as NEC*), has a fatality rate of 10 to 15 percent, said Alan Lantzy, a neonatologist at West Penn Hospital, with a much higher percentage of babies diagnosed with the disease requiring serious surgery.
*) click: Necrotizing enterocolitis
One recent study found that babies fed human breast milk were 77 percent less likely to contract NEC than babies fed cow-milk based formula. The same 2010 study in the Journal of Pediatrics calculated that for every eight babies fed breast milk instead of formula, one case of NEC requiring surgery or death could be prevented.
“The decrease that we’re seeing not only in deaths but in severity is pretty significant,” said Dr. Kloesz, who serves on the board of the Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank. click: Three Rivers Mothers' Milk Bank | Facebook.
Premature babies fed human milk versus formula also leave the hospital an average of three days sooner than formula-fed babies and have lower rates of sepsis, said O’Connor.
While donor milk that is frozen and pasteurized doesn’t have all the immunity-boosting benefits of fresh milk from babies’ own mothers, it is still recommended over formula.
“Every neonatologist *) would rather use human milk that has been frozen than cow’s milk formula,” said Lantzy, also a Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank board member.*) neonatology) that branch of pediatric medicine concerned with the newborn; the diagnosis and treatment of neonates (= a newborn child or mammal)
Demand and Supply
O’Connor has received letters of intent from Pittsburgh hospitals to use the milk and has also heard interest from hospitals in Erie and West Virginia. She does not anticipate any trouble finding demand for the milk: HMBANA milk banks distributed more than 2 million ounces in 2011, but the group estimates the national need for NICU babies to be around 9 million ounces per year.
To fill that demand, the milk bank must also find donors. Typically, said O’Connor, milk donors might be working mothers who have pumped more than they need to feed their own baby or mothers who have had previous experiences with premature babies.
There are also cases of mothers who pump for other babies after their own premature babies have died, she said. She is confident that willing Pittsburgh donors exist, having been told by the Mothers Milk Bank of Ohio in Columbus that it regularly fields calls from Pittsburgh mothers looking to give away milk.
Some mothers now share milk informally, usually through websites or social networking, but that milk isn’t pasteurized or screened, she said. An study in the journal Pediatrics found almost three quarters of such samples contaminated with bacteria, including salmonella. Milk shared informally is also generally going to babies who are much healthier than hospitalized babies, said. O’Connor.
Making the milk bank a reality would take $200,000 to $300,000, said O’Connor, who was previously on the board of the Midwife Center for Birth and Women’s Health. While their application for official tax nonprofit status is pending, they are accepting donations through the Midwife Center for the benefit of the Three Rivers Mothers’ Milk Bank.
She is hoping to get the bank up and running by the end of the year, depending on funding. “If someone thought this was a great cause and decided to give us a quarter million dollars, we could have it up and running in a few months,” she said.
Click the website links below to further study information - important for the baby and for the mother
- Why breastfeeding is important | womenshealth.govwww.womenshealth.gov › Breastfeeding
- Interested in Developing a HMBANA Milk Bank?www.flbreastfeeding.org/.../InterestedinDevelopingaHMBANAMilkBank...HMBANA aims to facilitate the establishment of non-profit donor milk banks in North. America in areas where they are needed. Interested groups must adhere to ...
- HMBANA | - Lactation Matterslactationmatters.org/tag/hmbana/
What is the value of having access to safe donor milk? For families with a preterm infant in the NICU, it can be priceless, yet to many, the cost of pasteurized ... Source: (1) Internet News, (2) Internet links, (3) STAF, Inc. ___________________________________________
HMBANA = Human Milk Banking Association of North America
Your Daily Coffee Just Might Jolt Your Memory
New study suggests caffeine not only wakes you up, but also may aid your recall
A dose of at least 200 mg of caffeine was needed to enhance memory consolidation, the researchers said.
Jan. 12, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Swarms of morning commuters clutch cups of coffee to kick-start the workday. But a new study suggests caffeine might do more for the brain than boost alertness -- it may help memory too.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University looked at caffeine's impact on memory while excluding its other brain-enhancing factors. The study showed that caffeine enhances certain memories for up to 24 hours after it's consumed.
"The finding that caffeine has an effect on this process in humans -- the process of making memories more permanent, less forgettable -- was one of the big novelties," said study author Michael Yassa, an assistant professor of neurobiology and behavior at the University of California, Irvine, who conducted the research while at Johns Hopkins.
The study, which was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the U.S. National Science Foundation, included more than 100 participants who were "caffeine naive," meaning they were not big coffee, tea or cola drinkers, Yassa said.
"We picked people who were getting less than 500 milligrams of caffeine a week," he said. "Most weren't coffee drinkers. Most had a soda once or twice a week."
Coffee's caffeine content varies greatly. Most average-size cups contain about 160 milligrams (mg), Yassa said. But a 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee packs 330 mg of caffeine, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
A dose of at least 200 mg of caffeine was needed to enhance memory consolidation, the researchers said.
For the study, which was published online Jan. 12 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the researchers asked the participants to look at hundreds of common, everyday images on a computer screen: shoes, a chair, a rubber duck, etc.
"We asked them to tell us if it was an indoor or an outdoor object, but we didn't really care about what they said," Yassa said. "We just wanted them to attend to the object, to get that object into their brains."
Five minutes after the participants looked at the images, half were given 200 milligrams of caffeine and half received a placebo. They returned 24 hours later, after the caffeine was out of their system, and looked at more images of objects. They were asked to label the pictures as either old, new or similar to the original images they'd seen (for example, a picture of a duck they viewed the day before, but taken from a slightly different angle).
People who had taken the caffeine were better at distinguishing the similar pictures from the original ones, and those who had received the placebo were more likely to incorrectly identify the similar images as the old images, the researchers said.
Yassa said the caffeine-induced ability to recognize similar, but not identical, images did not occur when people were given smaller doses of caffeine or when caffeine was ingested an hour before the picture test.
"On caffeine, the participants were more likely to identify the similar items correctly as similar and not old," he said. "In doing so, this demonstrates that the caffeine enhanced the brain's consolidation process -- the process of making those items more permanent in their memory."
The idea, Yassa said, is that outside the lab, you could have the same benefit from your caffeine habit.
"It might allow you to remember things -- to retain memories -- for a longer period of time and with more precision, even if you eliminate the other benefits of caffeine, like attention, alertness and vigilance," Yassa said.
Dr. David Knopman, a professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., said the results are interesting from a pharmacologic perspective. "Taking it at face value, it's interesting research," Knopman said. "It raises some questions about what's involved in learning and how certain drugs might enhance learning in normal people."
But Knopman said he doesn't think the finding has any practical significance for people with memory loss due to Alzheimer's disease.
Yassa, who also studies aging and Alzheimer's, said more research is needed to figure out why caffeine might enhance memory.
The study didn't actually prove that caffeine improves memory, however. One limitation of the study is that participants knew they were involved in caffeine research, the researchers said.
In the United States, 80 percent of adults consume caffeine every day, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
SOURCES: Michael Yassa, Ph.D., assistant professor, neurobiology and behavior, University of California, Irvine, formerly of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.; David Knopman, M.D., professor, neurology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn.; Jan. 12, 2014,Nature Neuroscience, online
HealthDay
Copyright (c) 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
More Health News on: Caffeine Memory Recent Health News
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Banks Say No to Marijuana Money, Legal or Not
In his second-floor office above a hair salon in north Seattle, Ryan Kunkel is seated on a couch placing $1,000 bricks of cash — dozens of them — in a rumpled brown paper bag. When he finishes, he stashes the money in the trunk of his BMW and sets off on an adrenalized drive downtown, darting through traffic and nervously checking to see if anyone is following him.
Despite the air of criminality, there is nothing illicit in what Mr. Kunkel is doing. He co-owns five medical marijuana dispensaries, and on this day he is heading to the Washington State Department of Revenue to commit the ultimate in law-abiding acts: paying taxes. After about 25 minutes at the agency, Mr. Kunkel emerges with a receipt for $51,321.
“Carrying such large amounts of cash is a terrible risk that freaks me out a bit because there is the fear in my mind that the next car pulling up beside me could be the crew that hijacks us,” he said. “So, we have to play this never-ending shell game of different cars, different routes, different dates and different times.”
Launch media viewer
Mr. Kunkel and his business partner, Mr. Berman, left. David Ryder for The New York TimesLegal marijuana merchants like Mr. Kunkel — mainly medical marijuana outlets but also, starting this year, shops that sell recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington — are grappling with a pressing predicament: Their businesses are conducted almost entirely in cash because it is exceedingly difficult for them to open and maintain bank accounts, and thus accept credit cards.
The problem underscores the patchwork nature of federal and state laws that have evolved fitfully as states have legalized some form of marijuana commerce. Though 20 states and the District of Columbia allow either medical or recreational marijuana use — with more likely to follow suit — the drug remains illegal under federal law.
The Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970 classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the most dangerous category, which also includes heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
As a result, banks, including state-chartered ones, are reluctant to provide traditional services to marijuana businesses. They fear that federal regulators and law enforcement authorities might punish them, with measures like large fines, for violating prohibitions on money-laundering, among other federal laws and regulations.
“Banking is the most urgent issue facing the legal cannabis industry today,” said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association in Washington, D.C. Saying legal marijuana sales in the United States could reach $3 billion this year, Mr. Smith added: “So much money floating around outside the banking system is not safe, and it is not in anyone’s interest. Federal law needs to be harmonized with state laws.”
The limitations have created unique burdens for legal marijuana business owners. They pay employees with envelopes of cash. They haul Chipotle and Nordstrom bags containing thousands of dollars in $10 and $20 bills to supermarkets to buy money orders. When they are able to open bank accounts — often under false pretenses — many have taken to storing money in Tupperware containers filled with air fresheners to mask the smell of marijuana.
The all-cash nature of the business has also created huge security concerns for business owners. Many have installed panic buttons for workers in the event of a robbery and have set up a constellation of security cameras at their facilities beyond what is required, as well as floor sensors to detect break-ins. In Colorado, Blue Line Protection Group was formed a few months ago, specializing in protecting dispensaries and facilities that grow marijuana, and in providing transportation security. The firm largely uses military veterans who have Special Operations experience.
Marijuana business owners have devised strategies to avoid the suspicions of bankers. A number of legal operations have opened accounts by establishing holding companies with names that obscure the nature of their business. Some owners simply use personal bank accounts. Others have relied on local bank managers willing to take chances and bring them on as clients, or even offer tips on how to choose nondescript company names.
But the financial institutions eventually shut down many of these accounts after managers conclude the businesses are too much of a risk. It is not unusual for a legitimate marijuana business to go through a half-dozen bank accounts in a few years. While they are active, however, these accounts may have informal restrictions placed on them — some self-imposed — so they do not draw the scrutiny of bankers who may file suspicious-activity reports or would be required to report deposits over $10,000 in cash. The account holders may make only small deposits, and only at night and at certain branches. Mr. Kunkel of Seattle has such an account.
At the largest credit union in Washington State, BECU, about 20 accounts have been shut down in the last three years after it was discovered they were for businesses in the legal marijuana trade, Todd Pietzsch, a spokesman for the credit union, said.
Kristi Kelly, 36, who owns two dispensaries and several marijuana growing operations in the Denver area, said six bank accounts of hers had been canceled in the last 18 months. “Opening the account is not necessarily the problem,” she said. “Our cash deposit levels flag a bank’s compliance division.”
Launch media viewer
Mr. Kunkel, co-owner of five marijuana dispensaries, delivered a bag of cash to the Washington State Department of Revenue in Seattle. After 25 minutes, he emerged with a receipt for $51,321. David Ryder for The New York TimesMs. Kelly, who had just paid $10,000 in cash to the City of Denver for licensing and application fees to expand her business, said that several times a week she carried around tens of thousands of dollars in a bag. “I never felt as illegitimate as the day I had to buy a cash counter,” she said, adding that she spends three hours or so a day just managing the cash from her business’s multiple locations.
A.T.M.s are common in marijuana outlets, but the business owners often have to use their own cash in the machines in case law enforcement authorities conduct a raid and seize the money.
Those marijuana operations that do have bank accounts or use the personal ones of their owners can use a cashless A.T.M. service in which a debit card is swiped at a dispensary and the money is transferred into the recipient’s account.
“It is operating over the A.T.M. network and not the credit card network,” said Lance Ott, whose company, Guardian Data Systems, provides this service. “The A.T.M. networks are not as regulated. This is the loophole.”
Since legal marijuana operations, for the most part, cannot get bank loans, these small businesses have to rely on short-term loans from individuals, usually with higher interest rates.
To help, High Times magazine is starting a private equity fund to invest in marijuana businesses. But many investors may feel uneasy about marijuana businesses that do not have bank accounts. And without bank references, entrepreneurs say, it is much tougher to get lines of credit from vendors.
Leaders in the marijuana trade point out that giving accounts to businesses would allow for more transparency and meticulous regulation and would help ensure that jurisdictions receive the taxes they are entitled to.
Marijuana entrepreneurs and banks both would like clear guidelines from the government on how financial institutions can serve the industry. On Friday, six members of Colorado’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the Treasury and the Justice Department requesting that they “expedite” that guidance.
In August, the Justice Department issued a memo indicating that it would not crack down on legal marijuana as long as eight regulatory requirements were met, like preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises and preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors. The memo did not address banking.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network hopes to circulate recommendations by the end of this month to officials at the Treasury and the Justice Department for their opinions, an official briefed on the situation said. There is no timetable for formal guidelines.
Richard Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the American Bankers Association, said banks wanted clear and comprehensive guidelines on how to do business with the legal marijuana industry.
Mr. Riese said, for instance, that banks would want to know that they were not “aiding and abetting” a criminal enterprise if they provided services to marijuana businesses. “Banks will need a lot of detail from regulators to get the satisfaction and comfort they are looking for,” he said.
Source:
A version of this article appears in print on January 12, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Banks Say No to Marijuana Money, Legal or Not
_______________________________________
In his second-floor office above a hair salon in north Seattle, Ryan Kunkel is seated on a couch placing $1,000 bricks of cash — dozens of them — in a rumpled brown paper bag. When he finishes, he stashes the money in the trunk of his BMW and sets off on an adrenalized drive downtown, darting through traffic and nervously checking to see if anyone is following him.
Despite the air of criminality, there is nothing illicit in what Mr. Kunkel is doing. He co-owns five medical marijuana dispensaries, and on this day he is heading to the Washington State Department of Revenue to commit the ultimate in law-abiding acts: paying taxes. After about 25 minutes at the agency, Mr. Kunkel emerges with a receipt for $51,321.
“Carrying such large amounts of cash is a terrible risk that freaks me out a bit because there is the fear in my mind that the next car pulling up beside me could be the crew that hijacks us,” he said. “So, we have to play this never-ending shell game of different cars, different routes, different dates and different times.”
Launch media viewer
Mr. Kunkel and his business partner, Mr. Berman, left. David Ryder for The New York TimesLegal marijuana merchants like Mr. Kunkel — mainly medical marijuana outlets but also, starting this year, shops that sell recreational marijuana in Colorado and Washington — are grappling with a pressing predicament: Their businesses are conducted almost entirely in cash because it is exceedingly difficult for them to open and maintain bank accounts, and thus accept credit cards.
The problem underscores the patchwork nature of federal and state laws that have evolved fitfully as states have legalized some form of marijuana commerce. Though 20 states and the District of Columbia allow either medical or recreational marijuana use — with more likely to follow suit — the drug remains illegal under federal law.
The Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970 classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug, the most dangerous category, which also includes heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
As a result, banks, including state-chartered ones, are reluctant to provide traditional services to marijuana businesses. They fear that federal regulators and law enforcement authorities might punish them, with measures like large fines, for violating prohibitions on money-laundering, among other federal laws and regulations.
“Banking is the most urgent issue facing the legal cannabis industry today,” said Aaron Smith, executive director of the National Cannabis Industry Association in Washington, D.C. Saying legal marijuana sales in the United States could reach $3 billion this year, Mr. Smith added: “So much money floating around outside the banking system is not safe, and it is not in anyone’s interest. Federal law needs to be harmonized with state laws.”
The limitations have created unique burdens for legal marijuana business owners. They pay employees with envelopes of cash. They haul Chipotle and Nordstrom bags containing thousands of dollars in $10 and $20 bills to supermarkets to buy money orders. When they are able to open bank accounts — often under false pretenses — many have taken to storing money in Tupperware containers filled with air fresheners to mask the smell of marijuana.
The all-cash nature of the business has also created huge security concerns for business owners. Many have installed panic buttons for workers in the event of a robbery and have set up a constellation of security cameras at their facilities beyond what is required, as well as floor sensors to detect break-ins. In Colorado, Blue Line Protection Group was formed a few months ago, specializing in protecting dispensaries and facilities that grow marijuana, and in providing transportation security. The firm largely uses military veterans who have Special Operations experience.
Marijuana business owners have devised strategies to avoid the suspicions of bankers. A number of legal operations have opened accounts by establishing holding companies with names that obscure the nature of their business. Some owners simply use personal bank accounts. Others have relied on local bank managers willing to take chances and bring them on as clients, or even offer tips on how to choose nondescript company names.
But the financial institutions eventually shut down many of these accounts after managers conclude the businesses are too much of a risk. It is not unusual for a legitimate marijuana business to go through a half-dozen bank accounts in a few years. While they are active, however, these accounts may have informal restrictions placed on them — some self-imposed — so they do not draw the scrutiny of bankers who may file suspicious-activity reports or would be required to report deposits over $10,000 in cash. The account holders may make only small deposits, and only at night and at certain branches. Mr. Kunkel of Seattle has such an account.
At the largest credit union in Washington State, BECU, about 20 accounts have been shut down in the last three years after it was discovered they were for businesses in the legal marijuana trade, Todd Pietzsch, a spokesman for the credit union, said.
Kristi Kelly, 36, who owns two dispensaries and several marijuana growing operations in the Denver area, said six bank accounts of hers had been canceled in the last 18 months. “Opening the account is not necessarily the problem,” she said. “Our cash deposit levels flag a bank’s compliance division.”
Launch media viewer
Mr. Kunkel, co-owner of five marijuana dispensaries, delivered a bag of cash to the Washington State Department of Revenue in Seattle. After 25 minutes, he emerged with a receipt for $51,321. David Ryder for The New York TimesMs. Kelly, who had just paid $10,000 in cash to the City of Denver for licensing and application fees to expand her business, said that several times a week she carried around tens of thousands of dollars in a bag. “I never felt as illegitimate as the day I had to buy a cash counter,” she said, adding that she spends three hours or so a day just managing the cash from her business’s multiple locations.
A.T.M.s are common in marijuana outlets, but the business owners often have to use their own cash in the machines in case law enforcement authorities conduct a raid and seize the money.
Those marijuana operations that do have bank accounts or use the personal ones of their owners can use a cashless A.T.M. service in which a debit card is swiped at a dispensary and the money is transferred into the recipient’s account.
“It is operating over the A.T.M. network and not the credit card network,” said Lance Ott, whose company, Guardian Data Systems, provides this service. “The A.T.M. networks are not as regulated. This is the loophole.”
Since legal marijuana operations, for the most part, cannot get bank loans, these small businesses have to rely on short-term loans from individuals, usually with higher interest rates.
To help, High Times magazine is starting a private equity fund to invest in marijuana businesses. But many investors may feel uneasy about marijuana businesses that do not have bank accounts. And without bank references, entrepreneurs say, it is much tougher to get lines of credit from vendors.
Leaders in the marijuana trade point out that giving accounts to businesses would allow for more transparency and meticulous regulation and would help ensure that jurisdictions receive the taxes they are entitled to.
Marijuana entrepreneurs and banks both would like clear guidelines from the government on how financial institutions can serve the industry. On Friday, six members of Colorado’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the Treasury and the Justice Department requesting that they “expedite” that guidance.
In August, the Justice Department issued a memo indicating that it would not crack down on legal marijuana as long as eight regulatory requirements were met, like preventing revenue from the sale of marijuana from going to criminal enterprises and preventing the distribution of marijuana to minors. The memo did not address banking.
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network hopes to circulate recommendations by the end of this month to officials at the Treasury and the Justice Department for their opinions, an official briefed on the situation said. There is no timetable for formal guidelines.
Richard Riese, senior vice president for regulatory compliance at the American Bankers Association, said banks wanted clear and comprehensive guidelines on how to do business with the legal marijuana industry.
Mr. Riese said, for instance, that banks would want to know that they were not “aiding and abetting” a criminal enterprise if they provided services to marijuana businesses. “Banks will need a lot of detail from regulators to get the satisfaction and comfort they are looking for,” he said.
Source:
A version of this article appears in print on January 12, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Banks Say No to Marijuana Money, Legal or Not
_______________________________________
Bet on Barbera, What the Winemakers Drink
Don't let the other 'B' wines (Barolo and Barbaresco) from Italy's Piedmont region steal the spotlight
WINEMAKERS IN ITALY have cultivated thousands of grape varieties over the years, but only a few have won wide appeal, let alone international acclaim. (The French, with grapes like Pinot Noir and Cabernet, have proven much better at that sort of thing.) And yet there are dozens of Italian varieties that merit a much larger following, or even perhaps a spotlight of their own.
One of my top candidates for a starring turn would be Barbera, a red grape of Italy's Piedmont region. It's the most widely planted red grape of the district, though not its best known (that would be Nebbiolo, the grape of the famed wines Barolo and Barbaresco).
Barbera has plenty of qualities that would seem to make it a likely household name: fairly soft tannins, an ability to age well, and bright, lively acidity. Thanks to its versatile nature, it is also one of the easiest wines in the world to pair with food.
Jeffrey Porter, beverage director of Del Posto, Babbo and Lupa restaurants in New York, calls Barbera his restaurants' "Pinot Noir," in reference to its food-friendly nature. Mr. Porter, who has amassed a huge collection of fancy Barolos on his list at Del Posto, notes that Barbera is also one of his go-to wines. "We even have an aged Barbera on our list at Del Posto that we pair with a seafood stew," he noted.
While Barbera and Pinot Noir may share the virtue of mixing well with food, Barbera bests Pinot Noir in terms of price-quality ratio. It's almost impossible to find a good bottle of Pinot Noir for $15, but an excellent Barbera often costs much less.
So why hasn't Barbera inspired the same sort of rabid following as Pinot Noir? Why are there so many self-proclaimed "Pinot-philes" but relatively few "Barbera-ites"? One of the problems may be Barbera's bewildering variety of types. Barbera comes in so many guises—from big, broad-shouldered examples to light-bodied and charming wines—that would-be Barbera drinkers don't necessarily know what they'll find.
There's also the matter of how the wine is made, which can vary and further confuse drinkers. Some Barberas are aged in new French barriques (small barrels), which impart perceptible tannins and a certain spicy bouquet, while others are aged in several years old large barrels. Some go directly into stainless steel tanks, producing wines that are fresh and juicy but not very complex.
And then there's the added wrinkle of geographic diversity. Although Barbera is produced in various regions of Italy, it is best in three subregions of Piedmont. Unfortunately, each one of these places is also home to a more famous grape. Take, for example, Asti. Although the region is one of the best places to grow Barbera, it is also where Moscato is grown. Moscato is currently one of the most popular grapes in the world. (It's the grape of Asti Spumante, a less than brilliant but well-marketed wine.) In the other two regions, Monferrato and Alba, the Nebbiolo grape reigns supreme. Many of the best Alba vineyards are devoted to Nebbiolo. (The terroir of each region imparts a certain style as well—Asti wines tend to be more rustic and dense; Alba wines are often lighter, more refined.)
Many of the best Barolo producers also make Barbera—in fact, it is the wine that many say they often drink at home. That's how Lorena Ascencios, head wine buyer of Astor Wines & Spirits in New York, sells Barbera. "Drink what the winemakers drink," she tells her customers.
“Barbera has plenty of qualities that would seem to make it a likely household name. Why are there so few 'Barbera-ites'?”
There are also the Barbera specialists who have staked their reputation on the grape and don't make Barolo at all. The most famous of these producers would be the late Giacomo Bologna of Braida winery in Asti, who is credited with making the first "serious" Barbera in the 1980s, when he created Bricco dell'Uccellone. He made the then-radical decision to age his wine in barriques—something others have since done as well, though not always successfully.
And then there are the Barolo producers, like Vietti of Castiglione Falletto, who are committed to both grapes. Vietti's enologist Luca Currado produces great Barolo but aspires to make great Barbera too. In a recent phone call, Mr. Currado recalled how in 1989 he tore out top Barolo vineyards to plant Barbera, much to the horror of his father. "It was in the heart of Scarrone," he recalled, naming a famous vineyard. "My idea was that if we want Barbera to be the best wine, it must be from the best land," he explained. "A good Barbera, like a good Barolo, can only be made from good land."
Mr. Currado, who makes a number of different Barolos and Barberas, including the much-praised Scarrone wine under the Vietti label, believes there has been a Barbera renaissance in the past decade or so. "We sell more Barbera than any other wine by far," Mr. Currado said. "More growers are planting it and the market has really grown—probably the result of the price of Barolo," he added. (A Barolo can cost three or four times the price of a Barbera from the same estate.)
I recently bought 16 bottles of Barbera at prices ranging from $10 to $52 at stores around New York. I found the largest number of wines at Astor Wines & Spirits and the Wine Library in Springfield, N.J. (The Wine Library's wine director, Ian Dorin, said that he makes lots of friends selling Barbera, which he calls the "Goldilocks of wine—with something that's 'just right' for everyone.")
I bought wines from all the key appellations: Asti, Alba, Monferrato and basic Piedmont bottlings as well. (There are lots of Barberas produced under this simple, catchall appellation.) I bought some Barberas designated as "Superiore"—wines that are higher in alcohol and subject to minimum aging requirements in barrel and bottle. I bought a wide range of vintages, too, from 2006 to 2012.
- The Comforts of Punch
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- Rums That Don't Need Fruity Mixers
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Some of the wines were very young and bright, with lots of red cherry fruit and spice, while others were large-framed, tannic and dense. The diversity was impressive, if possibly somewhat bewildering for a Barbera neophyte. But, of the wines that I purchased, there were only a few that I didn't like, and there were several that I really loved—particularly the 2011 Brovia Ciaböt del Fi Barbera at $32, which was pretty much my Barbera platonic ideal, with a beautiful texture and just the right balance of acidity and fruit.
There were so many wines to recommend across a spectrum of styles—from light bodied and juicy wines (2012 Pico Maccario Berro' Piemonte Barbera, $10; and Elio Perrone Tasmorcan Barbera d'Asti, $14) to earthy tradtionally-styled wines (2006 Trinchero Vigna del Noce Barbera d'Asti, $26). There were polished, modern examples (2009 La Spinetta Ca' di Pian Barbera d'Asti, $17) and wines so powerful they needed a few years to unwind (2011 Giacomo Conterno Cerretta Barbera d'Alba, $52).
While none of these wines may become superstars, they are wonderfully, deliciously suitable for drinking every single day.
See wine videos and more from Off Duty at youtube.com/wsj.com.
Source: WSJ Wine
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What Management Skills & Experience is Expected to Occupy he White House and Lead the Nation ?
A brief history of the U.S. Presidents' management experience before entering the W.H.
A brief history of
The U.S. Presidents and Their Management Skills
E.g.: A seasoned executive would have bird-dogged*) ObamaCare in 2012/2013 at every stage,
from its creation to its rollout
*) to bird-dog= to follow a subject of interest, such as a person or trend, with persistent attentionTo observe or follow closely; monitor: e.g.: Police bird-dogged the suspect's movements.
To seek out (talent or clients, for example): bird-dogs recruits for the team.
Because this Successo-Pedia© advice website has a worldwide user audience, most readers do not have English as their first language, then STAF, Inc. provides additional guidance in certain English language words to help to follow the text easier. It is also way or learning more English.
Click green for further info
President Obama is back in Washington, presumably refreshed after a two-week Hawaiian vacation. Perhaps he'll start 2014 on a vigorous new note that will erase the memory of his lugubrious end-of-the-year news conference and other moments when Mr. Obama looked less like a leader with lousy poll numbers than like a beleaguered manager whose enterprise was failing.
One of the oddities of America's cherished political system is that the job of chief executive of the most powerful operation in the history of the world requires no executive experience. Men who have done little more than publish a small-town newspaper or manage the staff of a U.S. Senate office find themselves in charge of a vast bureaucracy and all-powerful military. As often as not, they don't have a clue about how to run this monster.
It's often argued that the virtue of America's endless and gigantic modern presidential campaigns is to test not only the candidates' brains, character and stamina, but also their managerial talent. The winner, it's said, proves by winning that he (and soon enough, she) has the right stuff to be chief executive.
That's really not the case. In a presidential race, the candidate is the "talent" out on the campaign making speeches and debating; the show is actually run by the "suits"—the campaign managers, fundraisers and press secretaries. If their candidate prevails, they become the heroes of postelection books like "Double Down," Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's account of the 2012 presidential race. The talent spends most of the time in the traveling bubble taking direction from his handlers back at headquarters.
Leadership and management are often confused, but the difference is more than semantic. A leader's job is to create and enunciate a vision and to inspire his followers to pursue it—"the vision thing," as George H.W. Bush so famously put it. The manager's job is to make the vision tangible. Some leaders may coincidentally be good managers, but a sterling manager doesn't necessarily have the charismatic leadership gene.
Some people may be born managers, but most only master the skill by painful experience. Humiliating mistakes are inevitable and necessary. A manager learns that having the right idea or strategy isn't the goal, but the obligatory first step in the process. Getting the plan or deal or product or service executed properly is the job. That means putting the right people in the right roles, anticipating what might go wrong and having a fallback to deal with disasters, and closely monitoring the unfolding process. Responsibilities have to be delegated, but the savvy manager knows that anything at any time can jump up and bite you in the behind.
Even the most brilliant staffers have weaknesses, and the successful manager has to sense or identify them and make sure people are put in roles where they can succeed despite their shortcomings. Some people are flawless in routine situations, shaky under pressure. Some people can be sloppy or careless, but brilliant in a crisis. Some people are cowards in the crunch. You need to get burned a couple of times to develop a sharp nose for danger.
Until the Depression, having an experienced manager in the White House wasn't often a concern. The federal government was a poky enterprise and the U.S. military was small and insular. The men who succeeded to the White House in the 19th century were most often military heroes (among them, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor and Ulysses Grant ) or U.S. senators (including the notorious "Dough Face" temporizers in the run-up to the Civil War, the drunken Franklin Pierce and dandyish James Buchanan ). It took Abraham Lincoln years to get a handle on managing the Civil War, and he didn't succeed until he put the Union forces in the sometimes tremorous hands of Grant, a onetime business failure who later turned out to be a disaster as president.
With the 20th century, governors who had experience administering their states increasingly took over, generally for the better ( William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge ).
The man with the most business and executive experience to reach the presidency was Herbert Hoover, the mining engineer who oversaw famine relief in Europe after World War I and then was overwhelmed in the White House by the Depression. George W. Bush, who ran a major-league baseball team and scored an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, is the only other president with management credentials. His administration of post-invasion Iraq was a shambles only partly redeemed by the 2007 "surge" that turned the tide of war.
The only American president who ever managed a mammoth enterprise before entering the White House wasn't a business executive at all: Dwight D. Eisenhower, who ran the Allied effort in Europe in World War II and masterminded D-Day, the largest and most complicated military operation in history. Derided in his Oval Office days as a smiling do-little, Ike is increasingly recognized today as a slyly adroit president.
Jimmy Carter, the nuclear submarine engineer, fancied himself so expert a manager that he personally handled the booking for the White House tennis court. His presidency was not a success. Lyndon Johnson, the acclaimed "Master of the Senate," tried to micromanage the Vietnam War with predictably disastrous consequences. He also loosed a torrent of Great Society social programs, many of which turned out to be expensive boondoggles. On the other hand, John F. Kennedy, who didn't even write his own Pulitzer Prize-winning book, came up with his "Excom" strategy team that brilliantly managed the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Barack Obama swept into office in 2008 with the thinnest résumé since JFK, a half-century earlier. When Mr. Obama was in his 20s, he headed a staff of 13 as a community organizer in Chicago and later directed a staff of 10 in a six-month get-out-the-vote campaign that also had 700 volunteers. At Harvard Law School, he ran the law review. Otherwise, Mr. Obama had been a writer, instructor at the University of Chicago Law School, an Illinois state legislator for eight years and a U.S. senator for four with a staff of three dozen or so.
However brilliant a politician he may be, this sort of background offers scant preparation for the managerial challenge of wrangling the executive branch with its stupendous bureaucracy and the high-tech military, not to mention the most fractious Congress in memory. Mr. Obama's response has essentially been not to try to manage much except foreign policy, where success could charitably be described as elusive.
The prime example of the president's management gap has been ObamaCare. By handing off the framing of the legislation to Congress, Mr. Obama repeated the rookie mistake he made with the stimulus bill, which became a bloated porkfest. The health-care program that emerged from Capitol Hill with no Republican support is a Rube Goldberg monstrosity, an administrative nightmare.
Given ObamaCare's complexity, a seasoned executive would have bird-dogged every stage of its creation and rollout, with obsessive attention to the testing of the sign-up computer programs, the public's first encounter with his signature initiative. There would be go/no-go inflection points and backup timetables, cold-eyed performance reviews and abrupt dismissals. And, in the worst case, a plan to put everything on hold for a year to sort out all the problems.
The Obama administration's backstage handling of the program has been so cloaked that it's impossible to know whether any of these routine management approaches were built in or ad-libbed when big trouble arose. But clearly, the chief executive's downcast proclamation that "I take full responsibility" is the lame refuge of the failed manager.
Source: (1) WSJ (2) Mr. Kosner is the former editor of Newsweek, New York magazine, Esquire and the New York Daily News. WSJ 1/9/13
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How the Great Rare-Earth Metals Crisis Vanished
China's attempt to control the market for materials essential to the tech industry is turning to dust
There was a time, not so long ago, when the world feared China was going to use its dominance of the global rare-earth-element industry to crush Western economies and militaries in a strategic vise. Those were the days. Recent developments highlight how wrong those alarmist predictions were.
Rare earths are the metals at the bottom of the periodic table that are exceptionally useful in many high-tech applications, from lasers to solar panels to electric car batteries to smartphones. China is the world's major extractor and only processor of rare-earth ores.
Beijing aroused worries in late 2010 when it apparently limited exports of the minerals to Japan amid a territorial dispute. The episode stoked fears that China would use its sole-supplier status for nefarious ends.
Except that it turns out Beijing doesn't have the wherewithal to execute such a dastardly plan. Consider the new plan Beijing unveiled last week to consolidate its rare-earth industry into six large extraction and processing companies. As a start, Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company (yes, that's its name) is buying nine of its smaller competitors in the north, with more mergers and acquisitions to come.
This is at least the second time in roughly a decade that Beijing has attempted rare-earth rationalization. The first foundered when faced by opposition that included the local officials who so often sponsor projects away from Beijing's watchful gaze.
Enlarge Image
A man driving a front loader shifts soil containing rare earth minerals to be loaded at a port in Lianyungang, east China's Jiangsu province, for export to Japan.Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
The consolidation drive is a sign of weakness, not strength. The impetus is Beijing's need to resolve the problems its past interventions in the market have created.
Export restrictions kicked in three years ago, officially justified by the need to reduce the pollution caused by mining and processing. Global prices rose dramatically, creating an incentive for new miners to start production, and an opportunity for them to profit from circumventing export blocks via endemic smuggling.
Meanwhile, Beijing's economic stimulus policies lowered the cost of credit, making it easier to fund this investment. But once the global panic subsided and demand slackened, rare-earth prices fell by as much as 60% from their 2011 peaks. Oversupply is the new worry.
On a related note, the export restrictions also have not helped Beijing mitigate the environmental damage caused by the rare-earth industry. Processing the ores is messy work, and Beijing seems to have hoped that whatever other mercantilist objective it might achieve, limiting export quantities would also lead to a cleanup of the industry at home.
Not so, because the restrictions stimulated new mining by small, illegal operators with even worse environmental practices than the big companies. Now lower global prices and the resulting thinner profit margins make costly environmental compliance that much harder.
Don't suppose for a minute that centrally arranged consolidation will solve any of this, since consolidation doesn't fix the underlying problem with China's approach to rare earths: Beijing still steadfastly refuses to allow the market to operate. Just ask yourself, when is the last time that politically allocated capital; administrative controls on price, production, export or other disposition of an output; and centrally determined corporate structures resulted in a rational industry, in China or anywhere else?
For guidance on better options, Beijing could look abroad. The other big rare earths story of the moment highlights the extent to which Beijing's non-market machinations have triggered helpful market responses elsewhere.
A Pentagon report leaked last month noted that reliance on Chinese rare-earth metals, while still high, is declining. New supplies for most rare-earths are coming online, as uncertainty over China's reliability and a period of higher prices stimulated investment in new mining projects elsewhere. Greenland and Russia both have opened new tracts to rare-earths exploration in the past year. China's share of global production now is down to as low as 80% from 95% in 2010.
This overseas rare-earth industry is not so different from the Chinese version, insofar as it's sustained, for now at least, by readily available capital thanks to the post-2010 surge in investor interest. But what the foreigners do have is a market mechanism for industry rationalization over time, as more profitable miners prosper and others go bankrupt or merge into their healthier peers via an organic process of consolidation.
Meanwhile, note an especially piquant detail: Manufacturers are rethinking their dependence on the metals as an input. One suspected goal of China's export restrictions was to force foreign manufacturers to shift more of their high-value-added, high-tech production into China in pursuit of more readily available domestic supplies.
Instead, foreign high-tech companies increasingly invest in new recycling methods, or products that rely less on rare earths. They have not weaned themselves off the metals by a long shot. But the technology frontier is shifting ever so gradually away from rare earths, and from China.
This does not add up to a major industrial-policy victory for Beijing. It's safe now to put away our smelling salts.
Mr. Sternberg edits the WSJ's Business Asia column
WSJ 1/9/13
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Alcoholics Work for Beer in Amsterdam Program
AMSTERDAM—The men streaming in and out of a small clubhouse in Amsterdam East could almost be construction workers at the end of a hard day, taking off their orange reflective vests and cracking jokes as they suck down a few Heinekens, waiting for their paychecks.
But it’s only noon, the men are alcoholics and the beers themselves are the paycheck.
In a pilot project that has drawn attention in the Netherlands and around the world, the city has teamed up with a charity organization in hopes of improving the neighborhood and possibly improving life for the alcoholics. Not by trying to get them to stop drinking, but instead by offering to fund their habit outright.
Participants are given beer in exchange for light work collecting litter, eating a decent meal, and sticking to their schedules.
“For a lot of politicians it was really difficult to accept, ‘So you are giving alcohol?’” Amsterdam East District Mayor Fatima Elatik said. “No, I am giving people a sense of perspective, even a sense of belonging. A sense of feeling that they are OK and that we need them and that we validate them and we don’t ostracize our people, because these are people that live in our district.”
Schedule Around BeerIn practice, the men—two groups of 10—must show up at 9 a.m., three days a week. They start off with two beers, work a morning shift, eat lunch, get two more beers, and then do an afternoon shift before closing out with their last beer. Sometimes there’s a bonus beer. Total daily pay package: $25 (19 euros), in a mix of beer, tobacco, a meal, and 10 euros cash.
Participants said a lot of that cash also goes to beer.
To understand how this all came to be, it helps to know the background. For years, a group of around 50 rowdy, aging alcoholics had plagued a park in Amsterdam East, annoying other park-goers with noise, litter, and occasional harassment.
The city had tried a number of heavy-handed solutions, including adding police patrols, and temporarily banning alcohol in the park outright—including for family barbecues and picnics. Elatik said the city was spending $1.3 million (1 million euros) a year on various prevention, treatment, and policing programs to deal with the problem, and nobody was satisfied.
Meanwhile, the small nonprofit Rainbow Group Foundation and its predecessors had been experimenting with ways to get help for alcoholics and drug addicts in the area.
Harm ReductionFloor van Bakkum of the Jellinek clinic, one of the city’s best-known addiction treatment clinics, said her organization has a very different approach to treating alcoholism. She has a few reservations about the Rainbow program, but approves of it in general.
She said a “harm reduction approach” makes sense only when there is no real hope of recovery for an alcoholic.
“The Rainbow group tries to make it as easy as possible (for alcoholics) to live their lives and that they make as little as possible nuisances to the environment they are living in,” she said. “I think it is good that they are doing this.”
Amsterdam’s WayAmsterdam has a storied history of pragmatic solutions to social problems—ideas that often seemed immoral at the time. Prostitution, now fully legal, has been tolerated here since the 1600s, when the city was a major port. Authorities designated a Red Light District where sailors could look for sex.
Marijuana use has been tolerated since the 1970s, when people realized street dealers were the main source of problems and authorities allowed weed instead to be sold in designated “coffee shops” while police looked the other way.
In the 1980s and 1990s, health care charities distributed free clean needles for heroin addicts to prevent the spread of HIV.
This time, the idea was simply that troublemakers might consume less and cause less trouble if they could be lured away from their park benches with the promise of free booze. Rainbow leader Gerrie Holterman said beer was the obvious choice, because it’s easier to regulate consumption. Rainbow still harbors the ambition to get alcoholics to stop drinking and move them back to mainstream society and sees the work-for-beer program as a first step.
Source: By Associated Press
_____________________________________________________
AMSTERDAM—The men streaming in and out of a small clubhouse in Amsterdam East could almost be construction workers at the end of a hard day, taking off their orange reflective vests and cracking jokes as they suck down a few Heinekens, waiting for their paychecks.
But it’s only noon, the men are alcoholics and the beers themselves are the paycheck.
In a pilot project that has drawn attention in the Netherlands and around the world, the city has teamed up with a charity organization in hopes of improving the neighborhood and possibly improving life for the alcoholics. Not by trying to get them to stop drinking, but instead by offering to fund their habit outright.
Participants are given beer in exchange for light work collecting litter, eating a decent meal, and sticking to their schedules.
“For a lot of politicians it was really difficult to accept, ‘So you are giving alcohol?’” Amsterdam East District Mayor Fatima Elatik said. “No, I am giving people a sense of perspective, even a sense of belonging. A sense of feeling that they are OK and that we need them and that we validate them and we don’t ostracize our people, because these are people that live in our district.”
Schedule Around BeerIn practice, the men—two groups of 10—must show up at 9 a.m., three days a week. They start off with two beers, work a morning shift, eat lunch, get two more beers, and then do an afternoon shift before closing out with their last beer. Sometimes there’s a bonus beer. Total daily pay package: $25 (19 euros), in a mix of beer, tobacco, a meal, and 10 euros cash.
Participants said a lot of that cash also goes to beer.
To understand how this all came to be, it helps to know the background. For years, a group of around 50 rowdy, aging alcoholics had plagued a park in Amsterdam East, annoying other park-goers with noise, litter, and occasional harassment.
The city had tried a number of heavy-handed solutions, including adding police patrols, and temporarily banning alcohol in the park outright—including for family barbecues and picnics. Elatik said the city was spending $1.3 million (1 million euros) a year on various prevention, treatment, and policing programs to deal with the problem, and nobody was satisfied.
Meanwhile, the small nonprofit Rainbow Group Foundation and its predecessors had been experimenting with ways to get help for alcoholics and drug addicts in the area.
Harm ReductionFloor van Bakkum of the Jellinek clinic, one of the city’s best-known addiction treatment clinics, said her organization has a very different approach to treating alcoholism. She has a few reservations about the Rainbow program, but approves of it in general.
She said a “harm reduction approach” makes sense only when there is no real hope of recovery for an alcoholic.
“The Rainbow group tries to make it as easy as possible (for alcoholics) to live their lives and that they make as little as possible nuisances to the environment they are living in,” she said. “I think it is good that they are doing this.”
Amsterdam’s WayAmsterdam has a storied history of pragmatic solutions to social problems—ideas that often seemed immoral at the time. Prostitution, now fully legal, has been tolerated here since the 1600s, when the city was a major port. Authorities designated a Red Light District where sailors could look for sex.
Marijuana use has been tolerated since the 1970s, when people realized street dealers were the main source of problems and authorities allowed weed instead to be sold in designated “coffee shops” while police looked the other way.
In the 1980s and 1990s, health care charities distributed free clean needles for heroin addicts to prevent the spread of HIV.
This time, the idea was simply that troublemakers might consume less and cause less trouble if they could be lured away from their park benches with the promise of free booze. Rainbow leader Gerrie Holterman said beer was the obvious choice, because it’s easier to regulate consumption. Rainbow still harbors the ambition to get alcoholics to stop drinking and move them back to mainstream society and sees the work-for-beer program as a first step.
Source: By Associated Press
_____________________________________________________
In Life and Business, Learning to Be Ethical
Click green for further info
LOTS of New Year’s resolutions are being made — and no doubt ignored — at this time of year. But there’s one that’s probably not even on many lists and should be: Act more ethically.
Most people, if pressed, would acknowledge that they could use an ethical tuneup. Maybe last year they fudged some numbers at work. Dented a car and failed to leave a note. Remained silent when a friend made a racist joke.
The problem, research shows, is that how we think we’re going to act when faced with a moral decision and how we really do act are often vastly different.
Here’s just one of many examples from an experiment at Northeastern University: Subjects were told they should flip a coin to see who should do certain tasks. One task is long and laborious; the other is short and fun.
The participant flips the coin in private (though secretly watched by video cameras), said David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern who conducted the experiment. Only 10 percent of them did it honestly. The others didn’t flip at all, or kept flipping until the coin came up the way they wanted.
Trying to become more ethical — or teaching people how to — would seem doomed then. But that’s not true. It’s just that how we teach ethics has to catch up with what we know about how the human mind works.
One area clearly in need of attention is business ethics, especially given the transgressions in the financial world in recent years. Some of the nation’s top researchers think so too. Next week, a group of them — most based at American universities — will officially introduce a new website,EthicalSystems.org. The site is the first to pull together extensive research and resources on the subject of business ethics with the aim of making the vast trove available to schools, government regulators and businesses — especially their compliance officers (= The chief compliance officer of a company is the officer primarily responsible for overseeing and managing regulatory compliance issues within an organization.
compliance= the act of complying with a wish, request, or demand)
“It used to be business ethics grew out of philosophy, with a focus on the right thing to do,” said Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “In the last 10 years there’s been an explosion of research in behavioral economics” and the underlying reasons people act the way they do.
Some of the research was informed by the scandals at Enron and WorldCom unfolding at the time, as well as the global financial crises.
Those events, in part, “inspired a small group of researchers to develop a more psychologically realistic approach to business ethics,” said Professor Haidt, who spearheaded the website.
This approach — which applies to ethics in general, not just business ethics — incorporates what we now know about how people really act when faced with a moral dilemma and what tools can be used to nudge them toward doing the right thing.
First we need to be more aware of the ways we fool ourselves. We have to learn how to avoid subconsciously turning our backs when faced with a moral dilemma. And then we must be taught how to challenge people appropriately in those situations.
“When people predict how they’re going to act in a given situation, the ‘should’ self dominates — we should be fair, we should be generous, we should assert our values,” said Ann E. Tenbrunsel, a professor of business ethics at the University of Notre Dame who is involved in the EthicalSystems website. “But when the time for action comes, the ‘want’ self dominates” — I don’t want to look like a fool, I don’t want to be punished.
“Our survival instinct is to want to be liked and to be included,” said Brooke Deterline, chief executive of Courageous Leadership, a consulting firm that offers workshops and programs on dealing with ethical situations. “We don’t willfully do bad things, but when we’re under threat our initial instinct is to downplay or ignore problematic situations.”
Most people know the feeling: Something happens that we know is wrong and we mean to speak up or make it right. But we can’t quite figure out how to do it, and the moment passes. And then we justify that it was O.K. that we acted the way we did.
So how do we change this?
Using social and cognitive behavioral psychology as well as neuroscience, Ms. Deterline said, the first step is to become aware of our natural inclinations.
“Think back: When are you vulnerable to not speaking up and not saying what needs to be said?” she said. Is it when authority is present? When it might alienate you from friends? When it might cause subordinates to think less of you?
“We all have automatic thoughts when we feel anxious: ‘I’m going to get fired, I’m going to look like an idiot,’ ” she said. The point is not to listen to those thoughts, but to be aware of them and override them. And to do that, we need to practice.
Like pilots who use flight simulators, people need to work on situations that cause them anxiety before they occur. In her programs, Ms. Deterline has role-playing employees initiate potentially challenging conversations.
“When most of us feel uncomfortable, we shut up,” she said. “But we need to use discomfort to know that that is my signal to be courageous and a cue for action rather than inaction.”
The focus on why people do and don’t act ethically is not, of course, limited to the business world. After all, it takes good citizens to make good employees.
Philip G. Zimbardo, a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, is a pioneer in the study of social power — for good and for evil — and started a program in 2007 called the Heroic Imagination Project. His interest in ethics dates far back; in 1971 he created the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment, where college student “guards” demeaned and humiliated student “prisoners.” The experiment had to be stopped early because it became so abusive.
After studying moral degradation for decades, Professor Zimbardo started wondering about the 10 to 20 percent of people in every situation who resisted. Who were these people he called heroes, and could anyone be taught to be one?
Through the Heroic Imagination Project — for which Ms. Deterline once worked — middle- and high-school and community college students learn about group dynamics, like the bystander effect, in which the more people who are on a scene, the less likely it is for anyone to help.
Using video clips and real-life situations, teachers explain how students can resist such behavior, and help them explore why they have acted — or failed to act — in specific situations.
While students are taught not to be “dumb heroes” and rush into danger, Professor Zimbardo said, “we teach them that knowledge obligates you to do something — to act heroically.”
His nonprofit program has made many of its resources available free and is in the final stages of receiving funding to train a group of teachers in Flint, Mich., starting in the spring. Graduate students at the University of Michigan will assist in the program and, it is hoped, develop longitudinal findings on its effectiveness, he said.
Kristen Renwick Monroe, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, has long studied why some people act righteously and others fail to.
She has found in her research that “the rescuers say, ‘What else could I do?’ ” she said. “The bystander says, ‘I was just one person? What could I do?’ ”
“We have to think, ‘Who am I and how do my actions create who I am?’ ” Professor Monroe added. She recalled interviewing a Dutch woman who stood by and watched while Jews were thrown into a truck and taken away during World War II. But the woman later saved more than a dozen others.
Professor Monroe remembers what the woman told her: “We all have memories when we should have done something, and it gets in the way for the rest of your life.”
Click green for further info
________________________________
Click green for further info
LOTS of New Year’s resolutions are being made — and no doubt ignored — at this time of year. But there’s one that’s probably not even on many lists and should be: Act more ethically.
Most people, if pressed, would acknowledge that they could use an ethical tuneup. Maybe last year they fudged some numbers at work. Dented a car and failed to leave a note. Remained silent when a friend made a racist joke.
The problem, research shows, is that how we think we’re going to act when faced with a moral decision and how we really do act are often vastly different.
Here’s just one of many examples from an experiment at Northeastern University: Subjects were told they should flip a coin to see who should do certain tasks. One task is long and laborious; the other is short and fun.
The participant flips the coin in private (though secretly watched by video cameras), said David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern who conducted the experiment. Only 10 percent of them did it honestly. The others didn’t flip at all, or kept flipping until the coin came up the way they wanted.
Trying to become more ethical — or teaching people how to — would seem doomed then. But that’s not true. It’s just that how we teach ethics has to catch up with what we know about how the human mind works.
One area clearly in need of attention is business ethics, especially given the transgressions in the financial world in recent years. Some of the nation’s top researchers think so too. Next week, a group of them — most based at American universities — will officially introduce a new website,EthicalSystems.org. The site is the first to pull together extensive research and resources on the subject of business ethics with the aim of making the vast trove available to schools, government regulators and businesses — especially their compliance officers (= The chief compliance officer of a company is the officer primarily responsible for overseeing and managing regulatory compliance issues within an organization.
compliance= the act of complying with a wish, request, or demand)
“It used to be business ethics grew out of philosophy, with a focus on the right thing to do,” said Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “In the last 10 years there’s been an explosion of research in behavioral economics” and the underlying reasons people act the way they do.
Some of the research was informed by the scandals at Enron and WorldCom unfolding at the time, as well as the global financial crises.
Those events, in part, “inspired a small group of researchers to develop a more psychologically realistic approach to business ethics,” said Professor Haidt, who spearheaded the website.
This approach — which applies to ethics in general, not just business ethics — incorporates what we now know about how people really act when faced with a moral dilemma and what tools can be used to nudge them toward doing the right thing.
First we need to be more aware of the ways we fool ourselves. We have to learn how to avoid subconsciously turning our backs when faced with a moral dilemma. And then we must be taught how to challenge people appropriately in those situations.
“When people predict how they’re going to act in a given situation, the ‘should’ self dominates — we should be fair, we should be generous, we should assert our values,” said Ann E. Tenbrunsel, a professor of business ethics at the University of Notre Dame who is involved in the EthicalSystems website. “But when the time for action comes, the ‘want’ self dominates” — I don’t want to look like a fool, I don’t want to be punished.
“Our survival instinct is to want to be liked and to be included,” said Brooke Deterline, chief executive of Courageous Leadership, a consulting firm that offers workshops and programs on dealing with ethical situations. “We don’t willfully do bad things, but when we’re under threat our initial instinct is to downplay or ignore problematic situations.”
Most people know the feeling: Something happens that we know is wrong and we mean to speak up or make it right. But we can’t quite figure out how to do it, and the moment passes. And then we justify that it was O.K. that we acted the way we did.
So how do we change this?
Using social and cognitive behavioral psychology as well as neuroscience, Ms. Deterline said, the first step is to become aware of our natural inclinations.
“Think back: When are you vulnerable to not speaking up and not saying what needs to be said?” she said. Is it when authority is present? When it might alienate you from friends? When it might cause subordinates to think less of you?
“We all have automatic thoughts when we feel anxious: ‘I’m going to get fired, I’m going to look like an idiot,’ ” she said. The point is not to listen to those thoughts, but to be aware of them and override them. And to do that, we need to practice.
Like pilots who use flight simulators, people need to work on situations that cause them anxiety before they occur. In her programs, Ms. Deterline has role-playing employees initiate potentially challenging conversations.
“When most of us feel uncomfortable, we shut up,” she said. “But we need to use discomfort to know that that is my signal to be courageous and a cue for action rather than inaction.”
The focus on why people do and don’t act ethically is not, of course, limited to the business world. After all, it takes good citizens to make good employees.
Philip G. Zimbardo, a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, is a pioneer in the study of social power — for good and for evil — and started a program in 2007 called the Heroic Imagination Project. His interest in ethics dates far back; in 1971 he created the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment, where college student “guards” demeaned and humiliated student “prisoners.” The experiment had to be stopped early because it became so abusive.
After studying moral degradation for decades, Professor Zimbardo started wondering about the 10 to 20 percent of people in every situation who resisted. Who were these people he called heroes, and could anyone be taught to be one?
Through the Heroic Imagination Project — for which Ms. Deterline once worked — middle- and high-school and community college students learn about group dynamics, like the bystander effect, in which the more people who are on a scene, the less likely it is for anyone to help.
Using video clips and real-life situations, teachers explain how students can resist such behavior, and help them explore why they have acted — or failed to act — in specific situations.
While students are taught not to be “dumb heroes” and rush into danger, Professor Zimbardo said, “we teach them that knowledge obligates you to do something — to act heroically.”
His nonprofit program has made many of its resources available free and is in the final stages of receiving funding to train a group of teachers in Flint, Mich., starting in the spring. Graduate students at the University of Michigan will assist in the program and, it is hoped, develop longitudinal findings on its effectiveness, he said.
Kristen Renwick Monroe, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, has long studied why some people act righteously and others fail to.
She has found in her research that “the rescuers say, ‘What else could I do?’ ” she said. “The bystander says, ‘I was just one person? What could I do?’ ”
“We have to think, ‘Who am I and how do my actions create who I am?’ ” Professor Monroe added. She recalled interviewing a Dutch woman who stood by and watched while Jews were thrown into a truck and taken away during World War II. But the woman later saved more than a dozen others.
Professor Monroe remembers what the woman told her: “We all have memories when we should have done something, and it gets in the way for the rest of your life.”
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________________________________
Seeking Ways to Help the Poor and Childless
Click green for further info
At the Food Bank for New York on 116th Street, I caught a glimpse of the many shapes of need.
With a few hundred dollars, 25-year-old Ayesha Depay could afford the lessons she needs to pass her road test and get a driver’s license, an indispensable tool for the job she craves leading recreation programs for children.
Nadine Robinson, 43, a former receptionist at Sony Music Studios who has been working for $9 an hour as a home health aide, could use the money to get a step ahead of the relentless stream of bills, pay down debts and rebuild her credit.
A 53-year-old security guard I talked to declined to provide his name, embarrassed perhaps that he was sleeping on friends’ couches, working barely enough hours to “keep my head above water.” He had so many potential uses for extra cash he couldn’t pin any one down.
For all their differences, these men and women shared one crucial thing. Despite incomes low enough that if they had been parents they would probably have qualified for substantial government cash assistance, they received little if any support. What drew them here was the chance to participate in an antipoverty experiment started by the city’s Center for Economic Opportunity to test what would happen if the government were to help adults without children. click: NYC Center for Economic Opportunity
Interviewing prospective participants in a pilot program to extend the earned-income tax credit to adults without children. To perform the investigation, proposed by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and supported by his successor, Bill de Blasio, New York City contracted with MDRC click: mdrc | building knowledge to improve social policywww.mdrc.org/Multiple reports regarding welfare and welfare reform from this nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization
MDCR is a nonprofit social policy research organization, to track 6,000 low-income single adults who do not have direct responsibility over children — from never-married childless women to divorced fathers who don’t have custody of their children but are obligated to pay child support.
Half of them will receive a bonus payment every year intended to replicate the main features of the earned-income tax credit. The other half will serve as a control group.
The hope is that the tax break will do for singles what it has achieved most successfully for single mothers: shoring up workers who suffer a drop in earnings and encouraging work by subsidizing the meager wages that have become the hallmark of the American service economy.
The test is one of the first concrete acknowledgments that the longstanding American economic belief that the job market alone can provide for the needs of nearly all workers may no longer be valid.
Needy children are innocent, worthy recipients of assistance. And for all practical purposes, that means aiding the parents, often single mothers, who care for them. But childless adults have been historically barred from most government support, from Medicaid to welfare.
From the 1930s well into the 1970s, most mothers were eligible for aid to families with dependent children only when the man was out of the home. “People from the welfare office came around looking for evidence of a man,” said MDRC’s president, Gordon L. Berlin. Today, low-income noncustodial fathers who can’t afford to pay child support are still not considered deserving of assistance. And they can go to jail for not paying up.
But the labor market is not doing its job the way it once did. Earnings of male high school graduates fell by nearly a fifth from 1979 to 2012, after inflation. For men without a high school diploma they declined by almost a third. Women’s wages have held up somewhat better, but are also declining for the least educated. Partly as a result, poverty among workers has increased faster over recent years than for working-age Americans without a job.
The future is not promising. According to projections from the Department of Labor, nine of the 10 occupations that will grow fastest over the next decade pay less than the median wage. Six pay less than is needed to keep a family of four out of poverty.
If the taboo against helping the able-bodied made sense in an era when a job guaranteed something approaching a reasonable living, its case is far weaker today.
The earned-income tax credit is the largest cash-transfer program in the United States, costing some $61 billion in 2010. It provides up to $3,305 a year to low-income working families with one child and up to $6,143 for those with three or more.
Combined with the much smaller child tax credit, it lifted one of every 15 children out of poverty in 2012, according to an analysis by Kathleen Short from the Census Bureau click: Census Bureau Homepage
Without it, the nation’s overall poverty rate would be 19 percent instead of 16 percent, under the Census Bureau’s comprehensive Supplemental Poverty Measure.
And it has encouraged single mothers to work. After the big expansions of the earned-income tax credit in 1990 and 1993, the labor supply of single mothers grew by 16 percentage points, reaching roughly 87 percent in 1999.
Like raising the minimum wage, broadening the tax credit could help workers earn their way out of poverty. “This is a promising thing to test,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard who has been collaborating with MDRC on the design and evaluation of the experiment. “It is a pro-employment sort of way to make work pay.”
Proposing more government aid in these bruising political times might seem like a waste of time. The New York program will bump the maximum annual benefit for singles to $2,000 for three years — from a maximum under the federal earned-income tax credit of $496. And it will phase out much more slowly.
Extending New York’s credit to some 13 million singles without qualifying children across the country would cost roughly $15 billion a year, according to a calculation by Cynthia Miller, who is head of the project for MDRC. Chances are that wouldn’t sit well among congressional Republicans, who have called for cuts to food assistance and are opposed to reinstating the extension of emergency jobless benefits.
Still, the earned-income credit has proved enormously popular on the left and the right. President Ronald Reagan called it “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”
N. Gregory Mankiw, the former chief economic adviser to President George W. Bush, recently recommended the earned-income tax credit over a higher minimum wage as the better tool to increase the earnings of the working poor.
Some criticize the credit, however, saying it subsidizes employers by allowing beneficiaries to accept a lower wage. As a consequence, they argue, the tax break ends up hurting low-wage workers who do not qualify for it.
This argument, which could bolster the case for a higher minimum wage, could also strengthen the case for spreading the tax credit’s benefits more broadly. And a broader credit could serve another rare bipartisan cause: improving compliance with child support laws.
“We have a robust child support enforcement system,” said Maria Cancian, a professor of public affairs and social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What we’ve been less successful at is enabling low-income fathers to earn enough to support themselves and afford child support obligations.”
Another potential benefit, said Kathryn Edin, a professor of public policy and management at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, would be to encourage young disadvantaged men into jobs and away from crime, making them more desirable as marriage partners and reducing the number of children born to teenage single mothers.
“Family structure is both a consequence and a cause of poverty,” Professor Edin told me.
The fundamental reason to support wages goes beyond children, however. In a nutshell, for the American market economy to remain viable, being employed must, one way or another, provide for workers’ needs.
Click green for further info
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
_________________________________________
Click green for further info
At the Food Bank for New York on 116th Street, I caught a glimpse of the many shapes of need.
With a few hundred dollars, 25-year-old Ayesha Depay could afford the lessons she needs to pass her road test and get a driver’s license, an indispensable tool for the job she craves leading recreation programs for children.
Nadine Robinson, 43, a former receptionist at Sony Music Studios who has been working for $9 an hour as a home health aide, could use the money to get a step ahead of the relentless stream of bills, pay down debts and rebuild her credit.
A 53-year-old security guard I talked to declined to provide his name, embarrassed perhaps that he was sleeping on friends’ couches, working barely enough hours to “keep my head above water.” He had so many potential uses for extra cash he couldn’t pin any one down.
For all their differences, these men and women shared one crucial thing. Despite incomes low enough that if they had been parents they would probably have qualified for substantial government cash assistance, they received little if any support. What drew them here was the chance to participate in an antipoverty experiment started by the city’s Center for Economic Opportunity to test what would happen if the government were to help adults without children. click: NYC Center for Economic Opportunity
Interviewing prospective participants in a pilot program to extend the earned-income tax credit to adults without children. To perform the investigation, proposed by the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and supported by his successor, Bill de Blasio, New York City contracted with MDRC click: mdrc | building knowledge to improve social policywww.mdrc.org/Multiple reports regarding welfare and welfare reform from this nonprofit, nonpartisan social policy research organization
MDCR is a nonprofit social policy research organization, to track 6,000 low-income single adults who do not have direct responsibility over children — from never-married childless women to divorced fathers who don’t have custody of their children but are obligated to pay child support.
Half of them will receive a bonus payment every year intended to replicate the main features of the earned-income tax credit. The other half will serve as a control group.
The hope is that the tax break will do for singles what it has achieved most successfully for single mothers: shoring up workers who suffer a drop in earnings and encouraging work by subsidizing the meager wages that have become the hallmark of the American service economy.
The test is one of the first concrete acknowledgments that the longstanding American economic belief that the job market alone can provide for the needs of nearly all workers may no longer be valid.
Needy children are innocent, worthy recipients of assistance. And for all practical purposes, that means aiding the parents, often single mothers, who care for them. But childless adults have been historically barred from most government support, from Medicaid to welfare.
From the 1930s well into the 1970s, most mothers were eligible for aid to families with dependent children only when the man was out of the home. “People from the welfare office came around looking for evidence of a man,” said MDRC’s president, Gordon L. Berlin. Today, low-income noncustodial fathers who can’t afford to pay child support are still not considered deserving of assistance. And they can go to jail for not paying up.
But the labor market is not doing its job the way it once did. Earnings of male high school graduates fell by nearly a fifth from 1979 to 2012, after inflation. For men without a high school diploma they declined by almost a third. Women’s wages have held up somewhat better, but are also declining for the least educated. Partly as a result, poverty among workers has increased faster over recent years than for working-age Americans without a job.
The future is not promising. According to projections from the Department of Labor, nine of the 10 occupations that will grow fastest over the next decade pay less than the median wage. Six pay less than is needed to keep a family of four out of poverty.
If the taboo against helping the able-bodied made sense in an era when a job guaranteed something approaching a reasonable living, its case is far weaker today.
The earned-income tax credit is the largest cash-transfer program in the United States, costing some $61 billion in 2010. It provides up to $3,305 a year to low-income working families with one child and up to $6,143 for those with three or more.
Combined with the much smaller child tax credit, it lifted one of every 15 children out of poverty in 2012, according to an analysis by Kathleen Short from the Census Bureau click: Census Bureau Homepage
Without it, the nation’s overall poverty rate would be 19 percent instead of 16 percent, under the Census Bureau’s comprehensive Supplemental Poverty Measure.
And it has encouraged single mothers to work. After the big expansions of the earned-income tax credit in 1990 and 1993, the labor supply of single mothers grew by 16 percentage points, reaching roughly 87 percent in 1999.
Like raising the minimum wage, broadening the tax credit could help workers earn their way out of poverty. “This is a promising thing to test,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard who has been collaborating with MDRC on the design and evaluation of the experiment. “It is a pro-employment sort of way to make work pay.”
Proposing more government aid in these bruising political times might seem like a waste of time. The New York program will bump the maximum annual benefit for singles to $2,000 for three years — from a maximum under the federal earned-income tax credit of $496. And it will phase out much more slowly.
Extending New York’s credit to some 13 million singles without qualifying children across the country would cost roughly $15 billion a year, according to a calculation by Cynthia Miller, who is head of the project for MDRC. Chances are that wouldn’t sit well among congressional Republicans, who have called for cuts to food assistance and are opposed to reinstating the extension of emergency jobless benefits.
Still, the earned-income credit has proved enormously popular on the left and the right. President Ronald Reagan called it “the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress.”
N. Gregory Mankiw, the former chief economic adviser to President George W. Bush, recently recommended the earned-income tax credit over a higher minimum wage as the better tool to increase the earnings of the working poor.
Some criticize the credit, however, saying it subsidizes employers by allowing beneficiaries to accept a lower wage. As a consequence, they argue, the tax break ends up hurting low-wage workers who do not qualify for it.
This argument, which could bolster the case for a higher minimum wage, could also strengthen the case for spreading the tax credit’s benefits more broadly. And a broader credit could serve another rare bipartisan cause: improving compliance with child support laws.
“We have a robust child support enforcement system,” said Maria Cancian, a professor of public affairs and social work at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “What we’ve been less successful at is enabling low-income fathers to earn enough to support themselves and afford child support obligations.”
Another potential benefit, said Kathryn Edin, a professor of public policy and management at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, would be to encourage young disadvantaged men into jobs and away from crime, making them more desirable as marriage partners and reducing the number of children born to teenage single mothers.
“Family structure is both a consequence and a cause of poverty,” Professor Edin told me.
The fundamental reason to support wages goes beyond children, however. In a nutshell, for the American market economy to remain viable, being employed must, one way or another, provide for workers’ needs.
Click green for further info
Source: (1) NYT, (2) STAF, Inc.
_________________________________________
Sleep: The Ultimate Brainwasher?
Date: 17 October 2013
Source: Click: Science Magazine
Click green for further info
Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself.
Most physiologists agree that sleep has come to serve many different purposes, ranging from memory consolidation to the regulation of metabolism and the immune system. While the "core" purposes of biological functions such as breathing and eating are easy to understand, however, scientists have never agreed on any such original purpose for sleeping. The new study, by Maiken Nedergaard and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York, provides what Charles Czeisler, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston, calls the “first direct experimental evidence at the molecular level” for what could be sleep’s basic purpose: It clears the brain of toxic metabolic byproducts.
The new work, published online in Science, “fits with a long-standing view that sleep is for recovery—that something is paid back or cleaned out,” says David Dinges, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. It builds on Nedergaard's recent discovery, described last summer in Science Translational Medicine, of a network of microscopic, fluid-filled channels that clears toxins from the brain, much as the lymphatic system clears out metabolic waste products from the rest of the body. Instead of carrying lymph, this system transports waste-laden cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Before the discovery of this "glymphatic system," as Nedergaard has dubbed it, the brain's only known method for disposing of cellular trash was to break down and recycle it within individual cells, she says.
In the original work, Nedergaard’s group showed that glia, the brain's non-neuronal cells, control the flow of CSF through channels in their cell membranes. "If we delete the channels in glial cells, the flow almost stops," Nedergaard says. Because the transport of fluid across cell membranes requires a lot of energy, Nedergaard and her team had a hunch that the brain would not be able to both clean and process sensory information at the same time and decided to test whether the activity of the glymphatic system changed during sleep. Lulu Xie, the new study's first author, spent the next 2 years training mice to relax and fall asleep on a two-photon microscope, which can image the movement of dye through living tissue.
Once Xie was sure the mice were asleep, based on their EEG brain activity, she injected a green dye into their CSF through a catheterlike device in their necks. After half an hour, she awakened them by touching their tails and injected a red dye that the two-photon microscope could easily distinguish from the green. By tracking the movements of red and green dye throughout the brain, the team found that large amounts of CSF flowed into the brain during sleep, but not during the awake state, Nedergaard says.
A comparison of the volume of space between nerve cells while the mice were awake and asleep revealed that the glial channels carrying CSF expanded by 60% when the mice were asleep. The team also injected labeled β amyloid proteins into the brains of sleeping mice and awake mice and found that during sleep, CSF cleared away this "dirt" outside of the cells twice as quickly—"like a dishwasher," Nedergaard says. Such proteins can aggregate as pathogenic plaques inside cells and are associated with Alzheimer’s disease, she says.
Many neurological diseases—from Alzheimer's disease to stroke and dementia—are associated with sleep disturbances, Nedergaard notes. The study suggests that lack of sleep could have a causal role, by allowing the byproducts to build up and cause brain damage. "This could open a lot of debate for shift workers, who work during the nighttime,” Nedergaard predicts. "You probably develop damage if you don’t get your sleep."
One unknown, however, is whether the need to remove waste products actively regulates sleep—whether, for example, the buildup of metabolic byproducts makes us sleepy. Researchers also wonder how the fluid-filled channels change shape during sleep, and whether clearing waste actually improves the function of neurons.
Nor are other researchers certain that cleansing is sleep’s sole core function. No one function of sleep necessarily rules them all, says sleep scientist Derk-Jan Dijk of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. “Sleep probably has many functions,” he says, just as the weekend is variously for shopping, socializing, and cleaning the house.
But now that Nedergaard and her colleagues have identified this nightly brainwashing in mice, Czeisler says, scientists can investigate whether it occurs in all species, and to what extent. “One could imagine that different species have evolved different additional functions of sleep to suit their different habitats, … but this will help resolve if there is some shared function of sleep across species,” he concludes.
Source: Science Magazine
Added information
Amyloid-β and tau in Alzheimer's disease Frank M. LaFerla
Article bodyAlzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder with a relentless progression. AD pathogenesis is believed to be triggered by the accumulation of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ), which is due to overproduction of Aβ and/or the failure of clearance mechanisms. Aβ self-aggregates into oligomers, which can be of various sizes, and forms diffuse and neuritic plaques in the parenchyma and blood vessels. Aβ oligomers and plaques are potent synaptotoxins, block proteasome function, inhibit mitochondrial activity, alter intracellular Ca2+ levels and stimulate inflammatory processes. Loss of the normal physiological functions of Aβ is also thought to contribute to neuronal dysfunction. Aβ interacts with the signalling pathways that regulate the phosphorylation of the microtubule-associated protein tau. Hyperphosphorylation of tau disrupts its normal function in regulating axonal transport and leads to the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles and toxic species of soluble tau. Furthermore, degradation of hyperphosphorylated tau by the proteasome is inhibited by the actions of Aβ. These two proteins and their associated signalling pathway
____________________________
Date: 17 October 2013
Source: Click: Science Magazine
Click green for further info
Every night since humans first evolved, we have made what might be considered a baffling, dangerous mistake. Despite the once-prevalent threat of being eaten by predators, and the loss of valuable time for gathering food, accumulating wealth, or having sex, we go to sleep. Scientists have long speculated and argued about why we devote roughly a third of our lives to sleep, but with little concrete data to support any particular theory. Now, new evidence has refreshed a long-held hypothesis: During sleep, the brain cleans itself.
Most physiologists agree that sleep has come to serve many different purposes, ranging from memory consolidation to the regulation of metabolism and the immune system. While the "core" purposes of biological functions such as breathing and eating are easy to understand, however, scientists have never agreed on any such original purpose for sleeping. The new study, by Maiken Nedergaard and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York, provides what Charles Czeisler, a sleep researcher at Harvard Medical School in Boston, calls the “first direct experimental evidence at the molecular level” for what could be sleep’s basic purpose: It clears the brain of toxic metabolic byproducts.
The new work, published online in Science, “fits with a long-standing view that sleep is for recovery—that something is paid back or cleaned out,” says David Dinges, a sleep researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. It builds on Nedergaard's recent discovery, described last summer in Science Translational Medicine, of a network of microscopic, fluid-filled channels that clears toxins from the brain, much as the lymphatic system clears out metabolic waste products from the rest of the body. Instead of carrying lymph, this system transports waste-laden cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Before the discovery of this "glymphatic system," as Nedergaard has dubbed it, the brain's only known method for disposing of cellular trash was to break down and recycle it within individual cells, she says.
In the original work, Nedergaard’s group showed that glia, the brain's non-neuronal cells, control the flow of CSF through channels in their cell membranes. "If we delete the channels in glial cells, the flow almost stops," Nedergaard says. Because the transport of fluid across cell membranes requires a lot of energy, Nedergaard and her team had a hunch that the brain would not be able to both clean and process sensory information at the same time and decided to test whether the activity of the glymphatic system changed during sleep. Lulu Xie, the new study's first author, spent the next 2 years training mice to relax and fall asleep on a two-photon microscope, which can image the movement of dye through living tissue.
Once Xie was sure the mice were asleep, based on their EEG brain activity, she injected a green dye into their CSF through a catheterlike device in their necks. After half an hour, she awakened them by touching their tails and injected a red dye that the two-photon microscope could easily distinguish from the green. By tracking the movements of red and green dye throughout the brain, the team found that large amounts of CSF flowed into the brain during sleep, but not during the awake state, Nedergaard says.
A comparison of the volume of space between nerve cells while the mice were awake and asleep revealed that the glial channels carrying CSF expanded by 60% when the mice were asleep. The team also injected labeled β amyloid proteins into the brains of sleeping mice and awake mice and found that during sleep, CSF cleared away this "dirt" outside of the cells twice as quickly—"like a dishwasher," Nedergaard says. Such proteins can aggregate as pathogenic plaques inside cells and are associated with Alzheimer’s disease, she says.
Many neurological diseases—from Alzheimer's disease to stroke and dementia—are associated with sleep disturbances, Nedergaard notes. The study suggests that lack of sleep could have a causal role, by allowing the byproducts to build up and cause brain damage. "This could open a lot of debate for shift workers, who work during the nighttime,” Nedergaard predicts. "You probably develop damage if you don’t get your sleep."
One unknown, however, is whether the need to remove waste products actively regulates sleep—whether, for example, the buildup of metabolic byproducts makes us sleepy. Researchers also wonder how the fluid-filled channels change shape during sleep, and whether clearing waste actually improves the function of neurons.
Nor are other researchers certain that cleansing is sleep’s sole core function. No one function of sleep necessarily rules them all, says sleep scientist Derk-Jan Dijk of the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. “Sleep probably has many functions,” he says, just as the weekend is variously for shopping, socializing, and cleaning the house.
But now that Nedergaard and her colleagues have identified this nightly brainwashing in mice, Czeisler says, scientists can investigate whether it occurs in all species, and to what extent. “One could imagine that different species have evolved different additional functions of sleep to suit their different habitats, … but this will help resolve if there is some shared function of sleep across species,” he concludes.
Source: Science Magazine
Added information
Amyloid-β and tau in Alzheimer's disease Frank M. LaFerla
Article bodyAlzheimer's disease (AD) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder with a relentless progression. AD pathogenesis is believed to be triggered by the accumulation of the amyloid-β peptide (Aβ), which is due to overproduction of Aβ and/or the failure of clearance mechanisms. Aβ self-aggregates into oligomers, which can be of various sizes, and forms diffuse and neuritic plaques in the parenchyma and blood vessels. Aβ oligomers and plaques are potent synaptotoxins, block proteasome function, inhibit mitochondrial activity, alter intracellular Ca2+ levels and stimulate inflammatory processes. Loss of the normal physiological functions of Aβ is also thought to contribute to neuronal dysfunction. Aβ interacts with the signalling pathways that regulate the phosphorylation of the microtubule-associated protein tau. Hyperphosphorylation of tau disrupts its normal function in regulating axonal transport and leads to the accumulation of neurofibrillary tangles and toxic species of soluble tau. Furthermore, degradation of hyperphosphorylated tau by the proteasome is inhibited by the actions of Aβ. These two proteins and their associated signalling pathway
____________________________
The little white shack at the water’s edge in Lower Manhattan is unobtrusive(= attracting attention) — so much so that the tourists strolling the promenade at Battery Park the other day did not give it a second glance.
Up close, though, the roof of the shed behind a Coast Guard building bristled with antennas and other gear. Though not much bigger than a closet, this facility is helping scientists confront one of the great environmental mysteries of the age.
The equipment inside is linked to probes in the water that keep track of the ebb and flow of the tides in New York Harbor, its readings beamed up to a satellite every six minutes.
While the gear today is of the latest type, some kind of tide gauge has been operating at the Battery since the 1850s, by a government office originally founded by Thomas Jefferson. That long data record has become invaluable to scientists grappling with this question: How much has the ocean already risen, and how much more will it go up?
RELATED COVERAGEScientists have spent decades examining all the factors that can influence the rise of the seas, and their research is finally leading to answers. And the more the scientists learn, the more they perceive an enormous risk for the United States.
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A young kayaker on Manchester Avenue in Norfolk, Va., in October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy caused flooding. Norfolk is struggling to cope with rising seawater and sinking land. Matthew Eich for The New York TimesMuch of the population and economy of the country is concentrated on the East Coast, which the accumulating scientific evidence suggests will be a global hot spot for a rising sea level over the coming century.
The detective work has required scientists to grapple with the influence of ancient ice sheets, the meaning of islands that are sinking in the Chesapeake Bay, and even the effect of a giant meteor that slammed into the earth.
The work starts with the tides. Because of their importance to navigation, they have been measured for the better part of two centuries. While the record is not perfect, scientists say it leaves no doubt that the world’s oceans are rising. The best calculation suggests that from 1880 to 2009, the global average sea level rose a little over eight inches.
Rising Sea, Sinking LandTide gauges along the East Coast show a long-term increase in relative sea levels, in part because the ocean is rising and in part because areas of the coast are sinking.
A METEOR IMPACT
about 35 million years ago weakened sediment around what is now Chesapeake Bay, which may contribute to rapid land subsidence in the area.
That may not sound like much, but scientists say even the smallest increase causes the seawater to eat away more aggressively at the shoreline in calm weather, and leads to higher tidal surges during storms. The sea-level rise of decades past thus explains why coastal towns nearly everywhere are having to spend billions of dollars fighting erosion.
The evidence suggests that the sea-level rise has probably accelerated, to about a foot a century, and scientists think it will accelerate still more with the continued emission of large amounts of greenhouse gases into the air. The gases heat the planet and cause land ice to melt into the sea.
The official stance of the world’s climate scientists is that the global sea level could rise as much as three feet by the end of this century, if emissions continue at a rapid pace. But some scientific evidence supports even higher numbers, five feet and beyond in the worst case.
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Concrete pipes near the water's edge in Norfolk, Va., which is spending millions on raising streets and improving drainage to cope with routine flooding. Matthew Eich for The New York Times Scientists say the East Coast will be hit harder for many reasons, but among the most important is that even as the seawater rises, the land in this part of the world is sinking. And that goes back to the last ice age, which peaked some 20,000 years ago.
As a massive ice sheet, more than a mile thick, grew over what are now Canada and the northern reaches of the United States, the weight of it depressed the crust of the earth. Areas away from the ice sheet bulged upward in response, as though somebody had stepped on one edge of a balloon, causing the other side to pop up. Now that the ice sheet has melted, the ground that was directly beneath it is rising, and the peripheral bulge is falling.
Some degree of sinking is going on all the way from southern Maine to northern Florida, and it manifests itself as an apparent rising of the sea.
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The sinking is fastest in the Chesapeake Bay region. Whole island communities that contained hundreds of residents in the 19th century have already disappeared. Holland Island, where the population peaked at nearly 400 people around 1910, had stores, a school, a baseball team and scores of homes. But as the water rose and the island eroded, the community had to be abandoned.
Eventually just a single, sturdy Victorian house, built in 1888, stood on a remaining spit of land, seeming at high tide to rise from the waters of the bay itself. A few years ago, a Washington Post reporter, David A. Fahrenthold, chronicled its collapse.
Aside from this general sinking of land up and down the East Coast, some places sit on soft sediments that tend to compress over time, so the localized land subsidence can be even worse than the regional trend. Much of the New Jersey coast is like that. The sea-level record from the Battery has been particularly valuable in sorting out this factor, because the tide gauge there is attached to bedrock and the record is thus immune to sediment compression.
Perhaps the weirdest factor of all pertains to Norfolk, Va., and points nearby. What is now the Tidewater region of Virginia was slammed by a meteor about 35 million years ago — a collision so violent it may have killed nearly everything on the East Coast and sent tsunami waves crashing against the Blue Ridge Mountains. The meteor impact disturbed and weakened the sediments across a 50-mile zone. Norfolk is at the edge of that zone, and some scientists think the ancient cataclysm may be one reason it is sinking especially fast, though others doubt it is much of a factor.
Coastal flooding has already become such a severe problem that Norfolk is spending millions to raise streets and improve drainage. Truly protecting the city could cost as much as $1 billion, money that Norfolk officials say they do not have. Norfolk’s mayor, Paul Fraim, made headlines a couple of years ago by acknowledging that some areas might eventually have to be abandoned.
Up and down the Eastern Seaboard, municipal planners want to know: How bad are things going to get, and how fast?
One of the most ambitious attempts to take account of all known factors came just a few weeks ago from Kenneth G. Miller and Robert E. Kopp of Rutgers University, and a handful of their colleagues. Theircalculations, centered on New Jersey, suggest this is not just some problem of the distant future.
People considering whether to buy or rebuild at the storm-damaged Jersey Shore, for instance, could be looking at nearly a foot of sea-level rise by the time they would pay off a 30-year mortgage, according to the Rutgers projections. That would make coastal flooding and further property damage considerably more likely than in the past.
Even if the global sea level rises only eight more inches by 2050, a moderate forecast, the Rutgers group foresees relative increases of 14 inches at bedrock locations like the Battery, and 15 inches along the New Jersey coastal plain, where the sediments are compressing. By 2100, they calculate, a global ocean rise of 28 inches would produce increases of 36 inches at the Battery and 39 inches on the coastal plain.
These numbers are profoundly threatening, and among the American public, the impulse toward denial is still strong. But in towns like Norfolk — where neighborhoods are already flooding repeatedly even in the absence of storms, and where some homes have become unsaleable — people are starting to pay attention.
“In the last couple or three years, there’s really been a change,” said William A. Stiles Jr., head of Wetlands Watch, a Norfolk environmental group. “What you get now is people saying, ‘I’m tired of driving through salt water on my way to work, and I need some solutions.’ ”
A version of this article appears in print on January 14, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline
____________________________
Up close, though, the roof of the shed behind a Coast Guard building bristled with antennas and other gear. Though not much bigger than a closet, this facility is helping scientists confront one of the great environmental mysteries of the age.
The equipment inside is linked to probes in the water that keep track of the ebb and flow of the tides in New York Harbor, its readings beamed up to a satellite every six minutes.
While the gear today is of the latest type, some kind of tide gauge has been operating at the Battery since the 1850s, by a government office originally founded by Thomas Jefferson. That long data record has become invaluable to scientists grappling with this question: How much has the ocean already risen, and how much more will it go up?
RELATED COVERAGEScientists have spent decades examining all the factors that can influence the rise of the seas, and their research is finally leading to answers. And the more the scientists learn, the more they perceive an enormous risk for the United States.
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A young kayaker on Manchester Avenue in Norfolk, Va., in October 2012, when Hurricane Sandy caused flooding. Norfolk is struggling to cope with rising seawater and sinking land. Matthew Eich for The New York TimesMuch of the population and economy of the country is concentrated on the East Coast, which the accumulating scientific evidence suggests will be a global hot spot for a rising sea level over the coming century.
The detective work has required scientists to grapple with the influence of ancient ice sheets, the meaning of islands that are sinking in the Chesapeake Bay, and even the effect of a giant meteor that slammed into the earth.
The work starts with the tides. Because of their importance to navigation, they have been measured for the better part of two centuries. While the record is not perfect, scientists say it leaves no doubt that the world’s oceans are rising. The best calculation suggests that from 1880 to 2009, the global average sea level rose a little over eight inches.
Rising Sea, Sinking LandTide gauges along the East Coast show a long-term increase in relative sea levels, in part because the ocean is rising and in part because areas of the coast are sinking.
A METEOR IMPACT
about 35 million years ago weakened sediment around what is now Chesapeake Bay, which may contribute to rapid land subsidence in the area.
That may not sound like much, but scientists say even the smallest increase causes the seawater to eat away more aggressively at the shoreline in calm weather, and leads to higher tidal surges during storms. The sea-level rise of decades past thus explains why coastal towns nearly everywhere are having to spend billions of dollars fighting erosion.
The evidence suggests that the sea-level rise has probably accelerated, to about a foot a century, and scientists think it will accelerate still more with the continued emission of large amounts of greenhouse gases into the air. The gases heat the planet and cause land ice to melt into the sea.
The official stance of the world’s climate scientists is that the global sea level could rise as much as three feet by the end of this century, if emissions continue at a rapid pace. But some scientific evidence supports even higher numbers, five feet and beyond in the worst case.
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Concrete pipes near the water's edge in Norfolk, Va., which is spending millions on raising streets and improving drainage to cope with routine flooding. Matthew Eich for The New York Times Scientists say the East Coast will be hit harder for many reasons, but among the most important is that even as the seawater rises, the land in this part of the world is sinking. And that goes back to the last ice age, which peaked some 20,000 years ago.
As a massive ice sheet, more than a mile thick, grew over what are now Canada and the northern reaches of the United States, the weight of it depressed the crust of the earth. Areas away from the ice sheet bulged upward in response, as though somebody had stepped on one edge of a balloon, causing the other side to pop up. Now that the ice sheet has melted, the ground that was directly beneath it is rising, and the peripheral bulge is falling.
Some degree of sinking is going on all the way from southern Maine to northern Florida, and it manifests itself as an apparent rising of the sea.
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The sinking is fastest in the Chesapeake Bay region. Whole island communities that contained hundreds of residents in the 19th century have already disappeared. Holland Island, where the population peaked at nearly 400 people around 1910, had stores, a school, a baseball team and scores of homes. But as the water rose and the island eroded, the community had to be abandoned.
Eventually just a single, sturdy Victorian house, built in 1888, stood on a remaining spit of land, seeming at high tide to rise from the waters of the bay itself. A few years ago, a Washington Post reporter, David A. Fahrenthold, chronicled its collapse.
Aside from this general sinking of land up and down the East Coast, some places sit on soft sediments that tend to compress over time, so the localized land subsidence can be even worse than the regional trend. Much of the New Jersey coast is like that. The sea-level record from the Battery has been particularly valuable in sorting out this factor, because the tide gauge there is attached to bedrock and the record is thus immune to sediment compression.
Perhaps the weirdest factor of all pertains to Norfolk, Va., and points nearby. What is now the Tidewater region of Virginia was slammed by a meteor about 35 million years ago — a collision so violent it may have killed nearly everything on the East Coast and sent tsunami waves crashing against the Blue Ridge Mountains. The meteor impact disturbed and weakened the sediments across a 50-mile zone. Norfolk is at the edge of that zone, and some scientists think the ancient cataclysm may be one reason it is sinking especially fast, though others doubt it is much of a factor.
Coastal flooding has already become such a severe problem that Norfolk is spending millions to raise streets and improve drainage. Truly protecting the city could cost as much as $1 billion, money that Norfolk officials say they do not have. Norfolk’s mayor, Paul Fraim, made headlines a couple of years ago by acknowledging that some areas might eventually have to be abandoned.
Up and down the Eastern Seaboard, municipal planners want to know: How bad are things going to get, and how fast?
One of the most ambitious attempts to take account of all known factors came just a few weeks ago from Kenneth G. Miller and Robert E. Kopp of Rutgers University, and a handful of their colleagues. Theircalculations, centered on New Jersey, suggest this is not just some problem of the distant future.
People considering whether to buy or rebuild at the storm-damaged Jersey Shore, for instance, could be looking at nearly a foot of sea-level rise by the time they would pay off a 30-year mortgage, according to the Rutgers projections. That would make coastal flooding and further property damage considerably more likely than in the past.
Even if the global sea level rises only eight more inches by 2050, a moderate forecast, the Rutgers group foresees relative increases of 14 inches at bedrock locations like the Battery, and 15 inches along the New Jersey coastal plain, where the sediments are compressing. By 2100, they calculate, a global ocean rise of 28 inches would produce increases of 36 inches at the Battery and 39 inches on the coastal plain.
These numbers are profoundly threatening, and among the American public, the impulse toward denial is still strong. But in towns like Norfolk — where neighborhoods are already flooding repeatedly even in the absence of storms, and where some homes have become unsaleable — people are starting to pay attention.
“In the last couple or three years, there’s really been a change,” said William A. Stiles Jr., head of Wetlands Watch, a Norfolk environmental group. “What you get now is people saying, ‘I’m tired of driving through salt water on my way to work, and I need some solutions.’ ”
A version of this article appears in print on January 14, 2014, on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline
____________________________
Why This European Is Bullish on America
to be bullish on = Optimistic or confident; e.g.: bullish on the prospects of reaching a negotiated settlement
The billionaire founder of Ineos*) says
(1) the shale revolution is making the U.S. a world-beater again;
(2) The U.S.would be 'unbeatable' with a lower corporate tax rate.
*) Click: INEOS - The Word for Chemicalswww.ineos.com/We are one of the world's largest manufacturers of chemicals and oil products, with sales of $45 billion, employing 15000 people.
The shale evolution:
The discovery of vast shale gas and oil fields in the USA, and stronger national conservation, some forecasts peg energy independence for North America at just a few years off. A Citigroup report calls the region "the new Middle East."
The trend is a "game changer, it's a "new paradigm." (paradigm= a typical example or pattern of something; a model)
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable.[1] Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering or bedding less than one centimeter in thickness, called fissility.[1] Mudstones, on the other hand, are similar in composition but do not show the fissility.
Fissility = Easily split along close parallel planes
The Article
Why This European Is Bullish on America
Click green for further info
America's energy boom is spurring a new British invasion, this one headed by Jim Ratcliffe, chairman and CEO of Ineos Group Holdings, the multinational petrochemical giant he founded in 1998. "The United States from our point of view," Mr. Ratcliffe says, "presents lots of opportunities for investment and growth."
In the U.S., where the economic discussion is often dominated by hand-wringing about "secular stagnation" and declinism, growth remains subpar and unemployment stubbornly high. Yet the explosion in shale gas and oil production made possible by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling are, the Ineos founder says, set to reinvigorate the U.S. economy. Mr. Ratcliffe sees an America in which a boom, driven by cheap energy, is already well under way.
A chemical engineer turned industrialist, Mr. Ratcliffe left Exxon XOM +0.38% for the private-equity firm Advent in the late 1980s. Some four years later, he got back into running a chemicals company when he helped lead the buyout of a BP BP.LN -0.96% chemical plant in Hythe. He took the resulting company, Inspec, public before leaving again to buy out Inspec's Antwerp plant, which formed the starting point of what has become Ineos. Much of its growth into today's $43 billion a year behemoth has come through acquisitions, the biggest of which was its purchase of BP's chemicals business in 2005.
But for all the deal-making, Mr. Ratcliffe insists he is "a manufacturer at heart," born and reared in Manchester, England—where, he notes, "the whole Industrial Revolution began." These days he is one of Britain's richest citizens, owning about two-thirds of the privately held Ineos.
Most people think of oil and gas as fuels, but to Ineos they're "feedstocks" for making things. Ineos turns petrochemicals into plastics and related materials in massive plants known in the business as "crackers." Cracking is the chemical process by which natural gas and crude oil are broken down into ethylene. From ethylene, Mr. Ratcliffe says, "you produce polyethylene, polyester, PVC—all the world's biggest plastics," which make up the stuff of modern life. Everything from soda bottles and fleece jackets to car bumpers and computer cases comes ultimately from the natural gas or oil that petroleum companies pull out of the ground.
There are two kinds of crackers, one for oil and one for natural gas. For a long time in most places, the two "had similar economics," Mr. Ratcliffe says. But now "what's happened in the United States with shale gas is that the price of gas has dislocated from the price of oil. If you have a gas cracker it becomes very, very profitable." Ineos owns the second-largest gas cracker in the U.S., outside Houston, and so suddenly it also has "access to lots of cheap shale gas." It's good to own a gas cracker in America right now.
Mr. Ratcliffe, a tall, trim 61-year-old with a gravelly voice and something of a mop-top, is holding court in a conference room in a boutique hotel near Hyde Park in West London. Until recently, Ineos Group Director Tom Crotty notes, Ineos liked to call itself "the largest company you'd never heard of." That changed, at least in Britain, last October when Mr. Ratcliffe threatened to shut down Scotland's only crude-oil refinery, which Ineos owns, in the midst of a labor dispute.
The price of keeping it open, Mr. Ratcliffe told the union, was to accept salary freezes, an end to final-salary pensions, and greater freedom for the company to set work rules. When the union balked, Mr. Ratcliffe said he was prepared to walk away, prompting a political and economic panic from Edinburgh to London. Within days, the union capitulated. Now he's proposing to spend millions of pounds to export American shale gas to Scotland, where Ineos will crack it at the same plant he nearly closed two months ago—the refining complex at Grangemouth also sports one of Europe's four gas crackers.
Ineos is already building a similar project at its other European gas cracker in Norway. Shale gas has made the feedstocks Ineos needs so cheap in the U.S.—"a lot less than half the price of European feedstocks," Mr. Ratcliffe says—that suddenly it makes sense to build a natural-gas liquefaction plant and export terminal in the U.S., buy specialized tankers to ship liquefied natural gas across the Atlantic and re-gasify it in Europe, all to feed ethane into Ineos's gas crackers in Norway and Scotland.
This is a radical transformation of the petroleum business. As recently as 2011, the U.S. was a net importer of petrochemicals. In the middle of the previous decade, oil companies were clamoring for new liquefied natural gas import terminals to address the high price and shortage of gas. Today there are "10 new world-scale crackers being built" in the U.S. "on the back of all the shale gas you've found," Mr. Ratcliffe says. He foresees net petrochemicals exports from the U.S. "to the tune of $30 billion by 2018-2020."
His bullishness on America is a recurring theme. "The markets generally seem to be doing quite well in the United States, raw materials are plentiful, energy is cheap, skills are great," Mr. Ratcliffe says. As a result, Ineos is "more and more turning its attention to the United States." Seven or eight years ago in his industry, "people were shutting things down" in America "because it wasn't competitive. Now it's become immensely competitive."
And most of that is because of shale gas and hydraulic fracturing. "I'm not sure we could spell 'shale' in 2008," Mr. Ratcliffe jokes. "People hadn't heard of it. We're pretty big in chemicals in the United States, and we're a big gas consumer, and nobody was talking about it."
He has a different view of his native Continent. "Generally," he says, "I'm quite bearish about Europe. There's lots of debt kicking around all over the place, they're all running trade deficits apart from Germany. There is no growth. We don't have great competitive economics, certainly in things like energy and feedstocks." On the contrary, Europe has "the most expensive energy in the world." The Continent has been very slow to move on shale gas, and the U.K. has only lately, and somewhat reluctantly, started to embrace fracking. Older oil and gas fields in the North Sea are in decline, and any new sources from fracking are years away at best.
"There's lots of shale gas around" in the U.K. and elsewhere, Mr. Ratcliffe says. But "in Texas there are 280,000 active shale wells at the moment. . . . And I think a million wells in the United States" as a whole. By contrast, "I think we have one, at the most two, in the U.K., and I don't think there are any in France." The French made fracking illegal in 2011, and the country's highest court upheld the ban in October.
Today, Mr. Ratcliffe says, two-thirds of Ineos's assets are in Europe, and one-third are in the U.S. But "from 2010-2013, our profits in Europe have more than halved," while at the same time, Ineos's "profits in America since 2010 have tripled. So our profits in America now are double, from a third of assets, our profits in Europe from two-thirds of our assets." Much of this shift is due to the costs of energy and raw materials, but Mr. Ratcliffe points to an additional, more subtle factor.
Social protections in Europe make it much more expensive to shut down underperforming plants. Many Europeans will say, "Yes, that's the idea. To protect jobs." And indeed Mr. Ratcliffe was excoriated in certain circles for his threat to close the Grangemouth refinery.
But Mr. Ratcliffe argues that European-style social protections lead to under-investment that ultimately benefits no one. He offers an example: "In Spain we have a small unit which wasn't successful and it was too small, making ABS [a plastic]." But to close it would have cost "a minimum of three years' salary for every employee. So what you do is, you try to find ways of just sort of continuing for a few more years. And what you find of course is you lose a bit more money, and you lose a bit more money and you lose a bit more money. And eventually you do have to close it down. But by the time you close it down, it costs you a fortune and also you've lost money for eight years while you were fiddling about."
By contrast, he says, in America "you'd just shut it down." Which is why, he adds, "in America all our assets are good assets, they all make money." That may sound like a European social democrat's nightmare, but Mr. Ratcliffe takes a longer view, explaining that if the lost money had instead been invested in new capacity, the company would be healthier, employees' jobs more secure and better-paying because the plant would be profitable. This logic is unlikely to persuade Europe's trade unions, but Mr. Ratcliffe says that the difficulty and expense of restructuring is one of the things holding back Europe—and its workers.
America, he acknowledges, "is not without its issues," citing federal debt and trade and budget deficits. But Mr. Ratcliffe's "only gripe" about the U.S.—"you have to have a gripe," he says—is that America "has the highest corporate tax rates in the world: "They're too high in my view, nearly 40%. And that's a pity because in most other parts of the world corporate tax rates are about 25%."
'America's got quite reasonable tax rates from an employee point of view," Mr. Ratcliffe says, speaking in a country that only recently lowered its top marginal rate to 45% from 50%, "but the corporate tax rate is too high. Because what you want to do is reinvest. If you weren't paying all that tax, what you'd do is, you'd invest more. And we'd probably spend the money better than the government would."
His suggestion for Washington on corporate taxes: "I think they should bring that down to about 30% or so. Then they'd be unbeatable. For investment, they'd be unbeatable, the United States."
Source: (1) WSJ, (2) STAF, Inc.
_____________________________________
to be bullish on = Optimistic or confident; e.g.: bullish on the prospects of reaching a negotiated settlement
The billionaire founder of Ineos*) says
(1) the shale revolution is making the U.S. a world-beater again;
(2) The U.S.would be 'unbeatable' with a lower corporate tax rate.
*) Click: INEOS - The Word for Chemicalswww.ineos.com/We are one of the world's largest manufacturers of chemicals and oil products, with sales of $45 billion, employing 15000 people.
The shale evolution:
The discovery of vast shale gas and oil fields in the USA, and stronger national conservation, some forecasts peg energy independence for North America at just a few years off. A Citigroup report calls the region "the new Middle East."
The trend is a "game changer, it's a "new paradigm." (paradigm= a typical example or pattern of something; a model)
Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of mud that is a mix of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments (silt-sized particles) of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite. The ratio of clay to other minerals is variable.[1] Shale is characterized by breaks along thin laminae or parallel layering or bedding less than one centimeter in thickness, called fissility.[1] Mudstones, on the other hand, are similar in composition but do not show the fissility.
Fissility = Easily split along close parallel planes
The Article
Why This European Is Bullish on America
Click green for further info
America's energy boom is spurring a new British invasion, this one headed by Jim Ratcliffe, chairman and CEO of Ineos Group Holdings, the multinational petrochemical giant he founded in 1998. "The United States from our point of view," Mr. Ratcliffe says, "presents lots of opportunities for investment and growth."
In the U.S., where the economic discussion is often dominated by hand-wringing about "secular stagnation" and declinism, growth remains subpar and unemployment stubbornly high. Yet the explosion in shale gas and oil production made possible by hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling are, the Ineos founder says, set to reinvigorate the U.S. economy. Mr. Ratcliffe sees an America in which a boom, driven by cheap energy, is already well under way.
A chemical engineer turned industrialist, Mr. Ratcliffe left Exxon XOM +0.38% for the private-equity firm Advent in the late 1980s. Some four years later, he got back into running a chemicals company when he helped lead the buyout of a BP BP.LN -0.96% chemical plant in Hythe. He took the resulting company, Inspec, public before leaving again to buy out Inspec's Antwerp plant, which formed the starting point of what has become Ineos. Much of its growth into today's $43 billion a year behemoth has come through acquisitions, the biggest of which was its purchase of BP's chemicals business in 2005.
But for all the deal-making, Mr. Ratcliffe insists he is "a manufacturer at heart," born and reared in Manchester, England—where, he notes, "the whole Industrial Revolution began." These days he is one of Britain's richest citizens, owning about two-thirds of the privately held Ineos.
Most people think of oil and gas as fuels, but to Ineos they're "feedstocks" for making things. Ineos turns petrochemicals into plastics and related materials in massive plants known in the business as "crackers." Cracking is the chemical process by which natural gas and crude oil are broken down into ethylene. From ethylene, Mr. Ratcliffe says, "you produce polyethylene, polyester, PVC—all the world's biggest plastics," which make up the stuff of modern life. Everything from soda bottles and fleece jackets to car bumpers and computer cases comes ultimately from the natural gas or oil that petroleum companies pull out of the ground.
There are two kinds of crackers, one for oil and one for natural gas. For a long time in most places, the two "had similar economics," Mr. Ratcliffe says. But now "what's happened in the United States with shale gas is that the price of gas has dislocated from the price of oil. If you have a gas cracker it becomes very, very profitable." Ineos owns the second-largest gas cracker in the U.S., outside Houston, and so suddenly it also has "access to lots of cheap shale gas." It's good to own a gas cracker in America right now.
Mr. Ratcliffe, a tall, trim 61-year-old with a gravelly voice and something of a mop-top, is holding court in a conference room in a boutique hotel near Hyde Park in West London. Until recently, Ineos Group Director Tom Crotty notes, Ineos liked to call itself "the largest company you'd never heard of." That changed, at least in Britain, last October when Mr. Ratcliffe threatened to shut down Scotland's only crude-oil refinery, which Ineos owns, in the midst of a labor dispute.
The price of keeping it open, Mr. Ratcliffe told the union, was to accept salary freezes, an end to final-salary pensions, and greater freedom for the company to set work rules. When the union balked, Mr. Ratcliffe said he was prepared to walk away, prompting a political and economic panic from Edinburgh to London. Within days, the union capitulated. Now he's proposing to spend millions of pounds to export American shale gas to Scotland, where Ineos will crack it at the same plant he nearly closed two months ago—the refining complex at Grangemouth also sports one of Europe's four gas crackers.
Ineos is already building a similar project at its other European gas cracker in Norway. Shale gas has made the feedstocks Ineos needs so cheap in the U.S.—"a lot less than half the price of European feedstocks," Mr. Ratcliffe says—that suddenly it makes sense to build a natural-gas liquefaction plant and export terminal in the U.S., buy specialized tankers to ship liquefied natural gas across the Atlantic and re-gasify it in Europe, all to feed ethane into Ineos's gas crackers in Norway and Scotland.
This is a radical transformation of the petroleum business. As recently as 2011, the U.S. was a net importer of petrochemicals. In the middle of the previous decade, oil companies were clamoring for new liquefied natural gas import terminals to address the high price and shortage of gas. Today there are "10 new world-scale crackers being built" in the U.S. "on the back of all the shale gas you've found," Mr. Ratcliffe says. He foresees net petrochemicals exports from the U.S. "to the tune of $30 billion by 2018-2020."
His bullishness on America is a recurring theme. "The markets generally seem to be doing quite well in the United States, raw materials are plentiful, energy is cheap, skills are great," Mr. Ratcliffe says. As a result, Ineos is "more and more turning its attention to the United States." Seven or eight years ago in his industry, "people were shutting things down" in America "because it wasn't competitive. Now it's become immensely competitive."
And most of that is because of shale gas and hydraulic fracturing. "I'm not sure we could spell 'shale' in 2008," Mr. Ratcliffe jokes. "People hadn't heard of it. We're pretty big in chemicals in the United States, and we're a big gas consumer, and nobody was talking about it."
He has a different view of his native Continent. "Generally," he says, "I'm quite bearish about Europe. There's lots of debt kicking around all over the place, they're all running trade deficits apart from Germany. There is no growth. We don't have great competitive economics, certainly in things like energy and feedstocks." On the contrary, Europe has "the most expensive energy in the world." The Continent has been very slow to move on shale gas, and the U.K. has only lately, and somewhat reluctantly, started to embrace fracking. Older oil and gas fields in the North Sea are in decline, and any new sources from fracking are years away at best.
"There's lots of shale gas around" in the U.K. and elsewhere, Mr. Ratcliffe says. But "in Texas there are 280,000 active shale wells at the moment. . . . And I think a million wells in the United States" as a whole. By contrast, "I think we have one, at the most two, in the U.K., and I don't think there are any in France." The French made fracking illegal in 2011, and the country's highest court upheld the ban in October.
Today, Mr. Ratcliffe says, two-thirds of Ineos's assets are in Europe, and one-third are in the U.S. But "from 2010-2013, our profits in Europe have more than halved," while at the same time, Ineos's "profits in America since 2010 have tripled. So our profits in America now are double, from a third of assets, our profits in Europe from two-thirds of our assets." Much of this shift is due to the costs of energy and raw materials, but Mr. Ratcliffe points to an additional, more subtle factor.
Social protections in Europe make it much more expensive to shut down underperforming plants. Many Europeans will say, "Yes, that's the idea. To protect jobs." And indeed Mr. Ratcliffe was excoriated in certain circles for his threat to close the Grangemouth refinery.
But Mr. Ratcliffe argues that European-style social protections lead to under-investment that ultimately benefits no one. He offers an example: "In Spain we have a small unit which wasn't successful and it was too small, making ABS [a plastic]." But to close it would have cost "a minimum of three years' salary for every employee. So what you do is, you try to find ways of just sort of continuing for a few more years. And what you find of course is you lose a bit more money, and you lose a bit more money and you lose a bit more money. And eventually you do have to close it down. But by the time you close it down, it costs you a fortune and also you've lost money for eight years while you were fiddling about."
By contrast, he says, in America "you'd just shut it down." Which is why, he adds, "in America all our assets are good assets, they all make money." That may sound like a European social democrat's nightmare, but Mr. Ratcliffe takes a longer view, explaining that if the lost money had instead been invested in new capacity, the company would be healthier, employees' jobs more secure and better-paying because the plant would be profitable. This logic is unlikely to persuade Europe's trade unions, but Mr. Ratcliffe says that the difficulty and expense of restructuring is one of the things holding back Europe—and its workers.
America, he acknowledges, "is not without its issues," citing federal debt and trade and budget deficits. But Mr. Ratcliffe's "only gripe" about the U.S.—"you have to have a gripe," he says—is that America "has the highest corporate tax rates in the world: "They're too high in my view, nearly 40%. And that's a pity because in most other parts of the world corporate tax rates are about 25%."
'America's got quite reasonable tax rates from an employee point of view," Mr. Ratcliffe says, speaking in a country that only recently lowered its top marginal rate to 45% from 50%, "but the corporate tax rate is too high. Because what you want to do is reinvest. If you weren't paying all that tax, what you'd do is, you'd invest more. And we'd probably spend the money better than the government would."
His suggestion for Washington on corporate taxes: "I think they should bring that down to about 30% or so. Then they'd be unbeatable. For investment, they'd be unbeatable, the United States."
Source: (1) WSJ, (2) STAF, Inc.
_____________________________________
- Sam Berns, 17, Public Face of a Rare Illness, Is Dead
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Sam Berns lived a heroic life with a rare disease-and prompted new research into it.
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The W.H. Administration Urges Restraint
in Using Arrest or Expulsion to Discipline Students
W.H. = The White House
The Obama administration issued guidelines that recommended public school officials use law enforcement only as a last resort for disciplining students, a response to a rise in zero-tolerance policies that have disproportionately increased the number of arrests, suspensions and expulsions of minority students for even minor, nonviolent offenses.
The secretary of education, Arne Duncan, and the attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., released a 35-page document that outlined approaches — including counseling for students, coaching for teachers and disciplinary officers, and sessions to teach social and emotional skills — that could reduce the time students spend out of school as punishment.
“The widespread use of suspensions and expulsions has tremendous costs,” Mr. Duncan wrote in a letter to school officials. “Students who are suspended or expelled from school may be unsupervised during daytime hours and cannot benefit from great teaching, positive peer interactions and adult mentorship offered in class and in school.”
Launch media viewer
Education Secretary Arne Duncan in 2013. Data collected by the Education Department shows that minorities — particularly black boys and students with disabilities — face the harshest discipline in schools.
According to the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, black students without disabilities are more than three times as likely as their white peers to be suspended or expelled. And an analysis of the federal data by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that in 10 states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware and Illinois, more than a quarter of black students with disabilities were suspended in the 2009-10 school year.
In addition, students who are eligible for special education services — generally those with disabilities — make up nearly a quarter of those who have been arrested at school, despite representing only 12 percent of the nation’s students.
As school districts have placed more police officers on campuses, criminal charges against children have drastically increased, a trend that has alarmed civil rights groups and others concerned about the safety and educational welfare of public-school students.
The Obama administration’s document also set guidelines for reducing arrests and keeping discipline within schools.
“A routine school disciplinary infraction should land a student in the principal’s office, not in a police precinct,” Mr. Holder said in a statement.
The administration advised schools to focus on creating positive environments, setting clear expectations and consequences for students, and ensuring fairness and equity in disciplinary measures. It also called for districts to collect data on school-based arrests, citations and searches, as well as suspensions and expulsions, and reminded schools of civil rights laws protecting students.
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The education secretary, Mr. Duncan, and the attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., released a document suggesting other approaches. Matt Rourke/Associated PressCivil rights groups broadly welcomed the federal guidance. Citing “misuse and overuse of exclusionary school discipline” that fuels a “school to prison pipeline,” Deborah J. Vagins, senior legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, called the guidelines “timely and important.”
Some school districts, including in Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles and Broward County, Fla., have already begun to alter their policies and focus more on preventing problem behavior in the first place.
Of the federal guidance, Leticia Smith-Evans, interim director of education practice at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said, “We can only hope that districts will look at this and embrace it and try to make sure that they can move forward in a positive direction to make sure that all students in their schools are being educated.”
School officials generally welcomed the guidance but said that putting all of the recommendations in place could be a long, expensive process. “Resistance can make implementing alternatives a difficult course to chart for school leaders,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, which represents district superintendents. “Meanwhile, funds to improve school climate and train school personnel in alternative school discipline can be scarce in today’s economic climate.”
Some experts saw the guidance as a good first step but warned that changing entrenched school cultures would be difficult.
“We often talk about solving this problem as if it’s an easy problem to solve,” said James Forman Jr., a clinical professor at Yale Law School. “Actually creating a positive school climate, particularly in schools that are in communities that are themselves not calm and orderly, is hard work.”
Professor Forman added that because school accountability systems focus on student test scores and other academic measures, rather than on reducing suspensions, schools might not have much incentive to keep troubled students in class.
“Sometimes getting rid of these kids can help you do better on the metrics that you are evaluated on,” he said. “If a kid is causing trouble, that’s probably not a kid who is testing well, and it may be a kid who is making it hard for teachers to teach other kids.”
Source: NYT news
_________________________
“We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.”
(President Reagan)
click: Ronald Reagan
Progress in the War on Poverty
Article 1 of 3 (Article 2-3 of 3 next below)
America’s war on poverty turned 50 years old, and plenty of people have concluded that, as President Reagan put it:
“We fought a war on poverty, and poverty won.”
That perception shapes the right’s suspicion of food stamps, minimum-wage raises and extensions of unemployment benefits. A reader named Frank posted on my Facebook page: “All the government aid/handouts in the world will not make people better parents. This is why the ideas from the left, although always made with the best of intentions, never work. ... All of this aid is wasted.”
Yet a careful look at the evidence suggests that such a view is flat wrong. In fact, the first lesson of the war on poverty is that we can make progress against poverty, but that it’s an uphill slog.
RELATED IN OPINIONThe most accurate measures, using Census Bureau figures that take account of benefits, suggest that poverty rates have fallen by more than one-third since 1968. There’s a consensus that without the war on poverty, other forces (such as mass incarceration, a rise in single mothers and the decline in trade unions) would have lifted poverty much higher.
A Columbia University study suggests that without government benefits, the poverty rate would have soared to 31 percent in 2012. Indeed, an average of 27 million people were lifted annually out of poverty by social programs between 1968 and 2012, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
The best example of how government antipoverty programs can succeed involves the elderly. In 1960, about 35 percent of older Americans were poor. In 2012, 9 percent were. That’s because senior citizens vote, so politicians listened to them and buttressed programs like Social Security and Medicare.
In contrast, children are voiceless, so they are the age group most likely to be poor today. That’s a practical and moral failure.
I don’t want anybody to be poor, but, if I have to choose, I’d say it’s more of a priority to help kids than seniors. In part, that’s because when kids are deprived of opportunities, the consequences can include a lifetime of educational failure, crime and underemployment.
Research from neuroscience underscores why early interventions are so important. Early brain development turns out to have lifelong consequences, and research from human and animal studies alike suggests that a high-stress early childhood in poverty changes the physical brain in subtle ways that impair educational performance and life outcomes.
A careful review of antipoverty programs in a new book, “Legacies of the War on Poverty,” shows that many of them have a clear impact — albeit sometimes not as great an impact as advocates hoped.
For starters, one of the most basic social programs that works — indeed pays for itself many times over — is family-planning assistance for at-risk teenage girls. This has actually been one of America’s most successful social programs in recent years. The teenage birthrate has fallen by half over roughly the last 20 years.
Another hugely successful array of programs involved parent coaching to get pregnant women to drink and smoke less and to encourage at-risk moms to talk to their children more. Programs like Nurse-Family Partnership, Healthy Families America, Child First, Save the Children and Thirty Million Words Project all have had great success in helping parents do a better job with their kids".
Another area of success: Programs that encourage jobs, especially for the most at-risk groups. The earned-income tax credit is a huge benefit to the working poor and to society.
Likewise, a program called Career Academies has had excellent results training at-risk teenagers in specialized careers and giving them practical work experience. Even eight years later, those young people randomly assigned to Career Academies are earning significantly more than those in control groups.
As that example suggests, we increasingly have first-rate research — randomized controlled trials, testing antipoverty programs as rigorously as if they were pharmaceuticals — that give us solid evidence of what works or doesn’t.
So let’s drop the bombast and look at the evidence.
Critics are right that antipoverty work is difficult and that dependency can be a problem. But the premise of so much of today’s opposition to food stamps and other benefits — that government assistance inevitably fails — is just wrong. And child poverty is as unconscionable in a rich nation today as it was half a century ago.
RELATED COVERAGE click green title:Source: NYT (Articles 2-3 of 3 next below)
_____________________________________
Article 2 of 3 (Article 1 of 3 next above)
Terrorism’s Fertile Ground
The best strategy to limit the power of militant groups to seduce*) recruits
is to fight poverty, not terrorism
Instead of investing billions of dollars on drones*),
let’s focus on augmenting *) economic opportunities
and
providing basic and essential services like health care and education
The war on terror can be won only through education, promise and real opportunities.
_______________
*) seduce = attract (someone) to a belief or into a course of action that is inadvisable or foolhardy
*) to augment = make (something) greater by adding to it; increase
*) drone = a pilotless aircraft operated by remote control
NAIROBI, Kenya - click: Nairobi click: Kenya
Text by Kennedy Odede click: Kennedy Odede
Shining Hope for Communities
175 Varick St. 6th Floor
New York, NY 10014
E: [email protected]
T: 860.218.9854
"Growing up in an African slum, I saw the lure of violence"
(Kennedy Odede click: Kennedy Odede)
— Terrorism is a global reality, and for me as a Kenyan, this struck close to home in September 2013 with the siege*) of the Westgate mall. Yet in many ways, growing up in Nairobi I was always in the midst of terror. As a boy living in extreme poverty in Kibera click: Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, I learned early on that I was disposable, that human life is not equally valued. Life expectancy in Kibera is estimated at 30 years, compared with 64 in the rest of Kenya and 70 worldwide. In Kibera, people are desensitized to death. Living is understood to be the exception.
*) siege = a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender of those inside.
I am 29 years old — on the threshold of a new decade of life. All my close friends from childhood, save for two, were robbed of this experience. Some took risks to feed their families; for stealing bread or charcoal, they were shot by the police. Others, who worked for as little as $1 per day, fell from construction sites or burned in factory fires. Still others perished in the violence after the 2007 election. click: 2007–08 Kenyan crisis
Violence and loss became part of day-to-day life.
These are more than singular tragedies; they contribute to the psyche of being poor. This psyche inculcates hopelessness, dispels a belief in the possibility of tomorrow’s being better than today, compels a resignation to the fact that you may suffer the same tragic fate as your peers, and fuels anger because there is no escape and you did not choose this — you simply drew life’s short straw.
This, perhaps, is terrorism’s fertile ground. Because if you grew up as I did, self-protection requires coming to terms with violence and terror. Violence becomes a vehicle of survival. My friend Boi was 16 when he joined a gang with the goal of supporting his mother and sister. If stealing or fighting was the only way, he was ready. In the end, he was shot dead.
An environment in which you cannot get a job despite ability, ambition and persistence fosters anger. My friend James and I used to leave the slum together each morning to look for work as day laborers. We always hoped we’d be lucky, only to be told “not today” — day after day after day. Then one day, James and I got construction jobs. While carrying heavy stones, two of James’s fingers were crushed. He was not compensated and was out of work for more than two years. Later, James caught another break and got a job as a security guard at an upper-class estate. The estate was robbed, and James was fired and never paid.
Something broke in James. In the constant degradation he saw that for people like us there was no justice. He joined a local group infamous for terrorizing the community, robbing and stealing. James was ready to die, willing to do anything to provide what he could f.or his family. Today, this world of violence and uncertainty remains his reality.
News reports inform us that Kenya’s slums are ripe for terrorist recruitment. No one is born a terrorist. But being paid a reported $1,000 to undergo militant training in Somalia is more than enough financial incentive; the young people in Nairobi’s slums are accustomed to taking risks that pay far less.
A 2011 study in the Journal of Peace Research click: Journal of Peace Research found that the perpetuation of Islamist extremism was more significantly associated with urban poverty than with variables like religiosity, lack of education and income dissatisfaction. The urban poor are so close to the city’s opportunities — but they always remain out of reach.
Given the link between urban poverty and terrorism,
the best strategy to limit the power of militant groups to seduce recruits is to fight poverty, not terrorism. Instead of investing billions of dollars on drones, let’s focus on augmenting economic opportunities and providing basic and essential services like health care and education.
Every day, more and more people arrive in Nairobi, drawn by the hope of a better life, only to settle in slums. More than half of those living in Africa’s urban slums are between the ages of 15 and 24. Without access to education, this generation has little hope of escaping its straitened conditions. We must capture the potential of urban youth before they are led to believe that the path of violence is their only option.
Over the past few years, the Shabab , the Somali militant group that took credit for the Westgate massacre, has inflicted terror on the citizens of Kenya, throwing grenades into local bars, bus stations and villages near the border — places frequented by the poor and lower middle class. Only Westgate, however, garnered enormous international media attention. This was of course because of the scale of the tragedy, but also because of the affluent demographic it primarily affected.
Shabab click: Al-Shabaab (militant group) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)Al-Shabaab's troop strength was estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 militants In February 2012, Al-Shabaab leaders quarreled with Al-Qaeda over the union, ...Moktar Ali Zubeyr - Aden Hashi Farah - Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a - Boko Haram
Westgate was a place marked by economic prosperity, wholly inaccessible to so many, including those who might be recruited from Nairobi’s slums to undertake similar acts. As we condemn those who have carried out these heinous acts, so too must we condemn the systems that perpetuate extremism. We must install new systems of urban promise.
If we pursue an antiterrorism strategy based on tactical strikes, it will only further a cycle of violence. The perpetual sense of anger experienced in urban poverty will ensure that there are always new terrorist leaders to replace those who are killed. The war on terror can be won only through education, promise and real opportunities.
It is time to give young men like my friends, and like those today living in urban slums, hope. That is the only way to end the violence that preys on our cities’ most vulnerable.
Source:
(1) Kennedy Odede is the founder and chief executive of Shining Hope for Communities, a social services organization, and a 2013 New Voices fellow at the Aspen Institute.
(2) A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 9, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline:
Terrorism's Fertile Ground.
(Article 3 of 3 next below)
______________________________
Terrorism’s Fertile Ground
The best strategy to limit the power of militant groups to seduce*) recruits
is to fight poverty, not terrorism
Instead of investing billions of dollars on drones*),
let’s focus on augmenting *) economic opportunities
and
providing basic and essential services like health care and education
The war on terror can be won only through education, promise and real opportunities.
_______________
*) seduce = attract (someone) to a belief or into a course of action that is inadvisable or foolhardy
*) to augment = make (something) greater by adding to it; increase
*) drone = a pilotless aircraft operated by remote control
NAIROBI, Kenya - click: Nairobi click: Kenya
Text by Kennedy Odede click: Kennedy Odede
Shining Hope for Communities
175 Varick St. 6th Floor
New York, NY 10014
E: [email protected]
T: 860.218.9854
"Growing up in an African slum, I saw the lure of violence"
(Kennedy Odede click: Kennedy Odede)
— Terrorism is a global reality, and for me as a Kenyan, this struck close to home in September 2013 with the siege*) of the Westgate mall. Yet in many ways, growing up in Nairobi I was always in the midst of terror. As a boy living in extreme poverty in Kibera click: Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums, I learned early on that I was disposable, that human life is not equally valued. Life expectancy in Kibera is estimated at 30 years, compared with 64 in the rest of Kenya and 70 worldwide. In Kibera, people are desensitized to death. Living is understood to be the exception.
*) siege = a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender of those inside.
I am 29 years old — on the threshold of a new decade of life. All my close friends from childhood, save for two, were robbed of this experience. Some took risks to feed their families; for stealing bread or charcoal, they were shot by the police. Others, who worked for as little as $1 per day, fell from construction sites or burned in factory fires. Still others perished in the violence after the 2007 election. click: 2007–08 Kenyan crisis
Violence and loss became part of day-to-day life.
These are more than singular tragedies; they contribute to the psyche of being poor. This psyche inculcates hopelessness, dispels a belief in the possibility of tomorrow’s being better than today, compels a resignation to the fact that you may suffer the same tragic fate as your peers, and fuels anger because there is no escape and you did not choose this — you simply drew life’s short straw.
This, perhaps, is terrorism’s fertile ground. Because if you grew up as I did, self-protection requires coming to terms with violence and terror. Violence becomes a vehicle of survival. My friend Boi was 16 when he joined a gang with the goal of supporting his mother and sister. If stealing or fighting was the only way, he was ready. In the end, he was shot dead.
An environment in which you cannot get a job despite ability, ambition and persistence fosters anger. My friend James and I used to leave the slum together each morning to look for work as day laborers. We always hoped we’d be lucky, only to be told “not today” — day after day after day. Then one day, James and I got construction jobs. While carrying heavy stones, two of James’s fingers were crushed. He was not compensated and was out of work for more than two years. Later, James caught another break and got a job as a security guard at an upper-class estate. The estate was robbed, and James was fired and never paid.
Something broke in James. In the constant degradation he saw that for people like us there was no justice. He joined a local group infamous for terrorizing the community, robbing and stealing. James was ready to die, willing to do anything to provide what he could f.or his family. Today, this world of violence and uncertainty remains his reality.
News reports inform us that Kenya’s slums are ripe for terrorist recruitment. No one is born a terrorist. But being paid a reported $1,000 to undergo militant training in Somalia is more than enough financial incentive; the young people in Nairobi’s slums are accustomed to taking risks that pay far less.
A 2011 study in the Journal of Peace Research click: Journal of Peace Research found that the perpetuation of Islamist extremism was more significantly associated with urban poverty than with variables like religiosity, lack of education and income dissatisfaction. The urban poor are so close to the city’s opportunities — but they always remain out of reach.
Given the link between urban poverty and terrorism,
the best strategy to limit the power of militant groups to seduce recruits is to fight poverty, not terrorism. Instead of investing billions of dollars on drones, let’s focus on augmenting economic opportunities and providing basic and essential services like health care and education.
Every day, more and more people arrive in Nairobi, drawn by the hope of a better life, only to settle in slums. More than half of those living in Africa’s urban slums are between the ages of 15 and 24. Without access to education, this generation has little hope of escaping its straitened conditions. We must capture the potential of urban youth before they are led to believe that the path of violence is their only option.
Over the past few years, the Shabab , the Somali militant group that took credit for the Westgate massacre, has inflicted terror on the citizens of Kenya, throwing grenades into local bars, bus stations and villages near the border — places frequented by the poor and lower middle class. Only Westgate, however, garnered enormous international media attention. This was of course because of the scale of the tragedy, but also because of the affluent demographic it primarily affected.
Shabab click: Al-Shabaab (militant group) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)Al-Shabaab's troop strength was estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 militants In February 2012, Al-Shabaab leaders quarreled with Al-Qaeda over the union, ...Moktar Ali Zubeyr - Aden Hashi Farah - Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a - Boko Haram
Westgate was a place marked by economic prosperity, wholly inaccessible to so many, including those who might be recruited from Nairobi’s slums to undertake similar acts. As we condemn those who have carried out these heinous acts, so too must we condemn the systems that perpetuate extremism. We must install new systems of urban promise.
If we pursue an antiterrorism strategy based on tactical strikes, it will only further a cycle of violence. The perpetual sense of anger experienced in urban poverty will ensure that there are always new terrorist leaders to replace those who are killed. The war on terror can be won only through education, promise and real opportunities.
It is time to give young men like my friends, and like those today living in urban slums, hope. That is the only way to end the violence that preys on our cities’ most vulnerable.
Source:
(1) Kennedy Odede is the founder and chief executive of Shining Hope for Communities, a social services organization, and a 2013 New Voices fellow at the Aspen Institute.
(2) A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 9, 2014, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline:
Terrorism's Fertile Ground.
(Article 3 of 3 next below)
______________________________
Article 3 of 3 (Article 1-2 of 3 next above)
U.S. Advisers Sent
to Help Somalia Fight the Shabab
Shabab click: Al-Shabaab (militant group)
Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)Al-Shabaab's troop strength was estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 militants In February 2012, Al-Shabaab leaders quarreled with Al-Qaeda over the union, ...Moktar Ali Zubeyr - Aden Hashi Farah - Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a - Boko Haram
Click green for further info
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has sent a small team of uniformed military advisers to Somalia, the first American troops assigned there since 1993, when 18 Americans were killed in the failed “Black Hawk Down” mission.
But in a reflection of the administration’s caution in deploying United States forces to the strife-torn nation, the presence is tiny, at least for now — three advisers, a Defense Department official said on Friday.
The advisers were deployed to the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month to help provide logistics, planning and communications assistance to Somali and other African forces combating the Shabab, the Islamic militant group, according to the official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the mission.
Shabab fighters carried out a bloody siege*) at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, last September in which more than 60 men, women and children were killed.*) siege = a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender of those inside.
RELATED COVERAGE
The Obama administration has been edging closer toward reversing a policy in place for decades that effectively bars American “boots on the ground” in Somalia. In January 2013, the United States officially recognized a new federal government in Somalia, re-establishing diplomatic ties for the first time in decades. The State Department has not yet reopened an embassy in Mogadishu, but officials from the American Embassy in Nairobi visit there frequently.
Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of the Africa Command, made an initial trip to Mogadishu last summer. Last October, Amanda J. Dory, the Pentagon’s top policy official for Africa, told a Senate committee that the military would increase its presence in Mogadishu “in tandem with the State Department.”
The C.I.A. has long maintained a covert presence in the country, at times financing its security services, and American Special Operations forces have periodically conducted drone strikes or commando raids.
Source:
(1) A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Advisers Sent to Help Somalia Fight The Shabab.
(2) STAF, Inc.
__________________________________
U.S. Advisers Sent
to Help Somalia Fight the Shabab
Shabab click: Al-Shabaab (militant group)
Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Shabaab_(militant_group)Al-Shabaab's troop strength was estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 militants In February 2012, Al-Shabaab leaders quarreled with Al-Qaeda over the union, ...Moktar Ali Zubeyr - Aden Hashi Farah - Ahlu Sunna Waljama'a - Boko Haram
Click green for further info
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has sent a small team of uniformed military advisers to Somalia, the first American troops assigned there since 1993, when 18 Americans were killed in the failed “Black Hawk Down” mission.
But in a reflection of the administration’s caution in deploying United States forces to the strife-torn nation, the presence is tiny, at least for now — three advisers, a Defense Department official said on Friday.
The advisers were deployed to the Somali capital of Mogadishu last month to help provide logistics, planning and communications assistance to Somali and other African forces combating the Shabab, the Islamic militant group, according to the official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the mission.
Shabab fighters carried out a bloody siege*) at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, last September in which more than 60 men, women and children were killed.*) siege = a military operation in which enemy forces surround a town or building, cutting off essential supplies, with the aim of compelling the surrender of those inside.
RELATED COVERAGE
- World Briefing | Africa: Airstrike Hits Militants’ Camp in Somalia JAN. 10, 2014
- U.S. Mission in South Sudan Shows Limits of MilitaryJAN. 9, 2014
The Obama administration has been edging closer toward reversing a policy in place for decades that effectively bars American “boots on the ground” in Somalia. In January 2013, the United States officially recognized a new federal government in Somalia, re-establishing diplomatic ties for the first time in decades. The State Department has not yet reopened an embassy in Mogadishu, but officials from the American Embassy in Nairobi visit there frequently.
Gen. David Rodriguez, the head of the Africa Command, made an initial trip to Mogadishu last summer. Last October, Amanda J. Dory, the Pentagon’s top policy official for Africa, told a Senate committee that the military would increase its presence in Mogadishu “in tandem with the State Department.”
The C.I.A. has long maintained a covert presence in the country, at times financing its security services, and American Special Operations forces have periodically conducted drone strikes or commando raids.
Source:
(1) A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2014, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Advisers Sent to Help Somalia Fight The Shabab.
(2) STAF, Inc.
__________________________________
Global Economics
50 Years After the War on Poverty,
Poor People Are Not Better Off
Click all green for further info
This year is the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts us in a far better position to judge how it’s gone. It appears that government programs significantly reduce the number of people living below the poverty line. Yet at the same time, by any global standard, America’s performance in turning economic growth into poverty reduction is incredible—as a negative outlier.
The real value of the U.S official poverty line hasn’t changed much since it was defined in 1963. It’s still meant to be about three times the cost of the “minimum food diet” as defined five decades ago. Broadly, that cost has tracked the consumer price index. What a poverty-line income buys you today, give or take, should look pretty similar to what it could buy you in 1963. That means it doesn’t fully account for the fact that the costs of a lot of vital services, including health care, have grown faster than the general rate of inflation. Nor does it account for changing ideas about what “necessities” are. In 2006 the Pew Research Center reported that 68 percent said a microwave was a necessity and more than half said the same about a computer—two technologies that didn’t exist for consumers in 1963. Thanks not least to falling prices, many poor households now own these devices–81 percent owned a microwave in 2005 and 38 percent a home computer, compared with 88 percent and 68 percent for households overall. But the point remains that a wealthier society thinks more items are “necessary” than a poorer one, and that acts as a force for dissatisfaction and exclusion among those who have a hard time affording them.
That said, the poverty line doesn’t account very well for technological changes or the provision of public services. Take one example: You don’t have to pay for a visit to the library, but today (unlike 1964) the library has more books alongside photocopiers, DVDs, and computers with Internet access. And perhaps most significantly, the official poverty measure doesn’t take account of the impact of government programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and the earned income tax credit.
Click: STORY: A Smarter War on Poverty
A new paper by economist Liana Fox and colleagues calculates historical poverty estimates using the U.S. Census Bureau’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure. That measure accounts for the impact of SNAP, the earned income tax credit, and other government programs on household incomes. It also uses a slightly different definition of the household and measure of the poverty threshold–although one that lines up with the official threshold in 1964 and is only slightly higher than the official line today. Using this supplemental measure, the authors suggest that poverty has declined from 19 percent to 16 percent over the past 50 years. And absent government antipoverty programs, while one-quarter of U.S. households would have been poor in 1967, fully 31 percent would have been poor today.
On the one hand, that’s a real success for the War on Poverty–government programs cut poverty by one-quarter in 1967, they cut it by a half in 2012. On the other hand, these statistics suggest an incredible failure when it comes to America’s ability to convert economic dynamism into significantly improved quality of life and opportunities for the country’s least well-off. The output of the country has climbed from $3.9 trillion to $14.2 trillion. According to the World Bank, allowing for inflation, average gross domestic product per capita in the U.S. has climbed from $17,461 in 1964 to $45,336 in 2012. That’s more than double—an increase of about 159 percent. And yet looking at the numbers on either side of the absolute poverty line, the poorest households in the U.S. appear to have seen regression in pre-program incomes and only a small improvement in post-program outcomes.
From an international perspective, that makes the U.S. an incredible aberration. In 2001, Aart Kraay and David Dollar of the World Bank examined the impact of overall GDP per capita growth on the incomes of the poorest across 90 countries and concluded Growth is Good for the Poor. They suggested that “across regions, time periods, income levels, and growth rates … incomes of the poor rise equi-proportionately with average incomes.” Looking at the income of the bottom fifth of a country across countries and over time, “over 80 percent of the variation in incomes of the poor is due to variation in overall per capita incomes”—leaving just 20 percent to be explained by changes in income distribution. It’s worth noting that a recent paper by Raymundo Campos-Vazquez at El Colegio de Mexico and colleagues suggests Growth is (Really) Good for the (Really) Rich in that the top 1 percent appear to do even better than average from growth across countries. But, with that caveat, Dollar and Kraay’s result have stood the test of time.
Click: STORY: Want to Fight Poverty? Just Give the Poor Cash
And that’s what makes the U.S. look like such an outlier—even more incredible given that it’s a country with a (frayed) safety net, (reasonable) public schools, and (some) infrastructure. Even though American GDP per capita has more than doubled over 50 years, the bottom 15 to 20 percent have seen their income remain pretty much unchanged.
One comparatively benign view of why U.S. economic growth has not reduced pre-program poverty could involve the immigration of poor people. That appears, however, to be only a small part of the story. An analysis of the impact of migration on domestic poverty rates by Steven Raphael and Eugene Smolensky of the University of California at Berkeley suggests that from 1970 to 2005 the change in the population distribution between natives and immigrants added a little more than one percentage point to the official poverty rate. The authors also suggest there’s “little evidence of an effect of immigration on native poverty through immigrant-native labor market competition.” In short, immigrants come to America, earn more here than they did at home, still earn a low enough wage to count as living in poverty, at least in the short term, but have a limited impact on the overall poverty rate in the country.
With the benign interpretation discarded, we’re left with less positive explanations. It appears that as much as the War on Poverty interventions play an increasingly vital role in treating the symptoms of poverty, they don’t adequately address its causes. And these are significant enough to almost completely derail the pattern of economic growth lifting rich and poor alike. Whether the causes are the declining real value of the minimum wage, excessive land use regulation, attacks on unionization, the appalling record of support for job retraining in the face of trade and technology change, health costs, weaknesses in the pension system, or some other set of factors entirely, dealing with America’s abject failure to help poor people help themselves should be an urgent priority for Washington.
Click green for further info
Source:(1)By Charles Kenny January 13, 2014(2)
50 Years After the War on Poverty,
Poor People Are Not Better Off
Click all green for further info
This year is the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, and a new paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research puts us in a far better position to judge how it’s gone. It appears that government programs significantly reduce the number of people living below the poverty line. Yet at the same time, by any global standard, America’s performance in turning economic growth into poverty reduction is incredible—as a negative outlier.
The real value of the U.S official poverty line hasn’t changed much since it was defined in 1963. It’s still meant to be about three times the cost of the “minimum food diet” as defined five decades ago. Broadly, that cost has tracked the consumer price index. What a poverty-line income buys you today, give or take, should look pretty similar to what it could buy you in 1963. That means it doesn’t fully account for the fact that the costs of a lot of vital services, including health care, have grown faster than the general rate of inflation. Nor does it account for changing ideas about what “necessities” are. In 2006 the Pew Research Center reported that 68 percent said a microwave was a necessity and more than half said the same about a computer—two technologies that didn’t exist for consumers in 1963. Thanks not least to falling prices, many poor households now own these devices–81 percent owned a microwave in 2005 and 38 percent a home computer, compared with 88 percent and 68 percent for households overall. But the point remains that a wealthier society thinks more items are “necessary” than a poorer one, and that acts as a force for dissatisfaction and exclusion among those who have a hard time affording them.
That said, the poverty line doesn’t account very well for technological changes or the provision of public services. Take one example: You don’t have to pay for a visit to the library, but today (unlike 1964) the library has more books alongside photocopiers, DVDs, and computers with Internet access. And perhaps most significantly, the official poverty measure doesn’t take account of the impact of government programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, and the earned income tax credit.
Click: STORY: A Smarter War on Poverty
A new paper by economist Liana Fox and colleagues calculates historical poverty estimates using the U.S. Census Bureau’s new Supplemental Poverty Measure. That measure accounts for the impact of SNAP, the earned income tax credit, and other government programs on household incomes. It also uses a slightly different definition of the household and measure of the poverty threshold–although one that lines up with the official threshold in 1964 and is only slightly higher than the official line today. Using this supplemental measure, the authors suggest that poverty has declined from 19 percent to 16 percent over the past 50 years. And absent government antipoverty programs, while one-quarter of U.S. households would have been poor in 1967, fully 31 percent would have been poor today.
On the one hand, that’s a real success for the War on Poverty–government programs cut poverty by one-quarter in 1967, they cut it by a half in 2012. On the other hand, these statistics suggest an incredible failure when it comes to America’s ability to convert economic dynamism into significantly improved quality of life and opportunities for the country’s least well-off. The output of the country has climbed from $3.9 trillion to $14.2 trillion. According to the World Bank, allowing for inflation, average gross domestic product per capita in the U.S. has climbed from $17,461 in 1964 to $45,336 in 2012. That’s more than double—an increase of about 159 percent. And yet looking at the numbers on either side of the absolute poverty line, the poorest households in the U.S. appear to have seen regression in pre-program incomes and only a small improvement in post-program outcomes.
From an international perspective, that makes the U.S. an incredible aberration. In 2001, Aart Kraay and David Dollar of the World Bank examined the impact of overall GDP per capita growth on the incomes of the poorest across 90 countries and concluded Growth is Good for the Poor. They suggested that “across regions, time periods, income levels, and growth rates … incomes of the poor rise equi-proportionately with average incomes.” Looking at the income of the bottom fifth of a country across countries and over time, “over 80 percent of the variation in incomes of the poor is due to variation in overall per capita incomes”—leaving just 20 percent to be explained by changes in income distribution. It’s worth noting that a recent paper by Raymundo Campos-Vazquez at El Colegio de Mexico and colleagues suggests Growth is (Really) Good for the (Really) Rich in that the top 1 percent appear to do even better than average from growth across countries. But, with that caveat, Dollar and Kraay’s result have stood the test of time.
Click: STORY: Want to Fight Poverty? Just Give the Poor Cash
And that’s what makes the U.S. look like such an outlier—even more incredible given that it’s a country with a (frayed) safety net, (reasonable) public schools, and (some) infrastructure. Even though American GDP per capita has more than doubled over 50 years, the bottom 15 to 20 percent have seen their income remain pretty much unchanged.
One comparatively benign view of why U.S. economic growth has not reduced pre-program poverty could involve the immigration of poor people. That appears, however, to be only a small part of the story. An analysis of the impact of migration on domestic poverty rates by Steven Raphael and Eugene Smolensky of the University of California at Berkeley suggests that from 1970 to 2005 the change in the population distribution between natives and immigrants added a little more than one percentage point to the official poverty rate. The authors also suggest there’s “little evidence of an effect of immigration on native poverty through immigrant-native labor market competition.” In short, immigrants come to America, earn more here than they did at home, still earn a low enough wage to count as living in poverty, at least in the short term, but have a limited impact on the overall poverty rate in the country.
With the benign interpretation discarded, we’re left with less positive explanations. It appears that as much as the War on Poverty interventions play an increasingly vital role in treating the symptoms of poverty, they don’t adequately address its causes. And these are significant enough to almost completely derail the pattern of economic growth lifting rich and poor alike. Whether the causes are the declining real value of the minimum wage, excessive land use regulation, attacks on unionization, the appalling record of support for job retraining in the face of trade and technology change, health costs, weaknesses in the pension system, or some other set of factors entirely, dealing with America’s abject failure to help poor people help themselves should be an urgent priority for Washington.
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Source:(1)By Charles Kenny January 13, 2014(2)
Smoking can kill you
We’ve known that for at least 50 years — and yet millions still smoke, and thousands more pick up the habit every year.
Why? Their stories involve strong addictions, passionate defiance — and billions spent to make people act against their own best interest.
How bad is it?
In 1965, 42% of the population smoked. Today, 19% of Americans do, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That number sounds comparatively small, but that’s an estimated 43.8 million Americans — and the decline in smoking has plateaued, experts say.
Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Surgeon General’s report that linked smoking with bad health. The government has issued yet another edition of the report, its 32nd. Barring a drastic change, experts say the government will be issuing these same reports, warning of the dangers of smoking, for many more years.
Smoking is still the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the United States& worldwide, and has been for decades. It kills more people than obesity, substance abuse, infectious disease, firearms, and traffic accidents, according to the CDC. Some 443,000 Americans die from smoking-related illnesses every year, according to the U.S. Department of Health.
Even President Barack Obama, who has pushed some of the toughest anti-tobacco laws in history, admitted in 2009 that he stopped smoking but still “falls off the wagon” sometimes. The urge to smoke is that strong.
______________________________________
The Credit-Card Shuffle
Swapping Credit Cards
How to get freebies by signing up for credit cards
—and then canceling them -
all legally and ethically
to swap = to trade one thing for another = too exchange (one thing) for another.
Over the years I have obtained free round-trip tickets from Boston to London, Miami and New York, free hotel rooms, free cash and free gift cards. All thanks to credit-card companies and a little nifty footwork.
By Michal Dziekan
If you want to know just how much money credit-card companies make from their typical customer, take a look at how much they are willing to offer as an incentive to sign up. The initial bonuses—in reward points, frequent-flier miles and even cash—are generally far more lucrative than the continuing rewards for established customers.
They are one of the best freebies around, and, what's more, they are getting better.
"The card companies continue to up the ante to attract the best customers," says Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of Evolution Finance in Washington, which operates consumer-finance websitesCardHub.com and WalletHub.com. The value of initial sign-up bonuses has increased steadily since the end of the financial crisis, he says, and is at a record high now.
The average bonus for new customers on a cash-back card is now $84, up 27% from a year ago, according to CardHub's figures. The average bonus on a frequent-flier-miles card is up 25%.
These averages understate the opportunity for the savvy deal hunter, too. For example, new customers for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card will get $500 in travel rewards, or $400 in cash, if they spend $3,000 or more during the first three months. And new customers who spend $3,000 on a Hilton HHonors Surpass Card can get points redeemable for up to 12 nights at Hilton hotels.
As a general rule, I like to keep my finances as simple as possible, and I avoid gimmicks. I mostly avoid credit cards and spend cash—I find I spend far less when I do. But over the years I've made an exception for these sign-up bonuses because they can be so lucrative. I have saved myself several thousand dollars in the past few years, with very little effort.
It hasn't always worked out, though. And over time I have developed some simple rules to make this strategy work better.
Rule 1. Understand your own limitations. Some people are detail masters. They alphabetize their refrigerators, they never forget a birthday, and they can juggle 12 credit cards. Others are like me: Their pockets and wallets are filled with notes written on loose pieces of paper, and they sometimes get frantic calls from their dentist's receptionist saying, "Where are you?"
I once missed a card bonus because I underspent by $50 during the first three months. Occasionally, I have been hit by a late fee on an old card. Now I sign up for only one card at a time, and at most one or two a year.
And an obvious caveat: If you have trouble handling credit, or you are overextended, you should probably avoid playing this game altogether.
Rule 2. Respect, but don't worship, your credit score.
Opening several new cards at the same time could ding your credit score, warns Fair Isaac, FICO -2.22% creator of the widely used FICO score. Closing cards also can have an effect.
That means if you need excellent credit within the next six months or so—for example to get a mortgage, refinance, or to get a car loan—then you are probably best leaving this strategy alone for the time being.
On the other hand, too many solvent, middle-class Americans are too scared of their credit scores. I don't need a mortgage. I'm not looking to refinance. I don't own a car, and if I did I would buy a cheap one with cash. So I'm not too worried about my score. I view it as something to be used—for example, to help me get freebies from a new card.
Rule 3. Be focused. It takes time and effort to sign up for a new card, activate it, make sure you use it for the right amount of spending in the appropriate time, pay it off and then cancel it. Often it can take a lot of work to cancel it, including sitting on hold for half an hour.
Christopher Parr, a financial planner in Columbia, Md., says this "nuisance factor" can be a significant hidden cost. Too many people underestimate it, he says.
In the past I have wasted time on cards with trivial bonuses. I also have had frequent-flier miles expire because I never got around to using them. There isn't any point wasting time and energy getting the Air Poughkeepsie credit card if you never go to Poughkeepsie.
So I now stick to cards where I am most likely to use the bonus. Mr. Parr, who says he tends to avoid card-swapping strategies, adds that his wife occasionally employs them to generate frequent-flier miles that she then uses to visit their daughter at college in California. I estimate two hours' labor per card and the financial value of the reward. That allows me to calculate an hourly rate for the work (untaxed, of course).
Rule 4. Use the card only for purchases you would make anyway. For example, I've used mine to pay condo fees. If you spend an extra $1,000 with the card just to get the bonus, you aren't saving money—you are spending it.
Rule 5. I cancel the cards once I've obtained the bonus. I don't like carrying surplus cards. It usually saves me from the annual fee, which is typically waived in the first year. And it has allowed me to go back to the same well. I've gotten a new-customer bonus from a card, canceled it and then gone back 18 months later and gotten another new-customer bonus from the same company.
The way I see it, a lot of CEOs get free personal travel courtesy of their stockholders. Why not me, too?
Source: (1) By Michal Dziekan, (2) STAF, Inc.
___________________________________
Swapping Credit Cards
How to get freebies by signing up for credit cards
—and then canceling them -
all legally and ethically
to swap = to trade one thing for another = too exchange (one thing) for another.
Over the years I have obtained free round-trip tickets from Boston to London, Miami and New York, free hotel rooms, free cash and free gift cards. All thanks to credit-card companies and a little nifty footwork.
By Michal Dziekan
If you want to know just how much money credit-card companies make from their typical customer, take a look at how much they are willing to offer as an incentive to sign up. The initial bonuses—in reward points, frequent-flier miles and even cash—are generally far more lucrative than the continuing rewards for established customers.
They are one of the best freebies around, and, what's more, they are getting better.
"The card companies continue to up the ante to attract the best customers," says Odysseas Papadimitriou, chief executive of Evolution Finance in Washington, which operates consumer-finance websitesCardHub.com and WalletHub.com. The value of initial sign-up bonuses has increased steadily since the end of the financial crisis, he says, and is at a record high now.
The average bonus for new customers on a cash-back card is now $84, up 27% from a year ago, according to CardHub's figures. The average bonus on a frequent-flier-miles card is up 25%.
These averages understate the opportunity for the savvy deal hunter, too. For example, new customers for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card will get $500 in travel rewards, or $400 in cash, if they spend $3,000 or more during the first three months. And new customers who spend $3,000 on a Hilton HHonors Surpass Card can get points redeemable for up to 12 nights at Hilton hotels.
As a general rule, I like to keep my finances as simple as possible, and I avoid gimmicks. I mostly avoid credit cards and spend cash—I find I spend far less when I do. But over the years I've made an exception for these sign-up bonuses because they can be so lucrative. I have saved myself several thousand dollars in the past few years, with very little effort.
It hasn't always worked out, though. And over time I have developed some simple rules to make this strategy work better.
Rule 1. Understand your own limitations. Some people are detail masters. They alphabetize their refrigerators, they never forget a birthday, and they can juggle 12 credit cards. Others are like me: Their pockets and wallets are filled with notes written on loose pieces of paper, and they sometimes get frantic calls from their dentist's receptionist saying, "Where are you?"
I once missed a card bonus because I underspent by $50 during the first three months. Occasionally, I have been hit by a late fee on an old card. Now I sign up for only one card at a time, and at most one or two a year.
And an obvious caveat: If you have trouble handling credit, or you are overextended, you should probably avoid playing this game altogether.
Rule 2. Respect, but don't worship, your credit score.
Opening several new cards at the same time could ding your credit score, warns Fair Isaac, FICO -2.22% creator of the widely used FICO score. Closing cards also can have an effect.
That means if you need excellent credit within the next six months or so—for example to get a mortgage, refinance, or to get a car loan—then you are probably best leaving this strategy alone for the time being.
On the other hand, too many solvent, middle-class Americans are too scared of their credit scores. I don't need a mortgage. I'm not looking to refinance. I don't own a car, and if I did I would buy a cheap one with cash. So I'm not too worried about my score. I view it as something to be used—for example, to help me get freebies from a new card.
Rule 3. Be focused. It takes time and effort to sign up for a new card, activate it, make sure you use it for the right amount of spending in the appropriate time, pay it off and then cancel it. Often it can take a lot of work to cancel it, including sitting on hold for half an hour.
Christopher Parr, a financial planner in Columbia, Md., says this "nuisance factor" can be a significant hidden cost. Too many people underestimate it, he says.
In the past I have wasted time on cards with trivial bonuses. I also have had frequent-flier miles expire because I never got around to using them. There isn't any point wasting time and energy getting the Air Poughkeepsie credit card if you never go to Poughkeepsie.
So I now stick to cards where I am most likely to use the bonus. Mr. Parr, who says he tends to avoid card-swapping strategies, adds that his wife occasionally employs them to generate frequent-flier miles that she then uses to visit their daughter at college in California. I estimate two hours' labor per card and the financial value of the reward. That allows me to calculate an hourly rate for the work (untaxed, of course).
Rule 4. Use the card only for purchases you would make anyway. For example, I've used mine to pay condo fees. If you spend an extra $1,000 with the card just to get the bonus, you aren't saving money—you are spending it.
Rule 5. I cancel the cards once I've obtained the bonus. I don't like carrying surplus cards. It usually saves me from the annual fee, which is typically waived in the first year. And it has allowed me to go back to the same well. I've gotten a new-customer bonus from a card, canceled it and then gone back 18 months later and gotten another new-customer bonus from the same company.
The way I see it, a lot of CEOs get free personal travel courtesy of their stockholders. Why not me, too?
Source: (1) By Michal Dziekan, (2) STAF, Inc.
___________________________________
Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer
Every New Year New Year when the government publishes its click: Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer,
it is followed by a familiar lament*). We are losing the war against cancer.
*) lament = a passionate expression of grief or sorrow
Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely to die from heart disease. Now cancer is on the verge of overtaking it as the No. 1 cause of death.
Troubling as this sounds, the comparison is unfair. Cancer is, by far, the harder problem — a condition deeply ingrained in the nature of evolution and multicellular life. Given that obstacle, cancer researchers are fighting and even winning smaller battles: reducing the death toll from childhood cancers and preventing — and sometimes curing — cancers that strike people in their prime. But when it comes to diseases of the elderly, there can be no decisive victory. This is, in the end, a zero-sum game.
RELATED COVERAGE
CLICK:
The rhetoric about the war on cancer implies that with enough money and determination, science might reduce cancer mortality as dramatically as it has with other leading killers — one more notch in medicine’s belt. But what, then, would we die from? Heart disease and cancer are primarily diseases of aging. Fewer people succumbing to one means more people living long enough to die from the other.
The newest cancer report, which came out in mid-December, put the best possible face on things. If one accounts for the advancing age of the population — with the graying of the baby boomers, death itself is on the rise — cancer mortality has actually been decreasing bit by bit in recent decades. But the decline has been modest compared with other threats.
A graph from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells the story. There are two lines representing the age-adjusted mortality rate from heart disease and from cancer. In 1958 when the diagram begins, the line for heart disease is decisively on top. But it plunges by 68 percent while cancer declines so slowly — by only about 10 percent — that the slope appears far less significant.
Measuring from 1990, when tobacco had finished the worst of its damage and cancer deaths were peaking, the difference is somewhat less pronounced: a decline of 44 percent for heart disease and 20 percent for cancer. But as the collision course continues, cancer seems insistent on becoming the one left standing — death’s final resort. (The wild card in the equation is death from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, which has been advancing year after year.)
Though not exactly consoling, the fact that we have reached this standoff is a kind of success. A century ago average life expectancy at birth was in the low to mid-50s. Now it is almost 79, and if you make it to 65 you’re likely to live into your mid-80s. The median age of cancer death is 72. We live long enough for it to get us.
The diseases that once killed earlier in life -- bubonic plague, smallpox,influenza, tuberculosis — were easier obstacles. For each there was a single infectious agent, a precise cause that could be confronted.
EvenAIDS is being managed more and more as a chronic condition.
Progress against heart disease has been slower. But the toll has been steadily reduced, or pushed further into the future, with diet, exercise and medicines that help control blood pressure and cholesterol. When difficulties do arise they can often be treated as mechanical problems — clogged piping, worn-out valves — for which there may be a temporary fix.
Because of these interventions, people between 55 and 84 are increasingly more likely to die from cancer than from heart disease. For those who live beyond that age, the tables reverse, with heart disease gaining the upper hand. But year by year, as more failing hearts can be repaired or replaced, cancer has been slowly closing the gap.
For the oldest among us, the two killers are fighting to a draw. But there are reasons to believe that cancer will remain the most resistant. It is not so much a disease as a phenomenon, the result of a basic evolutionary compromise. As a body lives and grows, its cells are constantly dividing, copying their DNA — this vast genetic library — and bequeathing it to the daughter cells. They in turn pass it to their own progeny: copies of copies of copies. Along the way, errors inevitably occur. Some are caused by carcinogens but most are random misprints.
Over the eons, cells have developed complex mechanisms that identify and correct many of the glitches. But the process is not perfect, nor can it ever be. Mutations are the engine of evolution. Without them we never would have evolved. The trade-off is that every so often a certain combination will give an individual cell too much power. It begins to evolve independently of the rest of the body. Like a new species thriving in an ecosystem, it grows into a cancerous tumor. For that there can be no easy fix.
These microscopic rebellions have been happening for at least half a billion years, since the advent of complex multicellular life — collectives of cells that must work together, holding back, as best each can, the natural tendency to proliferate. Those that do not — the cancer cells — are doing, in a Darwinian sense, what they are supposed to do: mutating, evolving and increasing in fitness compared with their neighbors, the better behaved cells of the body. And these are left at a competitive disadvantage, shackled by a compulsion to obey the rules.
Faced with this inevitability, there have been encouraging reductions in the death toll from childhood cancer, with mortality falling by more than half since 1975. For older people, some early-stage cancers — those that have not learned to colonize other parts of the body — can be cured with a combination of chemicals, radiation therapy and surgery. Others can be held in check for years, sometimes indefinitely. But the most virulent cancers have evolved such wily subterfuges (a survival instinct of their own) that they usually prevail. Progress is often measured in a few extra months of life.
OVER all, the most encouraging gains are coming from prevention. Worldwide, some 15 to 20 percent of cancers are believed to be caused by infectious agents. With improvements in refrigeration and public sanitation, stomach cancer, which is linked to Helicobacter pylori bacteria, has been significantly reduced, especially in more developed parts of the world. Vaccines against human papilloma virus have the potential of nearly eliminating cervical cancer.
Where antismoking campaigns are successful, lung cancer, which has accounted for almost 30 percent of cancer deaths in the United States, is steadily diminishing. More progress can be made with improvements in screening and by reducing the incidence of obesity, a metabolic imbalance that, along with diabetes, gives cancer an edge.
Surprisingly, only a small percentage of cancers have been traced to the thousands of synthetic chemicals that industry has added to the environment. As regulations are further tightened, cancer rates are being reduced a little more.
Most of the progress has been in richer countries. With enough political will the effort can be taken to poorer parts of the world. In the United States, racial disparities in cancer rates must be addressed. But there is a long way to go. For most cancers the only identifiable cause is entropy, the random genetic mutations that are an inevitable part of multicellular life.
Advances in the science will continue. For some cancers, new immune system therapies that bolster the body’s own defenses have shown glints of promise. Genomic scans determining a cancer’s precise genetic signature, nano robots that repair and reverse cellular damage — there are always new possibilities to explore.
Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.
Source:
(1) George Johnson is a former reporter and editor at The New York Times and the author of “The Cancer Chronicles.”
(2) A version of this news analysis appears in print on January 5, 2014, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer
(3) STAF, Inc.
_____________________________________
Every New Year New Year when the government publishes its click: Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer,
it is followed by a familiar lament*). We are losing the war against cancer.
*) lament = a passionate expression of grief or sorrow
Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely to die from heart disease. Now cancer is on the verge of overtaking it as the No. 1 cause of death.
Troubling as this sounds, the comparison is unfair. Cancer is, by far, the harder problem — a condition deeply ingrained in the nature of evolution and multicellular life. Given that obstacle, cancer researchers are fighting and even winning smaller battles: reducing the death toll from childhood cancers and preventing — and sometimes curing — cancers that strike people in their prime. But when it comes to diseases of the elderly, there can be no decisive victory. This is, in the end, a zero-sum game.
RELATED COVERAGE
CLICK:
The rhetoric about the war on cancer implies that with enough money and determination, science might reduce cancer mortality as dramatically as it has with other leading killers — one more notch in medicine’s belt. But what, then, would we die from? Heart disease and cancer are primarily diseases of aging. Fewer people succumbing to one means more people living long enough to die from the other.
The newest cancer report, which came out in mid-December, put the best possible face on things. If one accounts for the advancing age of the population — with the graying of the baby boomers, death itself is on the rise — cancer mortality has actually been decreasing bit by bit in recent decades. But the decline has been modest compared with other threats.
A graph from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells the story. There are two lines representing the age-adjusted mortality rate from heart disease and from cancer. In 1958 when the diagram begins, the line for heart disease is decisively on top. But it plunges by 68 percent while cancer declines so slowly — by only about 10 percent — that the slope appears far less significant.
Measuring from 1990, when tobacco had finished the worst of its damage and cancer deaths were peaking, the difference is somewhat less pronounced: a decline of 44 percent for heart disease and 20 percent for cancer. But as the collision course continues, cancer seems insistent on becoming the one left standing — death’s final resort. (The wild card in the equation is death from complications of Alzheimer’s disease, which has been advancing year after year.)
Though not exactly consoling, the fact that we have reached this standoff is a kind of success. A century ago average life expectancy at birth was in the low to mid-50s. Now it is almost 79, and if you make it to 65 you’re likely to live into your mid-80s. The median age of cancer death is 72. We live long enough for it to get us.
The diseases that once killed earlier in life -- bubonic plague, smallpox,influenza, tuberculosis — were easier obstacles. For each there was a single infectious agent, a precise cause that could be confronted.
EvenAIDS is being managed more and more as a chronic condition.
Progress against heart disease has been slower. But the toll has been steadily reduced, or pushed further into the future, with diet, exercise and medicines that help control blood pressure and cholesterol. When difficulties do arise they can often be treated as mechanical problems — clogged piping, worn-out valves — for which there may be a temporary fix.
Because of these interventions, people between 55 and 84 are increasingly more likely to die from cancer than from heart disease. For those who live beyond that age, the tables reverse, with heart disease gaining the upper hand. But year by year, as more failing hearts can be repaired or replaced, cancer has been slowly closing the gap.
For the oldest among us, the two killers are fighting to a draw. But there are reasons to believe that cancer will remain the most resistant. It is not so much a disease as a phenomenon, the result of a basic evolutionary compromise. As a body lives and grows, its cells are constantly dividing, copying their DNA — this vast genetic library — and bequeathing it to the daughter cells. They in turn pass it to their own progeny: copies of copies of copies. Along the way, errors inevitably occur. Some are caused by carcinogens but most are random misprints.
Over the eons, cells have developed complex mechanisms that identify and correct many of the glitches. But the process is not perfect, nor can it ever be. Mutations are the engine of evolution. Without them we never would have evolved. The trade-off is that every so often a certain combination will give an individual cell too much power. It begins to evolve independently of the rest of the body. Like a new species thriving in an ecosystem, it grows into a cancerous tumor. For that there can be no easy fix.
These microscopic rebellions have been happening for at least half a billion years, since the advent of complex multicellular life — collectives of cells that must work together, holding back, as best each can, the natural tendency to proliferate. Those that do not — the cancer cells — are doing, in a Darwinian sense, what they are supposed to do: mutating, evolving and increasing in fitness compared with their neighbors, the better behaved cells of the body. And these are left at a competitive disadvantage, shackled by a compulsion to obey the rules.
Faced with this inevitability, there have been encouraging reductions in the death toll from childhood cancer, with mortality falling by more than half since 1975. For older people, some early-stage cancers — those that have not learned to colonize other parts of the body — can be cured with a combination of chemicals, radiation therapy and surgery. Others can be held in check for years, sometimes indefinitely. But the most virulent cancers have evolved such wily subterfuges (a survival instinct of their own) that they usually prevail. Progress is often measured in a few extra months of life.
OVER all, the most encouraging gains are coming from prevention. Worldwide, some 15 to 20 percent of cancers are believed to be caused by infectious agents. With improvements in refrigeration and public sanitation, stomach cancer, which is linked to Helicobacter pylori bacteria, has been significantly reduced, especially in more developed parts of the world. Vaccines against human papilloma virus have the potential of nearly eliminating cervical cancer.
Where antismoking campaigns are successful, lung cancer, which has accounted for almost 30 percent of cancer deaths in the United States, is steadily diminishing. More progress can be made with improvements in screening and by reducing the incidence of obesity, a metabolic imbalance that, along with diabetes, gives cancer an edge.
Surprisingly, only a small percentage of cancers have been traced to the thousands of synthetic chemicals that industry has added to the environment. As regulations are further tightened, cancer rates are being reduced a little more.
Most of the progress has been in richer countries. With enough political will the effort can be taken to poorer parts of the world. In the United States, racial disparities in cancer rates must be addressed. But there is a long way to go. For most cancers the only identifiable cause is entropy, the random genetic mutations that are an inevitable part of multicellular life.
Advances in the science will continue. For some cancers, new immune system therapies that bolster the body’s own defenses have shown glints of promise. Genomic scans determining a cancer’s precise genetic signature, nano robots that repair and reverse cellular damage — there are always new possibilities to explore.
Maybe someday some of us will live to be 200. But barring an elixir for immortality, a body will come to a point where it has outwitted every peril life has thrown at it. And for each added year, more mutations will have accumulated. If the heart holds out, then waiting at the end will be cancer.
Source:
(1) George Johnson is a former reporter and editor at The New York Times and the author of “The Cancer Chronicles.”
(2) A version of this news analysis appears in print on January 5, 2014, on page SR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer
(3) STAF, Inc.
_____________________________________
Welcome to 2043: How we’ll live our lives in 30 years
Thirty years ago, in 1983, people didn’t surf the internet or talk on cell phones. There was no space tourism, supermarkets didn’t stock their shelves with genetically engineered food. Now look 30 years into the future. You’ll see yourself using performance-enhancing drugs, artificial limbs — and only speak to other humans infrequently.
“Evolution has come to an end”, says Rohit Talwar, CEO of forecasting company Fast Future. “Physically, we humans are not developing anymore, so in the future we’ll use all sorts of enhancement drugs to improve our abilities — for example, our cognition. Up to 90 percent of university students already admit to using cognition-aiding substances.”
In other words, we’ll try to make ourselves smarter – and more successful in school and at work – by taking drugs. And we’ll go about our smarter lives in better bodies. Futurists predict widespread use of artificial limbs, which may function even better than our natural ones. “And most of us will have the equivalent of an external hard-drive”, predicts Talwar. “Like computers, we’ll have memory in the cloud. And this is already happening, since cell phones essentially function like our external hard-drives.”
Indeed, technology will define our lives to a degree unimaginable today. “You think cell phones dominate our lives today?” asks Dutch futurist Erwin Van Lun. “2043 will be incomparable! Cell phones won’t even exist anymore. We’ll have a world where every window is a cell phone and camera. People will communicate through these windows in a very natural way, asking it about everything from their bank account balance to philosophical questions.”
But there’s a darker side, too. “We’ll essentially be bots”, notes Josh Calder, Founder of forecasting firm Foresight Alliance. “Artificial intelligence will regulate every aspect of our lives, including our social lives. Artificial systems will help us connect with others because they can tell us who’s like us. Of course, that’s what’s already happening on some dating websites.” The chance encounter, the love-at-first-sight romance will be history as human interaction is reduced to a minimum, a luxury even. And as humans become islands connected by AI systems, politics will be reduced to a micro-sphere — your neighborhood — and the heaviest macro issues, like foreign policy.
Even more worryingly, AI will put us out of work. “Because AI will be so pervasive, a large part of the workforce won’t be needed,” predicts Calder.
And, even as they’re making us redundant in the workplace, AI systems will be watching over us. “You’ll be monitored 24/7 by your phone and be told whether you’re having health issues, like a heart attack,” elaborates Talwar.
AI is here to stay
Being a servant to computers, using artificial limbs, depending on drugs for your mental output: What’s the point of putting children into such a world?
“But by not having kids you’re just giving up on the future, because then the future will just be populated by the progeny of the oblivious,” reflects Calder. “And while there may be aspects of the future that seem alarming to us, they will seem normal to our children. Humans are very resilient.”
In 2042, computers will speak
By: Erwin van Lun, Marketing Futurist CEO/Founder Chatbots.org
Being the greatest innovation since the invention of the book press, the Internet has revolutionized the world. The revolution has just begun. In 2043, computers will speak the language of humans. They will no longer look like machines, but like real humans, the most natural interface ever introduced. These virtual humans will live in the cloud, not restricted to any ‘device.’ They will express emotions like humans, speak our language, even dialects, and understand our — often local — gestures. These AI characters will appear on floating, transparent camera screens, which will be as cheap as plastic bags today, and spread in all parts of the world, including the now developing countries. Their incarnation, the humanoid robots, will assist us with many physical tasks. We’ll work a lot less, allowing us to focus on our core competence: being human.
Personalized reality TV and movies
By: L Christopher Kent, Co-Founder of futures consulting firm Foresight Alliance.
The leisure of 2043 will be immersive. Cheap storage and easy recording mean any experience can be captured and replayed or modified. So gamers will be able to play against “real” professional athletes and, instead of reality TV, viewers can experience living the life of their favorite star — premieres! parties! shopping! — through footage licensed for use by the celebrity. Readers will have the option of reading the story or participating as a character. The same holds true for movies and television. Traveltainment will be popular, especially if climate change premiums on airfare put flying out of reach for many consumers. Tourists can walk the Grand Canyon or visit the Antarctic glaciers in their homes. Leisure time will be extended in most cases by the use of drones, robots, and 3D printing, all of which allow for tremendous time and labor savings.
‘We’ll be happy, thin and work 6-10′
By: Rohit Talwar, CEO of the foresight research firm Fast Future Research.
Entire industries will be transformed by advances such as 4D printing that will enable us to print objects that can actually change their properties and behavior over time. Service industries and professional work will be impacted by artificial intelligence. In this world, careers will be transformed. We’ll take the option of studying online for free on courses run by major providers such as Harvard, with our coursework marked by AI programs. With life expectancy rising to 100 and beyond in developed economies, the idea of a career will change. We could easily have 6 to 10 careers. To cope in an intensely competitive world we’ll use a variety of human enhancements to make us smarter, fitter and more effective.We’ll use have bio-engineered body parts and exoskeletons and use smart drugs and electronic stimulus techniques.
Metro’s Special Guests take a look at what the world will be like in 2043, when Jaden is Will’s age.
The conclusion? An eerie resemblance to one of the latter Smith’s earlier blockbuster films.
Drugs that make you smarter:
Jaden: OK, I have a lot to say about this.
Will: Oh jeez.
Jaden: They’ve been storing information on DNA—they have made DNA--
Will: This is where we go too far.
Jaden: They have stored all of Shakespeare’s sonnets on something this big [holds up small tape recorder] Now if they can put information into artificial DNA cells, then I feel they could apply that to our DNA in our brain and well be able to download things onto our bodies.
Will: That’s deep.
Experts also say we become bots. Is this positive?
Will: Yes. All forward movement,
even when it doesn’t feel good, is positive.
Jaden: That’s how “I, Robot” happened,
just so you know.
Will: Okay. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s not good. [Laughs]
Mechanical arms?
Will: Yes, that’s true.
You can just have one for fun.
Jaden: I’d be one of those old school guys that’s like, “No, all that new technology.
I don’t need one.”
Will: [In old man voice] ‘Newfangled technology. All these kids. People lived for thousands of years with no metal arms. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry got a new metal knee.’
Click to read Will and Jaden Smith: Metro’s special guests on life ‘After Earth’ and more
Click to read ’1,000 years in the future: Melting point’
Sour
Thirty years ago, in 1983, people didn’t surf the internet or talk on cell phones. There was no space tourism, supermarkets didn’t stock their shelves with genetically engineered food. Now look 30 years into the future. You’ll see yourself using performance-enhancing drugs, artificial limbs — and only speak to other humans infrequently.
“Evolution has come to an end”, says Rohit Talwar, CEO of forecasting company Fast Future. “Physically, we humans are not developing anymore, so in the future we’ll use all sorts of enhancement drugs to improve our abilities — for example, our cognition. Up to 90 percent of university students already admit to using cognition-aiding substances.”
In other words, we’ll try to make ourselves smarter – and more successful in school and at work – by taking drugs. And we’ll go about our smarter lives in better bodies. Futurists predict widespread use of artificial limbs, which may function even better than our natural ones. “And most of us will have the equivalent of an external hard-drive”, predicts Talwar. “Like computers, we’ll have memory in the cloud. And this is already happening, since cell phones essentially function like our external hard-drives.”
Indeed, technology will define our lives to a degree unimaginable today. “You think cell phones dominate our lives today?” asks Dutch futurist Erwin Van Lun. “2043 will be incomparable! Cell phones won’t even exist anymore. We’ll have a world where every window is a cell phone and camera. People will communicate through these windows in a very natural way, asking it about everything from their bank account balance to philosophical questions.”
But there’s a darker side, too. “We’ll essentially be bots”, notes Josh Calder, Founder of forecasting firm Foresight Alliance. “Artificial intelligence will regulate every aspect of our lives, including our social lives. Artificial systems will help us connect with others because they can tell us who’s like us. Of course, that’s what’s already happening on some dating websites.” The chance encounter, the love-at-first-sight romance will be history as human interaction is reduced to a minimum, a luxury even. And as humans become islands connected by AI systems, politics will be reduced to a micro-sphere — your neighborhood — and the heaviest macro issues, like foreign policy.
Even more worryingly, AI will put us out of work. “Because AI will be so pervasive, a large part of the workforce won’t be needed,” predicts Calder.
And, even as they’re making us redundant in the workplace, AI systems will be watching over us. “You’ll be monitored 24/7 by your phone and be told whether you’re having health issues, like a heart attack,” elaborates Talwar.
AI is here to stay
Being a servant to computers, using artificial limbs, depending on drugs for your mental output: What’s the point of putting children into such a world?
“But by not having kids you’re just giving up on the future, because then the future will just be populated by the progeny of the oblivious,” reflects Calder. “And while there may be aspects of the future that seem alarming to us, they will seem normal to our children. Humans are very resilient.”
In 2042, computers will speak
By: Erwin van Lun, Marketing Futurist CEO/Founder Chatbots.org
Being the greatest innovation since the invention of the book press, the Internet has revolutionized the world. The revolution has just begun. In 2043, computers will speak the language of humans. They will no longer look like machines, but like real humans, the most natural interface ever introduced. These virtual humans will live in the cloud, not restricted to any ‘device.’ They will express emotions like humans, speak our language, even dialects, and understand our — often local — gestures. These AI characters will appear on floating, transparent camera screens, which will be as cheap as plastic bags today, and spread in all parts of the world, including the now developing countries. Their incarnation, the humanoid robots, will assist us with many physical tasks. We’ll work a lot less, allowing us to focus on our core competence: being human.
Personalized reality TV and movies
By: L Christopher Kent, Co-Founder of futures consulting firm Foresight Alliance.
The leisure of 2043 will be immersive. Cheap storage and easy recording mean any experience can be captured and replayed or modified. So gamers will be able to play against “real” professional athletes and, instead of reality TV, viewers can experience living the life of their favorite star — premieres! parties! shopping! — through footage licensed for use by the celebrity. Readers will have the option of reading the story or participating as a character. The same holds true for movies and television. Traveltainment will be popular, especially if climate change premiums on airfare put flying out of reach for many consumers. Tourists can walk the Grand Canyon or visit the Antarctic glaciers in their homes. Leisure time will be extended in most cases by the use of drones, robots, and 3D printing, all of which allow for tremendous time and labor savings.
‘We’ll be happy, thin and work 6-10′
By: Rohit Talwar, CEO of the foresight research firm Fast Future Research.
Entire industries will be transformed by advances such as 4D printing that will enable us to print objects that can actually change their properties and behavior over time. Service industries and professional work will be impacted by artificial intelligence. In this world, careers will be transformed. We’ll take the option of studying online for free on courses run by major providers such as Harvard, with our coursework marked by AI programs. With life expectancy rising to 100 and beyond in developed economies, the idea of a career will change. We could easily have 6 to 10 careers. To cope in an intensely competitive world we’ll use a variety of human enhancements to make us smarter, fitter and more effective.We’ll use have bio-engineered body parts and exoskeletons and use smart drugs and electronic stimulus techniques.
Metro’s Special Guests take a look at what the world will be like in 2043, when Jaden is Will’s age.
The conclusion? An eerie resemblance to one of the latter Smith’s earlier blockbuster films.
Drugs that make you smarter:
Jaden: OK, I have a lot to say about this.
Will: Oh jeez.
Jaden: They’ve been storing information on DNA—they have made DNA--
Will: This is where we go too far.
Jaden: They have stored all of Shakespeare’s sonnets on something this big [holds up small tape recorder] Now if they can put information into artificial DNA cells, then I feel they could apply that to our DNA in our brain and well be able to download things onto our bodies.
Will: That’s deep.
Experts also say we become bots. Is this positive?
Will: Yes. All forward movement,
even when it doesn’t feel good, is positive.
Jaden: That’s how “I, Robot” happened,
just so you know.
Will: Okay. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s not good. [Laughs]
Mechanical arms?
Will: Yes, that’s true.
You can just have one for fun.
Jaden: I’d be one of those old school guys that’s like, “No, all that new technology.
I don’t need one.”
Will: [In old man voice] ‘Newfangled technology. All these kids. People lived for thousands of years with no metal arms. Now every Tom, Dick and Harry got a new metal knee.’
Click to read Will and Jaden Smith: Metro’s special guests on life ‘After Earth’ and more
Click to read ’1,000 years in the future: Melting point’
Sour
Why Do We Fear the Blind?
BRISTOL, R.I. — A FEW years ago, when I mentioned to a woman I met at a party that I was teaching in a school for the blind, she seemed confused. “Can I just ask you one question?” she said. “How do you talk to your students?”
I explained that the students were blind, not deaf. Raising the palms of her hands at me, as if to stem further misunderstanding, she said: “Yes, I know they’re not deaf. But what I really mean is, how do you actually talk to them?”
I knew, because I had been asked this question before by reasonably intelligent people, that the woman didn’t know exactly what she meant. All she knew was that in her mind there existed a substantial intellectual barrier between the blind and the sighted. The blind could hear, yes. But could they properly understand?
Throughout history and across cultures the blind have been traduced by a host of mythologies such as this. They have variously been perceived as pitiable idiots incapable of learning, as artful masters of deception or as mystics possessed of supernatural powers. One of the most persistent misconceptions about blindness is that it is a curse from God for misdeeds perpetrated in a past life, which cloaks the blind person in spiritual darkness and makes him not just dangerous but evil.
A majority of my blind students at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs in Trivandrum, India, a branch of Braille Without Borders, came from the developing world: Madagascar, Colombia, Tibet, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and India. One of my students, the 27-year-old Sahr, lost most of his eyesight to measles when he was a child. (Like many children in rural West Africa, Sahr had not been vaccinated.) The residents of Sahr’s village were certain that his blindness — surely the result of witchcraft or immoral actions on his family’s part — would adversely affect the entire village. They surrounded his house and shouted threats and abuse. They confiscated a considerable portion of his parents’ land. Eventually, the elders decreed that Sahr’s father must take the child out to the bush, “where the demons live,” and abandon him there. The parents refused and fled the village with their son.
Many of my students had similar experiences. Marco’s parents, devout Colombian Catholics, begged a priest to say a Mass so that their blind infant son would die before his existence brought shame and hardship on their household. The villagers in Kyile’s remote Tibetan village insisted that she, her two blind brothers and their blind father should all just commit suicide because they were nothing but a burden to the sighted members of the family. When, as a child in Sierra Leone, James began to see objects upside down because of an ocular disease, the villagers were certain that he was possessed by demons.
In these places, schools for blind children were deemed a preposterous waste of resources and effort. Teachers in regular schools refused to educate them. Sighted children ridiculed them, tricked them, spat at them and threw stones at them. And when they reached working age, no one would hire them. During a visit to the Braille Without Borders training center in Tibet, I met blind children who had been beaten, told they were idiots, locked in rooms for years on end and abandoned by their parents. These stories, which would have been commonplace in the Dark Ages, took place in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. They are taking place now. Nine out of 10 blind children in the developing world still have no access to education, many for no other reason than that they are blind.
The United States has one of the lowest rates of visual impairment in the world, and yet blindness is still among the most feared physical afflictions. Even in this country, the blind are perceived as a people apart.
Aversion toward the blind exists for the same reason that most prejudices exist: lack of knowledge. Ignorance is a powerful generator of fear. And fear slides easily into aggression and contempt. Anyone who has not spent more than five minutes with a blind person might be forgiven for believing — like the woman I met at the party — that there is an unbridgeable gap between us and them.
For most of us, sight is the primary way we interpret the world. How can we even begin to conceive of a meaningful connection with a person who cannot see? Before I began living and working among blind people, I, too, wondered this. Whenever I saw a blind person on the street I would stare, transfixed, hoping, out of a vague and visceral discomfort, that I wouldn’t have to engage with him. In his 1930 book “The World of the Blind,” Pierre Villey, a blind French professor of literature, summarized the lurid carnival of prejudices and superstitions about the blind that were passed down the centuries. “The sighted person judges the blind not for what they are but by the fear blindness inspires. ... The revolt of his sensibility in the face of ‘the most atrocious of maladies’ fills a sighted person with prejudice and gives rise to a thousand legends.” The blind author Georgina Kleege, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, more tersely wrote, “The blind are either supernatural or subhuman, alien or animal.”
WE take our eyesight so much for granted, cling to it so slavishly and are so overwhelmed by its superficial data, that even the most brilliant sighted person can take a stupidly long time to recognize the obvious: There is usually a perfectly healthy, active and normal human mind behind that pair of unseeing eyes.
Christopher Hitchens called blindness “one of the oldest and most tragic disorders known to man.” How horribly excluded and bereft we would feel to lose the world and the way of life that sight brings us. Blindness can happen to any one of us. Myself, I used to be certain I’d rather die than be blind; I could not imagine how I would have the strength to go on in the face of such a loss.
And yet people do. In 1749, the French philosopher Denis Diderot published an essay, “Letter on the Blind for the Benefit of Those Who See,” in which he described a visit he and a friend made to the house of a blind man, the son of a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris. The blind man was married, had a son, had many acquaintances, was versed in chemistry and botany, could read and write with an alphabet of raised type and made his living distilling liqueurs. Diderot wrote with wonder of the man’s “good solid sense,” of his tidiness, of his “surprising memory for sounds” and voices, of his ability to tell the weight of any object and the capacity of any vessel just by holding them in his hands, of his ability to dismantle and reassemble small machines, of his musical acuity and of his extreme sensitivity to atmospheric change.
The blind man, perhaps weary of being interrogated by Diderot and his friend as if he were a circus animal, eventually asked them a question of his own. “I perceive, gentlemen, that you are not blind. You are astonished at what I do, and why not as much at my speaking?” More than any of his sensory skills, it was the blind man’s self-esteem that surprised Diderot most. “This blind man,” he wrote, “values himself as much as, and perhaps more than, we who see.”
I’ve learned from my blind friends and colleagues that blindness doesn’t have to remain tragic. For those who can adapt to it, blindness becomes a path to an alternative and equally rich way of living.
One of the many misconceptions about the blind is that they have greater hearing, sense of smell and sense of touch than sighted people. This is not strictly true. Their blindness simply forces them to recognize gifts they always had but had heretofore largely ignored.
A few years ago, I allowed myself to be blindfolded and led through the streets of Lhasa by two blind Tibetan teenage girls, students at Braille Without Borders. The girls had not grown up in the city, and yet they traversed it with ease, without stumbling or getting lost. They had a specific destination in mind, and each time they announced, “Now we turn left” or “Now we turn right,” I was compelled to ask them how they knew this. Their answers startled me, chiefly because the clues they were following — the sound of many televisions in an electronics shop, the smell of leather in a shoe shop, the feel of cobblestones suddenly underfoot — though out in the open for anyone to perceive, were virtually hidden from me.
For the first time in my life, I realized how little notice I paid to sounds, to smells, indeed to the entire world that lay beyond my ability to see.
The French writer Jacques Lusseyran, who lost his sight at the age of 8, understood that those of us who have sight are, in some ways, deprived by it. “In return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don’t even suspect.”
I do not intend to suggest there is something wonderful about blindness. There is only something wonderful about human resilience, adaptability and daring. The blind are no more or less otherworldly, stupid, evil, gloomy, pitiable or deceitful than the rest of us. It is only our ignorance that has cloaked them in these ridiculous garments. When Helen Keller wrote, “It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara,” she was speaking, obviously, of the uplifting and equalizing value of knowledge.
Source:
(1) Rosemary Mahoney is the author of the forthcoming book “For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches From the World of the Blind.”
(2) A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 5, 2014, on page SR8 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Do We Fear the Blind?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
(3) STAF, Inc.
__________________________
BRISTOL, R.I. — A FEW years ago, when I mentioned to a woman I met at a party that I was teaching in a school for the blind, she seemed confused. “Can I just ask you one question?” she said. “How do you talk to your students?”
I explained that the students were blind, not deaf. Raising the palms of her hands at me, as if to stem further misunderstanding, she said: “Yes, I know they’re not deaf. But what I really mean is, how do you actually talk to them?”
I knew, because I had been asked this question before by reasonably intelligent people, that the woman didn’t know exactly what she meant. All she knew was that in her mind there existed a substantial intellectual barrier between the blind and the sighted. The blind could hear, yes. But could they properly understand?
Throughout history and across cultures the blind have been traduced by a host of mythologies such as this. They have variously been perceived as pitiable idiots incapable of learning, as artful masters of deception or as mystics possessed of supernatural powers. One of the most persistent misconceptions about blindness is that it is a curse from God for misdeeds perpetrated in a past life, which cloaks the blind person in spiritual darkness and makes him not just dangerous but evil.
A majority of my blind students at the International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs in Trivandrum, India, a branch of Braille Without Borders, came from the developing world: Madagascar, Colombia, Tibet, Liberia, Ghana, Kenya, Nepal and India. One of my students, the 27-year-old Sahr, lost most of his eyesight to measles when he was a child. (Like many children in rural West Africa, Sahr had not been vaccinated.) The residents of Sahr’s village were certain that his blindness — surely the result of witchcraft or immoral actions on his family’s part — would adversely affect the entire village. They surrounded his house and shouted threats and abuse. They confiscated a considerable portion of his parents’ land. Eventually, the elders decreed that Sahr’s father must take the child out to the bush, “where the demons live,” and abandon him there. The parents refused and fled the village with their son.
Many of my students had similar experiences. Marco’s parents, devout Colombian Catholics, begged a priest to say a Mass so that their blind infant son would die before his existence brought shame and hardship on their household. The villagers in Kyile’s remote Tibetan village insisted that she, her two blind brothers and their blind father should all just commit suicide because they were nothing but a burden to the sighted members of the family. When, as a child in Sierra Leone, James began to see objects upside down because of an ocular disease, the villagers were certain that he was possessed by demons.
In these places, schools for blind children were deemed a preposterous waste of resources and effort. Teachers in regular schools refused to educate them. Sighted children ridiculed them, tricked them, spat at them and threw stones at them. And when they reached working age, no one would hire them. During a visit to the Braille Without Borders training center in Tibet, I met blind children who had been beaten, told they were idiots, locked in rooms for years on end and abandoned by their parents. These stories, which would have been commonplace in the Dark Ages, took place in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. They are taking place now. Nine out of 10 blind children in the developing world still have no access to education, many for no other reason than that they are blind.
The United States has one of the lowest rates of visual impairment in the world, and yet blindness is still among the most feared physical afflictions. Even in this country, the blind are perceived as a people apart.
Aversion toward the blind exists for the same reason that most prejudices exist: lack of knowledge. Ignorance is a powerful generator of fear. And fear slides easily into aggression and contempt. Anyone who has not spent more than five minutes with a blind person might be forgiven for believing — like the woman I met at the party — that there is an unbridgeable gap between us and them.
For most of us, sight is the primary way we interpret the world. How can we even begin to conceive of a meaningful connection with a person who cannot see? Before I began living and working among blind people, I, too, wondered this. Whenever I saw a blind person on the street I would stare, transfixed, hoping, out of a vague and visceral discomfort, that I wouldn’t have to engage with him. In his 1930 book “The World of the Blind,” Pierre Villey, a blind French professor of literature, summarized the lurid carnival of prejudices and superstitions about the blind that were passed down the centuries. “The sighted person judges the blind not for what they are but by the fear blindness inspires. ... The revolt of his sensibility in the face of ‘the most atrocious of maladies’ fills a sighted person with prejudice and gives rise to a thousand legends.” The blind author Georgina Kleege, a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, more tersely wrote, “The blind are either supernatural or subhuman, alien or animal.”
WE take our eyesight so much for granted, cling to it so slavishly and are so overwhelmed by its superficial data, that even the most brilliant sighted person can take a stupidly long time to recognize the obvious: There is usually a perfectly healthy, active and normal human mind behind that pair of unseeing eyes.
Christopher Hitchens called blindness “one of the oldest and most tragic disorders known to man.” How horribly excluded and bereft we would feel to lose the world and the way of life that sight brings us. Blindness can happen to any one of us. Myself, I used to be certain I’d rather die than be blind; I could not imagine how I would have the strength to go on in the face of such a loss.
And yet people do. In 1749, the French philosopher Denis Diderot published an essay, “Letter on the Blind for the Benefit of Those Who See,” in which he described a visit he and a friend made to the house of a blind man, the son of a professor of philosophy at the University of Paris. The blind man was married, had a son, had many acquaintances, was versed in chemistry and botany, could read and write with an alphabet of raised type and made his living distilling liqueurs. Diderot wrote with wonder of the man’s “good solid sense,” of his tidiness, of his “surprising memory for sounds” and voices, of his ability to tell the weight of any object and the capacity of any vessel just by holding them in his hands, of his ability to dismantle and reassemble small machines, of his musical acuity and of his extreme sensitivity to atmospheric change.
The blind man, perhaps weary of being interrogated by Diderot and his friend as if he were a circus animal, eventually asked them a question of his own. “I perceive, gentlemen, that you are not blind. You are astonished at what I do, and why not as much at my speaking?” More than any of his sensory skills, it was the blind man’s self-esteem that surprised Diderot most. “This blind man,” he wrote, “values himself as much as, and perhaps more than, we who see.”
I’ve learned from my blind friends and colleagues that blindness doesn’t have to remain tragic. For those who can adapt to it, blindness becomes a path to an alternative and equally rich way of living.
One of the many misconceptions about the blind is that they have greater hearing, sense of smell and sense of touch than sighted people. This is not strictly true. Their blindness simply forces them to recognize gifts they always had but had heretofore largely ignored.
A few years ago, I allowed myself to be blindfolded and led through the streets of Lhasa by two blind Tibetan teenage girls, students at Braille Without Borders. The girls had not grown up in the city, and yet they traversed it with ease, without stumbling or getting lost. They had a specific destination in mind, and each time they announced, “Now we turn left” or “Now we turn right,” I was compelled to ask them how they knew this. Their answers startled me, chiefly because the clues they were following — the sound of many televisions in an electronics shop, the smell of leather in a shoe shop, the feel of cobblestones suddenly underfoot — though out in the open for anyone to perceive, were virtually hidden from me.
For the first time in my life, I realized how little notice I paid to sounds, to smells, indeed to the entire world that lay beyond my ability to see.
The French writer Jacques Lusseyran, who lost his sight at the age of 8, understood that those of us who have sight are, in some ways, deprived by it. “In return for all the benefits that sight brings we are forced to give up others whose existence we don’t even suspect.”
I do not intend to suggest there is something wonderful about blindness. There is only something wonderful about human resilience, adaptability and daring. The blind are no more or less otherworldly, stupid, evil, gloomy, pitiable or deceitful than the rest of us. It is only our ignorance that has cloaked them in these ridiculous garments. When Helen Keller wrote, “It is more difficult to teach ignorance to think than to teach an intelligent blind man to see the grandeur of Niagara,” she was speaking, obviously, of the uplifting and equalizing value of knowledge.
Source:
(1) Rosemary Mahoney is the author of the forthcoming book “For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches From the World of the Blind.”
(2) A version of this op-ed appears in print on January 5, 2014, on page SR8 of the New York edition with the headline: Why Do We Fear the Blind?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe
(3) STAF, Inc.
__________________________
Puerto Ricans Flock North
Away From Battered Economy
Exodus in Past Decade Was the Largest Since the 1950s
click: Puerto Rico
Juan Alvarez Fernos, an unemployed former taxi driver, lives at a friend's place and plans to move to Texas. 'There is no plan B,' he says. José Jiménez-Tirado for The Wall Street Journal
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Francisco Armstrong didn't see much of a future for himself on this economically distressed island. A 27-year-old law-school graduate, he faced a job market saturated with candidates but short of opportunities.
So in November, he moved to Reno, Nev., to join his brother, a 24-year-old graphic artist who left two months earlier. Another 10 friends of his have bailed in recent years, he said, and most of his remaining circle are considering it.
"It's sad how this island is losing most of its young talent," Mr. Armstrong said one morning before leaving San Juan, sitting in his nearly empty apartment, where only a few pieces of unsold furniture remained. "But sometimes you feel pushed out."
Seven years into a grinding downturn, Puerto Rico is experiencing a historic exodus of residents fleeing the island's battered economy and rampant crime. From 2000 to 2010, a net 288,000 people left for the U.S. mainland, according to the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics. The pace has accelerated in the past few years as the economic situation has worsened, with a net loss of 54,000 migrants a year in 2011 and 2012 on an island of just over 3.6 million people. Preliminary data for early 2013 suggest the outflow is still strong.
The U.S. territory also is grappling with $70 billion in debt, ratings firms have downgraded its bonds to one notch above junk and investors fear it could default on its obligations.
"A country that doesn't have credit is destined to fail," said Janette Mondo, a 46-year-old engineer who moved from San Juan to Basking Ridge, N.J., in August.
The financial turmoil figured into her decision to leave, she said.
The current wave of departures is the largest since the 1950s, when 470,000 Puerto Ricans left for the mainland. Back then, they were mostly rural and working-class migrants leaving for jobs at Northeast farms and factories, said Deepak Lamba-Nieves, research director at the Center for a New Economy, a nonpartisan think tank in San Juan. Because Puerto Rico's economy wasn't generating sufficient jobs, the government encouraged them to go, he said.
Today, many of the people leaving are young professionals the island wants to retain, said Mario Marazzi, executive director of the Institute of Statistics. Those who left in 2011 spanned a wide range of occupations, including roughly 2,700 food-service workers, 2,000 teachers and 180 lawyers, according to institute estimates. They moved to states across the U.S., with Florida, New York and Texas topping the list.
The exodus, combined with a declining fertility rate, has caused Puerto Rico's population to slip to 3.62 million in 2013 from a peak of 3.83 million in 2004—a larger percentage decline than that of any U.S. state during that period. It is projected to drop to 2.98 million by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—about the same population the island had in 1975.
That could have profound effects on the territory, which already is struggling with a 14.7% unemployment rate. The population decline will shrink the island's tax base, lower demand for goods and services, and reduce investment, economists say.
In addition, "if we're losing young professionals, people at their most productive ages, we may have a huge problem trying to support the elderly population," said Sergio Marxuach, public-policy director at the Center for a New Economy.
Some argue that the flow of people to the mainland has potential benefits.
"We've been migrating for decades," Mr. Lamba-Nieves said. "Many of those will probably come back at some point." And when they do, he said, they could bring new skills and entrepreneurial energy to invigorate the economy.
Yet the toll the departures are taking on Puerto Rico already is apparent. Nearly 320,000 housing units were vacant in 2012, up from 186,000 in 2005, according to census data. "For Sale" signs dot every block in some neighborhoods.
Each week, some of the island's most talented professionals head to the airport with a one-way ticket to the mainland. Data from the University of Puerto Rico's School of Medicine show that roughly 30% of its residents leave the island once they complete their training. In some specialties, such as family medicine or obstetrics and gynecology, the percentage is much higher.
The departures of doctors threaten to create shortages of certain specialists, like orthopedic surgeons and anesthesiologists, according to a 2012 study commissioned by the Puerto Rico College of Physicians and Surgeons.
School districts in the U.S. eager to hire bilingual instructors regularly scoop up Puerto Rico's teachers. And employers like Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. snag many of the island's freshly minted engineers.
Those leaving include plenty of nonprofessionals as well. Juan Alvarez Fernos, 45, a former taxi driver, said he hasn't been able to find a job for six months and has racked up about $20,000 in debt.
He said he plans to move to Austin, Texas, as soon as he receives an expected settlement check for a neck injury he sustained in a car accident. He already has sent more than 100 résumés for restaurant jobs there, and shipped 10 boxes of belongings to a friend in Dallas. "I'm just waiting to leave," he said. "There's no plan B."
Gov. Alejandro García Padilla is trying to stem the flow by wooing investors, promoting tourism and stimulating agricultural production. He recently announced that since taking office last January, more than 25,000 jobs have been created—halfway toward his goal of generating 50,000 jobs in 18 months.
"This is not the first time our people have confronted big problems and managed to overcome them," said Ingrid Vila Biaggi, the governor's chief of staff.
She and others argue that migratory flows have always been tied to economic cycles. "If the situation starts to improve and the gap between the U.S. and Puerto Rico stabilizes, then the migration will taper," said Vicente Feliciano, president of Advantage Business Consulting in San Juan.
Some Puerto Ricans are determined to stay on the island. Raúl Santiago-Bartolomei, 28, an engineer who got his undergraduate degree at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and a master's degree at Cornell University, could probably have his pick of jobs on the continent. But he and his wife, a lawyer, said they plan to stay put.
"I guess it's more of a national-pride thing," Mr. Santiago-Bartolomei said. "It kind of saddens you to see that the country is crumbling. I have a sense of duty to stay."
Source:
(1) WSJ
(2) STAF, Inc.
________________________________________
Away From Battered Economy
Exodus in Past Decade Was the Largest Since the 1950s
click: Puerto Rico
Juan Alvarez Fernos, an unemployed former taxi driver, lives at a friend's place and plans to move to Texas. 'There is no plan B,' he says. José Jiménez-Tirado for The Wall Street Journal
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—Francisco Armstrong didn't see much of a future for himself on this economically distressed island. A 27-year-old law-school graduate, he faced a job market saturated with candidates but short of opportunities.
So in November, he moved to Reno, Nev., to join his brother, a 24-year-old graphic artist who left two months earlier. Another 10 friends of his have bailed in recent years, he said, and most of his remaining circle are considering it.
"It's sad how this island is losing most of its young talent," Mr. Armstrong said one morning before leaving San Juan, sitting in his nearly empty apartment, where only a few pieces of unsold furniture remained. "But sometimes you feel pushed out."
Seven years into a grinding downturn, Puerto Rico is experiencing a historic exodus of residents fleeing the island's battered economy and rampant crime. From 2000 to 2010, a net 288,000 people left for the U.S. mainland, according to the Puerto Rico Institute of Statistics. The pace has accelerated in the past few years as the economic situation has worsened, with a net loss of 54,000 migrants a year in 2011 and 2012 on an island of just over 3.6 million people. Preliminary data for early 2013 suggest the outflow is still strong.
The U.S. territory also is grappling with $70 billion in debt, ratings firms have downgraded its bonds to one notch above junk and investors fear it could default on its obligations.
"A country that doesn't have credit is destined to fail," said Janette Mondo, a 46-year-old engineer who moved from San Juan to Basking Ridge, N.J., in August.
The financial turmoil figured into her decision to leave, she said.
The current wave of departures is the largest since the 1950s, when 470,000 Puerto Ricans left for the mainland. Back then, they were mostly rural and working-class migrants leaving for jobs at Northeast farms and factories, said Deepak Lamba-Nieves, research director at the Center for a New Economy, a nonpartisan think tank in San Juan. Because Puerto Rico's economy wasn't generating sufficient jobs, the government encouraged them to go, he said.
Today, many of the people leaving are young professionals the island wants to retain, said Mario Marazzi, executive director of the Institute of Statistics. Those who left in 2011 spanned a wide range of occupations, including roughly 2,700 food-service workers, 2,000 teachers and 180 lawyers, according to institute estimates. They moved to states across the U.S., with Florida, New York and Texas topping the list.
The exodus, combined with a declining fertility rate, has caused Puerto Rico's population to slip to 3.62 million in 2013 from a peak of 3.83 million in 2004—a larger percentage decline than that of any U.S. state during that period. It is projected to drop to 2.98 million by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau—about the same population the island had in 1975.
That could have profound effects on the territory, which already is struggling with a 14.7% unemployment rate. The population decline will shrink the island's tax base, lower demand for goods and services, and reduce investment, economists say.
In addition, "if we're losing young professionals, people at their most productive ages, we may have a huge problem trying to support the elderly population," said Sergio Marxuach, public-policy director at the Center for a New Economy.
Some argue that the flow of people to the mainland has potential benefits.
"We've been migrating for decades," Mr. Lamba-Nieves said. "Many of those will probably come back at some point." And when they do, he said, they could bring new skills and entrepreneurial energy to invigorate the economy.
Yet the toll the departures are taking on Puerto Rico already is apparent. Nearly 320,000 housing units were vacant in 2012, up from 186,000 in 2005, according to census data. "For Sale" signs dot every block in some neighborhoods.
Each week, some of the island's most talented professionals head to the airport with a one-way ticket to the mainland. Data from the University of Puerto Rico's School of Medicine show that roughly 30% of its residents leave the island once they complete their training. In some specialties, such as family medicine or obstetrics and gynecology, the percentage is much higher.
The departures of doctors threaten to create shortages of certain specialists, like orthopedic surgeons and anesthesiologists, according to a 2012 study commissioned by the Puerto Rico College of Physicians and Surgeons.
School districts in the U.S. eager to hire bilingual instructors regularly scoop up Puerto Rico's teachers. And employers like Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. snag many of the island's freshly minted engineers.
Those leaving include plenty of nonprofessionals as well. Juan Alvarez Fernos, 45, a former taxi driver, said he hasn't been able to find a job for six months and has racked up about $20,000 in debt.
He said he plans to move to Austin, Texas, as soon as he receives an expected settlement check for a neck injury he sustained in a car accident. He already has sent more than 100 résumés for restaurant jobs there, and shipped 10 boxes of belongings to a friend in Dallas. "I'm just waiting to leave," he said. "There's no plan B."
Gov. Alejandro García Padilla is trying to stem the flow by wooing investors, promoting tourism and stimulating agricultural production. He recently announced that since taking office last January, more than 25,000 jobs have been created—halfway toward his goal of generating 50,000 jobs in 18 months.
"This is not the first time our people have confronted big problems and managed to overcome them," said Ingrid Vila Biaggi, the governor's chief of staff.
She and others argue that migratory flows have always been tied to economic cycles. "If the situation starts to improve and the gap between the U.S. and Puerto Rico stabilizes, then the migration will taper," said Vicente Feliciano, president of Advantage Business Consulting in San Juan.
Some Puerto Ricans are determined to stay on the island. Raúl Santiago-Bartolomei, 28, an engineer who got his undergraduate degree at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez and a master's degree at Cornell University, could probably have his pick of jobs on the continent. But he and his wife, a lawyer, said they plan to stay put.
"I guess it's more of a national-pride thing," Mr. Santiago-Bartolomei said. "It kind of saddens you to see that the country is crumbling. I have a sense of duty to stay."
Source:
(1) WSJ
(2) STAF, Inc.
________________________________________
Wall St. Shock: Take a Day Off, Even a Sunday
For the ambitious college graduates who flock to Wall Street, working into the wee hours or even pulling all-nighters is an unwritten expectation of the job. Spending both Saturdays and Sundays at the office is the norm.
But on Friday, Bank of America Merrill Lynch issued a small reprieve for those with grueling schedules: Take four days off a month, on the weekends.
Such an offer from an employer would sound like punishment for the average worker. But for junior employees of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, that recommendation was intended as a bit of relief.
Merrill Lynch, the investment bank unit, said in an internal memo on Friday that its analysts and associates — the two lowest-ranking employee levels — should try to spend four weekend days away from the office each month, part of a broader effort to improve working conditions.
“We are committed to making the work experience better for junior bankers and believe these enhancements will help ensure they have the resources and support needed to succeed,” Christian Meissner, the head of global corporate and investment banking at the bank, said in the memo, which was reviewed by The New York Times. A spokesman confirmed the memo’s contents.
The effort, coming after a review of several months, is the latest sign that Wall Street banks are taking a critical look at the hard-charging culture of these jobs, which are often seen as steppingstones to higher-ranking positions with better salaries (and, eventually, weekends off).
Last year, Goldman Sachs created a “junior banker task force,” composed of senior employees from different units, which recommended that analysts should be able to take weekends off whenever possible.
JPMorgan Chase plans this year to increase its staff of junior bankers 10 percent to help spread out the workload, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. The bank also plans to ensure that its young employees have one “protected weekend” set aside for rest each month.
For Bank of America, the issue sharpened after a 21-year-old intern died last summer in the company’s London office. Unconfirmed reports on social network forums suggested that the intern, Moritz Erhardt, had worked through three consecutive nights as part of the internship. Though his death was ultimately determined to have been caused by epilepsy, it nevertheless opened a discussion on Wall Street and in the news media about the grueling work hours expected of junior employees.
Bank of America’s review, which included hundreds of interviews with employees at all levels, led to a number of changes that are to start this quarter, the memo said. While the bank does not encourage weekend work, the memo said, “we recommend that analysts and associates take a minimum of four weekend days off per month.”
Exceptions to that guideline must be approved by a senior manager, according to the memo, which added that analysts and associates were required to use their allocated vacation time.
The changes come at a time when banks across Wall Street are trying to remain attractive employers for the country’s brightest young minds. Though the prospect of a large salary and experience in finance still draws many college graduates to the industry, some ambitious students are considering other career paths, including those in the technology industry, famous for its employee perks like free oil changes or staff masseuses.
“It’s a generational shift,” said Russell W. Ladson Jr., 24, a former analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “Does it really make sense for me to do something I really don’t love and don’t really care about, working 90 hours a week? It really doesn’t make sense. Banks are starting to realize that.”
Mr. Ladson, a graduate of Morehouse College who worked in the public finance group of the sales and trading section of Merrill Lynch, which would not be covered by the new rules, said he took the job in 2011 “because I wanted to make some quick money.” His starting salary was $70,000.
But he soon discovered a lack of passion for the work, made worse by the long hours. He would arrive at the office around 8:15 a.m., often staying until 1 the next morning, he said.
Another former analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Alex J. Cook, said that on a bad night, he “wouldn’t go home at all.” Mr. Cook, a 27-year-old graduate of Dartmouth, now works at Ralph Lauren in a strategy and operations role.
Mr. Ladson, after a stint at another financial firm, is now working at a technology start-up firm he helped found — which he views as more in line with his passions. The start-up, Drop, is developing an app to make reservations, to order and to pay at restaurants.
Many young workers are similarly looking for personal fulfillment in their jobs, said Adam Zoia, the chief executive of Glocap, an executive search firm focused on the investment management industry.
“It used to be the case that financial services were such attractive jobs that they were magnets for young talent,” said Mr. Zoia, who was once a junior employee at the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. “They didn’t have to worry as much about what the actual work experience was like.”
Bank of America said it intended to “make certain that junior bankers work on a wide variety of different assignments, where possible, and ensure that the development of core skills is an important factor in making staffing assignments.”
Changes in “technology, graphics and production and printing services” could also enhance efficiency and work-life balance, and the bank is reviewing these areas as well, the memo said.
Goldman Sachs, after its review last year, also said it would introduce new technology to make work more efficient.
But while some analysts complain about long hours, others say they enjoy the intensity of their work and the camaraderie that it can foster.
Mr. Cook, the former analyst at Bank of America, said he spent Super Bowl Sundays at the office in 2010 and 2011. His group took breaks to try to watch as much of the game as they could, he said.
“We would always order a bunch of Super Bowl food,” he said. “It was one of those classic investment banking bonding experiences.”
Sources:
(1) By WILLIAM ALDEN and SYDNEY EMBER
(2) NYT
(3) STAF, Inc.
_______________________________________________
Fitful Progress in the Antismoking Wars
Fifty years ago this Saturday, on Jan. 11, 1964, a myth-shattering surgeon general’s report on smoking and health brushed aside years of obfuscation by tobacco companies and asserted, based on 7,000 scientific articles, that smoking caused lung cancer and was linked to other serious diseases. Those findings expanded as more data was gathered.
Research since then has shown that tobacco can cause or exacerbate a wide range of diseases, including heart disease, stroke, multiple kinds of cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, asthma and diabetes, and can injure nonsmokers who breathe in the toxic fumes secondhand. The death toll from tobacco remains stubbornly high but can be driven down by using a range of new and proven tactics.
By some measures, the 50-year campaign to rein in tobacco use has been an enormous success. The percentage of American adults who smoke dropped from 42 percent in 1965 to 18 percent in 2012. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that tobacco control measures adopted since 1964 have saved eight million Americans from premature death and extended their lives by an average of almost 20 years.
Experts attribute the gains to vigorous campaigns to educate people about the dangers of smoking; increases in cigarette taxes; state and local laws that protect half the nation’s population from tobacco fumes in workplaces, bars and restaurants; restrictions on advertising; prohibition of sales to minors; and various prevention and cessation programs financed by states or private insurance.
Despite these gains, nearly 44 million American adults still smoke, more than 440,000 Americans die every year from smoking, and eight million Americans live with at least one serious chronic disease from smoking. Medical costs connected to smoking are nearly $96 billion a year, with an additional $97 billion lost in productivity because of illness.
On Wednesday, several health organizations, including the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the American Cancer Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids called for a new national commitment to drive smoking among adults down to less than 10 percent over the next decade; protect all Americans from secondhand smoke within five years by having every state enact laws against smoking in all workplaces, bars and restaurants; and ultimately eliminate death and disease caused by tobacco.
It won’t be easy. The tobacco industry spends more than $8 billion a year to market cigarettes and other tobacco products in this country, with much of its marketing slyly aimed at young people.
The industry is also invading foreign markets, often in less developed countries, in an effort to make addicts of millions more customers to replace those in industrialized nations. Although smoking rates among adults around the globe have fallen sharply since 1980, the number of smokers has increased significantly along with population growth and will continue to increase as national incomes and populations rise. The United States government must help counter the tobacco industry’s efforts to spread its noxious products around the world.
Source: NYT
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Alternative Lenders Peddle Pricey Commercial Loans
With Credit for Businesses Tight, Nonbank Lenders Offer Financing at a Price
Click green for further info
When Khien Nguyen needed $180,000 to open his 13th nail salon near Philadelphia in November, he didn't go to a bank. Mr. Nguyen's credit score had dropped during the recession, so he figured a bank would put him through weeks of aggravation, then reject him.
He turned instead to one of the nonbank, short-term lenders that have been gaining traction since the financial crisis. The lenders cater to small businesses, often at high cost.
Delaware-based Swift Capital reviewed his financial records and social-media sites such as Yelp and Facebook for reviews, then dispatched someone to one of his salons to pose as a customer. Swift wired him the money a few days later.
Mr. Nguyen is paying 14.9% interest over the loan's six-month term—the equivalent of about 30% annually. Payments are drawn automatically each day from his business bank account. "It's not cheap, but they served my needs quickly," he says.
About two dozen such nonbank lenders—including OnDeck Capital Inc., Kabbage Inc. and CAN Capital Inc.—lent about $3 billion collectively last year, double the 2012 total, estimates Marc Glazer, chief executive of Business Financial Services Inc., a lender with about $100 million of such loans outstanding.
These short-term lenders want to become the go-to financiers for business owners needing quick cash, often $50,000 or less.
"It is a substantially underserved segment of the economy," says former American Express chairman and chief executive James Robinson III, an investor in OnDeck alongside Google Ventures, GOOG -0.01% SAP Ventures and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
Banks generally require solid credit scores and spend weeks reviewing financial statements, tax returns and business plans. Biz2Credit, an online loan broker for small businesses, says an analysis of loan applications made in December through its website showed big banks approved 18% of loan applications by its customers in December, while small banks approved 49%.
Various nontraditional lenders have stepped into the void. Peer-to-peer online-lending platforms channel funds from ordinary investors to borrowers. Private investment partnerships, including hedge funds, make direct loans to struggling businesses, often with costly strings attached.
Short-term lenders such as Swift and OnDeck typically structure their loans to be repaid in months, not years. To reduce risk, payments are collected daily or weekly, enabling lenders see how loans perform "in real time, as opposed to the wait-and-hope model," says Daniel DeMeo, chief executive of New York-based CAN Capital.
Interest rates on such loans can run in excess of 50%, on an annualized basis, much higher than on conventional bank loans. Usury laws limiting interest rates generally don't apply to the short-term lenders. Some of the loans are originated in states that don't cap interest rates on commercial loans. Others are structured as private contracts between two businesses. Many loans come through brokers working on commission.
Speaking at a recent Small Business Administration conference, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said the government wants to "do more to knock down barriers to financing," and he voiced support for new approaches to lending. "These companies are using alternative measures to assess a business's ability to pay back a loan," he said. "They use data like real-time shipping schedules, records held in a business's accounting software, and even social-media traffic to determine creditworthiness." The government, he said, wants to provide access, with a borrower's permission, to certain information reported to the government.
Since launching in 2007, New York-based OnDeck has issued more than 20,000 loans totaling more than $825 million. Fifty-six of its 225 employees have backgrounds in math, statistics, computer science or engineering and work on data analysis, credit modeling and technology infrastructure.
The typical customer is a restaurant, auto-body shop, beauty salon, retailer or physician seeking about $35,000—businesses that often have trouble getting traditional bank loans, says OnDeck chief executive Noah Breslow.
Ron Wendolowski, co-owner of DJ's Delights LLC in Asbury Park, N.J., sought cash to expand in 2012. He says he was turned down by a bank because the business was only two years old. So he applied to OnDeck.
OnDeck analyzed credit-bureau data and DJ's cash flow, and electronically checked state corporate filings and court records. It even checked diner reviews on social-media sites Yelp, Urbanspoon and Foursquare. Within a day, it approved a $6,000 loan with a six-month term.
Since then, DJ's has taken out three more loans from OnDeck. The most recent, for $20,000, carries a nine-month term. The daily payment requirement equates to a 34% annual interest rate. "The rates are higher than bank loans, but it's a lot less aggravation," says Mr. Wendolowski.
Mr. Breslow says OnDeck customers are willing to pay a premium for "our speed, convenience, certainty and electronic delivery," and many "have not been served by banks."
Alternative lending to small businesses expanded during the financial crisis as bank credit dried up. The value of outstanding commercial loans under $1 million at federally insured banks—a proxy for small business—has declined by 15% since 2007, on a non-inflation-adjusted basis, to $284.5 billion in last year's third quarter, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
In 2008, when the financial crisis hit, sales at Robin's Nest Floral and Garden Center in Easton, Md., dropped by 15%, according to owner Ken Morgan. The 30-year-old company needed $50,000 for a shipment of Christmas decorations. "I went to the bank, where I'd always done business on a handshake, and they were scared and having their belts tightened," he says. He was turned down.
Mr. Morgan applied to Business Financial Services, which examined his company's credit score, sales volume, cash flow and other financials—then clicked on Facebook.
The Robin's Nest page was "continuously updated with promotions and events," an underwriter reported. "There are numerous 'likes.' " The business topped Google searches of area florists, and had a stellar Better Business Bureau rating.
Business Financial Services wired the money, which was repaid within six months. Interest payments totaled about 18%—an annual rate of more than 35%.
"This isn't cheap money," says Mr. Glazer, CEO of Business Financial. "But we charge these rates because we are taking a risk, and losing millions every year."
As private companies, the lenders aren't required to disclose default rates. Several said they run in the single digits.
OnDeck says it approves 25% of all applicants and 75% of those meeting its initial business and credit filters, which include being in business for at least one year and having at least $100,000 in annual revenue.
Swift says it approves more than three-quarters of applicants. "If we looked at just the credit score, the way a bank does, that eliminates more than half the market," says chief executive Ed Harycki. Swift says it has provided $350 million to more than 10,000 businesses.
Unlike banks, the short-term lenders don't take deposits, so they need other sources of capital to fund the loans. OnDeck has an $80 million credit facility from a syndicate that includes Goldman Sachs Group Inc. GS +0.56% "They have a successful business model that we like," says a Goldman spokesman.
This fall, OnDeck secured another $130 million from, among others, KeyCorp.KEY -0.94% Adam Warner, president of Key Equipment Finance, says loans to OnDeck and to CAN Capital are "a way to diversify our small-business lending."
Click green for further info
Source: (1) WSJ (2) STAF, Inc.
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Abused New York City Child's Caregiver Appears in Court
Prosecutors Say Kryzie King, 27, Admitted Repeatedly Hitting the Child
STAF, Inc.' demand has been and still is that there must be, at least a brief, training for babysitting - just anyone walking around does not qualify. No one knows automatically how t handle a baby, a toddler or a child of any age
The caregiver of the 4-year-old boy who was found dead in her Manhattan apartment was arraigned Friday on charges that she assaulted and imprisoned the young child.
Prosecutors said Kryzie King, 27, admitted repeatedly hitting the child with a belt and burning the child over the past three weeks because he was misbehaving and had stopped eating.
Ms. King was "the sole caregiver" of Myls Dobson "for the last three weeks of his life," Manhattan prosecutor Nicole Blumberg said.
"By the defendant's own admission the defendant watched him starve. He hadn't eaten and he'd barely had any liquid for two weeks," Ms. Blumberg said, adding that the boy endured "two weeks of torture at the hands of this defendant because she claimed he was misbehaving."Ms. King didn't enter a plea at the hearing and wasn't required to.
Her attorney, Bryan Konoski, said his client wasn't charged in the child's death and that authorities were "still investigating this case."
Whether Ms. King's actions played a direct role in Myls's death are pending the results of an autopsy, officials said. A preliminary autopsy conducted Thursday came back inconclusive. Additional tests are ongoing and could take weeks.
Ms. Blumberg said in court Friday that prosecutors expect to bring more charges against Ms. King.
The district attorney's office is "investigating the defendant for murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree and will likely bring additional charges," she said.
Ashlee Dobson, Myls's mother, appeared in public for the first time along with other family members at a news conference. She didn't speak.
"There should be safeguards in place and maybe these types of things won't happen again because of Myls," said Philip Lights, who is representing the family. "There are so many unanswered questions, but at the end of the day Myls is no longer here."
The severity of the injuries to Myls's body stunned investigators and raised questions about the Administration of Children's Services oversight of him. ACS officials and Mayor Bill de Blasio both said Friday that the city was investigating to see if anything could have been done to better protect Myls and to look for ways to avoid similar circumstances in the future.
The ACS findings are to be submitted to the mayor's office by the end of next week, a spokesman said.
Myls entered the ACS system in 2011, officials said. The agency had oversight of him and his parents until about August 2013.
ACS found Ms. Dobson unfit to care for the child, a person familiar with the case said. Full custody of the child was awarded to the boy's father, Okee Wade, 37, in August 2012 by a Brooklyn Family Court judge.
ACS caseworkers supervised visits between the parents for the following year before the case was terminated, officials said.
ACS reported to authorities it had no reports regarding Myls until Wednesday, when they opened a case surrounding the child's death, officials said.
Ms. King told police that she had been Myls's sole care provider since Dec. 17, when the boy's father left the boy in her care, authorities said.
Mr. Wade was then arrested in Brooklyn two days later on an outstanding warrant in New Jersey, police said.
NYPD spokeswoman Kim Royster said the father told an NYPD detective that he knew Ms. King "for three years and he had left the child in this person's care before."
On the day Mr. Wade was arrested, he called Ms. King about caring for the child, Ms. Royster said.
Police plan to obtain the recordings to determine if they provide any further information in the case.
Source: WSJ, (2) STAF, Inc.
______________________________
Prosecutors Say Kryzie King, 27, Admitted Repeatedly Hitting the Child
STAF, Inc.' demand has been and still is that there must be, at least a brief, training for babysitting - just anyone walking around does not qualify. No one knows automatically how t handle a baby, a toddler or a child of any age
The caregiver of the 4-year-old boy who was found dead in her Manhattan apartment was arraigned Friday on charges that she assaulted and imprisoned the young child.
Prosecutors said Kryzie King, 27, admitted repeatedly hitting the child with a belt and burning the child over the past three weeks because he was misbehaving and had stopped eating.
Ms. King was "the sole caregiver" of Myls Dobson "for the last three weeks of his life," Manhattan prosecutor Nicole Blumberg said.
"By the defendant's own admission the defendant watched him starve. He hadn't eaten and he'd barely had any liquid for two weeks," Ms. Blumberg said, adding that the boy endured "two weeks of torture at the hands of this defendant because she claimed he was misbehaving."Ms. King didn't enter a plea at the hearing and wasn't required to.
Her attorney, Bryan Konoski, said his client wasn't charged in the child's death and that authorities were "still investigating this case."
Whether Ms. King's actions played a direct role in Myls's death are pending the results of an autopsy, officials said. A preliminary autopsy conducted Thursday came back inconclusive. Additional tests are ongoing and could take weeks.
Ms. Blumberg said in court Friday that prosecutors expect to bring more charges against Ms. King.
The district attorney's office is "investigating the defendant for murder in the first degree and murder in the second degree and will likely bring additional charges," she said.
Ashlee Dobson, Myls's mother, appeared in public for the first time along with other family members at a news conference. She didn't speak.
"There should be safeguards in place and maybe these types of things won't happen again because of Myls," said Philip Lights, who is representing the family. "There are so many unanswered questions, but at the end of the day Myls is no longer here."
The severity of the injuries to Myls's body stunned investigators and raised questions about the Administration of Children's Services oversight of him. ACS officials and Mayor Bill de Blasio both said Friday that the city was investigating to see if anything could have been done to better protect Myls and to look for ways to avoid similar circumstances in the future.
The ACS findings are to be submitted to the mayor's office by the end of next week, a spokesman said.
Myls entered the ACS system in 2011, officials said. The agency had oversight of him and his parents until about August 2013.
ACS found Ms. Dobson unfit to care for the child, a person familiar with the case said. Full custody of the child was awarded to the boy's father, Okee Wade, 37, in August 2012 by a Brooklyn Family Court judge.
ACS caseworkers supervised visits between the parents for the following year before the case was terminated, officials said.
ACS reported to authorities it had no reports regarding Myls until Wednesday, when they opened a case surrounding the child's death, officials said.
Ms. King told police that she had been Myls's sole care provider since Dec. 17, when the boy's father left the boy in her care, authorities said.
Mr. Wade was then arrested in Brooklyn two days later on an outstanding warrant in New Jersey, police said.
NYPD spokeswoman Kim Royster said the father told an NYPD detective that he knew Ms. King "for three years and he had left the child in this person's care before."
On the day Mr. Wade was arrested, he called Ms. King about caring for the child, Ms. Royster said.
Police plan to obtain the recordings to determine if they provide any further information in the case.
- Syrian Kids Grow Up Fast
- The Lobotomy Files: Forgotten Soldiers
- For Delhi Cop, Tradition Overwhelms Badge
- Greece Struggles to Outlaw Fascists
- Fall of King Coal Hits Hard in Kentucky
- Inside the Breakup of the Pritzker Empire
Source: WSJ, (2) STAF, Inc.
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Maharajas' Express: World's Leading Luxury Train
The Maharajas' Express has spacious cabins, fine food and private performances
Step aboard into a world of red carpets and high teas with maharajas....rediscover a bygone age of elegance, opulence and romance Maharajas' Express is the latest luxury train to be introduced in India. The train, owned by IRCTC*) and dubbed India's equivalent to the Orient Express of Europe**), is one of the leading luxury trains in the world. It offers a royal ride and features state of the art amenities like Wi-Fi internet, Plasma TVs, DVD players and individual climate control.
*) IRCTC PORTAL HOME PAGEwww.irctc.com/IRCTC Corporate Portal. INDIAN RAILWAY CATERING & TOURISM CORPORATION
**)Romantic Orient Express - irtsociety.comRomantic Orient Express - irtsociety.comwww.irtsociety.com/Deluxe Private Railway Journeys On One of World's Top 25 Trains!www.irtsociety.com/Deluxe Private Railway Journeys On One of World's Top 25 Trains!
See the end link explaining "maharaja"
WHEN WE STEPPED off the train at the small station of Pachora, 250 miles northeast of Mumbai, Lord Ganesha was waiting. (Ganesha links at the end
A man costumed as the Hindu god was carried by turbaned attendants and accompanied by folk dancers who whirled to ancient stringed instruments, reedy horns and hand drums. Ganesha sported a pinkish elephant head, complete with trunk and oversize ears, but he blessed us with a very human hand. Locals must have felt like the circus had arrived in town, for despite the early hour, they had come to watch the welcome arranged specially for us.
It was appropriate to be greeted by the god of good fortune: We were a lucky group—passengers taking a 2,000-mile journey from Mumbai to New Delhi on the Maharajas' Express, one of the most luxurious trains in the world.
The train's name conjures images of hilltop forts, bejeweled scimitars and armies on camels and elephants— for good reason. The maharajas ("great kings") ruled India's hundreds of princely states from as early as the 1600s to the mid-20th century. In Rajasthan, in particular, the warrior-kings built impressive cities they named for themselves: Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaipur. Their heirs, allying themselves with the British Raj, continued a sumptuous style of living until Indian independence in 1947. (While the princely families lost their power post-Raj, they kept most of their palaces and for
The Maharajas' Express pays tribute to that regal lifestyle. Nearly half a mile long, the train is a glossy burgundy on the outside. Inside, guests sleep in cabins that feel like upscale hotel rooms, with silk window treatments, carved wood paneling and marble-tiled floors. Travelers feast off fine china and crisp linens in the two dining cars. The staff seems almost to outnumber the guests, which total 88 at full capacity. In the morning, valets brought tea to our rooms. When we trundled through the long line of cars to dinner, staffers folded down our beds, delivered clean laundry and left behind chocolates or a flower. Upon our return from outings, they greeted us with fresh juice or cocktails and cool, damp cloths for wiping the dust from our faces.
The extravagance wasn't limited to the onboard experience. We visited private gardens and met local notables. As we chugged through Rajasthan and three adjoining states, we were welcomed at every stop with red carpets, music and dancers, even camels and horses in colorful regalia. Such treatment in the face of India's poor piqued my conscience, though we didn't encounter much of the poverty that is so prevalent in India.
The Maharajas' Express experience doesn't come cheap. I chose the smallest and least costly cabin, priced at $6,840 a person for seven nights. The train's top two classes, the suite and presidential suite, run $13,800 and $23,700 per person, respectively. I imagined they would be filled with Russian oligarchs, Chinese millionaires or at least successful Indian expats. But in fact, on our journey those quarters remained empty, and my fellow passengers were hardly exotic: fellow Americans, older British couples, a smattering of Japanese and Russian families.
Each day, the Maharajas' Express stopped at a destination and we disembarked to see the sites. In the evening, we set off for the next city. After a night or two of adjusting to the rocking of the train and the scream of its whistle when we passed through villages, I slept soundly and was often the first in the dining car for breakfast. Alone at a table set with white damask and heavy silver, I watched the world slide by through the broad windows: women in bright saris hauling pots of water on their heads, a bullock cart heading out to a field, young boys tending cattle. At a rural train station, a gray-haired man did yoga on a wooden bench while a woman, the end of her sari pulled over her head in traditional style, swept the platform with a handful of sticks.
Such everyday scenes of India delighted me as I worked through a pitcher of coffee, a bowl of muesli, a masala dosa. One morning, as our chef passed by, I complimented him on his pastries and croissants. "Try doing that on a moving train every day," he said, laughing.
After our exuberant arrival at each destination, we would head to a fort or palace (and a tiger refuge on the penultimate day) in a luxury coach that followed us the entire trip. From Pachora, our first stop, we drove about two hours to Ajanta, a group of caves that sheltered wandering monks during the Buddhist wave that swept India from 200 B.C. to 600 A.D. Several of the caves at the Unesco World Heritage site are decorated with exquisite 2,000-year-old paintings of gods and religious life.
“The monument to undying love glowed rose under the still-rising sun.”
A few days later, outside Jodhpur, we visited a farming family of Bishnois, a six-centuries-old sect that prizes hospitality, protects wild animals and prepares opium tea for guests. I lapped several mouthfuls out of the palm of one of our hosts; this was how Rajasthani traders used to present the tea to guests on the spice route, we were told. (It was too mild to have any sort of narcotic effect.) An even odder experience was our visit to the Karni Mata Temple near Bikaner. Devotees travel great distances to revere the more than 20,000 black rats who make it their home, feeding from bowls of milk and grain and scurrying around visitors' feet.
Getting There: Dozens of airlines fly from the U.S. to Mumbai and/or Delhi, the departing or arrival points for Maharajas' Express trips. Most itineraries from major U.S. hubs involve one stop.
Staying There: At one end of the trip, in Mumbai, the iconic Taj Mahal Palace has hosted maharajas real and figurative for more than a century (from about $400 a night, tajhotels.com ). On the other end, in New Delhi, the Imperial is a jewel of Victorian and colonial architecture with a very pleasant spa (from about $280 a night, theimperialindia.com ).
Riding the Train: Maharajas' Express runs trips from October through April. They last for three or seven nights, and begin or end in New Delhi or Mumbai (from $3,850 per person, maharajas-express-india.com ). Consider booking through a travel agency, which can help you choose an itinerary and arrange add-on trips. Railbookers is the largest booking agency for Maharajas' Express ( railbookers.com ).
What to Pack: Go light and informal. This is not the Orient Express of 1890, and no one dresses up for dinner. The days are warm, but a light jacket or sweater is useful, especially in New Delhi in winter or at a barbecue dinner on the sand dunes in Bikaner.
Nothing beat the game of elephant polo we played in the private garden of the titular Maharaja of Jaipur. Six female elephants, their trunks painted with colorful swirls, faced off like football linemen. I perched on the broad back of a 12-foot-tall animal, my feet planted in stirrups, clutching a rope strung tightly across its back and struggling to maneuver the absurdly long polo mallet. A mahout sat a foot in front of me, urging our mount toward the soccer ball that had been rolled between the two teams. Off we ambled in the ball's general direction. I scored a point with an ungainly back shot from right in front of the goal. In the end, an elephant on the opposing team broke our two-point tie by snagging the ball in its trunk and lobbing it through the goal. We retired to drinks with a relative of the maharaja, followed by a vast Indian lunch on a terrace overlooking the polo field.
The Taj Mahal click:Taj Mahal was our final stop. When I visited two decades ago, it felt flat, a picture-pretty cliché; perhaps it was the hordes of midday tourists. This time, at 8 in the morning, the grounds were largely empty and the monument to undying love glowed rose under the still-rising sun. I roamed alone, letting its exquisite craftsmanship and sheer audacity sink in. Later, we walked to a nearby private garden for a breakfast buffet on a lawn overlooking the Taj.
That evening, the lurch of the train pulling out of Agra signaled that we had only three hours left in our journey. I sat in the dining car, watching as fields of crops, green from monsoon rains, give way to the busy outskirts of Delhi. When we pulled into a quiet suburban station, no band met us. There were
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*) IRCTC PORTAL HOME PAGEwww.irctc.com/IRCTC Corporate Portal. INDIAN RAILWAY CATERING & TOURISM CORPORATION
**)Romantic Orient Express - irtsociety.comRomantic Orient Express - irtsociety.comwww.irtsociety.com/Deluxe Private Railway Journeys On One of World's Top 25 Trains!www.irtsociety.com/Deluxe Private Railway Journeys On One of World's Top 25 Trains!
_____________
ma·ha·ra·jah or ma·ha·ra·ja (mäh-räj, -zh)n.= "great king."
1. A king or prince in India ranking above a rajah, especially the sovereign of one of the former native states. 2. Used as a title for such a king or prince.
[Sanskrit mahrja : mah-, great; see meg- in Indo-European roots + rj, king (variant of rj, king; see reg- in Indo-European roots).]
Click: Maharaja - Wikipedia
Word History: Countless Indian restaurants are named Maharajah, from a Sanskrit word (mahrja) that means "great king." The element mah- is related to Greek mega- and Latin magnus, both meaning the same thing as the Sanskrit. All three forms derive from Indo-European *meg-, "great." This root became *mik- in Germanic, where an adjective,*mikila-, "great," was formed to it. This became mikils in Gothic, and micel, pronounced (mchl), in Old English. The Old English word survives today in much (shortened from Middle English muchel) and in the family name Mitchell.
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LORD GANESHA
- Ganesha - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganesh
Ganapati (Sanskrit: गणपति; IAST: gaṇapati), a synonym for Ganesha, is a compound composed of gaṇa, meaning "group", and pati, meaning "ruler" or "lord".Mythological anecdotes - Ganesha in world religions - Siddha - Ganesha Purana - Images for Lord Ganesha - Report image
- Ganesha: Lord of Success - About the Hindu Elephant-Deityhinduism.about.com › ... › Gods & Goddesses › Lord Ganeshaby Subhamoy Das - in 169 Google+ circles About the elephant-headed deity - the Hindu god of success, the importance of his form and how he got his head.
Source: (1) WSJ travel, (2) India information, (3) STAF, Inc.
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The Next Data Privacy Battle
May Be Waged Inside Your Car
Cars are becoming smarter than ever, with global positioning systems, Internet connections, data recorders and high-definition cameras. Drivers can barely make a left turn, put on their seatbelts or push 80 miles an hour without their actions somehow, somewhere being tracked or recorded.
Automakers say they are only responding to consumer demand, and besides, they and regulators say, the new technologies help them better understand consumers and make the cars safer. But privacy advocates increasingly see something more unsettling for drivers: that someone is always watching.
Now two senators are trying to give car owners more say over some of that data. Early next week, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, will introduce a bill stipulating that car owners control the data collected on the device called the event data recorder. The recorder, commonly known as a black box, collects information like direction, speed and seatbelt use in a continuous loop. It is in nearly every car today, and in September, it is set to become mandatory.
“We’ve got real privacy concerns on the part of the public,” Senator Hoeven said in a telephone interview. “People are very concerned about their personal privacy, especially as technology continues to advance,” he said, referring to revelations of spying by the National Security Agency. Fourteen states have already passed similar laws.
The data collected by the black box has already been the center of litigation by law enforcement agencies and insurance companies seeking to use the information against car owners. The bill would limit what the data could be used for and would require a warrant to release the data without the owner’s consent.
But even this legislation covers only part of what is a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
At the International CES in Las Vegas this week, automakers and technology companies announced a stream of new products and services aimed at making cars more connected.
Google announced it had a partnership with G.M., Audi, Honda and Hyundai to bring its Android platform to vehicle infotainment systems by the end of this year. At the same time, G.M. said it would start an app shop, where drivers can use apps like Priceline.com to book a hotel room and CitySeeker, which provides information about attractions and restaurants near the vehicle.
The days of a driver being alerted to a deal at a retailer as he drives nearby are rapidly approaching.
Many consumers, though, are unaware of just how much personal information is collected and used, privacy advocates say.
“Manufacturers do a poor job of informing consumers and explaining the privacy implications of new technology,” said Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a consumer group based in Washington. “Often, that information is in the owner’s manual, and when’s the last time you thumbed through your owner’s manual?”
It didn’t help the automakers’ reassurances about their handling of data when Jim Farley, Ford Motor Company’s top sales executive, who is known for making off-the-cuff comments, told a panel at the CES: “We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing.” Although he quickly added, “By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,” and later issued a full retraction, the comments, even if overblown and meant to be provocative, fueled the concerns.
Vehicle owners, Ms. Barnes said, should be able to request the information manufacturers record and delete information at their discretion.
“Consumers should decide what level of surveillance they want to be under,” Ms. Barnes said. “None of that should be on default. You should have to opt in.”
Automakers say that consumers are eager for the new products. At the CES, G.M. introduced a new camera in the 2015 Corvette Stingray designed to give track enthusiasts real-time feedback on their driving. The performance data recorder, as it is called, uses a camera mounted on the windshield and a global positioning receiver to record speed, gear selection and brake force.
The Corvette’s system goes further than traditional black boxes.
A camera mounted on the windshield records the driver’s point of view and a microphone in the cabin records any noises made in the car.
Chevrolet said that the consumer owned the data, which is collected in a digital card housed in the glove compartment.
But privacy lawyers say that the information can still be used against a driver, as well as G.M. and its suppliers, in litigation or by an insurance company investigating a driver’s habits.
“The privacy and liability issues associated with the P.D.R. are as real as with any archived data that can be used by or against individuals,” said William Kohler, a lawyer at Clark Hill in Detroit.
The new brainpower in cars puts the industry in new territory with security and data privacy, said Thomas Kowalick, an expert in event data recorders and a former co-chairman of the federal committee that set the standard for black boxes.
“The major concern is not what an E.D.R. gathers now but that future in-vehicle technologies will make it possible to virtually record and track a vehicle’s movement from point A to point B,” Mr. Kowalick said.
Garmin introduced a new windshield-suctioned camera that turns on automatically when the car starts. It records wide-angle footage as well as speed, location and time in the event of a collision, and also has a microphone that can record sound from within the car.
“We hope it takes some of the ‘he said, she said’ out of an incident in your car,” said Ted Gartner, a spokesman.
He said the device’s owner also owned the data and that Garmin could not access it.
“There’s no way that we have access to that data because there’s no way to transfer the data out of the car wirelessly,” Mr. Gartner said.
Despite these and other assurances, the new products are attracting scrutiny in Washington.
On Monday, the Government Accountability Office released a report stating that some automakers were keeping private data collected from onboard navigation systems and mapping apps for varying lengths of time and that car owners could not request that it be erased.
The report, which was requested by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, found that the 10 automakers, navigation device manufacturers and application developers surveyed did not make owners aware of all the risks of the data collection, like allowing third parties to track their location or gather sensitive information such as their religious and political activities and preferences.
“Information about your location is extremely sensitive,” said Senator Franken, who is chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee on privacy and said he planned to introduce a bill that would legislate guidelines on when a vehicle owner’s location could be shared. “If someone has a record of your location, they can figure out where you live, where you work, the doctors you visit and where your kids go to school.”
Source: (1)STAF, Inc., (2) - NYT A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Next Data Privacy Battle May Be Waged Inside Your Car
____________________________
May Be Waged Inside Your Car
Cars are becoming smarter than ever, with global positioning systems, Internet connections, data recorders and high-definition cameras. Drivers can barely make a left turn, put on their seatbelts or push 80 miles an hour without their actions somehow, somewhere being tracked or recorded.
Automakers say they are only responding to consumer demand, and besides, they and regulators say, the new technologies help them better understand consumers and make the cars safer. But privacy advocates increasingly see something more unsettling for drivers: that someone is always watching.
Now two senators are trying to give car owners more say over some of that data. Early next week, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, and Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, will introduce a bill stipulating that car owners control the data collected on the device called the event data recorder. The recorder, commonly known as a black box, collects information like direction, speed and seatbelt use in a continuous loop. It is in nearly every car today, and in September, it is set to become mandatory.
“We’ve got real privacy concerns on the part of the public,” Senator Hoeven said in a telephone interview. “People are very concerned about their personal privacy, especially as technology continues to advance,” he said, referring to revelations of spying by the National Security Agency. Fourteen states have already passed similar laws.
The data collected by the black box has already been the center of litigation by law enforcement agencies and insurance companies seeking to use the information against car owners. The bill would limit what the data could be used for and would require a warrant to release the data without the owner’s consent.
But even this legislation covers only part of what is a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
At the International CES in Las Vegas this week, automakers and technology companies announced a stream of new products and services aimed at making cars more connected.
Google announced it had a partnership with G.M., Audi, Honda and Hyundai to bring its Android platform to vehicle infotainment systems by the end of this year. At the same time, G.M. said it would start an app shop, where drivers can use apps like Priceline.com to book a hotel room and CitySeeker, which provides information about attractions and restaurants near the vehicle.
The days of a driver being alerted to a deal at a retailer as he drives nearby are rapidly approaching.
Many consumers, though, are unaware of just how much personal information is collected and used, privacy advocates say.
“Manufacturers do a poor job of informing consumers and explaining the privacy implications of new technology,” said Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a consumer group based in Washington. “Often, that information is in the owner’s manual, and when’s the last time you thumbed through your owner’s manual?”
It didn’t help the automakers’ reassurances about their handling of data when Jim Farley, Ford Motor Company’s top sales executive, who is known for making off-the-cuff comments, told a panel at the CES: “We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing.” Although he quickly added, “By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,” and later issued a full retraction, the comments, even if overblown and meant to be provocative, fueled the concerns.
Vehicle owners, Ms. Barnes said, should be able to request the information manufacturers record and delete information at their discretion.
“Consumers should decide what level of surveillance they want to be under,” Ms. Barnes said. “None of that should be on default. You should have to opt in.”
Automakers say that consumers are eager for the new products. At the CES, G.M. introduced a new camera in the 2015 Corvette Stingray designed to give track enthusiasts real-time feedback on their driving. The performance data recorder, as it is called, uses a camera mounted on the windshield and a global positioning receiver to record speed, gear selection and brake force.
The Corvette’s system goes further than traditional black boxes.
A camera mounted on the windshield records the driver’s point of view and a microphone in the cabin records any noises made in the car.
Chevrolet said that the consumer owned the data, which is collected in a digital card housed in the glove compartment.
But privacy lawyers say that the information can still be used against a driver, as well as G.M. and its suppliers, in litigation or by an insurance company investigating a driver’s habits.
“The privacy and liability issues associated with the P.D.R. are as real as with any archived data that can be used by or against individuals,” said William Kohler, a lawyer at Clark Hill in Detroit.
The new brainpower in cars puts the industry in new territory with security and data privacy, said Thomas Kowalick, an expert in event data recorders and a former co-chairman of the federal committee that set the standard for black boxes.
“The major concern is not what an E.D.R. gathers now but that future in-vehicle technologies will make it possible to virtually record and track a vehicle’s movement from point A to point B,” Mr. Kowalick said.
Garmin introduced a new windshield-suctioned camera that turns on automatically when the car starts. It records wide-angle footage as well as speed, location and time in the event of a collision, and also has a microphone that can record sound from within the car.
“We hope it takes some of the ‘he said, she said’ out of an incident in your car,” said Ted Gartner, a spokesman.
He said the device’s owner also owned the data and that Garmin could not access it.
“There’s no way that we have access to that data because there’s no way to transfer the data out of the car wirelessly,” Mr. Gartner said.
Despite these and other assurances, the new products are attracting scrutiny in Washington.
On Monday, the Government Accountability Office released a report stating that some automakers were keeping private data collected from onboard navigation systems and mapping apps for varying lengths of time and that car owners could not request that it be erased.
The report, which was requested by Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, found that the 10 automakers, navigation device manufacturers and application developers surveyed did not make owners aware of all the risks of the data collection, like allowing third parties to track their location or gather sensitive information such as their religious and political activities and preferences.
“Information about your location is extremely sensitive,” said Senator Franken, who is chairman of a Judiciary subcommittee on privacy and said he planned to introduce a bill that would legislate guidelines on when a vehicle owner’s location could be shared. “If someone has a record of your location, they can figure out where you live, where you work, the doctors you visit and where your kids go to school.”
Source: (1)STAF, Inc., (2) - NYT A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2014, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Next Data Privacy Battle May Be Waged Inside Your Car
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Article 1 of 2
Guess What, Kiddo? You’re Rich
By Ruthie Ackerman
Everett Collection
Most ultra-wealthy families don’t discuss the family fortune with their kids until they are adults. That’s a mistake, advisers say.
Although kids generally realize that their families are rich from a young age, parents too often miss the chance to teach them critical financial lessons, which can begin as early as five years old.
According to a study by SEI Private Wealth Management of more than 100 individuals from families with more than $20 million in assets, only a third of wealthy parents have discussed their wealth and its implications with their children before the age of 21.
Parents have difficulty talking to their kids about taboo subjects, like money, and their children don’t necessarily want to mention that dad has his own airplane and other kids’ parents don’t. Advisers can help bring down the communication barrier or help navigate this tricky discussion.
Advisers agree that there is no right age to tell children how much the family owns or the size of their likely inheritance. Some 16-year-olds can handle that discussion, and others can’t. But parents tend to need a nudge before they’ll pick their moment.
“It is important not to wait until the kids are in their 30s or 40s and are not prepared at all to receive the wealth,” says wealth psychology expert Kathleen Kingsbury, founder of KBK Wealth Connection, a firm dedicated to helping financial-services professionals and their clients.
“It doesn’t work to randomly roll the dice and hope the child will grow into the responsibility,” says Nathan Dungan, a wealth coach. “It takes time, patience and persistence.”
Kingsbury suggests asking parents, “What are the top three financial messages you want to pass down to your children?” and “What would you like to do differently or the same as your own parents did?”
Most advisers suggest starting young, to establish values. Dungan, for example, recommended that his clients give their 8-year old daughter a weekly allowance equal to her age—$2 to share, $2 to save and $4 to spend—with suggestions on how each portion could be used. Her $4 could be used for buying movie tickets or helping to pay for a classmate’s birthday present. Some of her savings could go toward buying something big like a bike, so she could gain a sense of ownership. He recommended that the parents request that the child discuss with the entire family how she would donate the money put aside “to share.”
Teaching very young kids, even as young as five, can be as simple as giving them $5 or $10 at the movies and asking them to think about what they can buy, says Kol Birke, financial-behavior specialist at Commonwealth Financial in Waltham, Mass. If they only buy candy and no drink, they will be thirsty for the next two hours. “That’s an instant valuable lesson about money management skills,” he says.
As kids get a bit older, parents can be honest about their own money mistakes, Birke says. They can talk about how it was a good decision to spend money on a fun family vacation because it gave them good memories—and a not-so-good decision to buy a fancier car than they needed.
To get 7- or 8-year-olds used to the idea of saving and investing, Birke suggests that parents give them demonstrations in how money can grow. Take a chunk of the child’s allowance—25% to 30%—and keep it in an account, he says. If the child manages not to touch the money for one year, parents can promise to match it.
Then at about 13, parents can open a small investment account so their kids can start to pick and trade stocks, Birke says. The key is to make sure kids aren’t embarrassed about a loss, but feel comfortable talking about it.
Advisers also agree that children should not be allowed to conclude that they will have full access to their parents’ money. “They have to work for it,” says Bill Van Dresser, managing director at Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust. “Some would call that tough love, but it’s actually smart love.”
Article 2 of 2
Teaching Rich Kids How to Save
Click green for further info
Teaching kids how to be financially competent is tough for any parent — but it’s tougher for the wealthy.
When their kids want something, rich parents can’t simply say “we can’t afford it” — particularly not if they live in a 20,000 square-foot home and fly private for the holidays. Encouraging kids to delay gratification is nearly impossible when they can have anything they want right now.
Most of today’s wealthy grew up middle-class and want to instill the same hard-working, thrifty values in their kids.
So they send their kids to wealth-education camps and private-bank programs designed to teach them how to save and spend. (For the banks, the goal is to keep the kids as clients.) Yet in the end, this job falls on the parents themselves.
In today’s print Journal, my colleague Jonathan Clements has some tips for how parents can make their kids financially savvy. The list isn’t aimed at the wealthy, but I think many of the lessons apply.
Among them:
1. Waiting Until Later. I interviewed a wealthy mom in Palm Beach last year who said her kids came home from school one day and said a kid at school had gotten “an X-Box 360, and a go-cart and a pinball machine.” The mom told her kids they had to wait for a birthday or holiday.
Of course, she could have said “you’ll only get an X-Box and only a year from now.” But all thrift is relative. Mr. Clements taught his kids the lesson by offering them a choice, whenever they went to a restaurant, of either a soda or a $1. The kids “ended up drinking a lot of water” — and, presumably, accumulated a lot of dollars.
2. Talking the Talk. Stories of hard times in the family, Mr. Clements says, help keep kids grounded. That’s especially powerful for today’s boot-strapping rich, who rose up from the middle or lower-middle classes. One kid I interviewed recently loved to tell the story of how her billionaire dad had to strap tires on his feet during his first job in California because he couldn’t afford shoes. That story stuck with her.
3. Scoffing at Wealth. This one’s a little tricky for the rich — it’s tough to make fun of opulence when you’re a multi-millionaire. Yet it’s useful, as Mr. Clements mentions, to talk about other wealthy families who squandered their hard-earned wealth on excess spending and were eventually left with little but memories. The words “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” should be posted above every door of every rich household as a warning.
4. Setting Expectations. Mr. Clements says he plans to pay his kids’ college tuition, give $5,000 toward a wedding, help with a down-payment for a house and leave the kids some money for retirement. This shows “where I think my financial responsibility ends and where theirs will begin.”
For the rich, it’s especially important to be clear with the kids at an early age what they are — or aren’t — going to inherit. Some parents say they don’t want to spoil their kids by telling them they will receive millions of dollars. But wealthy kids assume they’re going to get a bundle anyway — maybe even more than they actually will receive. So best to tell them. And if the wealthy are worried that the news of an unearned windfall will spoil their kids and ruin their lives, best not to leave it to them.
________________________________
Guess What, Kiddo? You’re Rich
By Ruthie Ackerman
Everett Collection
Most ultra-wealthy families don’t discuss the family fortune with their kids until they are adults. That’s a mistake, advisers say.
Although kids generally realize that their families are rich from a young age, parents too often miss the chance to teach them critical financial lessons, which can begin as early as five years old.
According to a study by SEI Private Wealth Management of more than 100 individuals from families with more than $20 million in assets, only a third of wealthy parents have discussed their wealth and its implications with their children before the age of 21.
Parents have difficulty talking to their kids about taboo subjects, like money, and their children don’t necessarily want to mention that dad has his own airplane and other kids’ parents don’t. Advisers can help bring down the communication barrier or help navigate this tricky discussion.
Advisers agree that there is no right age to tell children how much the family owns or the size of their likely inheritance. Some 16-year-olds can handle that discussion, and others can’t. But parents tend to need a nudge before they’ll pick their moment.
“It is important not to wait until the kids are in their 30s or 40s and are not prepared at all to receive the wealth,” says wealth psychology expert Kathleen Kingsbury, founder of KBK Wealth Connection, a firm dedicated to helping financial-services professionals and their clients.
“It doesn’t work to randomly roll the dice and hope the child will grow into the responsibility,” says Nathan Dungan, a wealth coach. “It takes time, patience and persistence.”
Kingsbury suggests asking parents, “What are the top three financial messages you want to pass down to your children?” and “What would you like to do differently or the same as your own parents did?”
Most advisers suggest starting young, to establish values. Dungan, for example, recommended that his clients give their 8-year old daughter a weekly allowance equal to her age—$2 to share, $2 to save and $4 to spend—with suggestions on how each portion could be used. Her $4 could be used for buying movie tickets or helping to pay for a classmate’s birthday present. Some of her savings could go toward buying something big like a bike, so she could gain a sense of ownership. He recommended that the parents request that the child discuss with the entire family how she would donate the money put aside “to share.”
Teaching very young kids, even as young as five, can be as simple as giving them $5 or $10 at the movies and asking them to think about what they can buy, says Kol Birke, financial-behavior specialist at Commonwealth Financial in Waltham, Mass. If they only buy candy and no drink, they will be thirsty for the next two hours. “That’s an instant valuable lesson about money management skills,” he says.
As kids get a bit older, parents can be honest about their own money mistakes, Birke says. They can talk about how it was a good decision to spend money on a fun family vacation because it gave them good memories—and a not-so-good decision to buy a fancier car than they needed.
To get 7- or 8-year-olds used to the idea of saving and investing, Birke suggests that parents give them demonstrations in how money can grow. Take a chunk of the child’s allowance—25% to 30%—and keep it in an account, he says. If the child manages not to touch the money for one year, parents can promise to match it.
Then at about 13, parents can open a small investment account so their kids can start to pick and trade stocks, Birke says. The key is to make sure kids aren’t embarrassed about a loss, but feel comfortable talking about it.
Advisers also agree that children should not be allowed to conclude that they will have full access to their parents’ money. “They have to work for it,” says Bill Van Dresser, managing director at Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust. “Some would call that tough love, but it’s actually smart love.”
Article 2 of 2
Teaching Rich Kids How to Save
Click green for further info
Teaching kids how to be financially competent is tough for any parent — but it’s tougher for the wealthy.
When their kids want something, rich parents can’t simply say “we can’t afford it” — particularly not if they live in a 20,000 square-foot home and fly private for the holidays. Encouraging kids to delay gratification is nearly impossible when they can have anything they want right now.
Most of today’s wealthy grew up middle-class and want to instill the same hard-working, thrifty values in their kids.
So they send their kids to wealth-education camps and private-bank programs designed to teach them how to save and spend. (For the banks, the goal is to keep the kids as clients.) Yet in the end, this job falls on the parents themselves.
In today’s print Journal, my colleague Jonathan Clements has some tips for how parents can make their kids financially savvy. The list isn’t aimed at the wealthy, but I think many of the lessons apply.
Among them:
1. Waiting Until Later. I interviewed a wealthy mom in Palm Beach last year who said her kids came home from school one day and said a kid at school had gotten “an X-Box 360, and a go-cart and a pinball machine.” The mom told her kids they had to wait for a birthday or holiday.
Of course, she could have said “you’ll only get an X-Box and only a year from now.” But all thrift is relative. Mr. Clements taught his kids the lesson by offering them a choice, whenever they went to a restaurant, of either a soda or a $1. The kids “ended up drinking a lot of water” — and, presumably, accumulated a lot of dollars.
2. Talking the Talk. Stories of hard times in the family, Mr. Clements says, help keep kids grounded. That’s especially powerful for today’s boot-strapping rich, who rose up from the middle or lower-middle classes. One kid I interviewed recently loved to tell the story of how her billionaire dad had to strap tires on his feet during his first job in California because he couldn’t afford shoes. That story stuck with her.
3. Scoffing at Wealth. This one’s a little tricky for the rich — it’s tough to make fun of opulence when you’re a multi-millionaire. Yet it’s useful, as Mr. Clements mentions, to talk about other wealthy families who squandered their hard-earned wealth on excess spending and were eventually left with little but memories. The words “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations” should be posted above every door of every rich household as a warning.
4. Setting Expectations. Mr. Clements says he plans to pay his kids’ college tuition, give $5,000 toward a wedding, help with a down-payment for a house and leave the kids some money for retirement. This shows “where I think my financial responsibility ends and where theirs will begin.”
For the rich, it’s especially important to be clear with the kids at an early age what they are — or aren’t — going to inherit. Some parents say they don’t want to spoil their kids by telling them they will receive millions of dollars. But wealthy kids assume they’re going to get a bundle anyway — maybe even more than they actually will receive. So best to tell them. And if the wealthy are worried that the news of an unearned windfall will spoil their kids and ruin their lives, best not to leave it to them.
________________________________
N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers
N.S.A. = The National Security Agency
Date January 2014
No Domestic Use Seen
Click green for further info
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.
The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.
The N.S.A. calls its efforts more an act of “active defense” against foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, often at the presidential level.
Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”
“What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” said James Andrew Lewis, the cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”
For additional information in this topic click:
_________________________________
N.S.A. = The National Security Agency
Date January 2014
No Domestic Use Seen
Click green for further info
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency has implanted software in nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the United States to conduct surveillance on those machines and can also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks.
While most of the software is inserted by gaining access to computer networks, the N.S.A. has increasingly made use of a secret technology that enables it to enter and alter data in computers even if they are not connected to the Internet, according to N.S.A. documents, computer experts and American officials.
The technology, which the agency has used since at least 2008, relies on a covert channel of radio waves that can be transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards inserted surreptitiously into the computers. In some cases, they are sent to a briefcase-size relay station that intelligence agencies can set up miles away from the target.
The radio frequency technology has helped solve one of the biggest problems facing American intelligence agencies for years: getting into computers that adversaries, and some American partners, have tried to make impervious to spying or cyberattack. In most cases, the radio frequency hardware must be physically inserted by a spy, a manufacturer or an unwitting user.
The N.S.A. calls its efforts more an act of “active defense” against foreign cyberattacks than a tool to go on the offensive. But when Chinese attackers place similar software on the computer systems of American companies or government agencies, American officials have protested, often at the presidential level.
Among the most frequent targets of the N.S.A. and its Pentagon partner, United States Cyber Command, have been units of the Chinese Army, which the United States has accused of launching regular digital probes and attacks on American industrial and military targets, usually to steal secrets or intellectual property. But the program, code-named Quantum, has also been successful in inserting software into Russian military networks and systems used by the Mexican police and drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, according to officials and an N.S.A. map that indicates sites of what the agency calls “computer network exploitation.”
“What’s new here is the scale and the sophistication of the intelligence agency’s ability to get into computers and networks to which no one has ever had access before,” said James Andrew Lewis, the cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Some of these capabilities have been around for a while, but the combination of learning how to penetrate systems to insert software and learning how to do that using radio frequencies has given the U.S. a window it’s never had before.”
For additional information in this topic click:
- NSA Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers
New York Times - If the link has expired, search with the green title the web or search with the title The New York Times website - publishing date: 1/15/14
The agency has put software in thousands of computers that allows for surveillance and can ... N.S.A. Devises Radio Pathway Into Computers .... The New York Times withheld some of those details, at the request of American ...
_________________________________
Plenty of valuable information for anyone
renting or buying anywhere
TIPS FOR RENTING A NYC APARTMENT FROM AFAR
Same tips are valid for renting in any location
afar = from, at, or to a great distance
I thought I knew everything about renting a New York City apartment. After all, I’d written about real estate for years and moved apartments with my family four times in the last 10 years.
Then my husband got a job in Arizona and we not only left the city, we left the rental game, too. Twelve months later, when we decided that cacti and coyotes were not for us, we found ourselves in the stressful position of having to quickly find an apartment from afar.
Luckily, the building we lived in before we moved was part of a "chain" of luxury rentals and we knew that the management company was used to dealing with long-distance/international tenants.
Still, it took about six weekends of active web surfing, calling buildings, and calling friends of friends to see if anyone knew of available apartments in one of these buildings before we found the cozy two-bedroom we eventually leased sight unseen.
And, while this story has a happy ending (we love the cozy two bedroom), here are a few things to know about renting a NYC apartment long-distance, whether that long-distance location is Westchester or Wyoming.
1. Make a list of wants -- and be prepared to make some concessions. As with any move, you should make a list of priorities—general things like views and bedroom size. Then research rental property managers. You’ll need to call the leasing agent at the buildings you’re interested in to make sure they’re going to be okay renting to you without meeting you first. It's often case by case, though management companies will sometimes have a policy across buildings.
If you’re totally new to New York City and don’t know neighborhoods, visit New York magazine’s Best Places to Live series, research neighborhoods on StreetEasy.com (by simply typing the name into the search field) and search on BrickUnderground, especially our Confessions of a Neighborhood Blogger and Transitions series.
2. Read Yelp reviews. Search by name of building, address, and management company. Sure, a lot of these posts are written by PO’ed tenants, but if you’re seeing repeated complaints about loud noises from a local firehouse or construction site, take this seriously. Or, if you’re reading that the walls in a particular building are thin, the management company is predatory, it’s a revolving door of tenants, that’s important to know.
Tip: If you’re interested in a smaller building that isn’t listed on Yelp, look up the management company that owns it and see if there are any complaints. You should also plug the address of any building you're considering into the Bed Bug Registry and look up the building's complaint and violation history on the website of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
3. Spend time reading neighborhood blogs to get a sense of what’s going on in the neighborhood. You may have always dreamed of living in a certain part of town but if a recent issue has cropped up that has locals up in arms (e.g. ongoing Second Avenue Subway construction), you’ll want to know about it.
4. Don't take a property manager/leasing agent/broker's word for it. Don’t believe it if an agent says there’s no noise from a big project like the Second Avenue subway. Check into it by calling a nearby restaurant or shop to see how loud it actually is on the block.
5. Ask a NYC-based friend to do a few building walk-bys. He/she can report back to you and let you know if there are regular loiterers on the stoop or if people congregate there to smoke.
Don't know anyone in New York yet? Hire a Task Rabbit to do it for you.He/she should also check to see if the building matches your demo--for instance, you have kids but there are no kids coming out of the building or you’re a young professional and everyone seems to be over 60.
6. Urge a local friend to do an apartment walk-through. You may be told that the bedrooms have no view, but a trusted friend can tell you (and send you photographic proof) whether that means you’ll face a wall, a massive AC unit, barbed wire or all of the above and you have to decide if you can live with any of this.
FYI: Your friend may have to sign a document saying that she isn’t vouching for the apartment on your behalf and that you are the ultimate decision maker. This protects the management company just in case you walk in and freak out.
7: Be sure you’re told exactly what your monthly "nut" will be. Don’t assume your monthly rent is all you’ll have to pay. Necessities like heat and hot water aren’t always included in the monthly rent, so be sure to ask the broker or leasing manager exactly what’s included. Things like sewer fees and water charges aren’t just for apartment owners and these "extras" will factor into whether you can afford a place (or not). Also, remember that you'll have to pay a security deposit (usually one month's rent, plus first -- and maybe last -- month's rent and probably a broker fee, all up front).
8. Don’t assume your furniture will fit. Before you pay to ship all of your stuff, insist on getting precise room-by-room measurements, including hallway space (a tricky problem in older buildings where hallways are narrow). If your couch is going to hit a wall when you try to exit it out of the elevator, it could get stuck. This is not insurmountable as there is an entire cottage industry of businesses that will disassemble your furniture on the spot and put it back together again when it's inside your apartment--but it will cost you a few hundred bucks.
9: Heed the square footage. Ask if the quoted square footage on the apartment includes a long hallway or closets. For example, a smaller square footage may seem larger than it appears on paper if you don’t have a long hallway padding that square footage. Ask for specific measurements for each room, especially bedrooms, since you’ll need that before you order that luxurious king-sized bed.
10. Ask the management company to help out. See how open the management company is to making your relocation smooth. In other words, ask if they’ll accept your boxes/mail before you’re on-site to receive them, will they let certain deliveries take place before you arrive, etc.
11. Ask them to define move-in ready. Since you won’t be on-the-premises to walk through an apartment before you’ve signed for it, ask for a detailed list of what will be cleaned and ready upon move-in.
12. Be overly prepared with paperwork. You have to be ready to jump on an available apartment when you’re moving from down the street, but you have to be one step ahead of everyone else when you’re vying for an apartment from afar. Make sure your paperwork is in order and then get ready to jump in.
Related posts:
Click green title to read the article:
How to Rent a NYC Apartment
What I learned in 7 years, 5 apartments and 9 roommates
Moving to NYC? Here's a crash course in finding an apartment here
3 high-tech ways to make your moving process easier (and cheaper)
How to negotiate with a NYC mover: 7 tips that may save you bigtime
Source:
BrickUnderground | New York City Real Estate Survivalbrickunderground.com/
2 days ago -http://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2013/12/2014_real_estate_forecast .... Get more real estate news you can use from BrickUnderground.
Click green for further info:
Rent Price Check Rental Edition: Here's What You Can Rent Across ...
About Us Advertise With Us. Download our Media Kit · Download our Rate ...
How to Buy a NYC Apartment The first step in the NYC buying process is to decide if you are ...
How to Rent a NYC Apartment Brick Underground's guide to How to rent a NYC Apartment ...
Pages Skip to main content. BrickUnderground. Search form ...
Renter's Survival Kit Everything you need to know about renter's insurance .... The ...
More results from brickunderground.com »
______________________________________________
renting or buying anywhere
TIPS FOR RENTING A NYC APARTMENT FROM AFAR
Same tips are valid for renting in any location
afar = from, at, or to a great distance
I thought I knew everything about renting a New York City apartment. After all, I’d written about real estate for years and moved apartments with my family four times in the last 10 years.
Then my husband got a job in Arizona and we not only left the city, we left the rental game, too. Twelve months later, when we decided that cacti and coyotes were not for us, we found ourselves in the stressful position of having to quickly find an apartment from afar.
Luckily, the building we lived in before we moved was part of a "chain" of luxury rentals and we knew that the management company was used to dealing with long-distance/international tenants.
Still, it took about six weekends of active web surfing, calling buildings, and calling friends of friends to see if anyone knew of available apartments in one of these buildings before we found the cozy two-bedroom we eventually leased sight unseen.
And, while this story has a happy ending (we love the cozy two bedroom), here are a few things to know about renting a NYC apartment long-distance, whether that long-distance location is Westchester or Wyoming.
1. Make a list of wants -- and be prepared to make some concessions. As with any move, you should make a list of priorities—general things like views and bedroom size. Then research rental property managers. You’ll need to call the leasing agent at the buildings you’re interested in to make sure they’re going to be okay renting to you without meeting you first. It's often case by case, though management companies will sometimes have a policy across buildings.
If you’re totally new to New York City and don’t know neighborhoods, visit New York magazine’s Best Places to Live series, research neighborhoods on StreetEasy.com (by simply typing the name into the search field) and search on BrickUnderground, especially our Confessions of a Neighborhood Blogger and Transitions series.
2. Read Yelp reviews. Search by name of building, address, and management company. Sure, a lot of these posts are written by PO’ed tenants, but if you’re seeing repeated complaints about loud noises from a local firehouse or construction site, take this seriously. Or, if you’re reading that the walls in a particular building are thin, the management company is predatory, it’s a revolving door of tenants, that’s important to know.
Tip: If you’re interested in a smaller building that isn’t listed on Yelp, look up the management company that owns it and see if there are any complaints. You should also plug the address of any building you're considering into the Bed Bug Registry and look up the building's complaint and violation history on the website of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
3. Spend time reading neighborhood blogs to get a sense of what’s going on in the neighborhood. You may have always dreamed of living in a certain part of town but if a recent issue has cropped up that has locals up in arms (e.g. ongoing Second Avenue Subway construction), you’ll want to know about it.
4. Don't take a property manager/leasing agent/broker's word for it. Don’t believe it if an agent says there’s no noise from a big project like the Second Avenue subway. Check into it by calling a nearby restaurant or shop to see how loud it actually is on the block.
5. Ask a NYC-based friend to do a few building walk-bys. He/she can report back to you and let you know if there are regular loiterers on the stoop or if people congregate there to smoke.
Don't know anyone in New York yet? Hire a Task Rabbit to do it for you.He/she should also check to see if the building matches your demo--for instance, you have kids but there are no kids coming out of the building or you’re a young professional and everyone seems to be over 60.
6. Urge a local friend to do an apartment walk-through. You may be told that the bedrooms have no view, but a trusted friend can tell you (and send you photographic proof) whether that means you’ll face a wall, a massive AC unit, barbed wire or all of the above and you have to decide if you can live with any of this.
FYI: Your friend may have to sign a document saying that she isn’t vouching for the apartment on your behalf and that you are the ultimate decision maker. This protects the management company just in case you walk in and freak out.
7: Be sure you’re told exactly what your monthly "nut" will be. Don’t assume your monthly rent is all you’ll have to pay. Necessities like heat and hot water aren’t always included in the monthly rent, so be sure to ask the broker or leasing manager exactly what’s included. Things like sewer fees and water charges aren’t just for apartment owners and these "extras" will factor into whether you can afford a place (or not). Also, remember that you'll have to pay a security deposit (usually one month's rent, plus first -- and maybe last -- month's rent and probably a broker fee, all up front).
8. Don’t assume your furniture will fit. Before you pay to ship all of your stuff, insist on getting precise room-by-room measurements, including hallway space (a tricky problem in older buildings where hallways are narrow). If your couch is going to hit a wall when you try to exit it out of the elevator, it could get stuck. This is not insurmountable as there is an entire cottage industry of businesses that will disassemble your furniture on the spot and put it back together again when it's inside your apartment--but it will cost you a few hundred bucks.
9: Heed the square footage. Ask if the quoted square footage on the apartment includes a long hallway or closets. For example, a smaller square footage may seem larger than it appears on paper if you don’t have a long hallway padding that square footage. Ask for specific measurements for each room, especially bedrooms, since you’ll need that before you order that luxurious king-sized bed.
10. Ask the management company to help out. See how open the management company is to making your relocation smooth. In other words, ask if they’ll accept your boxes/mail before you’re on-site to receive them, will they let certain deliveries take place before you arrive, etc.
11. Ask them to define move-in ready. Since you won’t be on-the-premises to walk through an apartment before you’ve signed for it, ask for a detailed list of what will be cleaned and ready upon move-in.
12. Be overly prepared with paperwork. You have to be ready to jump on an available apartment when you’re moving from down the street, but you have to be one step ahead of everyone else when you’re vying for an apartment from afar. Make sure your paperwork is in order and then get ready to jump in.
Related posts:
Click green title to read the article:
How to Rent a NYC Apartment
What I learned in 7 years, 5 apartments and 9 roommates
Moving to NYC? Here's a crash course in finding an apartment here
3 high-tech ways to make your moving process easier (and cheaper)
How to negotiate with a NYC mover: 7 tips that may save you bigtime
Source:
BrickUnderground | New York City Real Estate Survivalbrickunderground.com/
2 days ago -http://www.brickunderground.com/blog/2013/12/2014_real_estate_forecast .... Get more real estate news you can use from BrickUnderground.
Click green for further info:
Rent Price Check Rental Edition: Here's What You Can Rent Across ...
About Us Advertise With Us. Download our Media Kit · Download our Rate ...
How to Buy a NYC Apartment The first step in the NYC buying process is to decide if you are ...
How to Rent a NYC Apartment Brick Underground's guide to How to rent a NYC Apartment ...
Pages Skip to main content. BrickUnderground. Search form ...
Renter's Survival Kit Everything you need to know about renter's insurance .... The ...
More results from brickunderground.com »
______________________________________________
The Story-Treasure
Thousands of selected & dated article-gems of interest
handling different local, nationwide & worldwide topics
Health & Sickness topics
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition topics
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
The treasure starts here
__________________________________________
Thousands of selected & dated article-gems of interest
handling different local, nationwide & worldwide topics
Health & Sickness topics
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition topics
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
The treasure starts here
__________________________________________
Article topics - Several different listings
Each listing has its own instructions how to connect to the articles
Some listings you click the colored title and it connects directly
Some listings you need to copy the article title, search the web with that title & click on the web the link that matches your article title info
______________________
This first part below is a free service provided by the Mayo Clinic
Click: Mayo Clinic - Mayo Clinicwww.mayoclinic.org/
Click green to connect:
Diseases and Conditions - Mayo Clinic
www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions Mayo Clinic
Comprehensive guides on hundreds of conditions
Find a disease by its first letter
Click green to connect:
Symptoms
Symptom Checker
__________________________________________________________
The information next below is a free service provided by these 4 organizations:
(1) MedlinePlus
Web: click: MedlinePlus - Health Information from the National Library of Medicinewww.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/
Health information from the National Library of Medicine. Easy access to Medline and Health topics, medical dictionaries, directories and publications.
(2) U.S. National Library of Medicine
Web: click: U.S. National Library of Medicine - National Institutes of Healthwww.nlm.nih.gov/.
(3) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Web: click: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The United States government's principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. HHS Careers - About HHS - Hipaa - Grants/Funding
(4) National Institutes of Health
Web: click: National Institutes of Health (NIH)www.nih.gov/
Official website of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). NIH is one of the world's foremost medical research centers.
An agency of the U.S. Department of Health ...
_______________________________
List of selected, dated articles, thousands of them, starts here:
Below several different listings
Each listing has their own instructions how to connect to the articles
Instructions
for the first listing "New on the MedlinePlus"
(1) Copy below from the list the green article title (2) search the web with that title (most likely up come several links with the same title) (3) click the web link matching the list info below (a) date & title info (b) that the web link belongs to one of the four organizations listed above or has "HealthDay News" mentioned
(1)
New on the MedlinePlus
In this listing: copy the green title below, search the web with that title, several links may come up, click the one that matches with the title info on this list below and the one that has "HealhtDay News" mentioned - then you are connected to the article
Whites More Likely to Undergo Weight-Loss Surgery
01/08/2014 02:00 PM EST
Researcher says blacks don't seem to feel obesity affects their quality of life as much as whites do
(2)
New on the MedlinePlus Obesity in Children page:
Study Spots Growing Disparity in U.S. Teen Obesity Problem
01/13/2014 02:00 PM EST
Rates decline among kids in more educated, affluent families, while they rise in lower-income homes
(3)
Fitness in Teen Years May Guard Against Heart Trouble Later
01/08/2014 09:00 AM EST
Swedish study found link between aerobic fitness at 18 and lowered heart attack risk in middle age
(4)
New on the MedlinePlus Complementary and Alternative Medicine page:
Alternative Therapies Widely Used for Autism
01/14/2014 09:00 AM EST
(5)\New on the MedlinePlus Obesity page: Treating Obesity As a Disease
01/12/2014 01:20 PM EST
Source: American Heart Association
Obesity and Stroke: What Is Their Connection?
01/12/2014 01:20 PM EST
Source: American Heart Association
(6) New on the MedlinePlus Dietary Supplements page:
Probiotic Drops Might Ease Colic
01/13/2014 04:00 PM EST
But more research is needed to assess any other effects on newborns, experts say
(7)
New on the MedlinePlus Teen Violence page:
School Violence and ER Visits
01/13/2014 09:29 AM EST
Source: HealthDay -
Assaults At Schools Send 90,000 Kids to ER Each Year
01/13/2014 09:00 AM EST
Number of intentional injuries is 'concerningly high,' researcher says
(8)New on the MedlinePlus Infant and Newborn Nutrition page:
Health Tip: Is Your Baby Eating Enough?
01/08/2014 07:00 AM EST
Here are potential signs of malnutrition
(9)
New on the MedlinePlus Sexually Transmitted Diseases page:
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance, 2012: Chlamydia
01/13/2014 07:49 PM EST
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
2012 Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance
01/13/2014 07:49 PM EST
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(10)New on the MedlinePlus Breastfeeding page:
Breast-Feeding Might Reduce Moms' Odds of Rheumatoid Arthritis
01/07/2014 09:00 AM EST
Study in China finds risk cut nearly in half after nursing
(11)
New on the MedlinePlus Mental Health page:
Children and Life Satisfaction
01/14/2014 09:42 AM EST
Source: HealthDay -
Parenthood for All? You've Got to Be Kid-Ding, Many Say
01/13/2014 04:00 PM EST
Study finds no big difference in satisfaction levels between those who have children and those who don't
(12)
New on the MedlinePlus Child Nutrition page:
Marketing of Unhealthy Foods Still Common in U.S. Schools
01/13/2014 04:00 PM EST
Vending machines, soda-company contracts push high-calorie fare at kids, researchers say
(13)New on the MedlinePlus Nutrition page:
Labeling Food with 'Stop' or 'Go' Colors Might Spur Healthier Diet
01/07/2014
Cafeteria items marked green for healthy or red for junk food led to shift in buying habits, study found
(14)
New on the MedlinePlus HPV page:
Protect Your Daughters from Cervical Cancer
01/13/2014 09:10 PM EST
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Cervical Cancer: The Preventable Gynecologic Cancer
01/13/2014 07:50 PM EST
(15)
New on the MedlinePlus Caffeine page:
Your Daily Coffee Just Might Jolt Your Memory
t0 jolt = push, make more energetic (article is placed in blog, above)
New study suggests caffeine not only wakes you up, but also may aid your recall
A dose of at least 200 mg of caffeine was needed to enhance memory consolidation, the researchers said.
(16)
Parent's Guide to Teen Parties
(17)
New on the MedlinePlus Food Safety page:
Health Tip: Food Safety During a Power Outage
Avoid opening refrigerator or freezer doors
(18)
New on the MedlinePlus Syphilis page:
Sexually Transmitted Diseases Surveillance, 2012: Syphilis
01/13/2014 09:10 PM EST
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(19)
New on the MedlinePlus Genital Herpes page:
Genital Herpes
01/07/2014 12:20 PM EST
Source: Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women's Health(20)
(20)
01/13/2014 09:10 PM EST
Trichomoniasis - STD information from CDCwww.cdc.gov/std/trichomonas/
Sep 5, 2013 - Trichomoniasis - STD information from CDC. Fact Sheets, Statistics, Treatment Guidelines, Resources for Clinicians and Educators.STD Facts - Trichomoniasis - Trichomoniasis Treatment - Facts & Brochures
Trichomoniasis = an infection caused by parasitic trichomonads, chiefly affecting the urinary tract, vagina, or digestive system.
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(21)
(21)
New on the MedlinePlus Suicide page:
Kids' Suicide Risk Similar for All Newer Antidepressants
01/07/2014 09:00 AM EST
Children had roughly the same risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, regardless of drug they were taking
(22)New on the MedlinePlus Occupational Health page:
Veteran Firefighters May Develop Heat Resistance
Study counters argument that aging impairs ability to combat flames
(23)
RESTRICTIONS ON RELIGION
Religious Hostilities Reach Six-Year High
The share of countries with a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion reached a six-year peak in 2012, according to a new Pew Research study. A third (33%) of the 198 countries and territories included in the study had high religious hostilities in 2012, up from 29% in 2011 and 20% as of mid-2007.
READ MORE >>
FACT TANK
Q&A With Author of U. Mich. Study on Preferred Dress for Women in Muslim Countries
A Fact Tank post last week looked at survey findings from the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research in seven Muslim-majority countries about preferences for women’s style of dress. Fact Tank went back to the researchers and asked them to share more data and to talk about their methods and their findings.
READ MORE >>
MEDIA MENTIONS
JAN. 14, 2014 - REUTERS
(24)
New on the MedlinePlus Alcohol page:
Alcohol, Middle Age and Memory
01/16/2014
(25)
New on the MedlinePlus Health Facilities page:
Racial Disparities in Deaths After Heart Surgery Tied to Hospital Quality
01/08/2014
Nonwhites have less access than whites to high-quality hospitals, researchers say
(26)
New on the MedlinePlus Assisted Living page:
VA Program Reduces MRSA Germ Cases At Long-Term Care Centers
01/08/2014 ESTMRSA = click also: Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus
MRSA - click also: FAQ's about MRSA - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Study showed simple infection-control measures at 133 facilities were effective
(27)
New on the MedlinePlus Health Statistics page:
Half-Century of Smoking Prevention Extended 8 Million Lives
01/07/2014
But almost one-fifth of Americans still light up
(28)
U.S. Cancer Deaths Decline Again
01/07/2014
Better prevention, screening and treatment are keys to continued progress, experts say
(29)
Americans Living Longer Than Ever: CDC
01/06/2014
A child born in 2009 is expected to reach 78.5 years, but one expert says longer life may not mean better life
(30)
New on the MedlinePlus Teen Sexual Health page:
20 Percent of Seventh Graders Have 'Sexted'
01/06/2014
And they were more likely to have engaged in some type of sexual behavior, study says
(31)
New on the MedlinePlus Palliative Care page:
NIH Makes Palliative Care More Attainable for Pediatric Patients and Their Families
01/08/2014
Source: National Institute of Nursing Research - click: National Institute of Nursing Research - Organization - The NIH ...www.nih.gov
(32)
New on the MedlinePlus Pregnancy and Nutrition page:
Peanut Allergies, Children and Pregnancy
01/08/2014
Source: March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation
(33)
Weight Gain during Pregnancy
01/07/2014 Source: March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation
(34)
New on the MedlinePlus Medicaid page
HHS Srengthens Community Living Options for Older Americans and People with Disabilities
01/10/2014
Source: Department of Health and Human Services - HHS
click:United States Department of Health and Human Services | HHS.govwww.hhs.gov/
The United States government's principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services.Click: HHS Careers
Click: Families HHS - Health and assistance information for families
(35)
New on the MedlinePlus Exercise and Physical Fitness page:
Health Tip: Don't Think of Exercise as a Chore
01/09/2014
(36)
Engage in activities that you enjoy
Source: HealthDay
Physical Activity in U.S. Youth Aged 12-15 Years, 2012
01/08/2014
(37)
Source: National Center for Health Statistics
Just 1 in 4 U.S. Teens Gets Enough Exercise
01/08/2014
Boys slightly more likely than girls to meet hour-a-day recommendation
Source: HealthDay
(38)
Fitness in Teen Years May Guard Against Heart Trouble Later
01/08/2014
Swedish study found link between aerobic fitness at 18 and lowered heart attack risk in middle age
(39)
New on the MedlinePlus Exercise for Children page:
Physical Activity in U.S. Youth Aged 12-15 Years, 2012
01/08/2014
Source: National Center for Health Statistics
CDC - National Center for Health Statisticswww.cdc.gov/nchs/
Jan 8, 2014 - Provides US public health statistics including diseases, pregnancies, births, aging, and mortality. Public use data files are available
(40)
New on the MedlinePlus Healthy Living page:
Cancer Prevention Guidelines Seem to Pay Off for Older Women
01/08/2014 Large study found adherents were less likely to develop or die from disease
(41)
Workplace Wellness Programs Work
01/06/2014
Study found lifestyle-management programs didn't cut health care costs as much as disease management
(42)
New on the MedlinePlus Sports Injuries page:
Ultramarathoners: How's Their Health?
01/08/2014
Researchers launch long-term study of these intense runners
(43)
Venous Thromboembolism and Marathon Athletes
01/07/2014
Source: American Heart Association
American Heart Association - Building healthier lives, free of ...www.heart.org/Learn more about the American Heart Association's efforts to reduce death caused by heart disease and stroke. Also learn about cardiovascular conditions, ECC ...
(44)New on the MedlinePlus Exercise for Children page:
Fitness Basics
01/13/2014 Source: Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women's Health
(45)
Aerobic, Muscle- and Bone-Strengthening: What Counts?
01/13/2014
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(46)
Everyday Ideas to Move More
01/13/2014
Source: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute - click: NIH Heart, Lung and Blood Institute - National Institutes of Health
(47)
New on the MedlinePlus Health Screening page:
Post-Surgical Tests Might Help Spot Colon Cancer's Return
01/14/2014
Study patients who had CEA blood test or CT scan click: CT scan were more likely to undergo follow-up surgery for disease - Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is used as a tumor marker. An elevated or rising CEA level indicates cancer progression or recurrence
Source: HealthDay
(48)
U.S. Panel Urges Diabetes Screening for All Pregnant Women
01/13/2014
Preventive Services Task Force recommends blood sugar test after 24 weeks of pregnancy
Source: HealthDay
(49)
New on the MedlinePlus Exercise and Physical Fitness page:
Ease into A Workout Program to Prevent Injuries
01/12/2014
Doctors give safety tips for weight-lifting and other regimens
Source: HealthDay
(50)
A-Fib Doesn't Mean You're Banished to the Sidelines
Atrial fibrillation (AF or A-fib) is the most common click: cardiac arrhythmia (heart rhythm disorder)
Click: Atrial fibrillation
01/10/2014
For most people with an irregular heartbeat, it's OK to stay active, doctors say
(51)
New on the MedlinePlus Traveler's Health page:
Medical Tourism - Getting Medical Care in Another Country
01/13/2014
(52)
New on the MedlinePlus College Health page
College Students with ADHD
click: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
01/14/2014
Source: American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
(53)
New on the MedlinePlus Sports Safety page:
Ease into A Workout Program to Prevent Injuries
01/12/2014
Doctors give safety tips for weight-lifting and other regimens
(54)
New on the MedlinePlus Healthy Living page:
Experts Urge 'Seismic Shift' in Approach to Better U.S. Health Care
01/15/2014
"Seismic Shift" = change in many areas of life
Improving education, social services can help Americans live longer, healthier lives, panel says
Medicine alone cannot improve the health of the nation -- not when one in five Americans lives in unsafe neighborhoods where pollution, crime and joblessness are prevalent; nutritious food is scarce; and the well-being of young people is at risk, an expert panel reports.
What's needed is a "seismic shift" in the way the nation approaches health care, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Commission to Build a Healthier America.
The panel's exhaustive report urges leaders in public, private, nonprofit and academic settings to work together to address social and environmental factors that impact people's health.
(55)
New on the MedlinePlus Obesity in Children page:
Fast Food Not Major Culprit in Kids' Obesity
01/17/2014
Poor overall dietary habits drive weight problems, experts say
(56)New on the MedlinePlus Obesity page:
Truck Drivers Top List of Overweight Workers
01/16/2014
Survey of Washington state residents also found salespeople, office workers prone to weight gain
Source: HealthDay
(57) Do Diet Drinks Make You Eat More?
01/16/2014
Study finds link between greater calorie consumption and low-calorie beverages in overweight adults
Source: HealthDay
(58) Obesity May Shorten Lives by Almost 4 Years
01/16/2014
And obese middle-aged people die an average of more than 7 years sooner, U.S. statistics show
Source: HealthDay
(59) Media Focus on Obesity May Backfire for Some Women
01/16/2014
Anxiety-provoking obesity 'news' spurred coeds who felt overweight to eat more, study found
Source: HealthDay
(60) As Weight Rises in People with Diabetes, So Does Death Risk
01/15/2014
Notion that obesity might offer protection is a myth, researchers say
Source: HealthDay
New on the MedlinePlus Drug Safety page:
(61) FDA Unit Pursues Illegal Web Pharmacies
01/15/2014
Source: Food and Drug Administration
(62) FDA Warns Against Prescription Drugs with High Levels of Acetaminophen
01/15/2014
Officials say action taken because of reports of severe liver damage from accidental overdoses
New on the MedlinePlus Drinking Water page:
(63) Safety of Bottled Water Beverages Including Flavored Water and Nutrient-Added Water Beverages
01/16/2014
Source: Food and Drug Administration
(64) Quiz: Water and Your Health
01/16/2014
Source: Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women's Health
(65) Treatment of Well Water
01/16/2014
Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
New on the MedlinePlus Weight Loss Surgery page:
(66) Bariatric Surgery and the Endocrine System
01/17/2014
Source: Hormone Health Network
(67) Bariatric Surgery
01/17/2014 New on the MedlinePlus Obesity page:
(68) Truck Drivers Top List of Overweight Workers
01/16/2014
Survey of Washington state residents also found salespeople, office workers prone to weight gain
Source: HealthDay
(69) Do Diet Drinks Make You Eat More?
01/16/2014
Study finds link between greater calorie consumption and low-calorie beverages in overweight adults
Source: HealthDay
(70) Obesity May Shorten Lives by Almost 4 Years
01/16/2014
And obese middle-aged people die an average of more than 7 years sooner, U.S. statistics show
Source: HealthDay
(71) Media Focus on Obesity May Backfire for Some Women
01/16/2014
Anxiety-provoking obesity 'news' spurred coeds who felt overweight to eat more, study found
Source: HealthDay
(72) As Weight Rises in People with Diabetes, So Does Death Risk
01/15/2014
Notion that obesity might offer protection is a myth, researchers say
Source: HealthDay
Source: Hormone Health Network
(73) Weight Loss Surgery (Bariatric Surgery) (For Parents)
01/17/2014
Source: Nemours Foundation click: Nemours Foundation
(74) Bariatric Surgery Misconceptions
Source: American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery
(75) Bariatric Surgery Procedures
01/17/2014
Source: American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery
New on the MedlinePlus Motor Vehicle Safety page:
(76) Walk, but Stay Safe: Tips for Pedestrians
01/19/2014
Use crosswalks, beware at intersections, carry flashlights at night, CDC advises
New on the MedlinePlus Alcohol page:
(77) 'Buzzed' Drivers Who Are Under Legal Limit to Blame in Many Fatal Crashes
01/22/2014
Study of 500,000 lethal U.S. collisions finds no amount of drinking safe before getting behind the wheel
New on the MedlinePlus Gun Safety page:
Firearm Access Alert
(78) New on the MedlinePlus Impaired Driving page:
'Buzzed' Drivers Who Are Under Legal Limit to Blame in Many Fatal Crash
Study of 500,000 lethal U.S. collisions finds no amount of drinking safe before getting behind the whee
(79)New on the MedlinePlus Safety page:
Texting While Walking a Dangerous Combination
01/22/2014
Pedestrians who did both had poorer balance, were less able to walk in straight line, researchers say
(80)New on the MedlinePlus Medicaid page:
More Prisons Helping Inmates Enroll in Medicaid At Release
01/17/2014
With expanded program eligibility, fresh start could include better health care(81) New on the MedlinePlus Child Sexual Abuse page:
Preventing the Sexual Exploitation of Children
01/23/2014
Source: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children - PDF
(82) Tips for Protecting Child Athletes from Sexual Abuse
01/23/2014
Source: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children - PDF - In English and Spanish
(83) Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
01/23/2014
Source: National Center for Missing and Exploited Children - PDF
(84) New on the MedlinePlus Child Safety page: Shopping Carts Can Pose Big Danger to Little Kids 01/23/2014 - Study found one youngster seriously injured in falls, tip-overs every 22 minutes
New on the MedlinePlus Health Facilities page:
(84) Hospital Safety Improves for Heart Patients, Study Finds
01/22/2014
But no drop seen in 'adverse events' for surgical or pneumonia patients
Source: HealthDay
(85) Older Patients May Fare Better in Trauma Centers That Treat More of Their Peers
01/22/2014
Study also found they do worse in hospitals with higher volumes of young patients
Source: HealthDay
(86) Tonsils Talk
01/22/2014
Source: HealthDay -
(87) U.S. Children's Hospitals Vary Widely in Tonsillectomy Care
01/20/2014
Study finds big differences in what medications patients get during and after procedure
Source: HealthDay
(88) New on the MedlinePlus Health Disparities page:
Minority Patients Less Likely to Stick with Heart Attack Meds
01/23/2014
Black, Hispanic women were least compliant (= cooperative) one year out
Source: HealthDay
(89) Wealthier Women More Likely to Use Fertility Services: CDC
01/22/2014
Overall, fewer women are seeking help with getting pregnant than in years past, report shows
(88)
(89)
(90)
(80)
(80)
(80)
(80)
(90)
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Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
TEEN LIFE
- Articles relating to the teen years -
Talking With Your Doctor
Click green title for the article - connects directly
Many Teens Don't Discuss Their Sex Life At Annual Checkup (12/31/2013, HealthDay)
Doctor's View of Hospice Influences Talks with Patients, Study Finds (12/16/2013, HealthDay)
Many Young Americans Know Little about Cervical Cancer Vaccine (12/09/2013, HealthDay)
Many At Risk for Diabetes and Don't Know It, Study Finds (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Tips for Being a Partner in Your Own Care (11/29/2013, HealthDay)
Text Message from Your Heart Doc: 'Take Your Medicine' (11/18/2013, HealthDay)
Hospital Stay May Improve When Doctor Takes Time to Connect (11/06/2013, HealthDay)
Don't Ask, Just Tell Parents When It's Time for Vaccines (11/04/2013, HealthDay)
Medical Interns May Need to Brush Up on Bedside Manners (10/29/2013, HealthDay)
See also Talking With Your Doctor ("See also" means: click this green also, it connects directly to a related article)
Tears Air Pollution Linked to Dry Eye Syndrome in Study (11/19/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tears
Teen Development
Are Teen Brains Hyper-Wired for Rewards? (01/14/2014, HealthDay)
Cinema Concerns (12/09/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Development
Teen Health
Study Spots Growing Disparity in U.S. Teen Obesity Problem
(01/13/2014, HealthDay)
Fitness in Teen Years May Guard Against Heart Trouble Later
(01/08/2014, HealthDay)
Just 1 in 4 U.S. Teens Gets Enough Exercise (01/08/2014, HealthDay)
Teen Drivers Become Distracted Quickly (01/02/2014, HealthDay)
Teen Driving and Dangerous Distractions (01/02/2014, HealthDay)
Health Tip: Teens Need Enough Sleep (12/31/2013, HealthDay)
Why Many U.S. Preteens Aren't Getting the HPV Shot (11/25/2013, HealthDay)
Sports for Teens Are Beneficial -- Up to a Point (11/21/2013, HealthDay)
Teens Who Are Night Owls May Struggle in School (11/14/2013, HealthDay)
Bullies More Likely to Engage in Risky Sex, Study Finds (11/12/2013, HealthDay)
Weight-Loss Surgery Safe for Very Obese Teens, Study Says (11/04/2013, HealthDay)
Obese Teens Eat Up Fast-Food Hype, Study Says (10/29/2013, HealthDay)
Preventing Concussions (10/28/2013, HealthDay)
Fewer Infants Hospitalized for Whooping Cough, Study Finds
(10/21/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Health
Teen Mental Health
Primary Care Providers May Balk At Giving Teens Antidepressants (01/15/2014, HealthDay)
Fear of Being Too Skinny May Put Teen Boys at Risk for Depression, Steroid Use (01/13/2014, American Psychological Association)
Therapy That Confronts Trauma of Sexual Abuse Helped Teen Girls with PTSD (12/24/2013, HealthDay)
More Than 6 Percent of U.S. Teens Take Psychiatric Meds: Survey (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Suicide Try While Young a 'Red Flag' for Lifelong Struggles, Study Finds (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Mental Health Disorders Growing Faster Among Kids Than Adults (11/27/2013, HealthDay)
Teens' Mental Disorders Often Untreated in U.S., Study Finds (11/21/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Mental Health
Teen Sexual Health
20 Percent of Seventh Graders Have 'Sexted' (01/06/2014, HealthDay)
Sexting Leads to Sex? (01/06/2014, HealthDay)
Many Teens Don't Discuss Their Sex Life At Annual Checkup (12/31/2013, HealthDay)
Teens Who 'Sext' Don't Dwell on Consequences (12/19/2013, HealthDay)
Talking Openly with Partner Linked to HIV Testing in Teens (11/26/2013, HealthDay)
Earlier Onset of Periods May Not Mean Earlier Sex (11/11/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Sexual Health
Teen Violence
Assaults At Schools Send 90,000 Kids to ER Each Year (01/13/2014, HealthDay)
School Violence and ER Visits (01/13/2014, HealthDay)
Cinema Concerns (12/09/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Violence
Teenage Pregnancy
U.S. Pregnancy Rates (12/05/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teenage Pregnancy
Thyroid Cancer
Minorities, Poor More Likely to Be Diagnosed with Advanced Thyroid Cancer (01/13/2014, HealthDay)
See also Thyroid Cancer
Tinnitus (= ringing or buzzing in the ears)
New Combo Approach May Ease Severe 'Ringing in The Ears' (12/06/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tinnitus
Toddler Development
Try Talking More to Boost Your Toddler's Vocabulary (10/31/2013, HealthDay)
See also Toddler Development
Toddler Health Keep Your Toddler's Body Clock in Mind At Bedtime (01/03/2014, HealthDay)
See also Toddler Health
Tooth Decay
Fluoride Treatments May Help Fight Cavities (11/01/2013, HealthDay)
Halloween Treats Can Spook Kids' Teeth (10/30/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tooth Decay
Tooth Disorders
Health Tip: Battling Bruxism (11/20/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tooth Disorders
Tourette Syndrome
Insights Gained into Tourette Syndrome (12/20/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tourette Syndrome
Tracheal*) Disorders
The trachea, or windpipe, is one part of our airway system
First Windpipe Transplant Holding Up Over Time: Report (10/23/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tracheal Disorders
Traumatic Brain Injury
Brain Injuries May Raise Risk of Early Death (01/15/2014, HealthDay)
Pop Songs May Awaken Fond Memories for Brain-Damaged Patients (12/19/2013, HealthDay)
Brain Injuries Tied to PTSD in Marines (12/11/2013, HealthDay)
Even Mild Blast Injuries Tied to Long-Term Brain Changes in Vets (12/02/2013, HealthDay)
Alzheimer'S-Like Plaque Seen on Brain Scans After Head Trauma (11/11/2013, HealthDay)
See also Traumatic Brain Injury
Traveler's Health
Medical Tourism - Getting Medical Care in Another Country (01/13/2014, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics (12/09/2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Health Tip: Traveling for the Holidays with Diabetes (12/06/2013, HealthDay)
See also Traveler's Health
Tuberculosis
Could Stem Cells Cure Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis? (01/09/2014, HealthDay)
TB Vaccine May Work Against Multiple Sclerosis (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tuberculosis
Twins, Triplets, Multiple Birth sFertility Treatments Behind High Rates of Multiple Births: Study (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Health Risks, Costs Much Higher with Multiple Births (11/11/2013, HealthDay)
See also Twins, Triplets, Multiple Births
More articles will be added
Health Topics
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
Read about symptoms, causes, treatment and prevention for over 900 diseases, illnesses, health conditions and wellness issues. MedlinePlus health topics are regularly reviewed, and links are updated daily.
Body Location/Systems
Click green for the article - connects directly
Disorders and Conditions
Diagnosis and Therapy
Demographic Groups
Health and Wellness
More articles will be added
Next below another listing with its own instructions how to connect to the articles ________________________________________________
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
TEEN LIFE
- Articles relating to the teen years -
Talking With Your Doctor
Click green title for the article - connects directly
Many Teens Don't Discuss Their Sex Life At Annual Checkup (12/31/2013, HealthDay)
Doctor's View of Hospice Influences Talks with Patients, Study Finds (12/16/2013, HealthDay)
Many Young Americans Know Little about Cervical Cancer Vaccine (12/09/2013, HealthDay)
Many At Risk for Diabetes and Don't Know It, Study Finds (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Tips for Being a Partner in Your Own Care (11/29/2013, HealthDay)
Text Message from Your Heart Doc: 'Take Your Medicine' (11/18/2013, HealthDay)
Hospital Stay May Improve When Doctor Takes Time to Connect (11/06/2013, HealthDay)
Don't Ask, Just Tell Parents When It's Time for Vaccines (11/04/2013, HealthDay)
Medical Interns May Need to Brush Up on Bedside Manners (10/29/2013, HealthDay)
See also Talking With Your Doctor ("See also" means: click this green also, it connects directly to a related article)
Tears Air Pollution Linked to Dry Eye Syndrome in Study (11/19/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tears
Teen Development
Are Teen Brains Hyper-Wired for Rewards? (01/14/2014, HealthDay)
Cinema Concerns (12/09/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Development
Teen Health
Study Spots Growing Disparity in U.S. Teen Obesity Problem
(01/13/2014, HealthDay)
Fitness in Teen Years May Guard Against Heart Trouble Later
(01/08/2014, HealthDay)
Just 1 in 4 U.S. Teens Gets Enough Exercise (01/08/2014, HealthDay)
Teen Drivers Become Distracted Quickly (01/02/2014, HealthDay)
Teen Driving and Dangerous Distractions (01/02/2014, HealthDay)
Health Tip: Teens Need Enough Sleep (12/31/2013, HealthDay)
Why Many U.S. Preteens Aren't Getting the HPV Shot (11/25/2013, HealthDay)
Sports for Teens Are Beneficial -- Up to a Point (11/21/2013, HealthDay)
Teens Who Are Night Owls May Struggle in School (11/14/2013, HealthDay)
Bullies More Likely to Engage in Risky Sex, Study Finds (11/12/2013, HealthDay)
Weight-Loss Surgery Safe for Very Obese Teens, Study Says (11/04/2013, HealthDay)
Obese Teens Eat Up Fast-Food Hype, Study Says (10/29/2013, HealthDay)
Preventing Concussions (10/28/2013, HealthDay)
Fewer Infants Hospitalized for Whooping Cough, Study Finds
(10/21/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Health
Teen Mental Health
Primary Care Providers May Balk At Giving Teens Antidepressants (01/15/2014, HealthDay)
Fear of Being Too Skinny May Put Teen Boys at Risk for Depression, Steroid Use (01/13/2014, American Psychological Association)
Therapy That Confronts Trauma of Sexual Abuse Helped Teen Girls with PTSD (12/24/2013, HealthDay)
More Than 6 Percent of U.S. Teens Take Psychiatric Meds: Survey (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Suicide Try While Young a 'Red Flag' for Lifelong Struggles, Study Finds (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Mental Health Disorders Growing Faster Among Kids Than Adults (11/27/2013, HealthDay)
Teens' Mental Disorders Often Untreated in U.S., Study Finds (11/21/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Mental Health
Teen Sexual Health
20 Percent of Seventh Graders Have 'Sexted' (01/06/2014, HealthDay)
Sexting Leads to Sex? (01/06/2014, HealthDay)
Many Teens Don't Discuss Their Sex Life At Annual Checkup (12/31/2013, HealthDay)
Teens Who 'Sext' Don't Dwell on Consequences (12/19/2013, HealthDay)
Talking Openly with Partner Linked to HIV Testing in Teens (11/26/2013, HealthDay)
Earlier Onset of Periods May Not Mean Earlier Sex (11/11/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Sexual Health
Teen Violence
Assaults At Schools Send 90,000 Kids to ER Each Year (01/13/2014, HealthDay)
School Violence and ER Visits (01/13/2014, HealthDay)
Cinema Concerns (12/09/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teen Violence
Teenage Pregnancy
U.S. Pregnancy Rates (12/05/2013, HealthDay)
See also Teenage Pregnancy
Thyroid Cancer
Minorities, Poor More Likely to Be Diagnosed with Advanced Thyroid Cancer (01/13/2014, HealthDay)
See also Thyroid Cancer
Tinnitus (= ringing or buzzing in the ears)
New Combo Approach May Ease Severe 'Ringing in The Ears' (12/06/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tinnitus
Toddler Development
Try Talking More to Boost Your Toddler's Vocabulary (10/31/2013, HealthDay)
See also Toddler Development
Toddler Health Keep Your Toddler's Body Clock in Mind At Bedtime (01/03/2014, HealthDay)
See also Toddler Health
Tooth Decay
Fluoride Treatments May Help Fight Cavities (11/01/2013, HealthDay)
Halloween Treats Can Spook Kids' Teeth (10/30/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tooth Decay
Tooth Disorders
Health Tip: Battling Bruxism (11/20/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tooth Disorders
Tourette Syndrome
Insights Gained into Tourette Syndrome (12/20/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tourette Syndrome
Tracheal*) Disorders
The trachea, or windpipe, is one part of our airway system
First Windpipe Transplant Holding Up Over Time: Report (10/23/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tracheal Disorders
Traumatic Brain Injury
Brain Injuries May Raise Risk of Early Death (01/15/2014, HealthDay)
Pop Songs May Awaken Fond Memories for Brain-Damaged Patients (12/19/2013, HealthDay)
Brain Injuries Tied to PTSD in Marines (12/11/2013, HealthDay)
Even Mild Blast Injuries Tied to Long-Term Brain Changes in Vets (12/02/2013, HealthDay)
Alzheimer'S-Like Plaque Seen on Brain Scans After Head Trauma (11/11/2013, HealthDay)
See also Traumatic Brain Injury
Traveler's Health
Medical Tourism - Getting Medical Care in Another Country (01/13/2014, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and Paralympics (12/09/2013, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
Health Tip: Traveling for the Holidays with Diabetes (12/06/2013, HealthDay)
See also Traveler's Health
Tuberculosis
Could Stem Cells Cure Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis? (01/09/2014, HealthDay)
TB Vaccine May Work Against Multiple Sclerosis (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
See also Tuberculosis
Twins, Triplets, Multiple Birth sFertility Treatments Behind High Rates of Multiple Births: Study (12/04/2013, HealthDay)
Health Risks, Costs Much Higher with Multiple Births (11/11/2013, HealthDay)
See also Twins, Triplets, Multiple Births
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Click: Religious groups face increased hostility worldwide - report
Reuters looks at the new Pew Research study of global restrictions on religion from several angles, including the share of countries where religion-related terrorism and sectarian violence occurred in 2012.
YEAR: 2014
Click the green title to get to the article
If the link has expired, copy the title & search the web to find the article
JAN. 11 - THE ECONOMIST
Click: Who is a Jew? Competing answers to an increasingly pressing question
In exploring the question of Jewish identity, The Economist cites findings from the 2013
Click: Pew Research survey of Jewish Americans. About one-in-five American Jews (22%) describe themselves as having no religion.
Click: READ MORE MEDIA MENTIONS >>
RELIGION NEWS - YEAR: 2014
JAN. 16 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vatican comes under sharp criticism for sex abuse
JAN. 15 - CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Chicago archdiocese turns over 6,000 pages on clergy abuse
JAN. 15 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Wanted: a new ambassador-at-large for religious freedom
JAN. 15 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gay marriage rulings in Okla., Utah build momentum
JAN. 14 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Nigeria: Rights chief assails law as roundup of gays begins
JAN. 13 - THE GUARDIAN
Christian counsellors ban therapy aimed at 'converting' gay patients
JAN. 13 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pope with the humble touch is firm in reshaping the Vatican
JAN. 13 - THE INDEPENDENT
Afghan atheist to get asylum in Britain on religious grounds
JAN. 13 - THE WASHINGTON POST
Supreme Court won’t revive Arizona law banning most abortions after 20 weeks
JAN. 13 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
New Mexico judge affirms right to 'aid in dying'
JAN. 12 - REUTERS
Pope's choice of new cardinals puts emphasis on poor
JAN. 12 - THE BOSTON GLOBE
Can the evangelical church embrace gay couples?
JAN. 12 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brawl hurts Berlin Jewish community
JAN. 12 - THE TELEGRAPH
BBC plans Easter spectacle for the non-religious
JAN. 10 - THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Mormon church sends missive to leaders about same-sex marriage
Click: READ MORE RELIGION NEWS >>
JANUARY 23, 2014
RELIGION NEWS
JAN. 23 - REUTERS
Rights group says Muslims massacred in Myanmar amid official denials
JAN. 22 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gay marriages confront Catholic school rules
JAN. 22 - THE WASHINGTON POST
Pentagon clarifies rules on beards, turbans for Muslim and Sikh service members
JAN. 22 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A look at key fighting groups in Syria
JAN. 21 - CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Papers detail decades of sex abuse by priests
JAN. 19 - LOS ANGELES TIMES
New Mexico judge affirms right to 'aid in dying'
JAN. 17 - MCCLATCHY
Priests take the lead in fierce revolt against drug gang in Mexico's Michoacan
JAN. 16 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Judge rules in favor of Muslim woman on no-fly list
JAN. 16 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
U.N. panel questions Vatican on handling of clergy sexual abuse
JAN. 16 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Nigeria's religious leaders welcome controversial anti-gay law
Click: READ MORE RELIGION NEWS >>
FACT TANK
Key Findings About Growing Religious Hostilities Around the World
A new Pew Research Center report on global restrictions on religion found that a third of the 198 countries and territories studied in 2012 had a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion, the highest share in the six years of the study. A Fact Tank post looks at some top findings and also includes a BBC video on the study.
READ MORE >>
Pope Francis Moves Beyond Europe With First Class of Cardinals
Pope Francis named his first group of new cardinals, often called “princes of the church,” earlier this month. Media reports have observed that Francis, the first pope from outside Europe in modern times, chose several cardinals from the developing world, and a Fact Tank post quantifies the geographic origins of the 218 living cardinals.
READ MORE >>
5 Facts About Abortion
Wednesday was the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision establishing a woman’s constitutional right to abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. The March for Life, the annual anti-abortion rally in Washington, also was on Wednesday. Recent Pew Research polling reveals a few key facts about Americans’ views on the issue.
READ MORE >>
MEDIA MENTIONS
JAN. 17 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
This year's March for Life reaches a new group: evangelicals
Religion News Service covers an increased effort by March for Life organizers to reach out to evangelicals. The article points out Pew Research data showing that a majority (54%) of white evangelical Protestants say Roe v. Wade should be completely overturned, and three-quarters of that group (75%) says having an abortion is morally wrong.
JAN. 17 - THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Why religious tensions are spiking around the globe
After citing data from the recent Pew Research study on religious restrictions around the world, The Christian Science Monitor talks to academic experts about possible reasons for increasing social hostilities involving religion.
READ MORE MEDIA MENTIONS >>
JANUARY 27, 2014
Daily Religion Headlines
U.S. HEADLINES
Texas woman is taken off life support after order
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
Kansas considers response to uncertainty on gay marriage
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
South Dakota bills allow refusal to take part in gay wedding
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Religious circumcisions not subject to Pennsylvania oversight
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE*
1925's Scopes trial: Who made a monkey of whom?
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Best Buy commercial points way to greater Muslim acceptance
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Supreme Court blocks contraceptives rule for religious groups
LOS ANGELES TIMES
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
Filipino troops battle hardline Muslim rebels opposed to new peace deal
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Himmler hoard of letters and diaries discovered in Israel
THE GUARDIAN
Tunisia finally passes progressive constitution
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thai police rescue hundreds of Rohingya in raid on suspected traffickers' camp
REUTERS
Priests bring comfort to menacing Kiev protests
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Irish priests' group labels comments about cutting back religious education 'unacceptable'
THE IRISH TIMES
Malaysian church attacked amid Allah dispute
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
The Islamic Republic of Baby-Making
FOREIGN POLICY*
Map: Publicly funded schools that teach creationism
SLATE
Noah's Ark: Round?
THE ATLANTIC
JANUARY 29, 2014
Daily Religion Headlines
U.S. HEADLINES
What's abortifacient? Disputes over birth control fuel Obamacare fight
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
House votes to restrict payments for abortions
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
Indiana House amends proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR*
Scheduled Missouri execution temporarily stayed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Philly DA files appeal of church official's overturned conviction
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER*
Pennsylvania Catholic school fires headmaster after identity revealed
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
N.Y. judge alarms gay parents by finding marriage law negates need for adoption
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
As Sochi Olympics loom, security concerns, antigay law and construction issues dominate
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL*
Central African Republic wants U.N. force as EU troops OKed
REUTERS
Police in Penang, Malaysia, to watch over churches, mosques
NEW STRAITS TIMES
Blasphemy law used against minorities in Pakistan
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Indian Supreme Court won't review gay sex ban
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
Vatican library, Japan institutes to catalogue lost archive of persecuted Christians
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Irish government ordered to compensate victim of abuse at Roman Catholic school
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
My Spanish Inquisition: Can Sephardic Jews go home again?
THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
'God bless America' in presidential speeches has a little-known, uncomfortable beginning
THE HUFFINGTON POST
On compromise and congressional brinkmanship
RELIGION & POLITICS
More articles will be added
JANUARY 30, 2014
Daily Religion Headlines
U.S. HEADLINES
Top brass say they're not aware of bias against military chaplains
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
St. Louis prosecutors seek to ban church members, along with press, from sentencing
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Gay married man says Catholic school rescinded job offer
THE BOSTON GLOBE*
Utah Capitol is arena for dueling rallies over gay marriage
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
LGBT advocate plans to make case for marriage rights before top Navajo court
AL JAZEERA AMERICA
Can Cathy McMorris Rodgers resurrect compassionate conservatism?
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Kansas City religious leaders seek release of federal immigration detainee
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
Near St. Peter's, an ancient burial site opens to the public
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
French peacekeepers struggle to stop religious violence in Central African Republic
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New method makes stem cells in about 30 minutes, scientists report
LOS ANGELES TIMES*
Scarlett Johansson leaves Oxfam after Israeli settlement uproar
REUTERS
Bangladesh sentences 14 to death for arms smuggling, including head of Islamist party
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In South Sudan conflict, churches attacked, looted
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
Is religious ritual simply a product of cultural evolution?
EVOLVING THOUGHTS
Are the roots of Western liberalism found in the idea of moral equality?
FINANCIAL TIMES*
______________________
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
___________________________________________________________
____________
Next another listing
Selected
Political & Religious & Public Life Project
U.S. & International Topics
Articles
Starting YEAR 2014
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
Below, click the green title you'll to get connected to the article
In case the link has expired search the web with the green title
(This web page has several wide article listings - every listing has its own instructions how to connect to the article)
Click: Religious groups face increased hostility worldwide - report
Reuters looks at the new Pew Research study of global restrictions on religion from several angles, including the share of countries where religion-related terrorism and sectarian violence occurred in 2012.
YEAR: 2014
Click the green title to get to the article
If the link has expired, copy the title & search the web to find the article
JAN. 11 - THE ECONOMIST
Click: Who is a Jew? Competing answers to an increasingly pressing question
In exploring the question of Jewish identity, The Economist cites findings from the 2013
Click: Pew Research survey of Jewish Americans. About one-in-five American Jews (22%) describe themselves as having no religion.
Click: READ MORE MEDIA MENTIONS >>
RELIGION NEWS - YEAR: 2014
JAN. 16 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Vatican comes under sharp criticism for sex abuse
JAN. 15 - CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Chicago archdiocese turns over 6,000 pages on clergy abuse
JAN. 15 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Wanted: a new ambassador-at-large for religious freedom
JAN. 15 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gay marriage rulings in Okla., Utah build momentum
JAN. 14 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Nigeria: Rights chief assails law as roundup of gays begins
JAN. 13 - THE GUARDIAN
Christian counsellors ban therapy aimed at 'converting' gay patients
JAN. 13 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Pope with the humble touch is firm in reshaping the Vatican
JAN. 13 - THE INDEPENDENT
Afghan atheist to get asylum in Britain on religious grounds
JAN. 13 - THE WASHINGTON POST
Supreme Court won’t revive Arizona law banning most abortions after 20 weeks
JAN. 13 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
New Mexico judge affirms right to 'aid in dying'
JAN. 12 - REUTERS
Pope's choice of new cardinals puts emphasis on poor
JAN. 12 - THE BOSTON GLOBE
Can the evangelical church embrace gay couples?
JAN. 12 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Brawl hurts Berlin Jewish community
JAN. 12 - THE TELEGRAPH
BBC plans Easter spectacle for the non-religious
JAN. 10 - THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Mormon church sends missive to leaders about same-sex marriage
Click: READ MORE RELIGION NEWS >>
JANUARY 23, 2014
RELIGION NEWS
JAN. 23 - REUTERS
Rights group says Muslims massacred in Myanmar amid official denials
JAN. 22 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gay marriages confront Catholic school rules
JAN. 22 - THE WASHINGTON POST
Pentagon clarifies rules on beards, turbans for Muslim and Sikh service members
JAN. 22 - THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
A look at key fighting groups in Syria
JAN. 21 - CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Papers detail decades of sex abuse by priests
JAN. 19 - LOS ANGELES TIMES
New Mexico judge affirms right to 'aid in dying'
JAN. 17 - MCCLATCHY
Priests take the lead in fierce revolt against drug gang in Mexico's Michoacan
JAN. 16 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Judge rules in favor of Muslim woman on no-fly list
JAN. 16 - THE NEW YORK TIMES
U.N. panel questions Vatican on handling of clergy sexual abuse
JAN. 16 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Nigeria's religious leaders welcome controversial anti-gay law
Click: READ MORE RELIGION NEWS >>
FACT TANK
Key Findings About Growing Religious Hostilities Around the World
A new Pew Research Center report on global restrictions on religion found that a third of the 198 countries and territories studied in 2012 had a high or very high level of social hostilities involving religion, the highest share in the six years of the study. A Fact Tank post looks at some top findings and also includes a BBC video on the study.
READ MORE >>
Pope Francis Moves Beyond Europe With First Class of Cardinals
Pope Francis named his first group of new cardinals, often called “princes of the church,” earlier this month. Media reports have observed that Francis, the first pope from outside Europe in modern times, chose several cardinals from the developing world, and a Fact Tank post quantifies the geographic origins of the 218 living cardinals.
READ MORE >>
5 Facts About Abortion
Wednesday was the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s decision establishing a woman’s constitutional right to abortion in the first three months of pregnancy. The March for Life, the annual anti-abortion rally in Washington, also was on Wednesday. Recent Pew Research polling reveals a few key facts about Americans’ views on the issue.
READ MORE >>
MEDIA MENTIONS
JAN. 17 - RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
This year's March for Life reaches a new group: evangelicals
Religion News Service covers an increased effort by March for Life organizers to reach out to evangelicals. The article points out Pew Research data showing that a majority (54%) of white evangelical Protestants say Roe v. Wade should be completely overturned, and three-quarters of that group (75%) says having an abortion is morally wrong.
JAN. 17 - THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
Why religious tensions are spiking around the globe
After citing data from the recent Pew Research study on religious restrictions around the world, The Christian Science Monitor talks to academic experts about possible reasons for increasing social hostilities involving religion.
READ MORE MEDIA MENTIONS >>
JANUARY 27, 2014
Daily Religion Headlines
U.S. HEADLINES
Texas woman is taken off life support after order
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
Kansas considers response to uncertainty on gay marriage
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
South Dakota bills allow refusal to take part in gay wedding
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Religious circumcisions not subject to Pennsylvania oversight
PITTSBURGH POST-GAZETTE*
1925's Scopes trial: Who made a monkey of whom?
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Best Buy commercial points way to greater Muslim acceptance
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Supreme Court blocks contraceptives rule for religious groups
LOS ANGELES TIMES
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
Filipino troops battle hardline Muslim rebels opposed to new peace deal
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Himmler hoard of letters and diaries discovered in Israel
THE GUARDIAN
Tunisia finally passes progressive constitution
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thai police rescue hundreds of Rohingya in raid on suspected traffickers' camp
REUTERS
Priests bring comfort to menacing Kiev protests
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Irish priests' group labels comments about cutting back religious education 'unacceptable'
THE IRISH TIMES
Malaysian church attacked amid Allah dispute
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
The Islamic Republic of Baby-Making
FOREIGN POLICY*
Map: Publicly funded schools that teach creationism
SLATE
Noah's Ark: Round?
THE ATLANTIC
JANUARY 29, 2014
Daily Religion Headlines
U.S. HEADLINES
What's abortifacient? Disputes over birth control fuel Obamacare fight
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
House votes to restrict payments for abortions
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
Indiana House amends proposed constitutional ban on gay marriage
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR*
Scheduled Missouri execution temporarily stayed
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Philly DA files appeal of church official's overturned conviction
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER*
Pennsylvania Catholic school fires headmaster after identity revealed
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
N.Y. judge alarms gay parents by finding marriage law negates need for adoption
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
As Sochi Olympics loom, security concerns, antigay law and construction issues dominate
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL*
Central African Republic wants U.N. force as EU troops OKed
REUTERS
Police in Penang, Malaysia, to watch over churches, mosques
NEW STRAITS TIMES
Blasphemy law used against minorities in Pakistan
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Indian Supreme Court won't review gay sex ban
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
Vatican library, Japan institutes to catalogue lost archive of persecuted Christians
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Irish government ordered to compensate victim of abuse at Roman Catholic school
THE NEW YORK TIMES*
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
My Spanish Inquisition: Can Sephardic Jews go home again?
THE JEWISH DAILY FORWARD
'God bless America' in presidential speeches has a little-known, uncomfortable beginning
THE HUFFINGTON POST
On compromise and congressional brinkmanship
RELIGION & POLITICS
More articles will be added
JANUARY 30, 2014
Daily Religion Headlines
U.S. HEADLINES
Top brass say they're not aware of bias against military chaplains
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
St. Louis prosecutors seek to ban church members, along with press, from sentencing
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Gay married man says Catholic school rescinded job offer
THE BOSTON GLOBE*
Utah Capitol is arena for dueling rallies over gay marriage
THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
LGBT advocate plans to make case for marriage rights before top Navajo court
AL JAZEERA AMERICA
Can Cathy McMorris Rodgers resurrect compassionate conservatism?
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
Kansas City religious leaders seek release of federal immigration detainee
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
INTERNATIONAL HEADLINES
Near St. Peter's, an ancient burial site opens to the public
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
French peacekeepers struggle to stop religious violence in Central African Republic
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
New method makes stem cells in about 30 minutes, scientists report
LOS ANGELES TIMES*
Scarlett Johansson leaves Oxfam after Israeli settlement uproar
REUTERS
Bangladesh sentences 14 to death for arms smuggling, including head of Islamist party
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In South Sudan conflict, churches attacked, looted
RELIGION NEWS SERVICE
ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
Is religious ritual simply a product of cultural evolution?
EVOLVING THOUGHTS
Are the roots of Western liberalism found in the idea of moral equality?
FINANCIAL TIMES*
______________________
Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
___________________________________________________________
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This page (= tab) is also used as (1) a collection & (2) editing page for the new topics for
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That's the reason you may somewhere see some notes that may not have been fully worked out at that moment.
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This page (= tab) is also used as (1) a collection & (2) editing page for the new topics for
World's #1 advice website Successo-Pedia©
That's the reason you may somewhere see some notes that may not have been fully worked out at that moment.
________________
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Articles for everyone of a wide range of topics for health, wealth & success in life
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- Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents; By Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. -not-for-profit-03/27/2014
- Leafy green vegetables
- Fruits (fresh, not from a can)
- Dried beans, peas, peanuts & nuts (not roasted, no salt)
- Full grain breads, full grain, unprocessed cereals and other full grain products
- 2 to 4 pounds total during the first trimester
- 3 to 4 pounds per month for the second and third trimesters
- click: Vitamins and Minerals: How to Get What You Need by American Academy of Family Physicians
- Also available in Spanish Vitaminas y minerales: cómo obtener lo que usted necesita clic: Spanish - por American Academy of Family Physicians
- click: Vitamins and Minerals: How to Get What You Need by American Academy of Family Physicians
- Also available in Spanish Vitaminas y minerales: cómo obtener lo que usted necesita clic: Spanish - por American Academy of Family Physicians
- 2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
New York Times
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family's home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and ...
- 2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
- 3 Enemas Later, Still No Drugs
IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, read what unfolded when the police suspected that David .. _____________________________________________________
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This Internet Seminar has
Three parts - all based on the most recent science
(1) Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy (Article 1 of 3),
(2) Complete Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan for your pregnancy, for your baby, for the parents, and for the whole family (Article 2 of 3),
(3) Introduction to Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.'s nationwide-worldwide services to ease human suffering and search for the good life
(Article 3 of 3)
(4) At the end additional information for lifetime opportunities
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Article 1 of 3
(Articles 2 of 3 and 3 of 3 next below)
Throughout all 3 articles click green for further info
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Founding President of STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
________________
Updated: March 27, 2014
Healthy Baby Through A Healthy Pregnancy Internet Seminar
Foreword
This internet seminar is written for both parents.
When both parents are involved in every step of the pregnancy & monitoring the mother's and the baby's safety, the wife-husband bond and the parents - new child bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Also, this complete guide is written for your possible children. If you do not have children, read this foreword anyway for the future use for your children and take from this text the ideas that fit now for your present family situation. The study instructions are still the same for the two of you to do together now. Save this seminar for your future children and teach them a few years from now.
Have your children (of any age) living with you involved daily in every step of the pregnancy - then the whole family bond will get stronger and your children will learn valuable healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles. Your children would also learn early on how to have healthy babies when their own time comes. Handle and discuss this guide material in a weekly family meeting during the pregnancy months - anyone who can read should study this guide and prepare pre-agreed text parts for meetings. Have your children of any age present in the family meetings, even the toddlers. The more new words your child learns early in life, the better chances for higher success in the future. Go through the whole guide step by step together as a family.
(click: Your Toddler's & Child's Success = the article "Tips for your child's success" - see what else is there to your interest - the link has text, voice, videos - American Academy of Pediatrics)
In addition to the basic text, this internet seminar has plenty of web links. For proper learning every member of your family who can read will study also the web link articles. Some links maybe sensitive and may need added parental guidance during the family meetings.
The weekly meetings can be done at home or (depending on the season) as a family pick-nick trip to your favorite park or to other outdoors place - the nature has plenty of fresh oxygen (good for the new mother and for everyone), it will be relaxing, refreshing, beautiful & healthy for the body & mind. Some outdoors locations may not have access to the internet - those links can be viewed at home. During the colder months you may have another inside destination with privacy to have pick-nick & your weekly family learning meeting.
The more different experiences your family has together also outside the home, the deeper the family bonds and the more successful your children will be in their adult lives. A weekly family meeting, no matter how small or big your family, will create miracles - you'll see. You and your children will value these weekly family outings and meetings for learning. You all will remember them forever as a pleasure. As the result your family bonds will be strong forever.
Guide your children to learn all what this internet seminar teaches. Your children will remember this as a well-appreciated gift given by their parents for life.
During the pregnancy it is especially important that the mother (1) eats healthy food & keeps herself away from all harmful ingredients, (2) keeps herself well hydrated with plain water, (3) keeps her body & mind in top-condition, (4) sleeps enough hours and (5) sees her pediatrician and/or her primary care physician as required. When the pregnant mother asks the other family members to help her remember what to do to stay healthy and the new baby to stay healthy, everyone learns at the same time.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
When you involve your children to help you to stay healthy, they will gladly do it, remind you enthusiastically and then they will easily copy what the mother and the father do. The children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do. With all these actions the family union gets healthier and stronger. Then your children can much easier resist the wrong models outside their loving home. That's an important benefit for everyone in your family. The earlier you involve your children to learn the health & success rules for life, the easier they can avoid harmful habits and the more successful they will become in life.
After the delivery it is as important as during the pregnancy to continue applying healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for the breastfeeding milk quality and for the mother's own health safety for life. Then your children see that healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition is not only for being pregnant but is the basic success principle for the whole life.
A big blessing for all of you.
As the whole family, apply all information in this seminar guide - then you give the gift of good health and successful, long life to all of you.
All necessary details and instructions are provided in this seminar.
One more final thing: Negotiate with your delivery doctor how to have your whole family best involved in the actual delivery process in the hospital. What does the mother want? Whom does the doctor & the hospital allow to be in the delivery room, etc.? The whole family being involved is best for everyone because it will be a learning process and will strengthen your family ties.
When your new baby is safely in the family and you all have studied together this whole seminar, then, all of you in your family, keep applying the life-quality lifting healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles for a better, richer and longer life.
Then next:
Let us at STAF, Inc. know how many family members (girls/boys plus their first name & age) are studying/studied this seminar "Give Your Baby A Safe Start - A Complete, Updated Guide for Both Parents"
A girl or a boy? Let us know your new baby's name & birthday & birth weight and please, mail us
a picture of your new baby. In an old-fashioned manner, mail us a postal letter and use our
NYC mailing address at the very end of this internet seminar. On the envelope write also
"New Baby". In your letter add your email address so we can email our suggestion for your next
STAF, Inc.'s Internet Seminar.
Make your weekend family meetings a permanent event. It is worth it.
STAF, Inc.'s postal mailing address is at the very end of this internet seminar.
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The Internet Seminar
A Well-Balanced Diet (1) Before & (2) During Pregnancy Will Lower The Risk of Preterm Delivery and (3) After Pregnancy Will Give More Nutrients in Your Baby's Breastfeeding & Improving Your Baby's Health for Life
Notice: The level of both parents' health at the time of
the conception will to a great extent affect the baby's future health.
A guide how to be fully prepared for your baby's best.
A well-balanced diet
means getting the right types & right amounts of food to supply nutrition & energy for maintaining body cells, tissues & organs, and for supporting normal growth & development, getting enough water for proper hydration and
giving the immune system strength to fight any disease.
(Throughout the text click green for further info)
The opposite:
An unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for a number of chronic diseases including (click each): high blood pressure, diabetes, abnormal blood lipids*), overweight/obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancer and any other deadly disease. *) Lipids: Another word for "fats."
This seminar text continues below after the event with The Earth Day deadline
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Before we go forward in this seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
we place next a temporary text
Do this important thing before
April 22, 2014, The Earth Day:
(this matter also relates to your baby having a healthier life)
Sign online to demand The U.S. Congress
to take action to protect the human life
(Links & info below)
This April 22, 2014 topic concerns everyone and every family including YOUR family.
1st example: According to experts at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention over 300 (three-hundred) toxic chemicals are showing up in our umbilical cords.
click: Umbilical cord care: Do's and don'ts for parents
click: Images for Umbilical cord
2nd example: Women put, on a daily basis, an average of515 toxic chemicals on their faces alone. That is 515 too many.
That has contributed (1) to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women, (2) to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age and (3) to in growing numbers to adult women starting menopause 10-15 years earlier. These facts point to a shorter life span. click: Menopause
3rd example: Most of our daily food we all eat, no matter what the food origin, has hundreds harmful chemicals. The air, the water, the ground - they are all more or less polluted with environmental toxins. Not even the organic products are fully safe. Is it then a wonder that our modern lifestyle kills over half of the population at the half-life.
We can still clean up this earth - but we all must change our lifestyle.
The governments must create effective regulations (based on science, not on politics) leading to cleaning, not to more greed and not to additional environmental, killing toxins.
Latest on April 22, 2014, give your signature to fight back - that is for everyone's best.
Environmental toxins in pregnancy and in every day life
click: Wikipedia - Environmental toxins & Fetal Development
(with info how to avoid some of the toxins) - click: Fetus
click: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - CDC www.cdc.gov
click: Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals - CDC
click: Updated Tables - National Report on Human exposure
to environmental chemicals - CDC
Poisonous stuff
that can hurt our nervous systems, mess with our developing brains and lower our IQs. Really bad stuff that's also linked to cancer, birth defects and asthma.
Fight back - help to bring the U.S. Congress to its knees. You have the power to do so - to make them listen and take action.
It's time for the lawmakers to do something about all the bad chemicals out there. Because that stuff ends up in our babies, in hour homes, in all our bodies, we must have a real change in this very wrong situation creating human suffering, costing lives and endangering our future generations.
FIGHTTOXINS.COM will gather 100,000 signatures by Earth Day,
April 22, 2014, and force a discussion with the government to get protective legislation to save human lives.
Click: How e-petitions works - e-petitions - HM Government e-petitions
Take a swing at these dangerous chemicals,
visit (copy & paste) fighttoxins.com
& sign the petition latest on the Earth day, April 22, 2014
click: Earth Day
If you & your family lives in another country, you can be involved and sign the petition as this concerns the whole world - put your voice up - it matters.
As Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. is one important organization to help your family to a better life the U.S. or worldwide,
we would appreciate if you could send us a letter in an old-fashioned manner via the postal service and let us know (1) if you & your family(including your children), signed the 100,000 petition (how many in your family signed), (2) your opinion about this FIGHTTOXINS.COM petition to fight the chemicals and
(3) we would appreciate if you could enclose a donation (as paper money) to STAF, Inc. - we do need your donation as a not-for-profit organization.
Our extensive, "World's # 1 advice website in all family matters for the good life" has everything your family needs for healthier, financially richer life.
When you, based on our guidance, reach your new goals, we at STAF, Inc. would like to know your family's success story in a new letter.
Mailing address: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_____________The End of The Earth Day Event ______________
The Internet Seminar
"Give Your Baby A Safe Start"
Continues:
*) Lipids: Another word for "fats." Lipids can be more formally defined as substances such as a fat, oil or wax that dissolves in alcohol but not in water.
Lipids contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen but have far less oxygen proportionally than carbohydrates click: Carbohydrates
Lipids are an important part of living cells. Together with carbohydrates and proteins, lipids are the main constituents of plant and animal cells.
Click: Cholesterol and click: triglycerides are lipids. Lipids are easily stored in the body. They serve as a source of fuel and are an important constituent of the structure of cells.
Etymology of the word lipid
Whereas the everyday term "fat" comes from the Old English (from "faett" meaning crammed = completely full), the more scientific term "lipid" comes from the Greek "lipos" which referred to animal fat or vegetable oil.
Increasing intake of healthy foods before & during pregnancy
is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, not only during the pregnancy but also important before conceiving and also important afterthe delivery because good breastfeeding can be based only on correct, healthy nutrition.
The breastfeeding should go on at least the first six months - the longer beyond 6 months the better - you want the best for your baby. Your baby gets the best nutrients in a correct combination and the best, lasting protection against sickness from your breastfeeding efforts.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that breastfeeding continue for at least twelve (12) months.
click: American Academy of Pediatrics www.aap.org
If for some reason the mother cannot breastfeed, other safe, natural solutions are introduced in the Healthy Eating Plan below.
It is not recommended to use formula as several worldwide studies show they can cause serious dangers to the baby because they are man-made, factory products with non-natural ingredients.
A brief quote of one of the earliest formula study:
"Decades of bottle-feeding, formula babies may have left a costly legacy, in both human and financial terms, of a generation of adults at higher risk of death and disability from heart disease and stroke than they should be, according to research published in the Lancet, one of the world's leading medical journals, establishes beyond doubt that breastfed babies become healthier adults."
This Lancet study was published already 20 years ago and even though tens of other studies after the Lancet have the same findings, the man-made formula is still widely & strongly pretending being suitable for a baby - it is not.
There are other safe choices.
Best is the breastfeeding , the 2nd best introduced below - the man-made formulas cannot have what the nature can provide.
The easy-to-remember truth for the adult, teenager, child, toddler & for the baby food is in this
Quotation: "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(click: Michael Pollan)
The mother's milk is perfect food for the baby- it is made of what the mother eats. For the safety of the baby the mother needs to eat food that the nature has made - not the processed, factory made disguise.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
Below detailed information what not to and what to eat.
Any questions after studying all information below, ask free via email
(contact info below).
Click for the Lancet article: Bottle-fed babies 'face higher risks
One more important area of facts:
It is understandable that we all know that the mother's health condition
matters when planning for a pregnancy. But it is now known that the father's health condition also matters as well.
This first link has info for both of you - even though it states as the source:
Office of Women's Health - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services -
Click: Preconception health
Click: Future fathers: 10 ways to help her get pregnant
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Definition
Preterm Delivery
By Mayo Clinic Staff
A preterm/premature birth is a birth that takes place more than three weeks before the baby is due — in other words, after less than 37 weeks of pregnancy, which usually lasts about 40 weeks.
Premature birth gives the baby less time to develop in the womb. Premature babies, especially those born earliest, often have complicated medical problems.
Depending on how early a baby is born, he or she may be:
(1) Late preterm, born between 34 and 37 weeks of pregnancy
(2) Very preterm, born at less than 32 weeks of pregnancy
(3) Extremely preterm, born at less than 25 weeks of pregnancy
Most premature births occur in the late preterm stage.
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When you're pregnant, eating healthy foods is more important than ever.
You need more protein, iron, calcium, and click: folic acid than you did before
pregnancy.
Folic acid is a B vitamin. It helps the body make healthy new cells. Everyone needs folic acid. For women who may get pregnant, it is really important. Getting enough folic acid before and during pregnancy can prevent major birth click: defects of the baby's brain or spine.
Foods with folic acid in them include
You also need more calories. But "eating for two" doesn't mean eating twice as much. It means that the foods you eat are the main source of nutrients for your baby. Sensible, balanced meals will be best for you and your baby.You should gain weight gradually during your pregnancy, with most of the weight gained in the last trimester. Generally, doctors suggest women gain weight at the following rate:
Expectant mothers are often told to eat lots of fresh fruits and fresh vegetables, and a new study adds to evidence that a healthy diet is linked to a reduced risk of premature birth.
Researchers analyzed data gathered from more than 66,000 pregnant women in Norway between 2002 and 2008. Premature birth (before 37 weeks of pregnancy) occurred in slightly more than 5 percent of the pregnancies.
Women who ate a "prudent" diet that included plenty of fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, whole grains and water had a much lower risk of preterm delivery, as did those with a traditional Norwegian diet of boiled potatoes, fish and cooked vegetables, the investigators found.
The study was published online March 4, 2014 in the journal BMJ (= British Medical Journal).
click: BMJ: Home
STAF, Inc.'s comment: The Western diet causes more health risks in the pregnant mother including diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. Your baby needs healthy foods that are packed with nutrients - you also need the same healthy foods. When you breastfeed your baby the milk must be healthy - it can be healthy milk only if and when the mother has eaten healthy, natural food. Human milk is the most perfect food but must be clean and have no poisonous chemicals.
Thus, eat in the manner during your pregnancy that is safe for your baby and for you as the mother. All needed guidance is in this compact healthy lifestyle guide.
However, increasing consumption of healthy foods is more important than eliminating unhealthy foods, the researchers said because every pregnant woman has sometimes unhealthy cravings and may forget to let them pass.
The findings also support advice given to pregnant women to eat a balanced diet that includes (more detailed 'what to eat' info in article 2 of 2):
(1) variety of fresh fruits (not from cans), (2) variety of fresh (or steamed) vegetables, (3) whole grains, fish (best: Atlantic salmon from Alaska, mackerel & sardines - these 3 fish types all can be from a can = low price & suitable as human food as long the label states: Wild Caught), (4) and drink enough plain water - enough is most likely more than you may be used to: drink daily fresh water the same amount in liquid oz. as your "normal healthy weight" is in lbs (not the overweight lbs). Drink no soda(no sugary, no diet - both with their chemicals harmful), no energy drinks (full of harmful chemicals), no energy bars (too sugary, partially processed, dead calories, they are candy bars in disguise), no chips (dead, processed calories, too salty with many other unhealthy ingredients).
AND: of course, during pregnancy: (1) no smoking, (2) no alcohol, no wine either, (3) avoid caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate have caffeine), (4) keep your
system hydrated = drink water daily as instructed a few lines above. Our human body is about 70 % made of water, blood and brains, both about 90+ % water - thus it is important to have enough water every day.
This Healthy Eating Guide gives all necessary details - apply the advice in every detail. You will be glad you did - the desired results will be there. These these same principles in full to your children - they will be glad you did. The weekly family meeting is the way to teach them as instructed in this guide.
However, although the study found an association between eating a healthy diet during pregnancy and a lower risk of preterm delivery, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
The study authors said premature birth can lead to major short- and long-term health problems, and it accounts for nearly 75 percent of all newborn deaths.
Healthy eating during pregnancy is always a good idea, according to an accompanying editorial by Lucilla Poston, of King's College London.
Poston said several studies have suggested that a diet rich in fruits and vegetables can help prevent premature birth. "[Health professionals] would therefore be well advised to reinforce the message that pregnant women eat a healthy diet," she said.
There is more to study for your precious baby's best:
See the important 3 links next below as an important part of this Article 1 of 3
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Links to additional pregnancy topics
Both parents need to study these six (6) links below and together monitor that everything above and in these links is applied - give a safe start to your precious baby.
Notice:
When both parents care for the baby, before and after the baby's birth, the emotional parent-child bond and the wife-husband bond will be stronger benefiting the whole family.
Click each:
(1) Getting pregnant
(2) Pregnancy week by week
(3) Labor & delivery, postpartum care
(LAT. post = after; partum = childbirth)
(4) Breastfeeding - American Academy of Pediatrics
Click: Breast-feeding twins
Click: Breast-feeding: Pumping tips
Click: More - several links
(5) Feeding Habits Set Babies Up for
Obesity: Study
Click: Infant development: Birth to 3 months
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics
SOURCES:
(1) BMJ (British Medical Journal), news release, March 4, 2014,
(2) NIH: National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements,
(3) Mayo Clinic,
(4) Medline,
(5) Dept. of Health and Human Services Office on Women's Health,
(6) American Academy of Pediatrics,
(7) United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - www.cdc.gov
(8) STAF, Inc.
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The next article 2 of 3 is for every member of your family - study & handle together in your weekly family meeting. Give your children the most precious gift: health for life.
Article 2 of 3
How to maintain your health -
How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Internet Seminar
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages.
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit, is the leading, new organization for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
_______________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering
& turns lives to victory *
STAF, Inc. needs you donation
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA
___________________________
This information is suitable advice for everyone 2 years or older
The Free, Abbreviated Guide for Healthy Lifestyle, Correct Nutrition & with a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
developed by STAF, Inc. (1) for the U.S. gov. use as a program in the new health care system and (2) to-be published as a how-to book for the worldwide market as
STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life ©
This program is at the same time an automatic,
"Aaahh!Finally-the-results"© Weight loss program, no calorie counting, just follow the new program's instructions for easy, natural food preparing - nothing else to do.
Everyone can afford this program as we do not sell you food - we guide you to buy the ingredients in your own supermarket and prepare the food in your very own kitchen - based on all new, delicious recipes. As the result, your new, lasting health will cost less than ever before. See the amazingly low monthly food cost below in the article 2 of 2. The savings is "found money" - you invest it to become a millionaire.
The full program has full guidance for "How to become financially independent, also potentially a millionaire, starting with $50 a month". Preliminary investment info in ab: op Nothing like this never existed before - suitable for everyone nationwide/worldwide.
Below detailed info, for you and for your whole family, what to drink & eat for your improved health and for your longer life.
This mini guide is kept up with the latest research info - thus it is a good idea to study this again if you studied it sometimes in the even a close past.
Repetitio est mater studiorum (Latin)
(Repetition is the mother of study)
© Copyrights STAF, Inc. 2014
_______________________
Instructions how to study
this Health Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide
Because this information can provide you excellent health leading to a longer, more enjoyable life, this guide may be the most important material for you and for your whole family.
This guide is fit for every family in the U.S. and for every family worldwide.
The purpose of this material is to guide you and your family
(1) to maintain your health and
(2) to restore your possible lost health due to an unhealthy lifestyle and to incorrect nutrition.
Every family member should be involved in this learning process.
To master the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition principles early in life could easily be the best gift you, as the parent(s), can give to your children for life.
Become a healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition inspirator for your children.
Your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Obtaining this information based on the natural health laws will save potentially plenty in (1) sickness care, (2) will eliminate pain and suffering (that have been based on a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition) and (3) provide for every family member a longer, more enjoyable life.
Even though this is called "a mini-guide" it has a substantial amount information, probably more than you expect. This guide has the basic healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles in a compact form.
Instructions: how to gain a healthy, meaningful life
It is important to follow the detailed instructions
(1) First read through below the whole text in the article 1 and in the article 2 .
During the first reading do NOT click any of the web links (basic text in black, the web links mostly in green , also in other color, with the preceding word click:) - read the full text in both articles 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 to get an idea what you and your family can expect to learn. Every family member should be involved and follow these instructions - as a group everyone learns better and sticks to the guidance to gain a better, healthier life and also all together building a million or more in the bank.
(2) When every family member has done the first reading, have a family meeting to decide together how you are going to proceed best as a family.
(3) During the 2nd reading, which is now the learning process, take notes, click every web link and study the link material as broadly as you see suitable.
In most links there are several pages to your interest. The better & wider job you do in learning, the better your health will be and the longer you will enjoy your life.
(4) Based on the guide instructions organize your weekly family learning meeting to discuss the material and deciding together how you are going to apply the material together in your family to build a better, healthier, richer & longer life for everyone.
(5) When your lives start improving let us at the STAF, Inc. know your success stories either by postal mail or via email. Contact info in this guide text and in
STAF, Inc.'s website, home page. Any questions via email.
e: [email protected]
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization, needs & will appreciate your donations.
Donation instructions in the home page and also below in article 2 of 2.
Your donations will ease human suffering nation/worldwide.
_____________
STAF, Inc. has developed a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program for the U.S. gov. use with the main title
STAF Healthy Eating Plan 3.11© With a Big Surplus of Money in The Bank for The Good Life©
Will also be published as a book - all suitable for every country's needs worldwide.
_____________
This free Fast-track guide fits women, men & children (min. 2 years old)
The 2 starting statements
(1) About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle and wrong nutrition.
(2) Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed
and do not necessarily automatically become part of our golden years.
Introduction
In the past in our human history, people died mostly in pandemics.
A pandemic (from Greek pan "all" and demos "people") is click: an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.
(epidemic from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people")(throughout the text click green for further info)
Plague (Lat. plaga = wound) click: Plague - Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the
most notorious disease episodes in history.
The Black Death peaking in Europe in the years around 1350 CE. (CE = common era - also Current Era or Christian Era ) was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of 50 % oof the population an estimated 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1348–50 CE. click: Wikipedia
E.g., still in the World War One 1914 - 1918 many times more soldiers died because of the infections due to low sanitary safety than died in the actual war actions.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate (= winner of a Nobel prize) Alexander Fleming in 1928. click: Nobel
Penicillin antibiotics were among the first drugs to be effective against many previously serious diseases. E.g. The famous British Prime Minister Churchill saved his life with Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery, click: Sir Winston Churchill
When in comes to food & nutrition,
in the past generations people ate FOOD = REAL food, prepared in their own home kitchen using natural ingredients.
Today most people do not any more know what real food is - the results: sickness & suffering & early death.
E.g., based on study, click and read: Fast Food Hamburgers Could be as Little as 2% ACTUAL Meat - and many call it "food".
(Yes, you saw it correctly 2 (two) % - no misprint)
Real Food & Enzymes
Real food suitable for us human or suitable for our pets, IS NOT the modern food-like stuff that is processed, "fortified" with chemicals, poisonous for the human body and lacking in life preserving nutrients.
E.g. the enzymes, large biological molecules responsible for the thousands of metabolic processes that sustain life, die at the temperature of about 132 F = 55 C.
Yet, the chemicalized food processing industry uses even higher temperatures - the results:
very little (if any) life-sustaining enzymes left. Click: Pasteurization
Notice: Without enzymes, life, as we know it, would not exist.
At any given moment, all of the work being done inside any cell is being done by enzymes. Processed "food-like non-food" does not have enough healthy enzymes - that's why eating unhealthy food leads to sickness, suffering and to a shorter life.
Only real, NATURAL, unprocessed food can deliver proper enzymes to maintain the human health and the human life.
To help you to realize the truth in these 3 quotations they are repeated 'here and there'. Many people place them on their refrigerator door.
(1) "If it came from a plant, eat it - if it was made in a plant, don't"
Click: Michael Pollan
(2) "To stay healthy and have a long life you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(3) "Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
"Flash-card" - REAL FOOD
Daily main parts - %-wise in this order:
(1) fresh, raw, unprocessed fruit, berries & vegetables,
(2) unprocessed, full grains,
(3) unprocessed fish or lean meat,
(4) tree-nuts, peanuts & seeds (not roasted, not salted) - if any allergy, replace daily with extra fresh fruit & fresh vegetables,
(5) cold pressed oils,
(6) enough water; coffee, tea counts as water (no diet or sugary sodas, no energy drinks) (in oz. the same amount of water as your normal weight (not overweight) is in lbs,
(7) physical & mental exercise (walk 25K steps daily) &
(8) enough sleep (adults 7-8 h / teenagers 10 h / child 10 - 12 h / toddlers 12-15 h/ babies sleep almost 24 h- the life sustaining growth hormone develops in all humans when we sleep and the brains clean themselves from poisons while we sleep - click: Goodnight. Sleep Clean
If the link has expired search the web with the title, published in The New York Times 1/11/14.
This keeps you on the right road to your better health.
All related, detailed instructions are in this compact guide.
Then there may be areas only your primary care physician can advice you to do
(because he/she knows you personally).
Enzymes are the tools of nature.
Enzymes cut and paste products such as nutrients. They speed up all vital biological processes.
The enzymes in the stomach, for instance, ensure that food is cut into tiny particles that can be converted into energy in the body. Wherever one substance needs to be transformed into another, nature uses enzymes to speed up the process.
That's why eating enzyme-dead or enzyme-low, processed or fast food
(= bad food) causes overweight because there are not enough enzymes in the digestive system to break the food into tiny particles our body system could absorb. Then the partially digested food sits inside the body and in the weakened immune system & starts rotting. Next the harmful, deadly germs & bacteria attack our cells infecting our body finally leading to any disease. Overweight lbs are made of this poisonous stuff rutting in the body because the person kept eating enzyme-dead processed or fast-food (= bad-food). That's why even a minor overweight can lead to any sickness, suffering and to an early death. A major overweight & high obesity is a sure killer.
STAF, Inc.'s tested, new methods are the solutions to guide you and anyone back to good health leading to an enjoyable life without suffering.
WHAT IS YOUR CHOICE? Eat food or poison? Life or death?
If you are overweight more or less (75 % of the population is), study this compact healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition guide again and again until you do all it teaches. To apply the information can return & maintain your health & reduce suffering and even save your life.
When you succeed in your efforts, email us to STAF, Inc. your success story so you can further help other people get motivated to accept the same knowledge as the road to their new, healthy life.
(The e-mail & postal address in the home page).
For additional info click: What are enzymes?
Metabolic Syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions — increased blood pressure, a high blood sugar level, excess body fat around the waist and abnormal cholesterol levels — that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes. If you have metabolic syndrome or any of the components of metabolic syndrome,aggressive lifestyle changes can delay or even prevent the development of serious health problems.
This Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide in front of you is your solution to your and your family's good health.
Study well every detail in this guide, handle everything in your weekly family meeting and guide everyone in your family to apply the information.
Quotation: "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Give yourself, your spouse and your children the best gift in life: good health.
Your good health leads to a longer, healthier, financially richer & happier life.
When the enzyme molecules are gone in the modern food-killing process, is it then a wonder that worldwide a wide part of the population suffer of click: Metabolic Syndrome storing larger and larger amounts of toxins in every cell of the body and finally developing all possible killer sicknesses: cancer, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. - just name any sickness - it's endless.
Sickness care (wrongly called health care) costs go up, human suffering gets wider, early deaths become more common. We at the STAF guide you in health care: we guide you and everyone willing to learn to restore & keep the precious base element: health - and based on health have a long, happy life.
The industrial age with its chemicals brought us all these "innovations".
Still in the 1950' - 1960's the advertisements touted "Health through the modern chemicals". Smoking was glorified publicly and still in the 1950's, 1960's believed being healthy for us human. That wrong belief was because smoking raises the heart beating rate as does exercise so the logical "science" thinking was "smoking is healthy". Still in the 50's and early 60's the tobacco commercials had medical doctors smoking and stating "I, Dr. X smoke Life*) - it is for my health". *) "Life" was a cigarette brand.
Today the use of pesticides has destroyed the healthy ground. The land, air & water are polluted as the result of wide use of chemicals once defined as a life & health improving solution for everyone worldwide.
Today the animals grown for food are fed with harmful chemicals
& click: Antibiotics ending in the food chain in the humans, in our pets and in everything including polluting the oceans and all elements.
Greed & The Modern Cattle Care - a life danger in our world and in our food
Rampant, irresponsible greed has widely destroyed in our modern times the proper, humane care of the animals meant for the human food.
The wide overuse of click: Antibiotics to make the animals grow faster is endangering also the human health by ending in our drinking water and in us when eating the meat - we develop resistance and the antibiotics do not work when needed in an emergency situation. CDC - The U.S. Centers of Disease Control, states "it can be lethal".
Click: Antibiotics: Misuse puts you and others at risk - Mayo Clinic
Physical exercise in us humans makes us stronger by expelling toxins out from our body - we stay healthier. The immune system does not have a pump to get rid of the toxins - our physical movements work as its pump.
Yet, most of the animals used as the human food live in a small space where they cannot hardly move around. It is like living our whole human life in the economy class airplane seat - what would our human body condition be if that would be our destiny? What about our mental condition? Our whole lifetime would be painful torturing.
Yet, our legislation still accepts that the animals we eat in our human food chain
can be living their whole life in similar terrifying conditions without any possibility to exercise and pump out the toxic from their muscles.
Is that kind of an animal meat, filled with toxins, really healthy for us humans?
Every living creature has emotions in addition to the physical pain.
The emotional pain feeds additional toxic chemicals into the animal'' meat and we humans eat it.
In the past the cattle grew outside freely roaming happily around eating fresh grass and enjoying the nature.
Now we give them an airline economy seat to live their whole life inside and expect them staying healthy without much physical exercise to keep the body & mind healthy. This is the background for the overuse of the antibiotics in the animal industry.
Often the slaughterhouses process knowingly (greed) or unknowingly (ignorance) sick animals. Anyone would understand that meat from sick sources is not suitable for us humans and not suitable for our pets.
Quotation "For greed all nature is too little"
Lucius Annaeus Seneca click: Seneca
One example of class 1 meat recall - class 1 = high health risk
In this case Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds of beef because it processed diseased and
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. The huge amount of recalled meat was supposed to be extra healthy "Fancy grass-fed Beef".
Is this a greed based decision to process the contaminated meat or did they really not know that the animals were diseased and unsound. You be the judge.
click: Class 1 – High Risk Recall - click: Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef
What about milk and eggs if the cows and the chickens are not allowed to move around?
Cow's Milk
Is there pus in the cow's milk produced in the U.S. ?
Pus = dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
Pus is a sign the cow having an infection in the udder (= the baglike organ where the milk is). Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to click: epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness*) (= difficulties in walking) click: lameness in cows and mastitis (udder infections) click: Mastitis in dairy cows, are the two click: leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States.
*) Lameness is a clinical sign of a more severe disorder that results in a disturbance in the gait (= manner ow walking) and the ability to move the body about, typically in response to pain, injury, or abnormal anatomy
click: Bovine Growth Hormone (bovine = relating to cow & cattle)
There is also an agreement how much pus is allowed to be in the U.S.
The 2003 FDA click: Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) PDF (3.5MB) sets the maximum level of somatic cells allowed in Grade A milk at 750,000 cells per. milliliter - a level that has been in effect since at least 1999
Read the health-related facts in this article: click: How much pus is there in milk? | NutritionFacts.org
Then read this article - all necessary facts out together
click: The Dangers of Drinking Cow's Milk
The dairy products, when they are clean have beneficial nutrients - but remember: where does the cow get the nutrients? From eating the grass outside
(= "vegetable") or eating soy, corn, hay (dried "grass")*) - all vegetables. So will you get them from eating a variety of vegetables daily - eat a variety of fresh fruit daily also. Thus one can live healthy without dairy products. Some are allergic to dairy and live happily healthy when eating vegetables & fresh fruit. Cheese in moderation is a treat if you are not allergic to it. *)click Hay -
Milk has calcium is touted (= to convince) - so do vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts - without any side effects.
click: Top 10 Foods Highest in Calcium
People who are lactose intolerant have trouble digesting the milk sugar lactose. Lactase is an enzyme that splits the milk sugar lactose, to produce the sugars glucose and galactose. Often these individuals have no problems with goats milk.
Goat's Milk -
a healthier, more nutritious option for any age - also for your baby because goat’s milk is closest in structure to human milk = closest to the mother's breast milk
Goat's milk has more beneficial nutrients in a cleaner form than cow's milk does.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow's milk can enjoy goat's milk.
Goat's milk is also more suitable for a baby because goat’s milk is closest in its structure to human milk.
Your pediatrician should know these fact - if not, it's time to find a more knowledgeable baby doctor.
Goat milk industry is smaller and is not so corrupted with the use of hormones and other harmful chemicals/medicines as the cow milk industry is.
Goats are not standing in an economy class seat their whole life - they are moving & jumping around often year round as they can take any weather better than the cows. They eat healthie natural grass & leaves outside much more than the cows.
That's why the goats produce much cleaner, safer and nutrition wise more valuable milk.
click: The Health Benefits of Goat's Milk
One more article explaining the differences between goat's & cow's milk - it is good to compare different texts:
click: Goat's Milk vs. Cow's Milk
No one can deny that goat's milk is a safer, cleaner, more upscale & healthier product than cow's milk - STAF, Inc. endorses the use of goat milk at least
(1) for the babies and for (2) people who cannot tolerate cow's milk.
If you can afford the smallish price difference for the whole family, be blessed
& go for the goat!
click also this link: cow’s milk to see the facts why cow's milk is secondary to goat's milk.
Sheep's Milk
Then there is the sheep's milk - a small niche (= a specialty segment of a market) , more expensive and not everywhere available (except with the modern "same-day-next-day delivery" = gets more expensive, no need pay more - instead invest the saved money - use goat's milk - if you can afford sheep's milk, buy and use it in addition to using the goat's milk). Sheep's milk has little more nutrients than goat's milk and much more than cow's milk and is safe for your baby.
To look further click: Sheep 101
What milk for your newborn, your baby?
Mother's milk is the most perfect food - breastfeed as long as you can - minimum 6 months - up to 12 months if you can - talk to you baby doctor. Breastfeeding is healthier for the mother and healthier for the baby.
click: How Often to Breastfeed
The mutual mental-emotional benefits are more rewarding when breast-feeding. Any sickness in the mother? - Talk to you baby doctor. Any sickness in the baby? - A sick baby needs more mother's milk (because it is perfect food & healing), not less, is the principle, but talk to your baby doctor because all depends on "what sickness".
Click: The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov.
The health outcomes in the developed countries differ substantially who
formula feed compared with those who breastfeed.
If he mother has difficulties developing enough beast milk, breast milk can also be bought, but: warning - there may be health risks (contamination, the source is not always the healthiest & it is quite expensive) - talk to your baby doctor.
Goat's milk click: Goat's Milk for Babies and sheep's milk click: Sheep's Milk are both close to the mother's milk and suitable for the baby - talk to you baby doctor.
Whole FRESH food and the blender for your baby - prepare your own FRESH baby food
It saves your money, yet gives better quality food and secures better health for your baby.
To prepare your own baby food takes less time than you may think and gives you peace of mind because you know that you are doing the right thing when giving the healthiest food to your precious baby.
Your baby deserves real fresh food, not commercial imitation or poisoned with added preservatives & other harmful chemicals.
In most cases the fine-blended (= use the blender - instructions in article 2 of 3 what kind) whole food can be added in milk or water earlier than many opinions state - talk to your baby doctor.
Fresh orange, apple, banana & berries blended fine can be given quite early.
Banana should be ripe (= the peel with brown spots or even darker is a ripe banana) - less ripe (harder) banana easily gives constipation, especially to your baby. Ripe banana can also be spoon-fed. Most people eat and feed their babies harder (= not ripe) bananas and then blame the banana for giving constipation.
Bananas are among the most common foods worldwide. By weight bananas are among the lowest priced foods and offer a high nutritional value.
Fine-blended soft-steamed*) potatoes & soft-steamed vegetables & soft-steamed beans can be given to the baby earlier than is common but talk to your baby doctor before you do. *) steaming keeps 30 - 50 % more more nutrients than boiling - adopt steaming also for your whole family needs.
NOTICE: Do not mix fruits and vegetables or other foods in the same bottle - can cause stomach ache, gas, constipation, crying and suffering - same with the adults.
Feed fresh fruit as their own category - feed potatoes & other vegetables as their own category - feed steamed/boiled beans as their own category - do not mix different categories.
Reminder: many baby doctors do NOT have much or even enough training in nutrition, thus asking a baby doctor guidance in nutrition is often similar to asking a street beggar guidance for how to become a milloinaire - but she/he knows your baby's development level for different common fruits, vegetables, berries & other food. In addition, still too many baby doctors believe in commercially made "food".
Eggs
The free-ranged chickens lay eggs that have much more healthy nutrients than the chickens kept in small boxes without any chance for moving around to exercise. California has a new legislation for healthier chicken to produce healthier eggs. The new CA law gives several times more space to all their chickens than most other states do. click: They Are Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens - The New York Times, March 3, 2014
The Past and The Present
In the past human history the infectious disease pandemics killed people, often a half or more of the population.
Today's pandemic
is the the way most people worldwide eat in a unhealthy manner stuff that has not much to do with food. Then they get sick, suffer and leave this life much too soon.
During the past worst pandemics about half of the population died.
The same thing now: over half of the population in the U.S. and worldwide is overweight or obese. Overweight & obesity kills by causing killer-sicknesses.
Today's pandemic is our wrong food which is not natural food and does not maintain the human health.
Snacking
Definition of snacking = a small amount of food eaten between meals; notice the three important words: (1+2) small amount, (3) food. You know what "small amount means" - the definition of "food" is in this quotation:
Quotation "If it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (click: Michael Pollan) and here is another as a warning:
Quotation "Keep snacking real food, not poison, or I keep nagging"
(Dr. Christian, author of this health-success guide, STAF, Inc.)
Food is something that comes from a plant - it is NOT made in a plant.
This means you will be snacking on - none of these from cans - all fresh:
(1) fresh fruit (not from cans filled with sugary syrup - that's pure poison), (2) fresh berries, (3) fresh vegetables, (4)variety of unsalted, unroasted nuts, (5) unroasted, unsalted peanuts (= peanuts are actually legumes; unpeeled = eat with the brown inner peel because they also have nutrients like all peels do - the outer shell is uneatable as raw - more about that in another occasion), (6) bread, snack only on full-grain bread. No soda (not even diet soda - it has harmful chemicals affecting your and your baby's health). Drink only plain water, coffee or tea. Drink water (coffee & tea counts) daily in liquid oz. the same amount as your normal weight (not overweight) would be in lbs.
Notice: Fresh above (as in "fresh fruit") means: not handled in any manner, not in cans with sugary syrup the same with any other snack "fresh, in their natural form with noting added. Eat apples (wash well with soap) with their peels - most nutritious part is inside under the peel.
It is good good to snack = to eat something little every couple of hours - it helps keep the body system balanced and helps even in weight loss. The modern problem is that there are too many unhealthy snacks on the market advertised being sooooo.... good and sooooo..... dishonestly healthy - ONLY REAL, natural food can be and is healthy for us humans and also for our pets.
Do NOT snack on these popular processed, factory-made items:
no energy drinks (dangerous chemicals), no energy bars (they are about the same as a candy-bar), no vitamin waters (they are nothing else than water + a vitamin pill - waste of your money), no chips (filled with unhealthy chemicals and waste of your money - and many other similar.
To see 10 energy drinks dangers click: Dangers
Snack on real food originating from a plant not on any imitation food that is made in a plant. How could "anything made in a plant" be food?
EAT real, clean FOOD, not any food-like processed killing stuff. If what you aim to eat is made in a plant, do NOT eat it - it kills, eat only what came from a plant and is not processed at all - all original & natural, nothing added, nothing taken out.
In addition
nowadays, the environmental pollution click: Environmental Pollution
is another challenge to our bodies
but: even that poison our immune system can eliminate when we give it a chance with
(1) a fully healthy lifestyle;
(2) feeding us with REAL food and correct nutrition;
(3) exercising enough (a fee-free, enjoyable solution: walk 25K steps daily
click Pedometer;
(4) no smoking/no drugs/no sugary drinks.
click: Environmental Pollution and Impacts on Public Health: - UNEP
To motivate you, the parents, and your children to walk & exercise
it is stated several times in this guide that
the immune system has no pump to pump out the garbage - your physical movements function as its pump.
Thus, sit less, stand up, exercise, do hatha *)yoga & walk more as instructed- 25K steps daily+ walk up the stairs (click: Pedometer). *) Hatha yoga is focusing on physical and mental strength building exercises and postures.
click: Hatha Yoga - Yoga Journal . Click: How Yoga Improves Health
Click: American Osteopathic Association - Benefits of Yoga
(Osteopathic = Greek: osteon = bone; Greek: pathos = disease)
STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-min. exercise program meant to be done among the first things in the morning before your breakfast. Contact STAF, Inc. to download it. It has similar health benefits as hatha yoga does. The program is called:
"This 7-minutes Yabbanetics© keeps you fit, healthy & attractive".
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Scientific Meditation In addition to our physical exercise you, I, and all of us, need to exercise our mind to teach it to calm down, unwind and to avoid mental stress. Stress is a killer as it affects the whole body, its immune system, its every organ, and its nervous system. In your family meeting take up the scientific meditation topic and guide every member of your family to learn it - takes only 15 min. a day to practice.
Learn more about scientific meditation click: Mindfulness meditation may ease anxiety, mental stress - Harvard www.health.harvard.edu. Harvard University
STAF, Inc. has also developed an effective scientific meditation method titled
Mplus™
Contact STAF, Inc. to download this program.
Physical exercise, walking, hatha yoga & meditation combined with correct nutrition and with overall healthy lifestyle will reduce stress. Stress
The shortest definition for stress can be "Stress is unfinished business".
Think about that statement. Stress is a killer as it weakens the immune system and can lead to diseases. E.g. certain life situations, challenges in relationships, financial matters, procrastination, etc. life difficulties can cause stress.
Procrastination
creates stress. The majority of people are procrastinators
Procrastinating is the action of delaying or postponing something.
By undoing procrastination we have less stress. Do things now when you can, not "tomorrow". It may be in this aspect that "the tomorrow" never comes. That creates even more stress. Make a plan to clear any matter now and if not possible, make a plan immediately OR a flash-note to remember to make the plan. Keep your flash-notes always in the same place to later know where they are so you can handle them: when, what, how, whom you have to contact, and stick to the plan. Train your mind to handle things "now" or at the first proper moment/time, not "tomorrow".
Another stress builder is a common habit to say
"I'll try"
instead of stating "I will do this...'. Trying is not doing.
Take this test: Drop a pen on the floor and tell yourself "try to lift up that pen". If you lifted it up, you did not try, you did it - you lifted it up - doing and trying are two different things, not the same. Now throw the pen again on the floor and this time "try" to lift it up: try, yes try, try, try" - but do not lift just "try" to lift it and YOU CANNOT lift because you are 'trying' (not doing).
Have you noticed that most of the time when someone will say"I'll try ..." they never get it done". You invite someone to a party, the other person says
"I'll try to come" - and he/she never comes.
Trying and doing are two different things. Teach this to your children in your family meetings. The key is "what you say or think, your mind will listen and do what you say or think of doing". What you tell your mind, will manifest. You say "I will try..", the results are not there. Say "I will do "X" and finish doing it - the results will be there. To execute a plan is to make a plan and do what must be done to get the goal materialized. What you tell your mind is what the reality will be.
Quotation "What your mind can conceive, you can achieve" (Napoleon Hill)
Click: Napoleon Hill
That quotation is a good reminder when materializing your plans.
Your children do what they see you doing, not what you tell them to do. Thus, become a doer if you have been a "try-er" - and you will have less stress, you will also become & stay healthier and you will create much more financial freedom.
Again stress is a killer - you will get rid of it when you apply the above info.
Planning to have a baby?
Before getting pregnant read this article (the green link next below) - Your baby can inherit your stress.
Take the above guidance seriously learn to get rid of your stress, give your baby the best start for life.
click: Inheriting Stress
If the link has expired search the New York Times with the title"Inheriting Stress" or search the internet for the same topic
It is said "We can have a long life and die healthy" - when we respect life and accept a healthy lifestyle, we can have a long, healthy life.
Quotation: "You respect you keep, you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To state it briefly: we are ready to move to heaven when the telomeres are "gone" - yes, the science may estimate when it is our time "to go" - when we probably drop dead.
(throughout the text click green for further info)
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. click: Telomere Wikipedia
To keep your telomeres for your healthier, longer life you need to accept and learn a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition. Start with this mini-fast-track 12 step guide and the continue to study & apply the complete STAF Plan at a later time
(see article 2 of 2).
The more effectively your immune system functions ,
the healthier you are and the less you will suffer. It is your choice based on how healthy your lifestyle is. This guide is a good starting point.
A suitable quotation as a reminder:
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Have mercy on yourself, your family & on your children,
and organize your life in such a manner that you all can learn to apply everything this compact guide teaches.
Give the best gift to yourself, to your family and to your children:
good, healthy, long, meaningful, financially rich life.
Help your immune system to stay clean(er)
by doing what this 12-step guide shows. Help your whole family, including your children, learn these health restoring & maintaining principles.
(1) Sleep enough (see below the needed hours) - everyone in your family, read the 7+ sleep articles kept in click: www.staf1org.weebly.com - there in the left hand side "blog" tab close to the tab's top; Hours to sleep: (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours, (4) adults 7-8 hours.
(2) Drink plain water portionally during the day in oz. the same amount as your normal weight is in lbs.; coffee & tea counts as water (no sugary or diet sodas).
Aim to drink the daily plain water mostly when your stomach is empty, otherwise it may dilute the natural digestive "chemicals" and can slow down the digestion.
Briefly: your stomach is "empty" in 30 min. after eating plain fresh fruit, in 90 min. after eating plain grains, in 180 min. after eating anything else.
When you start drinking more water be also prepared to urinate more often and more. Urinating more is a good thing because the water cleans your pipes and flushes out more toxic stuff, thus providing you (and your family) better health leading to less suffering, more enjoyable & longer life.
Carry a suitable-size plastic bottle with you to pee "secretly" in a "must-pee-now" situation. Night-time it would be a good idea to keep a capped container for each person next to the bed to avoid walking to the bathroom to pee. The walking takes us out from the proper sleep waves lowering the quality of our sleep. If you live in a house and have a garden, you can use the human urea as the garden fertilizer and in the composting process. Saves money - brings good, natural results without unnatural cancer causing chemicals.
click: Human Urine is shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer; Scientific American
click: Compost - Human urine can be used directly as fertilizer or can be put onto compost
Guide your children in the urine monitoring and related facts.
Monitor the color of your urine - it tells your health. The clearer the urine during daytime hours, the better chances you, your children and your family will have a enjoyable health. The darker the urine daytime color, the more your health is challenged. In the morning, just after you get up, the urine can be darker.
If your daytime urine is dark in color you MUST drink more water until it shows a clearer color. Teach your children to monitor their pee.
Eat as STAF, Inc. guides: The a,b,c:
(a) "if it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't, it kills",
(b) no fast food = bad-food,
(c) prepare your daily food in your own kitchen based on the STAF Plan
(3) Exercise enough (daily walking 25K steps will do)(click: Pedometer);
(4) Keep your mind clean - how? - Sleep enough, drink enough plain water,
eat healthy, walk & some other physical exercises as you wish - if you can afford, in addition to walking the 25K steps daily, hire a personal trainer to do also strength training. It is a type of click: physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance to induce click: muscular contraction which builds the click: strength, click: anaerobic endurance, click:size of click: skeletal muscles.
When we get older our muscles will shrink - a personal trainer can build them safely back to strengthen your health. Never use any drugs - use healthy food to feed your cells safely. STAF, Inc.'s Plans teach the healthy nutrition.
About the healthy sleep.
Most recent studies show that the brains clean themselves during steady, unfragmented sleep, thus making us more intelligent.
Study (you & your family) the sleep articles # 2 "Sleep - The Ultimate Brain Cleaner" and # 4 "Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth & Other Sicknesses" - both articles close to the beginning of the left-side hand blog in this website. It would be beneficial to study all sleep-related articles in the location - over ten
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free fast-track guide - fits for women, men & children (2 years +)
Study and apply the information in the article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
STAF, Inc. has develop a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program - info below in article 2 of 2
Quotation
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Free Fast-Track Mini-Guide
This is a shortened, compact fast-track mini-guide.
Start your new life from this guide & apply the information in your and your family's life. Have your children involved - you give them the best gift for life.
Arrange regular weekly family meetings and handle then, as a family including the babies & the toddlers, the material you had together agreed to study that past week. Decide in the meeting how you all are going to apply the information in your daily life for your better health and success.
Click & study each web link in full and well, take notes, involve your.
The deeper you study and learn the info in all links the better your life.
This 12-step mini-guide alone is a treasure for your and your family's better life quality with less sickness risks.
This whole extensive website is another story - it would take 5 years to go through.
This website is world's # 1 advice website in all family matters, in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition topics and guides you to enter the good life.
STAF, Inc. has developed a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program called also "The STAF Plan". That's a full-size book long and originally took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
Below, in article 2 of 2 more information about the full-size STAF Plan.
To stay healthy physically & mentally follow the instruction in fast-track mini-guide as a whole family
* Realize: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition principles are NOT taught properly in most schools nationwide - worldwide. Yet, it is the most important topic for us humans -our health & life depend on the correct facts . We also need to know how to feed our pets - not taught in schools either - out pets are getting sicker & sicker as we humans are. All because of our lacking knowledge.
Only by teaching the correct eating skills we can lower our high sickness costs, avoid human suffering, stay healthy & fully enjoy our time on this earth.
STAF, Inc. is the new, nationwide & worldwide leading organization in these topics in addition to handling all family & life success topics. STAF, Inc. has developed effective teaching programs fit for every country, every school and for every individual.
About Water
Most people do not realize that water is a vital nutrient.
Vital nutrients are life-sustaining and necessary to the continuation of life.
Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water
in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda, sugary or diet).
Roll the water in your mouth to mix it with saliva - the digestive process starts always in your mouth, click: Saliva and Your Mouth
Saliva is an important part of a healthy body. It is mostly made of water, like our whole body is (70 %). Saliva also contains important substances that your body needs to digest food.
Water is essential for the human body to function and to perform virtually every metabolic process.
As said, the human body is about 70 % water.
Notice:
The web links in this fast-track guide give detailed info what sources have the nutrients our bodies need - what to eat to get all needed natural
(1) vitamins (the drug store vitamins have almost no nutritional value and they can be toxic),
(2) minerals (only the natural ones can be properly digested by the human body),
(3) essential & non-essential amino acids (web links below),
(4) protein (links below),
(5) carbohydrates (links below) and
(6) what else is needed to keep your body & mind healthy.
About Vitamins - About Minerals
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are 13 vitamins your body needs.
They are click: Vitamins: MedlinePlus
NOTICE:
The next link to Harvard School of Public Health
has all information (1) about everything you need to eat and (2) what sources will provide the most natural nutrients - study all and do it with your whole family.
On the website, on the left-hand side, is a topic list - click each topic on the list, study well and apply- a real treasure for your and your family's health - and for the good life.
About Amino Acids - About Protein
click: Protein | The Nutrition Source
Harvard School of Public Health
About Carbohydrates
click: Carbohydrates | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
Twenty-two essential and non-essential amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins. When taken up into the human body from the diet, the 22 standard amino acids either are used to synthesize
(= make) proteins and other biomolecules or are oxidized to urea and carbon dioxide as a source of energy.
9 of these 22 are called click: essential amino acids because the human body cannot synthesize them from other compounds at the level needed for normal growth, so they must be obtained from food.
Notice: in this same link you also see (1) the recommended daily amounts
and (2) the main food sources for the 9 essential amino acids - notice: listed there are also the two common, easy-to-get, low-priced sources that have all these nine essential amino acids: (1) soy beans and (2) eggs. In addition, e.g.
hemp & quinoa have all 9 amino acids - they may be less common and also more expensive - click: Hemp - click: Quinoa
STAF, Inc.'s advice: always buy the cheaper products (in this case the soy beans) to save more cash for investing and step-by-step becoming a (multi-)millionaire. STAF, Inc. has a program for it also.
One egg a day, no more, except in rare occasions; eat the whole egg, the egg white & the yellow yolk - they function together well as a perfect nutrition source.
As a click: food, the yellow yolks are a major source of click: vitamins and minerals click: minerals
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Steam the eggs in their shells for saving the most egg nutrients including vitamins & minerals.
The scrambled eggs may have some harmful bacteria left because the heating process is quite short. Steaming 20 min. makes the yolk hard and kills the possible harmful bacteria.
click: essential amino acids
As long as you consume adequate levels of
(1) protein and (2) carbohydrates each day,
your cells will either have or make enough non-essential amino acids to support tissue growth and repair, immune function, red blood cell formation and hormone synthesis. Both plant- and animal-based proteins are rich sources of non-essential amino acids, and, although you can manufacture the non-essential amino acids, including a variety of protein sources in your diet helps ensure you have all the starting materials you need to keep the process running smoothly if your diet ever runs low on this particular nutrient.
Question:
In what proportions to eat daily proteins, carbohydrates, oils and other nutrients?
The answer next below in "The Healthy Eating Plate"
Realize that, according to the Harvard University leading specialists, you do not have to eat animal meat if you do not want - you will get the proteins from other sources (see below, e.g.: soy beans & other beans, eggs, some vegetables, etc.).
The Healthy Eating Plate,
created by the nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health and by the editors at Harvard Health Publications, was designed to address deficiencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s MyPlate.
The Healthy Eating Plate provides detailed guidance, in a simple format, to help people make the best eating choices and see in what proportions to eat different food types
Click: Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health...www.hsph.harvard.edu
Then:
Click the next line to make The Healthy Eating Plate bigger and esier to study
click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
_______
Now click to see how the most recent
U.S. gov. "Food Plate" the previous "Food Pyramid" look click: Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler plate. Each 3 pictures you can enlarge by clicking the picture or clicking the "enlarge the image" note next to each picture -
All these pictures: (1) click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
and (2) The U.S. gov. Nutrition Plate .& the Food Pyramid
show (1) what and (2) in what proportions to eat
Start today - stay healthy tomorrow
* avoid sickness * live longer
__________
The Fast-Track Guide to a better-quality life
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen. Eat full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry or at least any poultry - cage-free can be more costly; very little or no red meat, no pork), one egg daily. Eat nuts, peanuts (with their thin inner brown peel - peanut is a legume click Beans & legumes). Eat all nuts & peanuts raw - not salted & not roasted. Eat berries, fruit, vegetables, olive oil (cold-pressed, virgin, 1 - 2 spoonfuls a day) and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle of this quotation:
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(Quotation by click: Michael Pollan).
The science of food combining is helpful in avoiding heartburn, stomach aches, and other digestive pain & suffering.
The food combining principles will be introduced in full in the full-size STAF Plan.
Briefly: (1) eat smaller amounts every 3 - 4 hours rather than 1 - 2 times a day, (2) proteins & vegetables combine well, (3) eat fresh fruit alone (combine with nothing else), (4) eat other carbohydrates alone.
The heartburn medicines can actually make the heartburn worse when used continuously. As a natural first aid eat fresh celery or fresh cucumber to still heart burn - no negative side effects.
Sleep on one side - test what side works for you - it can still the heartburn and you can fall asleep.
_____________
About fish
Fish oils come from fatty fish, also known as oily fish, specifically the tissue of fatty fish, such as trout, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, and salmon.
The bigger the fish in wild the more it can have sea/ocean/river pollutants
(= harmful industrial waste), mercury, etc., thus a smaller fatty fish can be safer to eat. Why has the bigger fish more mercury & other pollutants? Because the bigger fish eats smaller fish (the smaller fish, of course, also has mercury, etc.) and the big(ger) fish gets more and more mercury, etc. in its system.
Plankton & phytoplankton are a key food item in both click: aquaculture
& click: mariculture.
Little fish eat (phyto)plankton because they are the base of the food chain. Small fish eat (phyto)plankton, medium fish eat small fish, and big fish eat medium fish. Humans eat the big fish & fish of all sizes. That is the (phyto)plankton cycle.
click: Plankton
click: Phytoplankton
Farm raised fish is a good idea but the fish farms can be filthy affecting negatively the safety quality for human consumption.
Trout is not so common on the market and can be priced higher than their value. click: Trout
Pricewise the canned Alaskan salmon (wild caught) is a good source for nutrition click: Alaskan salmon
Also canned, wild caught mackerel (small) or jack-mackerel (bigger) or king-mackerel (biggest) - more than half of the salmon price in cans - no need to buy fresh files - too expensive. Canned Alaskan salmon and canned mackerel are acceptable. Mackerel is a good fish to eat. Buy the smallest size mackerel if available, otherwise buy any of the three. If available, stack up mostly with the smallest mackerel. (1) Alaskan salmon, (2) small mackerel & (3) sardines(see below) are the basic fish items to buy - as said: buy in cans (wild caught) - least expensive. click: Mackerel
In any food item, shop around for the lowest prices, see the weekly on-sale offers, stack up & save. Invest your savings as guided in this website in tab: more, sub-tab: credit & credit cards. Learn to become an active investor - a millionaire is then a realistic goal.
Avoid tuna or have small amounts because: The bigger the fish, the more mercury & other pollutants - because the more the big fish eats smaller fish that all have certain amounts of pollutants). click: Tuna
Sardines - the European sardines are the real sardines and can be expensive outside Europe (in Europe they are quite low-priced). As wild caught the sardines are oily, healthy and delicious. click: Sardines
The American/Canadian sardines are low-priced and good, oily fish
(less oily than salmon or mackerel) and they are small in size = less polluted. These are not really sardines. In the past an agreement was made that all American & Canadian small ocean fish will be called "sardines".
Once more: Alaskan salmon, mackerel & sardines (all wild caught - the sardine cans may not state "wild caught" because they are basically always wild caught) are the three most economical and health-wise acceptable fish items to buy - all in cans
(lowest price - stack up when on sale).
Notice: Eat only fish that has a backbone & scales (notice: & = and - not either one but both at the same time in the same fish) when it still swims in the ocean, river or lake (e.g., do not eat eel click: Eel and not catfish click: Catfish, etc. similar).
The other fish or seafood without backbone & scales are not the best for us humans because they are in the ocean ecology the poison eaters and can safely digest the poisonous material that can harm other sea/river/lake animals. The poison-eating sea/river/lake creatures keep the water clean for other water species. That's how the nature operates.
The seafood & fish without a backbone & scales are the cleaners of the waters.
The poison only these poison cleaners can digest will end as health-threatening poison in your system if you eat such a "cleaning lady".
The cleaning ladies you must not eat (to keep your health safely) are e.g. crayfish & crabs, lobsters, oysters & all sea, river, lake creatures including fish that have no back bone & no scales (both at the same time in the same creature).
Next two article links relating to fish:
(1) Mercury and (2) Sorting out the risks of fish
(the link next a few lines below after another link).
Realize: not all that swims in the water is meant for us humans to eat as is explained in the paragraph just next above ( if you do not remember what it states, please, for your, your children's and your family's safety, study the paragraph above again before reading the next article).
Eat only fish which has a backbone AND scales (when still swimming around, e.g. do not eat eel, not catfish, not lobsters, not crab, etc.). These two article links are placed for you to get more information about the mercury in fish. Pregnancy & mercury do not go together. Mercury is dangerous to everyone in every age.
A little mercury can be "OK" - thus, avoid big fish as they have more mercury and other pollutants because the bigger fish eats smaller fish and thus accumulates more toxins.
click: Mercury - March of Dimes
Next click: Sorting Out the Risks of Fish
About eggs
It is said that the egg is the perfect food. The eggs have all nine essential amino acids as do also soy beans - two excellent foods, available & low-price.
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Brown eggs vs. White eggs - any difference?
The color differences in eggs are simply from the breed of the hens they come from. Brown eggs are laid by larger red-feathered hens with red earlobes, and white-feathered hens with white earlobes produce white eggs. When it comes to the nutritional value, however, brown eggs are more or less the same as white eggs.
The healthiest way is to steam whole eggs in their full shell 15- 20 minutes (until the yellow part is hard). To scramble the eggs does not give enough time for the possible harmful bacteria in them to get neutralized. In a big enough a pan steam the eggs for every family member for the whole week to save time - they stay well in the refrigerator.
Steaming kills the bacteria more effectively AND saves more healthy nutrients in the shelled egg. The Cage free eggs are healthier, they have less pollution and they have more nutrients BUT they are also much more expensive. As money may be the issue in most families it is still better to buy the cheaper eggs as it is said that the egg is the most perfect food. Not too many, though, max. one egg a day.
Why is the age-free egg (and the cage free chicken meat) healthier, less polluted and has more nutrients?
Because a chicken in the cage cannot move so much and the digestive waste is not eliminated so well by the immune system but stays partially in the chicken body and goes then also into the egg.
The same in the human being: that is why the exercise movements help the immune system (which has no pump) throw out our digestive & other toxins more effectively.
If a human being is not physically moving much, the toxins stay in the body cells leading to multitudes of sicknesses and to an early death. Walking (see blow how much daily) is one of the easiest way to help our immune system to clean our insides and our cells well to keep us healthy and give us a long life.
About full grains
and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
Whole Grains and Fish Highly Protective against Childhood Asthma
According to the American Lung Association, almost 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, which is reported to be responsible for over 14 million lost school days in children, and an annual economic cost of more than $16.1 billion.
Increasing consumption of whole grains and fish could reduce the risk of childhood asthma by about 50%, suggests the International Study on Allergy and Asthma in Childhood (Tabak C, Wijga AH, Thorax). click: Diet and asthma
click: American Lung Association
What Is a Whole Grain? - All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
In the morning the healthy breakfast
is the 5-full-grain hot home-cooked hot cereal as instructed below.
This 5-grain cereal is real delicious - there is not one person who would not like it.
In addition, our bodies like it.
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In this case you and your body will like every morning the 5 -grain cereal.
Have everyone involved, including your children, in the weekly preparation (for the whole week) - then the children and everyone immediately like the new 5 hot cereal.
However, the first thing in the morning, before enjoying the cereal, is to drink (as instructed below in # 2) 15 min. after the hot water/lemon-lime drinking below in # (2) is the way to start your day - then the cereal 15 min. after drinking the water/lemon-lime.
The cereal is for every family member over 1 year old (for the age use your own judgement).
Eat only whole-grain bread - find the best deals. Stack up when on sale.
Prepare multi-grain hot cereal for your family. Cook more for several days. If you can manage to cook the breakfast full-multi-grain hot cereal once a week (weekend?) for the whole week it would save your time. Keep in your refrigerator(s) - stays well for one week.
This is the 5-grain hot cereal
Stack up the different ingredients when on sale - buy in big packages/sacks - store in a DRY place and cover well to:
(1) oats; steal-cut healthiest; click: Steel-cut oats & any rolled oats will do;
click: Rolled oats,
(2) par-boiled rice; par-boiled means "partially boiled" click: in the click: husk
(husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed) cooking time shortened, about 15-20 min. click: Parboiled rice,
(3) brown rice; brown rice is whole grain rice, cooking (=simmering) time about 2-3 h = brown rice has 30 % more nutrients than an other rice type,
click: Brown rice
(4) barley - click: Barley - The World's Healthiest Foods - there you can also find a brief guide
"How to select & buy barley"
Pearl barley (or pearled barley) is dehulled barley which has been steam processed further to remove the bran. click: Barley
(5) buckwheat. (Buckwheat is not really cereal but but can be combined with cereal - click: Buckwheat)
Buy all cereals when they are on sale (stack up), buy big sacks 20 lbs & up - store in dry place away from all pests (mice & rats, ants, etc.).
The proportions of the 5 cereals for cooking are, e.g.
(1) 5 lbs oats, (2) 4 lbs par-boiled rice, (3) 2 lbs brown rice, (4) 3 lbs barley
(5) 1 lb buckwheat
Keeping the pan covered while cooking helps to keep up to 25 % more of the nutrients in the cereal.
Each cereal has their own cooking time
Follow the cooking time instructions on the packages or study the internet.
Soak each grain overnight in cold water in their own pan and cook in the morning each in their own pan.
Save the soaking water for the cooking and add water as needed.
Hint: keep a separate pan for heating boiled water during the cooking period as you will need to add water. When you add boiling water the cooking process will not stop (as it would for a while if you added cold water) - it will save your time as you do not need to stand and watch all the time the pans to avoid spilling over or to avoid burning. Best is to keep every cereal simmering as it would also retain more nutrient & vitamins (keep the pan cover on) and would allow you to do other things also. Avoid any cereal getting burned in the pan by using good-quality steel pans (buy them when on sale). To use aluminum pans will easily burn the cereal and would take much more of your time for watching & cleaning. Do not use non-sticky pans as their surface will leak poisonous chemicals . Use only high-quality steel pans. (Buy them when on sale - often the saving can be 50 %.)
Cook every grain in their own pot as they each have a different cooking time and at the end, when they are all cooked, mix them in correct proportions together as one 5-cereal combination to keep in your refrigerator for the week's breakfasts.
The two important kitchen "tools" for your & your family's good health are:
(1) big refrigerators & (2) several good blenders.
The Crown Prince of the home blenders is Vitamix - click: Vitamix
The prince of the cheaper home blenders is Proctor Silex - Hamilton Beach (same company)
Click: Proctor Silex - there click: Kitchen Appliances / Blenders
Proctor Silex models are lower in price than Hamilton Beach products, yet are of good quality with a good warranty.
Buy the blenders Proctor Silex calls "Space Saving Blenders" - you need several in your kitchen to save your time. When you learn to use the blenders more, you can use several blenders at the same time. Keep always at least one new, unopened blender package in case some blender breaks. Study the warranty time 3, 6 or 12 months (with Proctor Silex) - the company sends a free blender to your house during the warranty time. Vitamix warranty is several years, some models up to seven years. If you can afford 1- 2 Vitamix blenders (they do a much finer job, helpful for your digestive system and thus good for your health) and then you add a few Proctor Silex blenders (each only about $25).
It is said "the blender is the key to our good health".
You need to learn to use the blender(s) for an easier digestive process - that equals to a healthier body & to a healthier mind.
Use the blenders as much as you can as the blended food will digest easier in your system, use less energy for digestion - the saved energy keeps your body functioning more effectively giving you a better health.
You can blend anything and take with you in thick glass or thick plastic bottles
and "drink" your lunch or dinner - but when eating/drinking mix it well with the saliva by rolling the "liquidized food" in your mouth, click: Saliva.
Avoid hot material in any plastic bottle as the heat will make harmful chemicals leak and enter your system.
STAF, Inc.'s full-size STAF Plan guides further in the blender use.
HAVE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE CEREAL PREPARATION - then everyone will eat and enjoy the delicious 5-grain hot cereal every morning.
Especially children are much more eager to eat "new" food when they are involved in the preparation & the cooking process.
Realize: children do/eat what they see their parents doing/eating, not what they are told to do/to eat.
If someone in your family has any allergies (e.g. gluten sensitivity, click: Gluten sensitivity) see your gluten specialist health care provider or otherwise, based on your reliable information, solve the situation in your family.
Before making any appointment, confirm that the Dr. is a gluten issues specialist OR call your insurance company to locate a specialist or call your city/town/village health office or Community Health Center for (free) guidance/information; do the same when dealing with any other health question. Not just any Dr. knows every topic.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda).
First in the morning (your stomach still empty) drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below). Guide your children and your toddlers do the same - the babies have a different agenda.
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money - the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Do not boil the lemon/lime, boil only the plain water first. Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be frozen. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma).
Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
About your mouth & teeth hygiene
Why here next to the stroke & heart attack topics? Because your mouth may have a direct link to your heart & brain health - and even broader: take care of your teeth and you whole body will benefit.
When your teeth are not in the best condition, the potentially destructive mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
Professor Nairn Wilson click: Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee states: "There are still many unknown elements in these matters, but one thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing (soft bristles) your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being." click: BDA (British Dental Association)
- Health and Science
We at STAF, Inc. purposely repeat this often: Have your children involved in learning this guide info & studying all given web links including the mouth & teeth hygiene facts. To give yourself and to your children the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition info for life is the best gift to have.Click: Healthy dental care toothbrushes - American Dental Association - ADA.org
Skin Care - Hair Care - Body Care - Showers
The less chemicals is used, the better.
Use simple soap (no fragrance, no deodorant soaps).
With our skin being our largest organ, we must be wise not to use products
that are full of petro-chemicals, parabens and other highly toxic ingredients.
However, women put, on a daily basis, an average of 515 TOXIC chemicals a day on their faces alone! That is 515 too many. That alone, has contributed to the higher rate of breast & other cancers in women and to our girls beginning to cycle at a much younger age. Also many women start their monepouse earlier than normal. All signs of a shorter life span.
Click: Dangerous and cancer-causing petrochemical properties of products and
click there: reviews of related topics
Click: Petrochemical Click: Paraben
Hair
Most shampoos and other hair care products have too many harmful chemicals - the simpler the better. Hairsprays & other similar products can cause hair loss. Some wash their hair every day - if your work conditions do not demand daily washing, 2 (- 3) times a week is enough. Instead, daily, brush & comb your hair with a "heavy" comb to get rid of the dandruff (= dead skin cells on your scalp and hair). To wash your hair more often is to take the protective, natural "oil/fat" away and your hair loses its shine and strength; you risk to get bald faster than you otherwise would.
We humans have about -/+ 100 thousand hairs = men less, women more.
Every day we lose some of them. TEST: comb your hair & comb/rub your scalp with a heavy comb for 60 seconds. Dandruff (= dead scalp cells) drops and hairs drop. Count the hairs that came off after combing for 60 seconds.
Test answer: Less than 100 (hundred) hairs a day is safe and normal, more than 100(hundred) hairs a day = that's too much - also called click: Alopecia
In animals hair loss - you may need this info if you have pets or you have cattle click: Mange
We humans lose up to 100 hairs from our scalp every day. That's normal, and in most people, those hairs grow back. But many men -- and some women -- lose hair as they grow older. You can also lose your hair if you have certain
diseases, such as thyroid problems click: Thyroid, diabetes click: Diabetes or lupus, click: Lupus.
If you take certain medicines or have chemotherapy for cancer, you may also lose your hair. Other causes are stress, a low protein diet, a family history, or poor nutrition. Treatment for hair loss depends on the cause. In some cases, treating the underlying cause will correct the problem. Other treatments include medicines and hair restoration.
click: Hair loss
As needed, consult: (1) a dermatologist, click: Dermatology
OR consult (2) an Endocrinologist, click: Endocrinology
Deodorants
block the natural skin "breathing" by blocking the skin pores and keep toxins inside the body burdening the immune system, thus adding to sickness risks. Healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition eliminates unpleasant sweat odor - then you do not need any deodorants. The unpleasant sweat odor comes from eating unhealthy food, fast-f00d (= bad-food) and combining food items in an unnatural manner - then the bacteria relating to rutting causes the unpleasant odor - all signs for new disease.
Eat as instructed in this guide to avoid sickness - teach your children to do the same. Once more: children do what they see their parents doing not what the parents tell them to do.
There is no need to take the risk that deodorants may cause when you accept the healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in you daily life. One fact is for sure: they keep the toxins inside the body and that can & will cause sickness. Eliminate deodorant use when planning & being pregnant and as long as you are breastfeeding. The men can deliver higher quality sperm the less toxins there are in the male body.
Deodorants are toxic - that is a fact - they have toxins in them.
Eat real food, not imitation food, walk enough, sleep enough & learn to relax your mind - then your sweat does not smell and you forget the deodorants that are toxic no matter how we look at them.
click: Harmful ingredients in deodorants
click: Dangers of deodorant sprays
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily
as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer) - if you are not able to walk that much or not at all, meet with your primary care physician and find out what other exercise options fit your situation to keep you physically in a good condition.
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 (seven) sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children reading those 7 articles.
To sleep better: (1) leave 3 hours between the dinner and your bedtime - otherwise the food digestion may disturb you, (2) avoid listening/ watching/ hearing negative news late in the evening and (3) in your bedroom the only 2 things you do are (1) making love & (2) sleep.
Keep electronics in some other room (including the TV) - Guide your children do the same - all according to the available space.It is estimated that in the U.S. sleep deprivation causes annually 63 billion dollars in lost productivity.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titled M+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success - have your children learning also,
(9) Do (you and you children) basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9)
(10) Learn to keep a positive attitude leading to happiness - but how?
Running after the feeling of happiness is like trying to catch the rainbow.
The principle of how to pursue (= catch = get) & keep happiness is mostly misunderstood , tells the happiness science.
The pursuit of happiness click: pursuit of Happiness is in the click: United States Declaration of Independence, thus, especially the Americans think and believe that happiness is what everyone then should feel most of the time - otherwise we have failed in life. Not true at all.
Relax, STAF, Inc. will show you what real happiness is and how to get & keep it.
Let's see what the most recent happiness science states.
Quotation
"The Road to happiness is paved with struggle" (Dr. Russ Harris)
In this website STAF, Inc. has science articles relating to happiness.
Some main principles here - apply the information and you will have peace with the mystery of happiness.
Happiness is not always and continuously feeling good. That would be boring and make us feel strapped in the same routine day after day. Happiness is richness of life based on different events & different feelings. Life with endless forms and ventures is richness.
If we limit our life to one feeling only, feeling of happiness, we certainly will feel miserable - that would have nothing to do with happiness.
What makes us humans happy is to get results in solving our difficulties & struggles. Having a meaningful, steady work is one major source of life happiness. Getting results in any purposeful, significant goal, no matter how difficult, gives us happiness. E.g., relationships & parenthood gives us deep meaning & happiness and they always have difficult sides also.
Solving our struggle is the key to happiness
Old saying:
"When God wants to give us a gift, He always wraps it in a form of a problem"
When we solve the problem, we grow wiser & stronger and as the result feel peace & happiness. Thus, (1) do not curse difficulties, instead (2) be thankful for them and bless the challenges & struggling because they are an important part of our existence and the keys to a better, richer, happier life.
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 3 of 3 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more:
Have a weekly a whole family study meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discussing in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from this STAF, Inc.'s guidance website.
The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links - it's a wide
encyclopedia of information.
It is the "world's #1 free advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
To learn and start investing with the goal of becoming a (multi-)millionaire is in STAF, Inc.'s website in tab "more...", there in sub-tab "Credit & Credit Cards"
Teach the principles to you children to start with their allowance money.
It is a realistic goal to become financially wealthy - start, follow the instructions, learn to invest and the results will be yours. Patience & durability are the keys.
Start with any amount (even $50/month) - to start is the first step, learn and grow in financial health in addition learning the good bodily health.
___________
When you now studied the healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition information presented above, study this WSJ article:
"Chefs and doctors are teaming up to create healthy dishes you might actually crave"
"Copy and paste the entire address below into your web browser (next 2 lines):
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304704504579431133752897634-lMyQjAxMTA0MDEwNzExNDcyWj
When the article is up, in addition to reading the text, click also in the 3rd picture from the top: click: Interactive: Culinary Rx or click: View graphics -
then: Click the red circle next to each item to see the written description
to study 24 food items and their benefits for the human health.
All these 24 food items have been mentioned in this STAF, Inc.guide. Study this article also with your whole family including with your children.
In case the link to the article has expired search the web with
(copy & paste):
"WSJ Health Food for Foodies - A Delicious Prescription"
If the article does not come up, email STAF, Inc. and request to have it emailed to you - e: [email protected]
The article was published in WSJ 3/15/2014 as:
"WSJ Health Food for Foodies - A Delicious Prescription"
_____________________________
Below, after the article 3 of 3 the links to:
The U.S. Government Food Pyramids and Plates: What Should You Really Eat?- Prepared by The Harvard School of Public Health & other sources.
WHY AT THE END?
Because
(1) above there is quite much information to digest, then
(2) it is more practical to study the new "Food Plate" and the old "Food Pyramid" info after you studied the above compact healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guide.
Then studying the additional "Plate" and "Pyramid" info is easier to understand and easier to adopt in your and your family's daily healthy lifestyle and healthy eating.
Study everything as a family - have the weekly family meetings as instructed above.
Additional questions email to STAF, Inc.: [email protected]
Email your success stories based on this life-quality improving material.
STAF, Inc. needs your donations to ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide.
Donation instructions in STAF, Inc.'s home page and below in the article 3 of 3
_____________
Article 3 of 3
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
That's like a free health insurance and better
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the
most economical plan
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
We at STAF, Inc. want to know how you expect STAF, Inc. & this advice website, in a longer run, to improve your & your family's life, or how it already has improved your life.
Let us know in your donation letter.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
As instructed above
at the end of the article 1 of 2
STAF, Inc.'s editors placed these extensive web links above and once more here next below at the end of article 2 of 2 to give you
a chance to further study the details as they are the foundation for your and your family's future health
Click green below to study further info - study all details
Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health
Click:
Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/.../03plate.html
The New York Times
Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler guideline to promote healthy nutrition. ... Nutrition Plate Unveiled, Replacing Food Pyramid. Jim Watson/Agence ... The 1992 food guide pyramid. The new ...
__________________
The links below relate to # 10 ("Happiness") in the above guide.
Are you ready for more about 'how to have happiness' ?
click Dr Russ Harris
The Happiness Trap | Stop Struggling Start Living.www.thehappinesstrap.com/
Dr Russ Harris, author of 'The Happiness Trap' is Australia's foremost provider of training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - a powerful new ...
Resources - Book Shop - Happiness Trap Workshops - Mindfulness
click: The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A ...www.amazon.com › ... › Cognitive Psychology
Your opinion is valued at STAF, Inc.- let us know your opinion about Dr. Russ Harris' teachings. Amazon has his book for under 10 U.S. dollars
Email your opinions to STAF, Inc. to: [email protected]
Or mail to: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_________________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc.
will ease human suffering & turn lives to victory *
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
www.staf1org.weebly.com
__________________
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit,
is the nation/worldwide leading, new organization
for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
*Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering and turn lives to victory*
STAF, Inc. has also developed a "full-size" guide for the U.S. gov. use.
This abbreviated guide above is made of 2 basic elements: (1) written text and (2) added web referrals. Additionally, a free Q&A-service provided via email.
Even though this guide is abbreviated, it contains most major basic facts for a healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition.
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
& Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., as the author
The copyrighted Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Guide for The Good Life with related additional guides & information above is free of any charge worldwide for all personal use. It is also free for all educational purposes in seminars, schools, colleges & universities worldwide. Give your students STAF, Inc.'s web link and guide them to further study its extensive, scientifically reliable advice website for the good life. Urge your students to apply the information for their lasting health & longer life, for their family happiness & financially richer life including becoming a (multi-) millionaire starting with $50 dollars a month.
To everyone using this advice website for your improved life:
email to STAF, Inc. your success stories to: [email protected]
________
Find out what you have learned -
The 30-minute test
When you have studied in full every article above, STAF, Inc. invites you to test your level of mastery.
Instructions
(1) Click the green "Balance diet - Healthy lifestyle" link at the end of this test info.
(2) Read the link information to find out IF everything it states looks familiar to you. The test link has healthy lifestyle opinions from several nationwide &
worldwide leading organizations but in a compact form stating plain principles.
(3) Evaluate if you master all the basic principles and if almost nothing in that article is new info for you, then you are well on your way to a healthier, happier longer life with less or no suffering - as long as you apply the info daily in your life. Guide your children to apply the information in their lives every day.
Quotation "Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
(4) Email us at STAF, Inc. how you did in your test:
e-mail: [email protected]
Click this test link: Balanced diet - Healthy Lifestyle
As you may feel necessary anytime in the future, repeat-study this guide
to be sure you have adopted the healthy lifestyle information for your healthier, happier, longer and richer life.
________
Email us your success stories
how STAF, Inc.'s guidance has given you and your family a higher-quality life.
e-mail: [email protected]
_________
Want to get deeper knowledge &
become a professional ?
Public Health professionals are in demand because it's more widely
recognized that our good health and higher success in life
is possible through our own actions
A lifetime opportunity
Become a
Certified Healthy Lifestyle Coach© (CHLC)™
Earn full-time or part-time income (1) in your private practice and/or
(2) by leading STAF, Inc.'s public & corporate seminars in the U.S. nationwide or worldwide in any country.
As a public health professional you will ease human suffering, guide your clients to avoid sickness and have good health. As a CHLC™ -professional you will also show how to maintain a happy marriage, how to raise successful children and how to become financially successful, even a millionaire starting only with $50 a month.
When you teach these most important success elements in life you will yourself apply the principles more effectively in your own life and succeed higher than you ever expected.
STAF, Inc. will train & certify you - online or in major cities nationwide & worldwide.
Get more information of this great opportunity - send your brief resume or CV and basic info: (1) country & location(s) where you are available to run STAF, Inc.'s seminars, (2) in what language(s), (3) your education & work experience, (4) links to your online presence and (5) one recommendation letter of your suitability for teaching work (state the relation between you and your recommendation letter provider).
Include your (1) postal mailing address, (2) your email address & (3) phone #.
Write all material in English.
Mail to:
STAF, Inc.
Dept. CHLC ™ Program
P.O. Box 1555
New York, NY 10163-1555
USA
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs donations.
Perhaps you could include in your resume envelope a donation of a size suitable to you. Your donation will ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide. The U.S. paper notes preferred as donation but any currency paper notes are accepted.
STAF, Inc. will email to you a receipt for your donation.
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. is also in the process
of founding a new University
to provide high-quality education in the public health sciences and in all other STAF, Inc.'s work related science areas - which means: practically all areas of a successful life.
A few examples of the goals the new STAF, Inc.'s University will have.
STAF, Inc.'s goal and its new University's goal is to eliminate the modern killer-epidemics as overweight & obesity, widening smoking in developing countries & drug use worldwide and promote in a new manner nationwide & worldwide the importance of healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in fighting disease and human suffering.
Also strengthening nationwide & worldwide family ties & traditional marriages to provide a safe, nurturing & healthy atmosphere for our children to grow up, belongs to STAF, Inc.'s and its new University's goals. So do teaching and training every school child to know how to grow financially successful through investments starting only with$50 dollars a month. The financial equality nationwide & worldwide can be substantially leveled for everyone's best in our nation and in every nation worldwide. These are some examples of the new University's goals. The goal is to teach the world to have a better quality of life.
It can only be done when we all start sharing the abundance in knowledge & riches.
The results will be beneficial to the givers and to the receivers. We all share the same planet and its overall health or sickness will affect the rich & the poor, thus affecting us all.
In the new University all degree levels will be available:
Associate, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Quotation
"Education is the most powerful weapon
which you can choose to change the world"
Nelson Mandela Click
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
*to ease human suffering & turn lives to victory nationwide & worldwide*
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163-1555, USA
_______________________
Add Comment
Do you enjoy eating chemical used in shoe soles and yoga mats - it's commonly used in the food industry - find out how to avoid this poison and maintain your health03/26/2014
0 Comments
Sen. Charles Schumer (Dem. NY) called on the FDA to ban a chemical that's added into the bread at most fast-food chains.
"In a day where cancer rates are rising . . . you have to be careful," he said outside a McDonald's on Manhattan's West Side.
Many restaurants, grocery stores and fast-food chains, like McDonald's, use azodicarbonamide click: Wikipedia
to condition dough and make the bread last longer, but studies have found that it can create semicarbazide, a carcinogen, when cooked.
"The burger chain is one of many restaurants, like Arby's, Burger King and Wendy's, that use the chemical," Schumer said.
Last week, Subway announced it would stop using the chemical in its stores. McDonald's didn't return messages for comment.
Schumer is less worried about the use of the chemical in other products such as shoe soles and yoga mats. "It's pretty infrequent that we'd eat a shoe or yoga mat," he said.
Australia and the European Union have already banned azodicarbonamide from their food and the United States should follow suit, Schumer said.
The FDA could easily be rid of the chemical by attaching it to a clause in regulations, which prohibits the agency from approving anything carcinogenic for consumption.
"We need to do everything we can to remove carcinogens*) from the food pyramid," Schumer said.
A carcinogen*) is any substance, radionuclide**), or radiation that is an agent directly involved in causing cancer. This may be due to the ability to damage the genome or to the disruption of cellular metabolic processes.
*) carcinogene click: Wikipedia
* *) radionuclide click: Wikipedia
___________________
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, the new, leading organization in Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition with nationwide & worldwide operation states:
Senator Schumer is right - however, the fast food (= "Bad No-Food") and processed stuff called "food" is not suitable as food for us humans, not for our pets, either.
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click: mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
The way to eat safely to maintain our health is possible.
STAF, Inc. has the solution. See below.
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
________________
12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat, nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink 16 oz.
1-min. boiled water (brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in every fruit & vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the boiled water daily.
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces ad put as whole in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) Do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below).
The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan.
It is also called: The STAF Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
_______________________
Want to get deeper knowledge &
become a professional ?
Public Health professionals are in demand because it's more widely
recognized that our good health and higher success in life
is possible through our own actions
A lifetime opportunity
Become a
Certified Healthy Lifestyle Coach© (CHLC)™
Earn full-time or part-time income (1) in your private practice and/or
(2) by leading STAF, Inc.'s public & corporate seminars in the U.S. nationwide or worldwide in any country.
As a public health professional you will ease human suffering, guide your clients to avoid sickness and have good health. As a CHLC™ -professional you will also show how to maintain a happy marriage, how to raise successful children and how to become financially successful, even a millionaire starting only with $50 a month.
When you teach these most important success elements in life you will yourself apply the principles more effectively in your own life and succeed higher than you ever expected.
STAF, Inc. will train & certify you - online or in major cities nationwide & worldwide.
Get more information of this great opportunity - send your brief resume or CV and basic info: (1) country & location(s) where you are available to run STAF, Inc.'s seminars, (2) in what language(s), (3) your education & work experience, (4) links to your online presence and (5) one recommendation letter of your suitability for teaching work (state the relation between you and your recommendation letter provider).
Include your (1) postal mailing address, (2) your email address & (3) phone #.
Write all material in English.
Mail to:
STAF, Inc.
Dept. CHLC ™ Program
P.O. Box 1555
New York, NY 10163
USA
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs donations.
Perhaps you could include in your resume envelope a donation of a size suitable to you. Your donation will ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide. The U.S. paper notes preferred as donation but any currency paper notes are accepted.
STAF, Inc. will email to you a receipt for your donation.
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. is also in the process
of founding a new University
to provide high-quality education in the public health sciences and in all other STAF, Inc.'s work related science areas - which means: practically all areas of a successful life.
A few examples of the goals the new STAF, Inc.'s University will have.
STAF, Inc.'s goal and its new University's goal is to eliminate the modern killer-epidemics as overweight & obesity, widening smoking in developing countries & drug use worldwide and promote in a new manner nationwide & worldwide the importance of healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition in fighting disease and human suffering.
Also strengthening nationwide & worldwide family ties & traditional marriages to provide a safe, nurturing & healthy atmosphere for our children to grow up, belongs to STAF, Inc.'s and its new University's goals. So do teaching and training every school child to know how to grow financially successful through investments starting only with$50 dollars a month. The financial equality nationwide & worldwide can be substantially leveled for everyone's best in our nation and in every nation worldwide. These are some examples of the new University's goals. The goal is to teach the world to have a better quality of life.
It can only be done when we all start sharing the abundance in knowledge & riches.
The results will be beneficial to the givers and to the receivers. We all share the same planet and its overall health or sickness will affect the rich & the poor, thus affecting us all.
In the new University all degree levels will be available:
Associate, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.
Quotation
"Education is the most powerful weapon
which you can choose to change the world"
Nelson Mandela Click
www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF, Inc. needs your donation
*to ease human suffering & turn lives to victory nationwide & worldwide*
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA
_______________________
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Skipping Proper Breakfast You May End in Your Early Grave - Here is what to do to Save your health & Build new wealth03/11/2014
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Article 1 of 2
How to maintain your health - How to restore your lost health ?
STAF, Inc. has the solution
Written & Edited by
Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
"STAF, Inc. is your STAFF for your NEW life"
* health * family happiness * financial freedom
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click mission - STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages.
Save The America Family - STAF, Inc.,-not-for-profit, is the leading, new organization for all family matters, healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition, successful finances & for the good life - all with nationwide & worldwide operations.
* Your donation to STAF, Inc. will ease human suffering
& turn lives to victory *
Donation instructions below in article 2 of 2 and in the home page
___________________________
This article information is suitable advice for everyone 2 years or older
even though it first shows the teenage related research facts.
The Free, Abbreviated 12-Step Mini-Guide for Healthy Lifestyle, Correct Nutrition & for The Good Life with One Million or More in The Bank©
developed by STAF, Inc. (1) for the U.S. gov. use as a program in the new health care system and (2) to-be published as a book for the worldwide market with the main title STAF Plan 3.11© With One Million or More in The Bank©
The program is at the same time an automatic,
"Aaahh!Finally-the-results"© Weight loss program, no calorie counting, just follow the new program's instructions for easy, natural food preparing - nothing else to do. Everyone can afford this program as we do not sell you food - we guide you to buy the ingredients in your own supermarket and prepare the food in your very own kitchen - based on all new, delicious recipes. As the result, your new, lasting health will cost less than ever before. See the amazingly low monthly food cost below in the article 2 of 2. The savings is "found money" - you invest it to become a millionaire.
The program has full guidance for "How to become a (multi-)millionaire starting with $50 a month". Nothing like this never existed before - suitable for everyone nationwide/worldwide.
Below detailed info, for you and for your whole family, what to drink & eat for your improved health and for your longer life.
This mini guide is kept up with the latest research info - thus it is a good idea to study this again if you studied it sometimes in the even a close past.
Repetitio est mater studiorum (Latin)
(Repetition is the mother of study)
© Copyrights STAF, Inc. 2014
_______________________
Instructions how to study this 12-step mini-guide
Actually this whole text, from the very top to the final end, could be defined as the 12-step mini-guide. However, there is a specific section explaining the 12 basic steps.
We purposely repeat the title often to motivate you to learn & apply every detail.
Because this information can provide you excellent health leading to a longer, more enjoyable life, this guide may be the most important material for you and for your whole family.
This guide is fit for every family in the U.S. and for every family worldwide.
The purpose of this material is to guide you and your family
(1) to maintain your health and
(2) to restore your possible lost health due to an unhealthy lifestyle and to incorrect nutrition.
Every family member should be involved in this learning process.
To master the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition principles early in life could easily be the best gift you, as the parent(s), can give to your children for life.
Become a healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition inspirator for your children.
Your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Obtaining this information based on the natural health laws will save potentially plenty in (1) sickness care, (2) will eliminate pain and suffering (that have been based on a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition) and (3) provide for every family member a longer, more enjoyable life.
Even though this is called "a mini-guide" it has a substantial amount information,probably more than you expect. This guide has the basic healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition principles in a compact form.
Instructions: how to gain a healthy, meaningful life
- please, it is important to follow the detailed instructions
(1) First read through below the whole text in the article 1 and in the article 2 .
During the first reading do NOT click any of the web links (basic text in black, the web links mostly in green , also in other color, with the preceding word click:) - read the full text in both articles 1 of 2 and 2 of 2 to get an idea what you and your family can expect to learn. Every family member should be involved and follow these instructions - as a group everyone learns better and sticks to the guidance to gain a better, healthier life and also all together building a million or more in the bank.
(2) When every family member has done the first reading, have a family meeting to decide together how you are going to proceed best as a family.
(3) During the 2nd reading, which is now the learning process, take notes, clickevery web link and study the link material as broadly as you see suitable.
In most links there are several pages to your interest. The better & wider job you do in learning, the better your health will be and the longer you will enjoy your life.
(4) Based on the guide instructions organize your weekly family learning meeting to discuss the material and deciding together how you are going to apply the material together in your family to build a better, healthier, richer & longer life for everyone.
(5) When your lives start improving let us at the STAF, Inc. know your success stories either by postal mail or via email. Contact info in this guide text and in
STAF, Inc.'s website, home page. Any questions via email.
e: [email protected]
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization, needs & will appreciate your donations.
Donation instructions in the home page and also below in article 2 of 2.
Your donations will ease human suffering nation/worldwide.
_____________
STAF, Inc. has developed a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program for the U.S. gov. use with the main title
STAF Plan 3.11© With One Million or More in The Bank©
Will also be published as a book - all suitable for every country's needs worldwide. Further info below in article 2 of 2.
_____________
Article 1 of 2
The European (Swedish) study was published in "Public Health Nutrition", online January 28, 2014
Teenagers who didn't eat a good breakfast were more likely to be obese and have elevated blood sugar in middle age, a new study shows.
Researchers at Umea University in Sweden click: Umeå University, Sweden
found that teens who reported eating no breakfast or only sweets were two-thirds more likely to develop a cluster of risk factors linked to heart disease and diabetes when they were in their 40s than their peers who ate more substantial morning meals.
"It may be that eating breakfast aids in keeping to a healthier diet the rest of the day," the study's lead author, Maria Wennberg, click: Maria Wennberg - Search Facilities - Umeå University, Sweden
Kids who miss breakfast experience hunger surges and tend to overeat later in the day, Dr. David Ludwig, a pediatrics and nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, said. He was not involved in the current study.
Wennberg and her colleagues reviewed data from 889 people in Lulea, Sweden. In 1981, when they were 16 years old, the participants completed questionnaires about what they ate for breakfast on a single day.
Researchers then examined them in 2008, when they were 43 years old, for metabolic syndrome, a collection of risk factors that can lead to heart disease, diabetes and stroke.
They found that 27 percent had developed signs of the syndrome, according to the study published in Public Health Nutrition.
Moreover, those who reported missing breakfast or eating a poor-quality one as a teenager were 68 percent more likely to have metabolic syndrome in middle age.
Metabolic syndrome is a name for a group of risk factors that occur together and increase the risk for coronary artery disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, cancer & other sicknesses
Click for each metabolic syndrome topic:
Metabolic Syndrome
Causes - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
When the researchers analyzed separate components of the syndrome, they found that obesity and high blood-sugar levels at age 43 were linked with poor breakfast habits at age 16.
About 35 percent of U.S. adults have metabolic syndrome, according to the American Heart Association. In addition to a large waistline and high blood sugar, components of the syndrome include high blood pressure and low "good" cholesterol.
click: American Heart Association - Building healthier lives
Past studies found links between higher quality diets and healthier lifestyles, the authors write. Poor breakfast habits may therefore be part of an unhealthy lifestyle.
Wennberg called for more research on the link between adolescent breakfast habits and middle-age disease as well as for studies evaluating the benefits of school-breakfast programs "both because of effects on metabolic health and because of effects on academic performance."
"This may especially be of value in areas with socioeconomic disadvantage," she said.
Ludwig agreed, citing the benefits of a healthy breakfast on physical health as well as on thinking skills and academic performance. But he questioned the quality of the government-subsidized or free breakfasts that millions of American children currently receive at school.
"The rule is these breakfasts are cheap, low quality and of potentially marginal benefit," he told Reuters Health. "This is a tremendous missed opportunity."
An ideal breakfast would include protein, healthy fat and a source of carbohydrates like fruit or vegetables or minimally processed grain, he said.
The amount of money available for the federally-funded U.S. School Breakfast Program "is woefully inadequate," and "the nutritional standards are archaic," Ludwig said.
"In some cases, the schools have virtually outsourced the kitchen to the fast-food industry," he said.
He noted that the U.S. Senate sent to President Barack Obama a bill to cut the click: SNAP - Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, by about $900 million a year, or roughly 1 percent. About half of food stamp recipients are children.
____________
This free 12-step fast-track guide fits for women, men & children (min. 2 years old)
(1) About 95 % of sicknesses are caused by unhealthy lifestyle and wrong nutrition.
(2) Thus, 95 % of sicknesses can potentially be healed
and do not necessarily automatically become part of our golden years.
Introduction
In the past in our human history, people died mostly in pandemics.
A pandemic (from Greek pan "all" and demos "people") is click: an epidemic of infectious disease that has spread through human populations across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or even worldwide.
(epidemic from Greek epi "upon or above" and demos "people")
Plague (Lat. plaga = wound) click: Plague - Plague is a bacterial infection found mainly in rodents and their fleas. But via those fleas it can sometimes leap to humans. When it does, the outcome can be horrific, making plague outbreaks the most notorious disease episodes in history.
The Black Death peaking in Europe in the years around 1350 CE. (CE = common era - also Current Era or Christian Era ) was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in the deaths of 50 % oof the population an estimated 200 million people and peaking in Europe in the years 1348–50 CE. click: Wikipedia
E.g., still in the World War One 1914 - 1918 many times more soldiers died because of the infections due to low sanitary safety than died in the actual war actions.
The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel laureate (= winner of a Nobel prize) Alexander Fleming in 1928. click: Nobel
Penicillin antibiotics were among the first drugs to be effective against many previously serious diseases. E.g. The famous British Prime Minister Churchill saved his life with Alexander Fleming's penicillin discovery, click: Sir Winston Churchill
When in comes to food & nutrition,
in the past generations people ate FOOD = REAL food, prepared in their own home kitchen using natural ingredients.
Today most people do not any more know what real food is - the results: sickness & suffering & early death.
E.g., based on study, click and read: Fast Food Hamburgers Could be as Little as 2% ACTUAL Meat - and many call it "food"
Real food,
suitable for us human or suitable for our pets, IS NOT the modern food-like stuff that is processed, "fortified" with chemicals, poisonous for the human body and lacking in life preserving nutrients.
E.g. the enzymes, biological molecules responsible for the thousands of metabolic processes that sustain life, die at the temperature of about 132 F = 55 C. Yet, the chemicalized food processing industry uses even higher temperatures - the results: no life-sustaining enzymes left. Click: Pasteurization
When the enzyme molecules are gone in the modern food-killing process, is it then a wonder that worldwide a wide part of the population suffer of click: Metabolic Syndrome storing larger and larger amounts of toxins in every cell of the body and finally developing all possible killer sicknesses: cancer, diabetes, heart problems, high blood pressure, strokes, etc. - just name any sickness - it's endless.
Sickness care (wrongly called health care) costs go up, human suffering gets wider, early deaths become more common. We at the STAF guide you inhealth care: we guide you and everyone willing to learn to restore & keep the precious base element: health - and based on health have a long, happy life.
The industrial age with its chemicals brought us all these "innovations".
Still in the 1950' - 1960's the advertisements touted "Health through the modern chemicals". Smoking was glorified publicly and still in the 1950's, 1960's believed being healthy for us human. That wrong belief was because smoking raises the heart beating rate as does exercise so the logical "science" thinking was "smoking is healthy". Still in the 50's and early 60's the tobacco commercials had medical doctors smoking and stating "I, Dr. X smoke Life*) - it is for my health". *) "Life" was a cigarette brand.
Today the use of pesticides has destroyed the healthy ground. The land, air & water are polluted as the result of wide use of chemicals once defined as a life & health improving solution for everyone worldwide.
Today the animals grown for food are fed with harmful chemicals
& click: Antibiotics ending in the food chain in the humans, in our pets and in everything including polluting the oceans and all elements.
Greed & The Modern Cattle Care - a life danger in our world and in our food
Rampant, irresponsible greed has widely destroyed in our modern times the proper, humane care of the animals meant for the human food.
The wide overuse of click: Antibiotics to make the animals grow faster is endangering also the human health by ending in our drinking water and in us when eating the meat - we develop resistance and the antibiotics do not work when needed in an emergency situation. CDC - The U.S. Centers of Disease Control, states "it can be lethal".
Click: Antibiotics: Misuse puts you and others at risk - Mayo Clinic
Physical exercise in us humans makes us stronger by expelling toxins out from our body - we stay healthier. The immune system does not have a pump to get rid of the toxins - our physical movements work as its pump.
Yet, most of the animals used as the human food live in a small space where they cannot hardly move around. It is like living our whole human life in the economy class airplane seat - what would our human body condition be if that would be our destiny? What about our mental condition? Our whole lifetime would be painful torturing.
Yet, our legislation still accepts that the animals we eat in our human food chain
can be living their whole life in similar terrifying conditions without any possibility to exercise and pump out the toxic from their muscles.
Is that kind of an animal meat, filled with toxins, really healthy for us humans?
Every living creature has emotions in addition to the physical pain.
The emotional pain feeds additional toxic chemicals into the animal'' meat and we humans eat it.
In the past the cattle grew outside freely roaming happily around eating fresh grass and enjoying the nature.
Now we give them an airline economy seat to live their whole life inside and expect them staying healthy without much physical exercise to keep the body & mind healthy. This is the background for the overuse of the antibiotics in the animal industry.
Often the slaughterhouses process knowingly (greed) or unknowingly (ignorance) sick animals. Anyone would understand that meat from sick sources is not suitable for us humans and not suitable for our pets.
Quotation "For greed all nature is too little" Lucius Annaeus Seneca
click: Seneca
One example of class 1 meat recall - class 1 = high health risk
In this case Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds of beef because it processed diseased and
and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. 8.7 million pounds of Rancho recalled beef could make burgers for every resident of New York City, London, and Tokyo. The huge amount of recalled meat was supposed to be extra healthy "Fancy grass-fed Beef".
Is this a greed based decision to process the contaminated meat or did they really not know that the animals were diseased and unsound. You be the judge.
click: Class 1 – High Risk Recall - click: Recalls Fancy Grass-Fed Beef
What about milk and eggs if the cows and the chickens are not allowed to move around?
Cow's Milk
Is there pus in the cow's milk produced in the U.S. ?
Pus = dead white blood cells and bacteria with tissue debris and serum.
Pus is a sign the cow having an infection in the udder (= the baglike organ where the milk is). Turning dairy cows into milk machines has led to click: epidemics of so-called “production-related diseases,” such as lameness*) (= difficulties in walking)click: lameness in cows and mastitis (udder infections) click: Mastitis in dairy cows, are the two click: leading causes of dairy cow mortality in the United States.
*) Lameness is a clinical sign of a more severe disorder that results in a disturbance in the gait(= manner ow walking) and the ability to move the body about, typically in response to pain, injury, or abnormal anatomy
click: Bovine Growth Hormone (bovine = relating to cow & cattle)
There is also an agreement how much pus is allowed to be in the U.S.
The 2003 FDA click: Pasteurized Milk Ordinance (PMO) PDF (3.5MB) sets the maximum level of somatic cells allowed in Grade A milk at 750,000 cells per. milliliter - a level that has been in effect since at least 1999
Read the health-related facts in this article: click: How much pus is there in milk? | NutritionFacts.org
Then read this article - all necessary facts out together
click: The Dangers of Drinking Cow's Milk
The dairy products, when they are clean have beneficial nutrients - but remember: where does the cow get the nutrients? From eating the grass outside
(= "vegetable") or eating soy, corn, hay (dried "grass")*) - all vegetables. So will youget them from eating a variety of vegetables daily - eat a variety of fresh fruit daily also. Thus one can live healthy without dairy products. Some are allergic to dairy and live happily healthy when eating vegetables & fresh fruit. Cheese in moderation is a treat if you are not allergic to it. *)click Hay -
Milk has calcium is touted (= to convince) - so do vegetables, fruit, beans, nuts - without any side effects. click: Top 10 Foods Highest in Calcium
Goat's Milk -
a healthier, more nutritious option for any age - also for your baby because goat’s milk is closest in structure to human milk = closest to the mother's breast milk
Goat's milk has more beneficial nutrients in a cleaner form than cow's milk does.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow's milk can enjoy goat's milk.
Goat's milk is also more suitable for a baby because goat’s milk is closest in its structure to human milk.
Your pediatrician should know these fact - if not, it's time to find a more knowledgeable baby doctor.
Goat milk industry is smaller and is not so corrupted with the use of hormones and other harmful chemicals/medicines as the cow milk industry is.
Goats are not standing in an economy class seat their whole life - they are moving & jumping around often year round as they can take any weather better than the cows. They eat healthie natural grass & leaves outside much more than the cows.
That's why the goats produce much cleaner, safer and nutrition wise more valuable milk.
click: The Health Benefits of Goat's Milk
One more article explaining the differences between goat's & cow's milk - it is good to compare different texts:
click: Goat's Milk vs. Cow's Milk
No one can deny that goat's milk is a safer, cleaner, more upscale & healthier product than cow's milk - STAF, Inc. endorses the use of goat milk at least
(1) for the babies and for (2) people who cannot tolerate cow's milk.
If you can afford the smallish price difference for the whole family, be blessed
& go for the goat!
click also this link: cow’s milk to see the facts why cow's milk is secondary to goat's milk.
Sheep's Milk
Then there is the sheep's milk - a small niche (= a specialty segment of a market) , more expensive and not everywhere available (except with the modern "same-day-next-day delivery" = gets more expensive, no need pay more - instead invest the saved money). Sheep's milk has little more nutrients than goat's milk and much more than cow's milk.
To look further click: Sheep 101
What milk for your newborn, your baby?
Mother's milk is the most perfect food - breastfeed as long as you can - minimum 6 months - up to 18 - 24 months if you can - talk to you baby doctor. Breastfeeding is healthier for the mother and healthier for the baby.
The mutual mental-emotional benefits are more rewarding when breast-feeding. Any sickness in the mother? - Talk to you baby doctor. Any sickness in the baby? - A sick baby needs more mother's milk (because it is perfect food & healing), not less, is the principle, but talk to your baby doctor because all depends on "what sickness".
Click: The Risks of Not Breastfeeding for Mothers and Infants www.ncbi.
nlm.nih.gov.
Health outcomes in developed countries differ substantially who
formula feed compared with those who breastfeed.
If he mother has difficulties developing enough beast milk, breast milk can also be bought, but: warning - there may be health risks (contamination, the source is not always the healthiest & it is quite expensive) - talk to your baby doctor.
Goat's milk click: Goat's Milk for Babies and sheep's milk click: Sheep's Milk are both close to the mother's milk and suitable for the baby - talk to you baby doctor.
Eggs
The free-ranged chickens lay eggs that have much more healthy nutrients than the chickens kept in small boxes without any chance for moving around to exercise. California has a new legislation for healthier chicken to produce healthier eggs. The new CA law gives several times more space to all their chickens than most other states do. click: They Are Going to Wish They All Could Be California Hens - The New York Times, March 3, 2014
The Past and The Present
In the past human history the infectious disease pandemicskilled people, often a half or more of the population.
Today's pandemic
is the the way most people worldwide eat in a unhealthy manner stuff that has not much to do with food. Then they get sick, suffer and leave this life much too soon.
During the past worst pandemics about half of the population died.
The same thing now: over half of the population in the U.S. and worldwide is overweight or obese. Overweight & obesity kills by causing killer-sicknesses.
Today's pandemic is our wrong food which is not natural food and does not maintain the human health.
Snacking
Definition of snacking = a small amount of food eaten between meals; notice the three important words: (1+2) small amount, (3) food. You know what "small amount means" - the definition of "food" is in this quotation:
Quotation "If it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (click: Michael Pollan) and here is another as a warning: Quotation "Keep snacking real food, not poison, or I keep nagging" (Dr. Christian, author of this health-success guide, STAF, Inc.)
Food is something that came from a plant. This means you will be snacking on: fresh fruit, berries, fresh vegetables, unsalted, unroasted nuts (variety of them), unroasted, unsalted peanuts (actually a legume) with the brown peal, if any bread, snack only on full-grain bread. No soda. Drink only plain water, coffee or tea.
Notice: Fresh above (as in "fresh fruit") means: not handled in any manner, not in cans with sugary syrup the same with any other snack "fresh, in their natural form with noting added.
It is good good to snack = to eat something little every couple of hours - it helps keep the body system balanced and helps even in weight loss. The modern problem is that there are too many unhealthy snacks on the market advertised being sooooo.... good and sooooo.....
Do NOT snack on these popular processed, factory-made items:
no energy drinks(dangerous), no energy bars (they are about the same as a candy-bar), no vitamin waters (they are noting else than water + a vitamin pill - waste of your money) - and many other similar. If they are made in a plant, do NOT eat, eat only what what came from a plan and is not processed.
In addition
nowadays, the environmental pollution click: Environmental Pollution
is another challenge to our bodies
but: even that poison our immune system can eliminate when we give it a chance with
(1) a fully healthy lifestyle;
(2) feeding us with REAL food and correct nutrition;
(3) exercising enough (a fee-free, enjoyable solution: walk 25K steps daily - click Pedometer;
(4) no smoking/no drugs/no sugary drinks.
click: Environmental Pollution and Impacts on Public Health: - UNEP
To motivate you, the parents, and your children to walk & exercise it is stated several times in this guide that the immune system has no pump to pump out the garbage - your physical movements functions as its pump.
Thus, sit less, stand up exercise, do hatha yoga & walk more as instructed- 25K steps daily+ walk up the stairs (click: Pedometer)
It is said "We can have a long life and die healthy" - when we respect life and accept a healthy lifestyle, we can have a long, healthy life
Quotation: "You respect you keep, you don't, you lose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To state it brief: we are ready to move to heaven when the telomeres are "gone" - yes, the science may estimate when it is our time "to go" - when we probably drop dead.
(throughout the text click green for further info)
A telomere is a region of repetitive nucleotide sequences at each end of a chromatid, which protects the end of the chromosome from deterioration or from fusion with neighboring chromosomes. click: Telomere Wikipedia
To keep your telomeres for your healthier, longer life you need to accept and learn a healthy lifestyle with correct nutrition. Start with this mini-fast-track 12 step guide and the continue to study & apply the complete STAF Plan at a later time
(see article 2 of 2).
The more effectively your immune system functions ,
the healthier you are and the less you will suffer. It is your choice based on how healthy your lifestyle is. This mini guide is a good starting point.
A suitable quotation as a reminder:
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
Have mercy on yourself, on your family and on your children, and organize your life in such a manner that you all can learn to apply everything this 12-Step Mini-Guide teaches.
Give the best gift to yourself, to your family and to your children:
good, healthy, long, meaningful, financially rich life.
Help your immune system to stay clean(er)
by doing what this 12-step guide shows. Help your whole family, including your children, learn these health restoring & maintaining principles.
(1) Sleep enough (see below the needed hours) - everyone in your family, read the 7+ sleep articles kept in click: www.staf1org.weebly.com - there in the left hand side "blog" tab close to the tab's top;
(2) Drink plain water portionally during the day in oz. the same amount as your normal weight is in lbs.; coffee & tea counts as water (no sugary or diet sodas).
Aim to drink the daily plain water mostly when your stomach is empty, otherwise it may dilute the natural digestive "chemicals" and can slow down the digestion.
Briefly: your stomach is "empty" in 30 min. after eating plain fresh fruit, in 90 min. after eating plain grains, in 180 min. after eating anything else.
When you start drinking more water be also prepared to urinate more often and more. Urinating more is a good thing because the water cleans your pipes and flushes out more toxic stuff, thus providing you (and your family) better health leading to less suffering, more enjoyable & longer life.
Carry a suitable-size plastic bottle with you to pee "secretly" in a "must-pee-now" situation. Night-time it would be a good idea to keep a capped container for each person next to the bed to avoid walking to the bathroom to pee. The walking takes us out from the proper sleep waves lowering the quality of our sleep. If you live in a house and have a garden, you can use the human urea as the garden fertilizer and in the composting process. Saves money - brings good, natural results without unnatural cancer causing chemicals.
click: Human Urine is shown to be an effective agricultural fertilizer; Scientific American
click: Compost - Human urine can be used directly as fertilizer or can be put onto compost
Guide your children in the urine monitoring and related facts.
Monitor the color of your urine - it tells your health. The clearer the urine during daytime hours, the better chances you, your children and your family will have a enjoyable health. The darker the urine daytime color, the more your health is challenged. In the morning, just after you get up, the urine can be darker.
If your daytime urine is dark in color you MUST drink more water until it shows a clearer color. Teach your children to monitor their pee.
Eat as STAF, Inc. guides: The a,b,c:
(a) "if it came from a plant eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't, it kills",
(b) no fast food = bad-food,
(c) prepare your daily food in your own kitchen based on the STAF Plan
(3) Exercise enough (daily walking 25K steps will do)(click: Pedometer);
(4) Keep your mind clean - how? - Sleep enough, drink enough plain water,
eat healthy, walk & some other physical exercises as you wish - if you can afford, in addition to walking the 25K steps daily, hire a personal trainer to do also strength training. It is a type of click: physical exercise specializing in the use of resistance to induce click: muscular contraction which builds the click: strength, click: anaerobic endurance, click:size of click: skeletal muscles.
When we get older our muscles will shrink - a personal trainer can build them safely back to strengthen your health. Never use any drugs - use healthy food to feed your cells safely. STAF, Inc.'s Plans teach the healthy nutrition.
About the healthy sleep.
Most recent studies show that the brains clean themselves during steady, unfragmented sleep, thus making us more intelligent.
Study (you & your family) the sleep articles # 2 "Sleep - The Ultimate Brain Cleaner" and # 4 "Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth & Other Sicknesses" - both articles close to the beginning of the left-side hand blog in this website.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit,
is the new, leading specialist in these topics with nationwide
& worldwide operations.
Start your new healthier life from this free 12-step fast-track guide - fits for women, men & children (2 years +)
Study and apply the information in the article 1 of 2 and also study well the second article 2 of 2 below
STAF, Inc. has develop a "full-size" Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program - info below in article 2 of 2
Quotation :
"Knowledge is no power - only applied knowledge is power"
(Dr. Christian - STAF, Inc.)
Free 12-step Fast-Track Mini-Guide
This is a shortened, compact fast-track mini-guide.
Start your new life from this guide & apply the information in your and your family's life. Have your children involved - you give them the best gift for life.
Arrange regular weekly family meetings and handle then, as a family including the babies & the toddlers, the material you had together agreed to study that past week. Decide in the meeting how you all are going to apply the information in your daily life for your better health and success.
Click & study each web link in full and well, take notes, involve your.
The deeper you study and learn the info in all links the better your life.
This 12-step mini-guide alone is a treasure for your and your family's better life quality with less sickness risks.
This whole extensive website is another story - it would take 5 years to go through.
This website is world's # 1 advice website in all family matters, in healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition topics and guides you to enter the good life.
STAF, Inc. has developed a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program called also "The STAF Plan". That's a full-size book long and originally took 26 years worldwide research to develop.
Below, in article 2 of 2 more information about the full-size STAF Plan.
To stay healthy physically & mentally follow the instruction in fast-track mini-guide as a whole family
* Realize: your children do what they see their parents doing, not what you tell them to do.
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition principles are NOT taught properly in most schools nationwide - worldwide. Yet, it is the most important topic for us humans -our health & life depend on the correct facts . We also need to know how to feed our pets - not taught in schools either - out pets are getting sicker & sicker as we humans are. All because of our lacking knowledge.
Only by teaching the correct eating skills we can lower our high sickness costs, avoid human suffering, stay healthy & fully enjoy our time on this earth.
STAF, Inc. is the new, nationwide & worldwide leading organization in these topics in addition to handling all family & life success topics. STAF, Inc. has developed effective teaching programs fit for every country, every school and for every individual.
About Water
Most people do not realize that water is a vital nutrient.
Vital nutrients are life-sustaining and necessary to the continuation of life.
Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water
in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda, sugary or diet).
Roll the water in your mouth to mix it with saliva - the digestive process starts always in your mouth, click: Saliva and Your Mouth
Saliva is an important part of a healthy body. It is mostly made of water, like our whole body is (70 %). Saliva also contains important substances that your body needs to digest food.
Water is essential for the human body to function and to perform virtually every metabolic process.
As said, the human body is about 70 % water.
Notice:
The web links in this fast-track guide give detailed info what sources have the nutrients our bodies need - what to eat to get all needed natural
(1) vitamins (the drug store vitamins have almost no nutritional value and they can be toxic),
(2) minerals (only the natural ones can be properly digested by the human body),
(3) essential & non-essential amino acids (web links below),
(4) protein (links below),
(5) carbohydrates (links below) and
(6) what else is needed to keep your body & mind healthy.
About Vitamins - About Minerals
Vitamins are substances that your body needs to grow and develop normally. There are 13 vitamins your body needs.
They are click: Vitamins: MedlinePlus
NOTICE:
The next link to Harvard School of Public Health
has all information (1) about everything you need to eat and (2) what sources will provide the most natural nutrients - study all and do it with your whole family.
On the website, on the left-hand side, is a topic list - click each topic on the list, study well and apply- a real treasure for your and your family's health - and for the good life.
About Amino Acids - About Protein
click: Protein | The Nutrition Source
Harvard School of Public Health
About Carbohydrates
click: Carbohydrates | The Nutrition Source | Harvard School of Public
Twenty-two essential and non-essential amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of proteins. When taken up into the human body from the diet, the 22 standard amino acids either are used to synthesize
(= make) proteins and other biomolecules or are oxidized to urea and carbon dioxide as a source of energy.
9 of these 22 are called click: essential amino acids because the human body cannot synthesize them from other compounds at the level needed for normal growth, so they must be obtained from food.
Notice: in this same link you also see (1) the recommended daily amounts
and (2) the main food sources for the 9 essential amino acids - notice: listed there are also the two common, easy-to-get, low-priced sources that have all these nine essential amino acids: (1) soy beans and (2) eggs. In addition, e.g.
hemp & quinoa have all 9 amino acids - they may be less common and also more expensive - click: Hemp - click: Quinoa
STAF, Inc.'s advice: always buy the cheaper products (in this case the soy beans) to save more cash for investing and step-by-step becoming a (multi-)millionaire. STAF, Inc. has a program for it also.
One egg a day, no more, except in rare occasions; eat the whole egg, the egg white & the yellow yolk - they function together well as a perfect nutrition source.
As a click: food, the yellow yolks are a major source of click: vitamins and minerals click: minerals
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Steam the eggs in their shells for saving the most egg nutrients including vitamins & minerals.
The scrambled eggs may have some harmful bacteria left because the heating process is quite short. Steaming 20 min. makes the yolk hard and kills the possible harmful bacteria.
click: essential amino acids
As long as you consume adequate levels of
(1) protein and (2) carbohydrates each day,
your cells will either have or make enough non-essential amino acids to support tissue growth and repair, immune function, red blood cell formation and hormone synthesis. Both plant- and animal-based proteins are rich sources of non-essential amino acids, and, although you can manufacture the non-essential amino acids, including a variety of protein sources in your diet helps ensure you have all the starting materials you need to keep the process running smoothly if your diet ever runs low on this particular nutrient.
IMPORTANT
Question:
In what proportions to eat daily proteins, carbohydrates, oils and other nutrients?
The answer next below in "The Healthy Eating Plate"
Realize that, according to the Harvard University leading specialists, you do not have to eat animal meat if you do not want - you will get the proteins from other sources (see below, e.g.: soy beans & other beans, eggs, some vegetables, etc.).
The Healthy Eating Plate,
created by the nutrition experts at Harvard School of Public Health and by the editors at Harvard Health Publications, was designed to address deficiencies in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)’s MyPlate.
The Healthy Eating Plate provides detailed guidance, in a simple format, to help people make the best eating choices and see in what proportions to eat different food types
Click: Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health...www.hsph.harvard.edu
Then:
Click the next line to make The Healthy Eating Plate bigger and esier to study
click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
_______
Now click to see how the most recent
U.S. gov. "Food Plate" the previous "Food Pyramid" look click: Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid - Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler plate. Each 3 pictures you can enlarge by clicking the picture or clicking the "enlarge the image" note next to each picture -
All these pictures: (1) click: The Harvard Healthy Eating Plate
and (2) The U.S. gov. Nutrition Plate .& the Food Pyramid
show (1) what and (2) in what proportions to eat
Start today - stay healthy tomorrow
* avoid sickness * live longer
__________
The 12-Step Fast-Track Mini-Guide
to a better-quality life
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen. Eat full grains, fish, proper meat (= lean cage-free poultry or at least any poultry - cage-free can be more costly; very little or no red meat, no pork), one egg daily. Eat nuts, peanuts(with their thin inner brown peel - peanut is a legume click Beans & legumes). Eat all nuts & peanuts raw - not salted & not roasted. Eat berries, fruit, vegetables, olive oil (cold-pressed, virgin, 1 - 2 spoonfuls a day) and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle of this quotation:
"If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't"
(Quotation by click: Michael Pollan).
The science of food combining is helpful in avoiding heartburn, stomach aches, and other digestive pain & suffering.
The food combining principles will be introduced in full in the full-size STAF Plan.
Briefly: (1) eat smaller amounts every 3 - 4 hours rather than 1 - 2 times a day, (2) proteins & vegetables combine well, (3) eat fresh fruit alone (combine with nothing else), (4) eat other carbohydrates alone.
The heartburn medicines can actually make the heartburn worse when used continuously. As a natural first aid eat fresh celery or fresh cucumber to still heart burn - no negative side effects.
Sleep on one side - test what side works for you - it can still the heartburn and you can fall asleep.
_____________
About fish
Fish oils come from fatty fish, also known as oily fish, specifically the tissue of fatty fish, such as trout, mackerel, tuna, herring, sardines, and salmon.
The bigger the fish in wild the more it can have sea/ocean/river pollution
(= harmful industrial waste), thus a smaller fatty fish can be safer to eat.
Farm raised fish is a good idea but the fish farms can be filthy affecting negatively the safety quality for human consumption.
Trout is not so common on the market and can be priced higher than their value.
Pricewise the canned Alaskan salmon (wild caught) is a good source (when on sale buy plenty & stack up).
Also canned, wild caught mackerel (half of the salmon price) is good fish to eat (when on sale buy plenty & stack up).
Avoid tuna (= the bigger the fish, the more pollution and other bigger fish).
Sardines - the European sardines are the real sardines and can be expensive outside Europe (in Europe they are quite low-priced). As wild caught the sardines are oily, healthy and delicious.
The American/Canadian sardines are low-priced and good, oily fish
(less oily than salmon or mackerel) and they are small in size = less polluted. These are not really sardines. In the past an agreement was made that all American & Canadian small ocean fish will be called "sardines".
Notice: Eat only fish that has a backbone & scales (notice: & = and - not either one but both at the same time in the same fish) when it still swims in the ocean, river or lake.
The other fish or seafood without backbone & scales are not the best for us humans because they are in the ocean ecology the poison eaters and can safely digest the poisonous material that can harm other sea/river/lake animals. The poison-eating sea/river/lake creatures keep the water clean for other water species. That's how the nature operates.
The seafood & fish without a backbone & scales are the cleaners of the waters.
The poison only these poison cleaners can digest will end as health-threatening poison in your system if you eat such a "cleaning lady".
These cleaning ladies you must not eat (to keep your health safely) are e.g. crayfish & crabs, lobsters, oysters & all sea, river, lake creatures including fish that have no back bone & no scales (both at the same time in the same creature).
About eggs
It is said that the egg is the perfect food. The eggs have all nine essential amino acids as do also soy beans - two excellent foods, available & low-price.
Due to their protein content, the click: United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as meats within the click: Food Guide Pyramid.
Brown eggs vs. White eggs - any difference?
The color differences in eggs are simply from the breed of the hens they come from. Brown eggs are laid by larger red-feathered hens with red earlobes, and white-feathered hens with white earlobes produce white eggs. When it comes to the nutritional value, however, brown eggs are more or less the same as white eggs.
The healthiest way is to steam whole eggs in their full shell 15- 20 minutes (until the yellow part is hard). To scramble the eggs does not give enough time for the possible harmful bacteria in them to get neutralized. In a big enough a pan steam the eggs for every family member for the whole week to save time - they stay well in the refrigerator.
Steaming kills the bacteria more effectively AND saves more healthy nutrients in the shelled egg. The Cage free eggs are healthier, they have less pollution and they have more nutrients BUT they are also much more expensive. As money may be the issue in most families it is still better to buy the cheaper eggs as it is said that the egg is the most perfect food. Not too many, though, max. one egg a day.
Why is the age-free egg (and the cage free chicken meat) healthier, less polluted and has more nutrients?
Because a chicken in the cage cannot move so much and the digestive waste is not eliminated so well by the immune system but stays partially in the chicken body and goes then also into the egg.
The same in the human being: that is why the exercise movements help the immune system (which has no pump) throw out our digestive & other toxins more effectively.
If a human being is not physically moving much, the toxins stay in the body cells leading to multitudes of sicknesses and to an early death. Walking (see blow how much daily) is one of the easiest way to help our immune system to clean our insides and our cells well to keep us healthy and give us a long life.
About full grains
and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and (2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
Whole Grains and Fish Highly Protective against Childhood Asthma
According to the American Lung Association, almost 20 million Americans suffer from asthma, which is reported to be responsible for over 14 million lost school days in children, and an annual economic cost of more than $16.1 billion.
Increasing consumption of whole grains and fish could reduce the risk of childhood asthma by about 50%, suggests the International Study on Allergy and Asthma in Childhood (Tabak C, Wijga AH, Thorax). click: Diet and asthma
click: American Lung Association
What Is a Whole Grain? - All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
In the morning the healthy breakfast
is the 5-full-grain hot home-cooked hot cereal as instructed below.
This 5-grain cereal is real delicious - there is not one person who would not like it.
In addition, our bodies like it.Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In this case you and your body will like every morning the 5 -grain cereal.
Have everyone involved, including your children, in the weekly preparation (for the whole week) - then the children and everyone immediately like the new 5 hot cereal.
However, the first thing in the morning, before enjoying the cereal, is to drink (as instructed below in # 2) 15 min. after the hot water/lemon-lime drinking below in # (2) is the way to start your day - then the cereal 15 min. after drinking the water/lemon-lime.
The cereal is for every family member over 1 year old (for the age use your own judgement).
Eat only whole-grain bread - find the best deals. Stack up when on sale.
Prepare multi-grain hot cereal for your family. Cook more for several days. If you can manage to cook the breakfast full-multi-grain hot cereal once a week (weekend?) for the whole week it would save your time. Keep in your refrigerator(s) - stays well for one week.
This is the 5-grain hot cereal
Stack up the different ingredients when on sale - buy in big packages/sacks - store in a DRY place and cover well to:
(1) oats; steal-cut healthiest; click: Steel-cut oats & any rolled oats will do;
click: Rolled oats,
(2) par-boiled rice; par-boiled means "partially boiled" click: in the click: husk
(husk (or hull) in botany is the outer shell or coating of a seed) cooking time shortened, about 15-20 min. click: Parboiled rice,
(3) brown rice; brown rice is whole grain rice, cooking (=simmering) time about 2-3 h = brown rice has 30 % more nutrients than an other rice type,
click: Brown rice
(4) barley - click: Barley - The World's Healthiest Foods - there you can also find a brief guide
"How to select & buy barley"
Pearl barley (or pearled barley) is dehulled barley which has been steam processed further to remove the bran. click: Barley
(5) buckwheat. (Buckwheat is not really cereal but but can be combined with cereal - click: Buckwheat)
Buy all cereals when they are on sale (stack up), buy big sacks 20 lbs & up - store in dry place away from all pests (mice & rats, ants, etc.).
The proportions of the 5 cereals for cooking are, e.g.
(1) 5 lbs oats, (2) 4 lbs par-boiled rice, (3) 2 lbs brown rice, (4) 3 lbs barley
(5) 1 lb buckwheat
Keeping the pan covered while cooking helps to keep up to 25 % more of the nutrients in the cereal.
Each cereal has their own cooking time
Follow the cooking time instructions on the packages or study the internet.
Soak each grain overnight in cold water in their own pan and cook in the morning each in their own pan.
Save the soaking water for the cooking and add water as needed.
Hint: keep a separate pan for heating boiled water during the cooking period as you will need to add water. When you add boiling water the cooking process will not stop (as it would for a while if you added cold water) - it will save your time as you do not need to stand and watch all the time the pans to avoid spilling over or to avoid burning. Best is to keep every cereal simmering as it would also retain more nutrient & vitamins (keep the pan cover on) and would allow you to do other things also. Avoid any cereal getting burned in the pan by using good-quality steel pans (buy them when on sale). To use aluminum pans will easily burn the cereal and would take much more of your time for watching & cleaning. Do not use non-sticky pans as their surface will leak poisonous chemicals . Use only high-quality steel pans. (Buy them when on sale - often the saving can be 50 %.)
Cook every grain in their own pot as they each have a different cooking time and at the end, when they are all cooked, mix them in correct proportions together as one 5-cereal combination to keep in your refrigerator for the week's breakfasts.
The two important kitchen "tools" for your & your family's good health are:
(1) big refrigerators & (2) several good blenders.
The Crown Prince of the home blenders is Vitamix - click: Vitamix
The prince of the cheaper home blenders is Proctor Silex - Hamilton Beach (same company)
Click: Proctor Silex - there click: Kitchen Appliances / Blenders
Proctor Silex models are lower in price than Hamilton Beach products, yet are of good quality with a good warranty.
Buy the blenders Proctor Silex calls "Space Saving Blenders" - you need several in your kitchen to save your time. When you learn to use the blenders more, you can use several blenders at the same time. Keep always at least one new, unopened blender package in case some blender breaks. Study the warranty time 3, 6 or 12 months (with Proctor Silex) - the company sends a free blender to your house during the warranty time. Vitamix warranty is several years, some models up to seven years. If you can afford 1- 2 Vitamix blenders (they do a much finer job, helpful for your digestive system and thus good for your health) and then you add a few Proctor Silex blenders (each only about $25).
It is said "the blender is the key to our good health".
You need to learn to use the blender(s) for an easier digestive process - that equals to a healthier body & to a healthier mind.
Use the blenders as much as you can as the blended food will digest easier in your system, use less energy for digestion - the saved energy keeps your body functioning more effectively giving you a better health.
You can blend anything and take with you in thick glass or thick plastic bottles
and "drink" your lunch or dinner - but when eating/drinking mix it well with the saliva by rolling the "liquidized food" in your mouth, click: Saliva.
Avoid hot material in any plastic bottle as the heat will make harmful chemicals leak and enter your system.
STAF, Inc.'s full-size STAF Plan guides further in the blender use.
HAVE EVERYONE INVOLVED IN THE CEREAL PREPARATION - then everyone will eat and enjoy the delicious 5-grain hot cereal every morning.
Especially children are much more eager to eat "new" food when they are involved in the preparation & the cooking process.
Realize: children do/eat what they see their parents doing/eating, not what they are told to do/to eat.
If someone in your family has any allergies (e.g. gluten sensitivity, click: Gluten sensitivity) see your gluten specialist health care provider or otherwise, based on your reliable information, solve the situation in your family.
Before making any appointment, confirm that the Dr. is a gluten issues specialist OR call your insurance company to locate a specialist or call your city/town/village health office or Community Health Center for (free) guidance/information; do the same when dealing with any other health question. Not just any Dr. knows every topic.
(2) Drink daily (= during the day in smaller amounts) plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda).
First in the morning (your stomach still empty) drink 16 oz. 1-min. boiled tap water (mixed with.... see a few lines below). Guide your children and your toddlers do the same - the babies have a different agenda.
Brief boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water - drink tap water to save your money - the bottled water has sometimes more harmful bacteria than the tap water; in the morning, before taking the tap water, let the piped water run about one min. to avoid some of the accumulated pipe dirt ending in your system).
Mix your first morning 16 oz., 1-min. boiled water with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in all fruit & every vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Do not boil the lemon/lime, boil only the plain water first. Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the 1-min. boiled tap water daily. Blended lemon/lime can also be frozen. Blending in bigger amounts lemon/lime and anything else will save your time.
In the refrigerator the thawed fruit & other food items stay fresh 2 - 3 days.
The shelf life of the frozen food can be more than 12 months if continuously frozen and stored in -18 Fahrenheit = -28 Celcius (notice: - = minus).
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces and put as such in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
Coffee & tea daily counts as part of your daily needs of plain water.
This is h0w you know you have been drinking enough water daily: when your urine is almost clear, you have hydrated (= had enough water) your system well. The darker your urine, the more you are dehydrated (= not having enough water) and need to have your daily fresh, clean water as instructed above.
Being dehydrated leads to sicknesses of all kinds (including allergies & asthma).
Your body is about 70 % water, your blood about 92-95 % water, your brain about 90 % of water.
Being dehydrated (= not enough water) is the main reason developing high blood pressure (HBP) because the blood will get thicker and to circulate in the narrow veins it has to pressure harder on the vein walls; that's called high blood pressure (HBL) - a deadly condition. Also: blood vessels become stiffer as we age. Thus, being dehydrated the thicker blood pressures even harder on the vein walls.
High blood pressure (hypertension) (HBP)
is when your blood pressure is 140/90 mmHg or above most of the time. Normal is about 120/80 (or somewhat smaller numbers).
What do the numbers mean? Doctors call them systolic (the top number) and diastolic (the bottom number) blood pressure.
During each heartbeat, blood pressure varies between a maximum (systolic) and a minimum (diastolic) pressure.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about HBP - High blood pressure:
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
When your blood is thicker it can create more easily clots - the clots prevent the blood circulating and that is called a heart attack or a stroke - deadly conditions.
A stroke happens when blood flow to a part of the brain stops. A stroke is sometimes called a "brain attack." If blood flow is stopped for longer than a few seconds, the brain cannot get blood and oxygen. Brain cells can die, causing permanent damage.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about strokes :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis - Prevention - National Library of Medicine
A heart attack occurs when blood flow to a part of your heart is blocked for a long enough time that part of the heart muscle is damaged or dies. The medical term for this is myocardial infarction.
Click next below each of these green topics to learn more about heart attacks :
Causes - Symptoms - Tests - Treatment - Prognosis
National Library of Medicine
About your mouth & teeth hygiene
Why here next to the stroke & heart attack topics? Because your mouth mayhave a direct link to your heart & brain health - and even broader: take care of your teeth and you whole body will benefit.
When your teeth are not in the best condition, the potentially destructive mouth bacteria are known to enter the blood stream during dental procedures, and even while brushing teeth.
Professor Nairn Wilson click: Nairn Wilson, from the British Dental Association's health and science committee states: "There are still many unknown elements in these matters, but one thing we can say with confidence is that keeping your teeth and gums healthy by brushing (soft bristles) your teeth twice a day with a fluoride toothpaste, restricting sugary foods to meal times and visiting the dentist regularly makes an important contribution to oral health and general well-being." click: BDA (British Dental Association)
- Health and Science
We at STAF, Inc. purposely repeat this often: Have your children involved in learning this guide info & studying all given web links including the mouth & teeth hygiene facts. To give yourself and to your children the healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition info for life is the best gift to have.Click: Healthy dental care toothbrushes - American Dental Association - ADA.org
Hair Care - Body Care - Showers
The less chemicals is used, the better.
Use simple soap (no fragrance, no deodorant soaps).
Most shampoos and other haircare products have too many harmful chemicals - the simpler the better. Hairsprays & other similar products can cause hair loss.
Deodorants block the natural skin "breathing" and keep toxins inside the body burdening the immune system, thus adding to sickness risks. Healthy lifestyle and correct nutrition eliminates unpleasant sweat odor - then you do not need any deodorants. The unpleasant sweat odor comes from eating unhealthy food, fast-f00d (= bad-food) and combining food items in an unnatural manner.
Hydrate your system = drink enough water daily as guided here - you can avoid many sicknesses and keep your valuable health, be smarter (as stated above, brain is 90 % water), become richer (because you are smarter) and live longer and ENJOY A HEALTHY LIFE because you have been smart enough to start applying the information for the good life given to you by the STAF, Inc.
(3) Walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer) - if you are not able to walk that much or not at all, meet with your primary care physician and find out what other exercise options fit your situation to keep you physically in a good condition.
(4) Sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping
enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 (seven) sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children reading those 7 articles.
To sleep better: (1) leave 3 hours between the dinner and your bedtime - otherwise the food digestion may disturb you, (2) avoid listening/ watching/ hearing negative news late in the evening and (3) in your bedroom the only 2 things you do are (1) making love & (2) sleep.
Keep electronics in some other room (including the TV) - Guide your children do the same - all according to the available space.It is estimated that in the U.S. sleep deprivation causes annually 63 billion dollars in lost productivity.
(5) No smoking,
(6) No more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) No drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) Learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titled M+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success - have your children learning also,
(9) Do (you and you children) basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) Learn to keep a positive attitude leading to happiness - but how?
Running after the feeling of happiness is like trying to catch the rainbow.
The principle of how to pursue (= catch = get) & keep happiness is mostly misunderstood , tells the happiness science.
The pursuit of happiness click: pursuit of Happiness is in the click: United States Declaration of Independence, thus, especially the Americans think and believe that happiness is what everyone then should feel most of the time - otherwise we have failed in life. Not true at all.
Relax, STAF, Inc. will show you what real happiness is and how to get & keep it.
Let's see what the most recent happiness science states.
Quotation
"The Road to happiness is paved with struggle" (Dr. Russ Harris)
In this website STAF, Inc. has science articles relating to happiness.
Some main principles here - apply the information and you will have peace with the mystery of happiness.
Happiness is not always and continuously feeling good. That would be boring and make us feel strapped in the same routine day after day. Happiness is richness of life based on different events & different feelings. Life with endless forms andventures is richness.
If we limit our life to one feeling only, feeling of happiness, we certainly will feel miserable - that would have nothing to do with happiness.
What makes us humans happy is to get results in solving our difficulties & struggles. Having a meaningful, steady work is one major source of life happiness. Getting results in any purposeful, significant goal, no matter how difficult, gives us happiness. E.g., relationships & parenthood gives us deep meaning & happiness and they always have difficult sides also.
Solving our struggle is the key to happiness.
Old saying:
"When God wants to give us a gift, He always wraps it in a form of a problem"
When we solve the problem, we grow wiser & stronger and as the result feel peace & happiness. Thus, (1) do not curse difficulties, instead (2) be thankful for them and bless the challenges & struggling because they are an important part of our existence and the keys to a better, richer, happier life.
(11) Have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) Help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more:
Have a weekly a whole family study meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discussing in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from this STAF, Inc.'s guidance website.
The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links - it's a wide
encyclopedia of information.
It is the "world's #1 free advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
To learn and start investing with the goal of becoming a (multi-)millionaire is in STAF, Inc.'s website in tab "more...", there in sub-tab "Credit & Credit Cards"
Teach the principles to you children to start with their allowance money.
It is a realistic goal to become financially wealthy - start, follow the instructions, learn to invest and the results will be yours. Patience & durability are the keys.
Start with any amount (even $50/month) - to start is the first step, learn and grow in financial health in addition learning the good bodily health.
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Below Article 2 of 2
It has necessary information for the good life.
At the end of the article 2 of 2 the links to:
The U.S. Government Food Pyramids and Plates: What Should You Really Eat?- Prepared by The Harvard School of Public Health & other sources.
WHY AT THE END?
Because (1) above is quite much information to digest, then (2) it is more practical to study the new "Food Plate" and the old "Food Pyramid" info after you studied the above Fast-Track 12-Step Mini-Guide info.
Then studying the additional "Plate" and "Pyramid" info is easier to understand and easier to adopt in your and your family's daily healthy lifestyle and healthy eating.
Study everything as a family - have the weekly family meetings as instructed above.
Additional questions email to STAF, Inc.: [email protected]
Email your success stories based on this important life-quality improving material.
STAF, Inc. needs your donations to ease human suffering nationwide & worldwide.
Instructions in STAF, Inc.'s home page and below in the article 2 of 2
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Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill:
Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
That's like a free health insurance and better
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The best news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new STAF Plan program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes.
The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is
the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the
STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
We at STAF, Inc. want to know how you expect STAF, Inc. & this advice website, in a longer run, to improve your & your family's life, or how it already has improved your life.
Let us know in your donation letter.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
As instructed above at the end of the article 1 of 2 we placed these extensive web links above and once more here next below at the end of article 2 of 2 to give you
a chance to further study the details as they are the foundation for your and your family's future health
Click green below to study further info - study all details
Healthy Eating Plate & Healthy Eating Pyramid - Harvard School of Public Health
Nutrition Plate Unveiled to Replace the Food Pyramid -NYTimes.comwww.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/.../03plate.html
The New York Times
Jun 2, 2011 - Michelle Obama and administration officials introduced a simpler guideline to promote healthy nutrition. ... Nutrition Plate Unveiled, Replacing Food Pyramid. Jim Watson/Agence ... The 1992 food guide pyramid. The new ...
__________________
The links below relate to # 10 ("Happiness") in the above
12-Step Guide.
Are you ready for more about how to have happiness ?
click Dr Russ Harris
The Happiness Trap | Stop Struggling Start Living.www.thehappinesstrap.com/
Dr Russ Harris, author of 'The Happiness Trap' is Australia's foremost provider of training in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy - a powerful new ...
Resources - Book Shop - Happiness Trap Workshops - Mindfulness
click: The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living: A ...www.amazon.com › ... › Cognitive Psychology
Your opinion is valued at STAF, Inc.- let us know your opinion about
Dr. Russ Harris' teachings. Amazon has his book for under 10 U.S. dollars
Email your opinions to STAF, Inc. to: [email protected]
Or mail to: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA
_________________
* Your donation to STAF, Inc.
will ease human suffering & turn lives to victory *
Donation instructions above in article 2 of 2 and in the home page
Mail to: STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA
www.staf1org.weebly.com
__________________
STAF, Inc. is the new, nation/worldwide leading not-for-profit organization in these topics. STAF, Inc. has also developed a "full-size" guide for the U.S. gov. use (see above article 2 of 2)
This mini-guide is made of 2 basic elements: (1) written text and (2) added web referrals.
Even though this is called "mini"-guide, it contains all major basic facts for a healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition.
© 2014 - STAF, Inc., New York City, NY, USA
& Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D., as the author
The copyrighted 12-step Fast-Track Mini-Guide above is free worldwide for all personal use. It is also free for all educational purposes in seminars, schools, colleges & universities worldwide. Give your students STAF, Inc.'s web link and guide them to further study its extensive, scientifically reliable advice website for the good life. Urge your students to apply the information for their lasting health & longer life, for their family happiness & financially richer life including becoming a (multi-) millionaire starting with $50 dollars a month.
For everyone using this advice website for your improved life: email to STAF, Inc. your success stories to: [email protected]
www.staf1org.weebly.com
_______________________
Add Comment
To end the killing of our children in their home care must end as any type of domestic violence must be reduced or ended - STAF, Inc. has the new, tested solutions02/10/2014
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By Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D. ,N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s founding President
Save The American family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
headquartered in New York City with nationwide & worldwide operations
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click
STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
______________
Today's Topics
(1) Babies & children killed by their care takers
(2) Other home violence
(3) STAF, Inc. has new, tested solutions
to dramatically reduce the numbers for any type of violence is in
the website (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
in the right hand side page "Blog"
________________
Article 1 of 2
2-Year-Old Girl Dies in Home With a History of Violence
Detectives were investigating the death of a 2-year-old girl who was found at her family’s home in Queens late Monday with broken ribs and bruising around her mouth.
Police officers arrived at the family’s apartment in the Arverne section of the Rockaway Peninsula around 11:30 p.m., officials said. There they found the girl, Kevasia Edwards, unconscious. She was taken to St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where she was pronounced dead.
A woman who was staying with her sister in the building called 911 after she was notified of the emergency by the child’s mother, who was identified by the police as Ashley Diaz, 28.
Christine Murphy, 27, the woman who called 911, said she ran to Ms. Diaz’s sixth-floor apartment after she had called to say Kevasia was not breathing. Ms. Murphy found the girl lying on the floor.
“I started crying hysterically,” Ms. Murphy said. “I said, ‘Ashley, what happened? Did you call the ambulance?’ She goes, ‘No. I was about to.’ ”
There had been no arrests, yet
This article continues after the Article 2 of 2 below
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Article 2 of 2
The babysitters and the parents, unfortunately, can lose their full understanding while in a rage dominated by the limbic system.
The limbic (click:Limbic) system in the human brains is the atavistic
(click: Atavism), animal like behavior "fight or run" and can, during emotional challenges, lead fast to uncontrolled violence.
The lack of knowledge about our human behavior is the primary reason when some individuals are not able to control what actions they take.
The cure for the lack of knowledge is training in the knowledge.
It is also important to realize that the limbic system can lead any person, less or more highly educated, to a wide range of uncontrolled violence.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, headquartered in the New York City with nationwide & worldwide operations, has new, tested solutions capable of dramatically reducing the fatal harming of our babies & children. The same solution will also greatly reduce any other type of the widely occuring domestic violence.
Federal, state & local level legislation
is needed to change the present lack of knowledge. Otherwise the killing of our babies & children will rampantly continue and other domestic violence goes on in even higher numbers.
STAF, Inc.'s representatives are working on all these difficult topics and are introducing the new, STAF, Inc.-tested solutions to the lawmakers in D.C. and nationwide in all local levels.
The corrective, preventive training activities must happen (1) on the micro as well as (2) on the macro level.
Every individual already as a young child must be the target of getting training in these preventive matters.
When things are done correctly, the results will be visible nationwide & worldwide in impressively reduced numbers in all baby/child care violence,
in all domestic violence and in all school bullying & school violence numbers.
When thing are done correctly, the results will be also visible on the most important starting level: the family.
There will be reduction in separation and divorces - a serious reason for multitudes of children being victimized to fail in their own life and in their future marriage.
The inter-connective fibers in all these levels in our society are not widely recognized by the public because they are not introduced in the American school & college/university systems to the students.
In those rare countries where this is done, the family happiness is stronger, home = domestic/baby/child violence is almost non-existing & marital separations and divorces are close to none.
The Macro Level
(1) Not only how to avoid overweight, obesity, diabetes and other sicknesses BUT ALSO how to avoid all types of violence (child/domestic/bullying, etc.) in any situation MUST be introduced and taught in every school, college & university to EVERY individual.
(2) Also how to stay happily married and successful child raising topics must be introduced and taught in every school, college & university.
All these topics must be obligatory topics.
Every area of these important topics can be covered within a few hours.
Thus, the macro level training in these important topics is very cost-effective
because the training in the suggested manner WILL reduced dramatically the occurrence numbers in these areas of human life.
The macro level training will reduce human suffering and have a huge positive effect of our federal economy.
The Micro Level
(1) The solution to reduce and even eliminate any type of baby/child violence (physical or mental) is to train every new parent in the hospital before releasing the baby.
A two-hour parental training will give the basic knowledge of how to handle the situation when the baby or the child can cause the adult losing his/her temper. In the training part of the time is also given to how to avoid any domestic violence as the behavioral reasons for any domestic violence are the same no matter who is the target and who is the violator.
This same training must be repeated in the hospital for both parents every time a new baby is born. The repeated training can be one-hour long and will substantially reduce any type of home violence. The hospitals can use outside, licensed trainers.
STAF,Inc. can train the trainers on the local and nationwide level and has also the capacity & experience to train worldwide.
After the first training many parents are interested becoming certified trainers - it is a new, respected, well-paid p/t or f/t profession developed by STAF, Inc.'s Think Tank team.
Time being the training program is called "The Nanny University©" because it also has a wider training program to become a Certified professional nanny and is its first training program.
Relating to the domestic violence it is also necessary to realize what the statistics show: the men are not the only violators (as many may think) - both male & female partners can be the culprits as the deep-down, atavistic reasons for any violent actions are in the human limbic system and has nothing to do with the male/female difference.
Domestic violence done by men towards women is about 60 % and done by women towards men is about 40 %. Violence against babies and children is about 65 % done by women and 35 % by men.
(2) The 2nd part of the solution to reduce any type of violence (physical or mental) towards the babies & children is to make paid babysitting available only for a person (many of them teenagers) who has taken a similar basic training as provided to the parents in the hospital before any baby will be released. This program is time being 4 hours long and provides a title "Certified Babysitter".
(3) The 3rd part is for training the p/t or f/t live-out or live-in nanny -
a better-paid profession than most realize.
A professional nanny has to have a minimum of an Associate level College degree as also the salary level in that profession is commonly on that level.
________
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress
(House & Senate)
STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click
STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
______________
To read the title article in full click gree:
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Free 12-Step Fast-Track Guide for Health, Success & Long, Happy, Financially Rich Life - Avoid Cancer & Other Sickness - Avoid Early Death 02/09/2014
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The new quality of life improving fast-track guide,
fit for every person in the U.S. & for everyone worldwide,
is in the website
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
in the right hand side page "blog"
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit
Headquartered in New York City with nationwide & worldwide operations
_____________
Article 1 of 2
In its World Cancer Report 2014 The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
said cancer was growing "at an alarming pace" worldwide and new strategies were needed to curb the fatal and costly disease.
click: World Health Organization: WHO
The report states that we are unable to curb cancer with medical treatments.
The reports strongly states that the only way to restrain the growing, deadly cancer rate is prevention.
STAF, Inc.'s new, nationwide & worldwide leading Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program is the solution.
The "STAF Plan" (as it is also called) is (1) for prevention and (2) for naturally, without any negative side effects, restoring the lost health due to a wrong, unhealthy lifestyle & wrong, unhealthy nutrition (including the fast food = "bad food").
It is believed that about 95 % of all diseases may be caused by a wrong lifestyle & wrong nutrition.
It took 26 years worldwide research to develop the new STAF, Inc.'s Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program, "The STAF Plan".
What is also new and especially important in the STAF Plan is that (1) in the developed world (including the U.S.) everyone who works (even on the minimum salary) or gets basic government help, can afford to adopt the STAF Plan.
In the less developed world the governments can afford the new STAF Plan and provide the costs for healthy food & correct nutrients to everyone in need.
Based on the new STAF Plan the savings in the health care costs in the U.S. will be several billions every year adding finally, within years, to trillions. Proportionally in the same level in the other countries worldwide.
Article 2 of 2 below has additional details about the STAF Plan.
Back to the World Cancer Report 2014 by WHO
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), is the specialized cancer agency
of the World Health Organization.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between
250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
What is your choice?
(1) Life or (2) suffering & an early death?
The Good News:
As a principle, it is very simple and easy to learn to stay healthy and have a long life & get rich financially, even become a millionaire.
All that? - Yes, it can be yours. Keep reading.
The Bad News:
We humans are all slaves of our old habits, no matter how bad the habits.
To change our daily routines is scary as we love our own ways no matter how disastrous they may be. Even though we know that our wrong habits can & will kill us fast we hold to our wrong habits like a cat holds to a mouse in his mouth (at least that is a healthy habit for a cat, but: it is a cat, you are a human being).
If you keep eating unhealthy food (or stuff that could not really be called "food") you will miss the life-maintaining nutrients and for sure, not maybe or perhaps, but for sure, sooner or later, get sick and probably have several difficult diseases and you suffer, and suffer, and suffer until there is no more you.
When the killing sicknesses overwhelm your body & your mind, do you think you will then enjoy the terrible suffering when your body is slowly collapsing? Do you think your loved ones enjoy seeing your condition and love handling the mess your choice of unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition habit has caused to them?
It is not only about you - it is about everyone else also.
Then it is too late to repent - you lost your chances.
It is wise to drop your bad lifestyle & wrong nutrition habits now before you get sick. If you are already sick and suffering, you still have a potential chance for a new life because STAF Plan may also return your lost health. Give it a chance.
Are you one of the many who say "it is my private matter what I eat, drink,
if I miss daily exercising my body (at least walk daily 25K steps) and miss relaxing & quieting my mind - it is my private matter to handle my body & mind the way I want - it is my own life".
It is not YOUR private matter - you are not alone. In this world and life we ALL are linked to each other in several different ways. Most likely you have a family and you make all your family members suffer based on your wrong choices. Most likely you make your family also suffer financially because of your own wrong choices.
Do you have the right to come to my wallet and to everyone else's wallet to have us all paying for your sickness care you caused yourself because "it was your private matter what you eat and how you live".
Fine: it is fully your own private matter IF you do not make everyone, not only your family members, pay for all your sickness care expenses. Most sicknesses, over 95 % are based on a wrong lifestyle and unhealthy nutrition - - that part is in your & my own choice.
The rest, about 5 %, have their sickness roots in the gene mutations or in other genetic reasons - a small fraction of the whole 100 %
It is sure your own private matter (1) if and when you pay yourself for all your sickness expenses & care and (2) if and when your make no one else suffer losses in time and finances because of your own wrong choices how you eat and live. You may say "the insurance pays for me". Yes, but who pays for the insurance pool: all of us. The more sicknesses, the more we all have to pay to the insurance companies or as taxes to the government.
The basic principle in life is: in most cases to get older it does not have to meanthat we have to get sick. We can and maybe are even meant to die as healthy. As stated: about 95 % of all sicknesses may be coming from a unhealthy lifestyle & wrong nutrition.
When you hold into your wrong lifestyle & harmful nutrition and you are gone, you lived only half of your life & did not have much time reserved for you to enjoy full life including being financially wealthy. You missed then seeing your children succeed and you missed knowing your grand-children and perhaps even your grand-grand children.
You made a wrong choice.
Based on the above serious sermon I wish you opened your eyes & opened your ears to give yourself & to your loved ones the best gift you can give:
The Gift of Life
Decide today to start respecting good health to maintain & save your life.
Quotation "You respect you keep, you don't, you loose"
(Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
In 95 % of the cases it is the choice of the individual to stay healthy for life.
If you do not have any genetic disease (as can be in about 5 % of the population worldwide), you then belong to the 95 % who can decide to enjoy a healthy life as long as you live.
Because you, based on your correct choice, stay healthy for life, you will then also have energy, strength & brain power to be active and (if it is your will) to learn how to become a (multi-) millionaire so you widen you enjoyment of life and can help the suffering wrong choice makers nationwide & worldwide.
When you make the right choice and decide having The Healthy Lifestyle and the Correct Nutrition as your choice you will then also be a good model for everyone else including for your children.
As stated above, the children do not do what their parents tell them to do, the children do what they SEE their parents doing.
(1) NOW you have a real chance to make the CORRECT choice
to stay healthy, have a long life and make your whole family happy.
(2) Decide now and start from this free 12-step guide below.
(3) Then start studying, as instructed below, the whole STAF, Inc.'s guidance website from the beginning to the end. It will take several years to go through the whole website BUT: it will teach you & your children how to have the best life with all the good available. Have your whole family, including the children, actively involved and learning with you.
How to do that best, is all below.
Make the right choice and make it now:
Choose Life & Success
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. has the solutions - some easy, basic steps below (1) next and (2) in the article 2 of 2
Some easy steps to Health, Success & Long, Happy Life
Free 12-step Guide
Quotation " Knowledge is no power, only applied knowledge is power" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
To get the desired results for your healthier, even financially richer life, APPLY the information and guide your whole family to do the same including your children from early on. Teach the main healthy lifestyle facts to your offspring and you may give them the best gift for life. Parents: realize also that children do what they SEE their parents doing, not what the parents tell them to do.
Free 12-step Fast-Track Guide
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly full grains, fish, proper meat, nuts, berries, fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the main principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't" (quote by click: Michael Pollan).
About the full grains (above #1) and about the importance of their presence in the human daily nutrition a quote of facts: In the past, whole grains were thought to provide nothing more than fiber. However, new research reveals that whole grains offer (1) vitamins and
(2) minerals, plus (3) high levels of antioxidants and (4) other healthy plant-based nutrients.
What Is a Whole Grain? All grains start out as whole grains.
If, after milling, they keep all three parts of the original grain—the starchy endosperm*), the fiber-rich bran, and the germ—in their original proportions, they still qualify as whole grains.
*) endosperm = the part of a seed that acts as a food store for the developing plant embryo, containing starch with protein and other nutrients. The Dietary Guidelines recommend that Americans “make half their grains whole.” This means most people should consume three or more servings of whole grains each day. This is a minimum—the Dietary Guidelines say that “more whole grains up to all the grains recommended may be selected.” Active people would need even more whole grains. Four, five, even six servings of whole grains daily are not unreasonable.
Eating fiber has been linked to better gut health, less heart disease and lower weights. Fiber is found in whole grains in varying quantities as well as in fruits, vegetables and beans.
(2) Drink daily enough plain water in liquid ounces the same amount as your normal weight in lbs (no soda) - first (still empty stomach) in the morning drink16 oz. 1 min. boiled water (boiling kills most harmful bacteria in the water) mixed with 1/2 fresh lemon & 1/2 fresh lime juice with pulp (the pulp in every fruit & vegetable has about 80 % of the beneficial nutrients - do not juice, do not throw the pulp away). Use a blender for the lemon/lime - if bigger amounts blended, stays fresh in the fridge a few days - then add the boiled water daily.
The hot lemon/lime-water cleans your system daily very effectively, wakes you up deliciously & gives vitamins , fiber, minerals & other nutrients. Learn to use the whole lemon + lime with their peels. Wash the whole lemon/lime with soap & brush, cut in pieces ad put as whole in the blender. The peels have more beneficial nutrients than the inside of the fruit. Enjoy. You'll love it.
(3) walk 25K steps daily (click: Pedometer),
(4) sleep (adults) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom; not sleeping enough or being interrupted by noise or light causes cancer and other sicknesses - the sleep hours for toddlers, children & teenagers: babies sleep close to 24 h (they know what to do), (1) toddler should sleep up to 12 - 15 hours, (2) older child 10 to 11 - 12 hours, (3) teenager about 10+ hours.
Read & study well the 7 sleep articles in STAF, Inc.'s website at the beginning of the tab "blog" (the left-hand side "blog"; there are 2 tabs "blog" next to each other). The articles have important information most people do not know - applying the info WILL save your life, save you from suffering & give you a longer, financially more prosperous life. Have your spouse and also your children, reading those 7 articles.
(5) no smoking,
(6) no more than 1 - 2 drinks daily (drinking is not a must),
(7) no drugs or any substance abuse,
(8) learn to meditate; STAF, Inc. has developed a 10-min. program titledM+© to practice 2 times a day to quiet & strengthen your mind for success,
(9) do basic hatha yoga; the word 'hatha' means 'willful or forceful'. click: Hatha yoga refers to a set of physical exercises; STAF, Inc. has developed an effective 7-minute morning program Yabbanetics©, similar to hatha (contact STAF, Inc. to download both programs (8) + (9),
(10) learn to keep a happy, positive attitude (STAF-programs have guidance),
(11) have a work you enjoy; research shows meaningful work is one of the most important sources for life happiness (this in addition to good health & steady personal relationship),
(12) help people who have less than you, donate - that will guide you to appreciate what you have and inspires you to build further success.
Donate also to STAF, Inc. as STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization and needs your help & everyone's help to ease the human suffering in the U.S. and worldwide.
The instructions below in the Article 2 of 2 and in the STAF, Inc's website home page (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
STAF,. Inc.'s extensive website is full of detailed information for a healthy, happy, long, successful life.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
Also, see the article 2 of 2 below
- it has additional guidance for health & success
And one more: Have a weekly a whole family meeting
with children, even the smallest ones present, rotating weekly the leader of the group and discuss in the meeting the material you have chosen together as a family to study that week taken from STAF, Inc.'s guidance website. The family meeting is a long-term project. It also strengthens your family relationships & your family union and deepens your family happiness.
(click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
As stated above, STAF, Inc.'s website is a very extensive website - takes several years to go through and more up-t0-date material is being placed in the website continuously.
It has tens of thousands of articles & article links.
It is the "world's #1 advice website for the good life".
STAF, Inc.'s website is based on the most recent science and is being used also in the college & university teaching in all degree levels including the Ph.D. level.
In your family meetings you learn all what is needed for the good life.
In addition, your children will learn to lead groups and can shine with their skills early on in their schools.
_____________
Back to the 2014 WHO cancer report:
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization
"It's untenable to think we can treat our way out of the cancer problem. That alone will not be a sufficient response - Prevention is the key", Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014, told reporters at a London briefing.
"More commitment to prevention & in healthy lifestyle and early detection is desperately needed... to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in the cancer burden globally."
The World Cancer Report, which is only produced roughly once every five years, involved a collaboration of around 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would significantly cut death rates, even in places where health-care services are less well developed.
The spiraling costs of cancer are hurting the economies of even the richest countries and are often way beyond the reach of poorer nations. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated at around $1.16 trillion.
Yet around half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters.
Sharp Rise in Cases Expected
The report said that in 2012 - the latest year for which data are available - new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year, a figure expected to grow to 22 million within the next two decades.
Over the same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million a year to 13 million per year.
The data mean that at current rates, one in five men and one in six women worldwide will develop cancer before they reach 75 years old, while one in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease.
In 2012, the most common cancers diagnosed were lung, breast and colon or bowel cancers, while the most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
As populations across the world are both growing and ageing, IARC said developing countries were disproportionately affected by the increasing numbers of cancers.
"Behind each one of these numbers, there's an individual and a family faced with a tragic situation," Wild said.
More than 60 percent of the world's total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths, it said. The situation is made worse in poorer countries by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
"Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programs, which are an investment rather than a cost," said Bernard Stewart, another co-editor of the report.
The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines to prevent infections that cause cervical and liver cancers and policies aimed at bringing down rates of obesity as key areas in which more should be done.
"Adequate legislation can encourage healthier behavior," said Stewart.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN
in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. In STAF, Inc.'s website additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy & a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
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Dirty Electricity Worse for Kids Dangerous to Humans, Animals & Plants02/08/2014
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Important info for every person worldwide
How to Avoid
The Killing Devil in Your Home, Car, Office and Your Phone
Dirty Electricity Worse for Kids
Dangerous for Humans, Animals & Plants
What is dirty electricity:
High frequency energy that pollutes power lines. The what does that mean?
Below a full explanation. It is one of the reasons the mankind is getting sicker and sicker. What can be done?
See below. This info is something everyone must know. Especially our children are more in danger because they are still developing and their natural protection is weaker than in the adult population
Below additional links to study - see them all and save for your files and discuss this topic in your family and in your work place.
The sheer volume of modern electronics and appliances in homes and other settings has increased at a dizzying rate. While, this proliferation of electrical devices has made our lives more efficient and convenient, it has also contributed to a potentially harmful form of electro-pollution known as DIRTY ELECTRICITY.
Dirty electricity is unusable electromagnetic energy that is created by many electrical devices as they operate. It’s caused by interruptions in the flow of normal 60-Hertz AC (alternating current) power traveling through wires and electrical systems in homes and other buildings. These interruptions result in voltage spikes, or surges, as well as frequency variations (also called high frequency voltage transients) that combine to form a complex and potentially harmful electromagnetic field.
Common Sources
Many devices generate this dirty power, including compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), traditional fluorescent lighting, light dimmer switches, computers, printers, plasma televisions, stereo equipment, video game systems, cordless (DECT) telephones, battery/device chargers, kitchen appliances, washers/dryers, variable speed fans, hair dryers, SMART meters, and Wi-Fi systems
How do electronic devices contribute to dirty electricity?
Many modern electronics and appliances include ballasts, or transformers, (either internally or within an adapter on the power cord) that convert the AC power in a building’s wiring to the DC power needed to run electronics and appliances. During this conversion process, interruptions in electrical current flow occur.
In addition, many modern electronic devices (e.g., light dimmer switches, compact fluorescent light bulbs, equipment that use switch mode power supplies) utilize power in a more complicated way than more “old-fashioned” electronics and equipment. These devices are actually designed to operate with interrupted electric current flow. Rather than draw power continuously, they do so intermittently in variable amounts at a high frequency, primarily for efficiency.
While this can save energy, it involves frequent interruptions in electric current flow. For example, a compact fluorescent light bulb saves energy by turning itself on and off repeatedly, thousands of times per second. Regular interruptions like these create transients (i.e., voltage spikes/surges and frequency variations) that “dirty” the normal electricity flowing along wires.
What happens to dirty electricity once it is generated?
Once it’s created it’s circulated throughout the building, and even to other buildings in the neighborhood, via wiring. It radiates into the immediate environment via outlets, power strips, electronic devices, and cords/wires, exposing the humans inside to electromagnetic pollution.
Click: Greenwave filters
can help reduce dirty electricity in homes and other settings, thereby lowering individuals’ exposure to this unhealthy electromagnetic energy.
Earlier reports prove that dirty electricity—generated by computers and other electrical devices, has been linked to unexplained aches and pains, depression, sleepiness, ringing in the ears, headaches, and a foggy brain. An international group of scientists believes that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from dirty electricity can cause an increase in brain malignancy.
Dirty electricity is produced when transformers convert clean 60-Hertz household current into low-voltage power for electronic devices. This creates micro surges of electricity that contain up to 2,500 times the energy of a conventional 60-Hertz system. This electrical pollution causes a negative effect on our health.
Dirty electricity is bad for everyone, particularly children. A Swedish study reported that teens who use cell phones have a five-times greater chance of developing brain cancer than adult users. Since children’s skulls are thinner, cell phone radiation penetrates a far-larger proportion of brain tissue.
Click: World Health Organization: WHOwww.who.int/ Publication catalog, media resources, health articles, and current health news. List of upcoming health events, conferences, and summits.
In May 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a 10-year study into cell phone use and cancer rates.
The WHO recognized a significant correlation between malignant brain tumors and people who used their cell phones, wireless home phones, and Wi-Fi connected for more than 30 minutes combined daily.
Since everyone, including children, will continue to use cell phones,
what can be done to decrease the risk of dirty electricity?
Precautions to Decrease Dirty Energy
Parents can practice what is known in Europe as the “precautionary principle,” which means using old-fashioned horse sense. For a start, it’s prudent not to expose your family to unnecessary radiation such as purchasing a home near a cell-phone tower.Replace all the dimmer switches in your home with regular ones. Even when turned fully on, dimmers contaminate an entire home’s electrical wiring with dangerous high-frequency energy. Avoid low-voltage halogen tubes and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting. Virtually all of these technologies create dirty electricity.
Replace your TV monitor and TV with a new LCD as they emit much less EMR. If you can’t live without a microwave oven, stand at least five feet away when it’s on or better still, get out of the kitchen. And get rid of cordless phones, which constantly emit dirty electricity even when not in use.
Teach your children to use cell phones very, very carefully. For instance, it’s dangerous that some teenagers are actually sleeping with cell phones under their pillows. This subjects them to radiation for hours at close quarters. Stress that it’s important to turn on cell phones only to check messages and return calls. Carrying a cell phone in a pocket can decrease sperm count.
Use the speaker on the cell phone to keep it away from your head. Being just a short distance away can decrease radiation exposure from 1,000 to 10,000 times.
Remember that texting with a phone exposes a person to the same radiation as talking on the phone. This practice just radiates a different part of the body.
For years I’ve urged readers to guard against the dangers of needless radiation. This has not made me popular with some organizations. But whether you’re dealing with cell phones or other medical problems, rule No. 1 is to always practice prevention.
Unless we get smart with cell phone use, we may have a tsunami of brain cancers years from now, as damaged DNA takes years to cause malignancy.
ADDED LINKS
For more information
Copy the title below (1) & (2) and search the web with the title for several studies of this topic:
(1) "Biological Effects of Dirty Electricity with Emphasis on Diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis by Magda Havas "
(2) "Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity"
Click the green link below & save for your files- you need this info:
click: http://www.wireless-precaution.com/main/glossary.php
Source: Several (1) science publications, (2) internet articles and (3) internet links (4) STAF, Inc.
Article 2 of 2 below
World's # 1 free advice website
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life -
built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Free Q & A service - see our website
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about
$95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
The new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
_________________________
Add Comment
Ho to Avoid Dirty Electricity Worse for Kids Dangerous to All Humans, Animals & Plants02/08/2014
0 Comments
How to Avoid
The Killing Devil
in Your Home, Car, Office and Your Phone
Dirty Electricity Worse for Kids
Dangerous to All Humans, Animals & Plants
Important info for every person worldwide
What is dirty electricity:
High frequency energy that pollutes power lines. What does that mean?
Below a full explanation. It is one of the reasons the mankind is getting sicker and sicker. What can be done?
This info is something everyone must know. Especially our children are more in danger because they are still developing and their natural protection is weaker than in the adult population
Below additional links to study - see them all and save for your files and discuss this topic in your family and in your work place.
The sheer volume of modern electronics and appliances in homes and other settings has increased at a dizzying rate. While, this proliferation of electrical devices has made our lives more efficient and convenient, it has also contributed to a potentially harmful form of electro-pollution known as DIRTY ELECTRICITY.
Dirty electricity is unusable electromagnetic energy that is created by many electrical devices as they operate.
It’s caused by interruptions in the flow of normal 60-Hertz AC (alternating current) power traveling through wires and electrical systems in homes and other buildings. These interruptions result in voltage spikes, or surges, as well as frequency variations (also called high frequency voltage transients) that combine to form a complex and potentially harmful electromagnetic field.
Common Sources
Many devices generate this dirty power, including compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), traditional fluorescent lighting, light dimmer switches, computers, printers, plasma televisions, stereo equipment, video game systems, cordless (DECT) telephones, battery/device chargers, kitchen appliances, washers/dryers, variable speed fans, hair dryers, SMART meters, and Wi-Fi systems
How do electronic devices contribute to dirty electricity?
Many modern electronics and appliances include ballasts, or transformers, (either internally or within an adapter on the power cord) that convert the AC power in a building’s wiring to the DC power needed to run electronics and appliances. During this conversion process, interruptions in electrical current flow occur.
In addition, many modern electronic devices (e.g., light dimmer switches, compact fluorescent light bulbs, equipment that use switch mode power supplies) utilize power in a more complicated way than more “old-fashioned” electronics and equipment. These devices are actually designed to operate with interrupted electric current flow. Rather than draw power continuously, they do so intermittently in variable amounts at a high frequency, primarily for efficiency.
While this can save energy, it involves frequent interruptions in electric current flow. For example, a compact fluorescent light bulb saves energy by turning itself on and off repeatedly, thousands of times per second. Regular interruptions like these create transients (i.e., voltage spikes/surges and frequency variations) that “dirty” the normal electricity flowing along wires.
What happens to dirty electricity once it is generated?
Once it’s created it’s circulated throughout the building, and even to other buildings in the neighborhood, via wiring. It radiates into the immediate environment via outlets, power strips, electronic devices, and cords/wires, exposing the humans inside to electromagnetic pollution.
Click: Greenwave filters
can help reduce dirty electricity in homes and other settings, thereby lowering individuals’ exposure to this unhealthy electromagnetic energy.
Earlier reports prove that dirty electricity—generated by computers and other electrical devices, has been linked to unexplained aches and pains, depression, sleepiness, ringing in the ears, headaches, and a foggy brain. An international group of scientists believes that electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from dirty electricity can cause an increase in brain malignancy.
Dirty electricity is produced when transformers convert clean 60-Hertz household current into low-voltage power for electronic devices. This creates micro surges of electricity that contain up to 2,500 times the energy of a conventional 60-Hertz system. This electrical pollution causes a negative effect on our health.
Dirty electricity is bad for everyone, particularly children. A Swedish study reported that teens who use cell phones have a five-times greater chance of developing brain cancer than adult users. Since children’s skulls are thinner, cell phone radiation penetrates a far-larger proportion of brain tissue.
Click: World Health Organization: WHOwww.who.int/ Publication catalog, media resources, health articles, and current health news. List of upcoming health events, conferences, and summits.
In May 2010, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a 10-year study into cell phone use and cancer rates.
The WHO recognized a significant correlation between malignant brain tumors and people who used their cell phones, wireless home phones, and Wi-Fi connected for more than 30 minutes combined daily.
Since everyone, including children, will continue to use cell phones,
what can be done to decrease the risk of dirty electricity?
Precautions to Decrease Dirty Energy
Parents can practice what is known in Europe as the “precautionary principle,” which means using old-fashioned horse sense. For a start, it’s prudent not to expose your family to unnecessary radiation such as purchasing a home near a cell-phone tower.Replace all the dimmer switches in your home with regular ones. Even when turned fully on, dimmers contaminate an entire home’s electrical wiring with dangerous high-frequency energy. Avoid low-voltage halogen tubes and energy-efficient compact fluorescent lighting. Virtually all of these technologies create dirty electricity.
Replace your TV monitor and TV with a new LCD as they emit much less EMR. If you can’t live without a microwave oven, stand at least five feet away when it’s on or better still, get out of the kitchen. And get rid of cordless phones, which constantly emit dirty electricity even when not in use.
Teach your children to use cell phones very, very carefully. For instance, it’s dangerous that some teenagers are actually sleeping with cell phones under their pillows. This subjects them to radiation for hours at close quarters. Stress that it’s important to turn on cell phones only to check messages and return calls. Carrying a cell phone in a pocket can decrease sperm count.
Use the speaker on the cell phone to keep it away from your head. Being just a short distance away can decrease radiation exposure from 1,000 to 10,000 times.
Remember that texting with a phone exposes a person to the same radiation as talking on the phone. This practice just radiates a different part of the body.
For years I’ve urged readers to guard against the dangers of needless radiation. This has not made me popular with some organizations. But whether you’re dealing with cell phones or other medical problems, rule No. 1 is to always practice prevention.
Unless we get smart with cell phone use, we may have a tsunami of brain cancers years from now, as damaged DNA takes years to cause malignancy.
ADDED LINKS
For more information,
Copy the title below (1) & (2) and search the web with the title for several studies of this topic:
(1) "Biological Effects of Dirty Electricity with Emphasis on Diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis by Magda Havas "
(2) Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity
Click the green link next below & save for your files- you need this info:
click: http://www.wireless-precaution.com/main/glossary.php
Source: Several (1) science publications, (2) internet articles and (3) internet links (4) STAF, Inc.
____________________________
Article 2 of 2 below
World's # 1 free advice website for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life with Free Q & A service
built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want"
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about
$95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
The new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
To inspect STAF, Inc.'s first 4 pages in its original founding acceptance documents provided by the State of New York click this green click: click
STAF, Inc.'s purpose and its mission statements are in those 4 pages
STAF, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization working nationwide & worldwide
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide. Further info in STAF, Inc.'s website.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
__________________________________
Add Comment
Cancer is growing at an alarming pace in the U.S. & worldwide - What is your choice? Health or an early dead? 02/04/2014
0 Comments
In its World Cancer Report 2014 a few days ago The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said cancer was growing "at an alarming pace" worldwide and new strategies were needed to curb the fatal and costly disease.
click: International Agency for Research on Cancer - (IARC)
What is your choice?
As a principle it is very simple and easy to stay healthy, have long life, and get rich, even become a millionaire.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc. has the solutions - see the article 2 of 2 below
and take action.
Some details:
(1) Eat natural, simple food prepared in your own kitchen, mostly fruit & vegetables and small amount other necessary natural nutrients with the principle "If it came from a plant, eat it, if it was made in a plant, don't", (2) drink enough plain water (no soda), (3) walk 25K steps daily, (4) sleep (as an adult) 7-8 hours in a technology-free, quiet bedroom (not sleeping enough causes cancer and other sicknesses), (5) no smoking,
no more than 1 - 2 drinks daily, (6) no drugs, (7) learn to mediate and do basic hatha yoga,
(8) learn to keep a happy, peaceful mind, (9) have a work you enjoy, (10) help people who have less than you, donate. Plus: some other details (gets too long to place all here).
Back to the 2014 cancer report:
(1) The International Agency for Research on Cancer report is a collaboration between 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
(2) The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialized cancer agency of the World Health Organization
"It's untenable to think we can treat our way out of the cancer problem. That alone will not be a sufficient response - Prevention is the key", Christopher Wild, IARC's director and co-editor of its World Cancer Report 2014, told reporters at a London briefing.
"More commitment to prevention & in healthy lifestyle and early detection is desperately needed... to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in the cancer burden globally."
The World Cancer Report, which is only produced roughly once every five years, involved a collaboration of around 250 scientists from more than 40 countries.
It said access to effective and relatively inexpensive cancer drugs would significantly cut death rates, even in places where health-care services are less well developed.
The spiraling costs of cancer are hurting the economies of even the richest countries and are often way beyond the reach of poorer nations. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer was estimated at around $1.16 trillion.
Yet around half of all cancers could be avoided if current knowledge about cancer prevention was properly implemented, Wild told reporters.
Sharp Rise in Cases Expected
The report said that in 2012 - the latest year for which data are available - new cancer cases rose to an estimated 14 million a year, a figure expected to grow to 22 million within the next two decades.
Over the same period, cancer deaths are predicted to rise from an estimated 8.2 million a year to 13 million per year.
The data mean that at current rates, one in five men and one in six women worldwide will develop cancer before they reach 75 years old, while one in eight men and one in 12 women will die from the disease.
In 2012, the most common cancers diagnosed were lung, breast and colon or bowel cancers, while the most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.
As populations across the world are both growing and ageing, IARC said developing countries were disproportionately affected by the increasing numbers of cancers.
"Behind each one of these numbers, there's an individual and a family faced with a tragic situation," Wild said.
More than 60 percent of the world's total cases occur in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America, and these regions account for about 70 percent of the world's cancer deaths, it said. The situation is made worse in poorer countries by the lack of early detection and access to treatment.
"Governments must show political commitment to progressively step up the implementation of high-quality screening and early detection programs, which are an investment rather than a cost," said Bernard Stewart, another co-editor of the report.
The experts highlighted efforts to curb rates of smoking, the use of vaccines to prevent infections that cause cervical and liver cancers and policies aimed at bringing down rates of obesity as key areas in which more should be done.
"Adequate legislation can encourage healthier behavior," said Stewart.
_____________
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia©
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. (Above additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy and a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Add Comment
Sleep More - Gain Better Financial, Physical & Mental Health02/03/2014
0 Comments
Sleep Deprivation & Fragmented Sleep Accelerates Cancer Growth - Are you one of the 70 millions in danger?
Article 1 of 2
Sleep deprivation causes toxic accumulation in the brains, in our immune system and in every cell.
Sleeping enough (adults 7 -8 hours, teens 9 -11, other children 10-12, toddlers 11-14, babies (the only group knowing their correct number) almost 24 h gives the body a chance to throw out the toxins during during the sleep (click: Sleep: The Ultimate Brainwasher).
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (click: Centers for Disease Control and Preventionwww.cdc.gov) estimate that about 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems. “Considering the high prevalence of both sleep disorders and cancer in middle age or older populations,” the authors wrote, “there are far-reaching implications.” Their next step is to determine whether sleep affects metastasis or resistance to cancer chemotherapy.
Poor-quality sleep and not having enough sleep marked by frequent awakenings can speed cancer growth, increase tumor aggressiveness and dampen the immune system’s ability to control or eradicate early cancers, according to a new study published online January 21, 2014, in the journal Cancer Research.
The study is the first to demonstrate, in an animal model, the direct effects of fragmented sleep on tumor growth and invasiveness, and it points to a biological mechanism that could serve as a potential target for therapy.
“It’s not the tumor, it’s the immune system,” said study director David Gozal, MD, chairman of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital. “Fragmented sleep changes how the immune system deals with cancer in ways that make the disease more aggressive.”
“Fortunately, our study also points to a potential drug target,” he said. “Toll-like receptor 4, a biological messenger, helps control activation of the innate immune system. It appears to be a lynchpin for the cancer-promoting effects of sleep loss. The effects of fragmented sleep that we focused on were not seen in mice that lacked this protein.”
Gozal, an authority on the consequences of sleep apnea, was struck by two recent studies linking apnea to increased cancer mortality. So he and colleagues from the University of Chicago and the University of Louisville devised a series of experiments to measure the effects of disrupted sleep on cancer.
The above article 1 of 2 continues after the article 2 of 2 below
2 of 2
Article 2of 2
World's # 1 free advice website Successo-Pedia
for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A
- built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
_____________
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best plan. The Dash Plan is NOT the best plan.
The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the best Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. (Above additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy and a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________________
Relating to the article 1 of 2 above
To find out what you have to do to avoid the cancer & other disease danger and become physically, mentally & emotionally healthier and financially wealthier read the whole article 1 of 2
click: materials
__________________________
Add Comment
Police Sticking Fingers in Man's Anus - Victim Rewarded 1,6 Millions - This news article from N.M. wins the price of "Wisdom Gone with The Wind"02/01/2014
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Article 1 of 2
IF you think that protests about overzealous law enforcement are over the top, read what unfolded when the police suspected that David Eckert, 54, was hiding drugs in his rectum.
Eckert is a shy junk dealer struggling to get by in Hidalgo County, N.M. He lives a working-class life, drives a 16-year-old pickup and was convicted in 2008 of methamphetamine possession. Click: Methamphetamine
Police officers, suspecting he might still be involved in drugs, asked him to step out of his pickup early last year after stopping him for a supposed traffic violation. No drugs or weapons were found on Eckert or in his truck, but a police dog showed interest in the vehicle and an officer wrote that Eckert’s posture was “erect and he kept his legs together.”
That led the police to speculate that he might be hiding drugs internally, so they took him in handcuffs to a nearby hospital emergency room and asked the doctor, Adam Ash, to conduct a forcible search of his rectum. Dr. Ash refused, saying it would be unethical.
“I was pretty sure it was the wrong thing to do,” Dr. Ash told me. “It was not medically indicated.”
Eckert, protesting all the while, says he asked to make a phone call but was told that he had no right to do so because he hadn’t actually been arrested. The police then drove Eckert 50 miles to the emergency room of the Gila Regional Medical Center, where doctors took X-rays of Eckert’s abdomen and performed a rectal examination. No drugs were found, so doctors performed a second rectal exam, again unavailing.
Doctors then gave Eckert an enema and forced him to have a bowel movement in the presence of a nurse and policeman, according to a lawsuit that Eckert filed. When no narcotics were found, a second enema was administered. Then a third.
The police left the privacy curtain open, so that Eckert’s searches were public, the lawsuit says.
This article continues below after the article 2 of 2 - read what happened then
Article 2 of 2
World's # 1 free advice website for all family matters, success, health, wealth & for the good life - with free Q & A - built by Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit-
& by Dr. Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
Free Q & A service - see our website
This info will save nationwide/worldwide trillions in health care costs
This info will save YOUR health and save YOUR money
America & everyone worldwide must learn the #1 skill: Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition
Avoid big food bills, big bellies & big sickness costs
Quotation:
"To stay healthy you need to eat what your body wants, not what you want" (Dr. Christian, STAF, Inc.)
STAF, Inc. has a new Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Program for the U.S. government's & for every nation's use worldwide.
Totally it took 26 years to develop, first 19 years worldwide research & 7 years to modify it for everyone's needs. This program covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements to get the lasting results in all family related challenges & in our rampant obesity, overweight & sickness levels. Its nutritional program leading to health & to a longer life is at the same time an automatic weight loss program: nothing to buy, no calories to count, no unreasonable portion control - eat as needed; just follow the easy instructions.
The biggest news is this: the correct, health-restoring & health-maintaining food with all necessary daily nutrients in the correct combination costs ONLY about $95 per one (adult) person monthly.
The new program guides you to buy your food ingredients in your local supermarket & prepare your food in your own kitchen based on the new, delicious recipes. The bigger the family, the less $ per/person. Only a program everyone can afford is a solution to the world's health challenges.
Your food expenses, time being, are probably many times more than in this new STAF, Inc.'s results bringing program. Everyone can afford this amazing program whether one works on the minimum salary or lives on the social security or similar.
The saved money this new STAF, Inc. program guides you to place in safe investments - STAF, Inc. endorses only a few investment adviser companies as reliable. With the saved money your family can create substantial wealth within time. Also a millionaire?
STAF, Inc.has 10 private services given a unique lifetime result-guarantee with only a one-time fee - see website.
US News & World Reports studied several diet plans
and stated, at the beginning of January 2014, that the best and healthiest diet plan was The Dash Plan because (1) it is easy to follow and because (2) it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol. (By the way: there is good and bad cholesterol and one should not say "it lowers cholesterol", but say: "it lowers bad cholesterol".)
The DASH Plan certainly has all those benefits the report states: it is easy to follow & is healthy, etc. However, the STAF, Inc. will not and cannot agree that the DASH Plan is the best diet plan. The Dash Diet Plan is NOT the best diet plan. The proof is clear - below you can read why it is not the best plan.
The Proof
First of all, the US News & World Reports should say "we did not study every plan and we admit that there may be other plans that could be even better".
Secondly, the STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan did not participate in that "competition" because it will NOT be made nationwide/worldwide available before it has been introduced in D.C. in a televised event (see below). The STAF Plan Is NOT a DIET - it is commonly known that diets do NOT work and diets do not provide lasting results. The STAF Plan has broader goals: to be the solution to overweight & obesity for the whole nation and also worldwide through a new approach no other plan studied by US News & W... provides. This is the reason the STAF Plan is NOT called a diet, it is called STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan
STAF, Inc. has informed the US News & Wold Reports about these facts.
The STAF Plan developed by The Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., not-for-profit, is absolutely the BEST Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition PLAN anyone can find anywhere.
Here are the reasons why STAF Plan is the best nationwide & worldwide.
The STAF Plan is the best because:
The STAF Plan delivers the same good results as the best participant in the US News & World Reports' study: "in an easy to follow manner & is the healthiest" .
In addition STAF Plan delivers several other, additional important program elements NO Diet Plan does (not even The Dash Plan) - the facts below.
(1) The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition Plan is the MOST ECONOMICAL PLAN in the U.S. and worldwide (only about $95 a month per one adult).
Yet, the STAF Plan provides all nutrients any human needs in a correct, healthy, delicious manner and in fully correct proportions.
A healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition plan is good only if everyone working or getting government benefits can afford the plan. Most diet plans are so costly that those people who most need a result-bringing plan cannot afford following the plan. What good is that? Everyone working or getting the government benefits will and CAN afford following The STAF Plan because it will cost the least.
(2) Not only is the STAF Plan the most affordable but the STAF Plan has financial benefits embedded in its guidance.
In most families the food costs are (much) more than the new STAF Plan demands. The plan will guide to invest the saved money thus leading to a improved family economy - potentially also a millionaire level (not a joke, a fact).
No other plan does that. (Above additional information relating to the investment program.)
(3) In addition to providing all healthy lifestyle & correct nutrition guidance the STAF PLAN covers, for the first time ever, all necessary elements in strengthening the marriage & other family ties, in successful child raising, in teen age challenges and in other happy family related topics.
The STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program covers all factors needed for a healthy and a happy family life.
The new STAF Healthy Lifestyle & Correct Nutrition program will, in a televised D.C. event, be introduced worldwide & to The W.H., The President, The U.S. Congress & Senate.
STAF, Inc.'s presence is needed in D.C. in the U.S. Congress (House & Senate). STAF, Inc.'s founding President is planning (1) to seek a seat in D.C. Congress/Senate to provide the necessary information to the D.C. lawmakers and (2) to establish a new federal agency, Healthy Lifestyle & Family Success Agency & to be named its first federal director. New legislation & training for all these matters are needed in a results-bringing manner.
STAF, Inc.'s slogan: Less suffering - more life™
Our website page tops have a link to study STAF, Inc.'s founding documents to see its mission statements.
Save The American Family - STAF, Inc., -not-for-profit, needs donations to widen its important work for your & your family's richer, healthier & safer future.
Mail any size of donation in any currency as paper money to:
STAF, Inc., P.O. Box 1555, New York, NY 10163, USA.
Inside the envelope enclose your name & email address - STAF, Inc. will email you
a tax deductible confirmation receipt.
Fully 100 % of the donations will be used for STAF, Inc.'s help operations in reducing sickness & promoting healthy lifestyle worldwide.
Listen to STAF, Inc.'s popular Radio Shows - you'll get free CEU & College-University credits nationwide or worldwide.
Visit STAF, Inc.'s extensive website - (click) www.staf1org.weebly.com
or search the internet with:
"Save The American Family - STAF, Inc.- Home" - (one 'F' in STAF, Inc.).
Respectfully,
Christian von Christophers, Ph.D., N.D., D.D.
STAF, Inc.'s President
Founder of Successology ® (Reg.U.S.Pat.Off.1991)
- The new science for the GOOD LIFE -
________________
To read the article in full click green title below:
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Nyc Consulate ([email protected])
Add to contacts
10:40 AM
To: Christian Christophers,
Hei!
1. Voitte varata ajan passin uusimiselle soittamalle meille numeroon 212 750 4400 kello 9 aamulla kello 12 iltapäivällä maanantaista perjantaihin, jolloin voitte tiedustella vapaita aikoja. Ensi viikon maanantaina olemme kiinni Memorial Day takia.
2. Osoitteemme on: Consulate General of Finland, 866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 250, (2 kerros) New York, 10017 ( First Avenue and 48st Street)
3. Toukokuussa 2014 passin hinta on $164:- ja mahdolliset postituskulut $10:- Passin hinta vaihtele kuukausittain dollarin ja Euron kurssivaihtelusta riippuen, jokaisen kuukauden alussa löytyy konsulaatin nettisivuilta www.finland.org uusi hinnasto.
4. Uuden passin saaminen kestää noin 2 – 3 viikkoon. Passin tulosta ilmoitetaan puhelimitse tai sähköpostilla jolloin sovitaan nouto aika.
Ystävällisin terveisin,
Consular and Immigration Section
Consulate General of Finland
866 United Nations Plaza, Suite 250
New York, NY 1001
Tel. 212-750-4400
Fax. 212-750-4418
www.finland.org
Christian Christophers.PhD
5/21/14
New York Finnish Consulate: Olen Suomen kansalainen, mutta asun vakituisesti Yhdysvalloissa. Haluan uusia Suomen passin
__________________________________________
Dear Eero:
On ikavaa, kun asumme eri paikkakuinnalla ja viela eri maassa.
Minua ei Suomi saa takaisin vaikka olisin Suomen Presidentti - kun olin viela Suomessa monet sanoivat minun soveltuvan Suomen Presidentiksi mm. Hannu Klami puhui selliasta. Hannu myos koetti saAda minua jaamaan Suomeen ja sanoi, Sinulla,C., on PKK:ssa loistava nimi ja koko kansa tuntee laitoksesi ja Sinut ainutlaatuisen lahjakkaana ja antoisana henkilona ja kurssit ovat korkeatasoisimmat kaikista tarjokkaista koko maassa. Olinhan toki aina mukana politiikassa (ja vielakin olen ja enemman, koska taalla aion pyrkia U.S. Congressiin in D.C. - siella minua kylla tarvitaan).
"I am not for sale" (on sanontani) as many politicians are. U.S. nykyinen Congressi on tilastollisesti tehottomin kaikista congresseista in the U.S. history.
PKK:sta viela: olinhan toki suunnitellut PKK:n jatkamista, mutta: EN VUOSIA ETSITTYANI loytanyt yhtaan kyvykasta koko Suomesta, joka olisi pystynyt hoitamaan kaikki eri osastot PKK:ssa, kun itse kauko-ohjauksesta USA:sta annan ohjeet. Piti supistaa. Halusin pysya in USA. 1985 paatimme avata teknisiet koulut ja laajentaa sita ja panna johtajaksi minun kauko-ohjauksessa Ville Jarvisen (muistatko Villen, Vaasasta?) - Nero mies joka ei tiennyt etta on nero, enenn kuin mina todistin sen hanelle ja han uskoi ja sen jalkeen oli viela enemman nero - han noudatti kaikessa ohjeitani. Olen siullekin toistanut: OLET poikkeuslahjakkkUus, Eero - Ville sanoit, etta palkka SINUT hyvalla tulolla markkinointijohtajaksi ohjauksessani Amerikasta. Sanoin, Hyva, hyva, Eero on paras koko Suomessa.
Mina tarvitsin VILLEa ja VILLE MINUA. Mina rakensin markkinoinnin ja julkisuuden kuvan ja systeemit, Ville puhalsi hengen teknisiinkursseihin ja opetti jokaisen teknisien kurssiemme opettajan KUNNOLLA OPETTAMAAN siten kuin olin ensin opettanut VILLEN.
Mina olen AINA saanut opetustyossani hyvat tulokset.
Villen menetys on yksi suurimpia menetyksia elamassani. Olimme jo sopineet, etta PKK jatkaa, han on ylin johtaja SUOMESSA kauko-ohjauksessani, saa ison,ison palkan. Ville sanoi heti "Kylla", kun soitin Amerikasta. Menin Kathrynin kanssa tapaamaan ja sina viikonloppuna ennen kuin paasimme Vaasaan Kuusamosta (Sinun ja Karin kanssa), Ville kannissa hukkui mereen, kuten olen kertonut.
Mika hirvea asia. Jarkyttavaa. Ja mika lahjakkuuden menetys. Olen menettanyt satoja miljoonia, kun niin tapahtui. Hanen perheensa on menettanyt satoja miljoonia. PKK oli iso asia ja oisil e=aajentyunmut koko Euroopan laajuiseksi tkenisten kurssine kanssa>Miljardin vuosimyynnit!, Muttaminun vapaus in AMerica on minulle taarke. Mutta olisin tehnyt molemmat USA:n nja Euroopan. Ilmna Villea en.
Koko Suomessa ei ollut toista sopivaa ja kyvykasta.
Niin erikoinen laitos ja vaativa oli PKK! Kehitin sen nollasta ILMAN YHTAAN LAINARAHAA - iHME SEKIN SINANSA.
Olin lukiossa luokkani paras oppilas, olin koko koulun tuntema, suosittu oppilas. Yliopistossa olin ensimmainen koskaan, joka valittiin humanistisen tiedekunnan oppilaskunnan puheenjohtajaksi jo ensimmaisenja = freshman opiskeluvuotena - kukaan toinen ei koskaan mimua ennen ollut niin onnekas - eika tietojeni mukaan toinen minun jalkeenkaan. Mielenkiintoista. Mutta; sain lisaksi aikaan paljon enemman kuin mikaan toinen opplaskunta ennen minua. Tein humanistisen tiedekunnan oppilaskunnan liitosta vuodessa rahallisesti rikkaimman. Tein operatioita, joita ei koskaan ennen oltu tehty. Jarjestin mm,. Suomen ensimmaiset tietokonetanssiaiset = mikssaa tietokione valitsi illan osallistujille romattisesti sopvimman parin. Huomaa,. etta tama oli vuonna 1965 jolloin tietokone oli viela ihme. Tein sopimuksen Oulun yliopiston teknisen tiedekunnan kanssa heidan huoneen kokoinen tietokoneensa (silloin olivat niin suuria) valitsi romanttisen partnerin.
Juhlat olivat sitten parhaassa silloisessa Oulun juontipaikassa = Tervahovissa. Jarjestin Oulun ensimmiaset katutanssiaiset.
Oman tiedkuntamkme opiskelija taiteili paasiaiskortit ja moimme paasiaikortteja nioin paljon, etta kukaan ei oliosi uskonut.
Saimme rahaa, rahaa, rahaa ja minusta tuli kuuluisi jo ensimmaisena opiksluvuotenani. Minulle annettiin paikka kokoylioppilaskunna hallituksessa ja lisaksi edustajissa. Mielenkiintoista asiassa on, etta en ollut missan naista omasta takaa edes ehdokkaana, en edes ensimmaiseswsa vaalissa = oman tiedekuntani oppilaskunmnan puheenjohtajan vaalit. MInulle tuli vain eras henkilo samomaan (en edes tuntenut hanta, nainen), "haluamme SINUSTA uuden puheenjohtajan" - sanoin, onko tassa virhe :en ole edes ehdokkaana enka edes tiennyt, etta voin olla, koska olen freshman. Teemme SInusta ehdokkaan - suostutko? Sanoin: tietenkin. Monet jostakin kumman syysta tiesivat,
etta olin ollut paras oppilas lukiossani, etta olin ollut nuorin kansakoulun johtajaopettaja heti ylolioppiasltutkintovuoteni jalkeen ja olin tehnyt sen tyon hyvin - paremmin kuin kukaan ennen minua koko koulussa olivat kylalaiset sanoneet ja olivat sanoneet myos, etta olivat pyytaneet minua jatkamaan (siihen olin sanonut "menen takaisin yliopistoon jatkamaan opintoja"). Olin hyvin yllattynyt, etta kaikki tama oli puolen Suomen tiedossa. Tietenkin asiaa auttoi, etta olin esiintynyt lausujana, nayttelijana, tanssijana (ballroom), harmoonin soittajana, esiintynyt usein radiossa ja muutoinkin ollut "elavainen" joka asiassa.
JOS JULIA lukee taman emailin englanniksi, tassa on SInulle, JULIA, ylla+ ALLA paljon asiaa. Sanoin sotkujesi alussa: annan anteeksi, kuin muutat tapasi.
Sanoin "syytteet SInua vastaan, jULIA, tulevat ennemmin tai myohemmin ja jouduT vuosiksi vankilaan, jos niin haluan JA JOS ANNAN TODISTAJALASUNNOT VIRANOMAISILLE. rIKOKSET, JOTKA OLET THENYT ENNEN MINUN TUNTEMISTASI OVAT TIEDOSSANI JA YKSI NIISTA EI KOSKAAN VANHENNU - TIEDAT, MIKA SE ON "AVAINSANA "ARAB".- SIITA SAAT LISAVUOSIA VANKILATUOMIOOSI.
jos julioa LUKEE (TIEDAN, ETTA "VIERAILET" EMAILTILILLANI" NIINKUIN sina, julia< VIEWRAILIT MINUN DOLLARITILEILLA JA VARASTIT - TAPPIONI OVAT SADOISSA MILJOONISSA sinun RIKOLLISEN VERESI VUOKSI, jULIA.
Syyttajat haluavat. Joko kadut tai et - vapautesi riippuu siita. Mina olen ratkaiseva henkilo, koska rikokset,joita olet kohtaani ja kahta lastamme kohtaan (ja myos ensimmista lastasi kohtaan, lapsi, jonka isa en ole) tehnyt ovat hyvin torkeita. - ymmarran ja itsekin tiedat sen (siksi katosit etka menyt oikueuden maaraamaan mielentilatutkimukseen. MIna menin ja sain taysin puhtaat paperit. Sinun tauatasi, JULIA, on rikollinen ja olet tuhonout jo ensimmaisenj pioikasi, lapsen, joka isa mina en ole.
Pelastan SInut, jos kadut tekojas, tunnustat sairautesi, tulet jarkiisi, menet lakikouuujn ja teen tutkinnon ja paadyt juristiksi (siirtolaisjrusti onj hyva ammmatti, miljoona vuodessa tai enemman. Opetan markkinoinnin.
Vapautesi on kasissani, enaa en odota kauan. Vaadin (jos et pysty todistamaan olevasi kyhvyton) etta teet ainakin yhden lisalaspen ja adaptoimme muutaman (yhden kutakin varia)
ETTA SELLAISTA.
EERO ON PARAS OMASSA LAHJAKKUUDESSAAN SUOMESSA
LOVE
C