Got your attention? I bet I did. I know everyone of us are thinking about health care these days, one way or another. My goal today is to tell you how you can be less concerned about what changes are really coming down, and show you how you can have less costs with regards to your health, and, how if we all did this, it would save the country hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe even billions.
First, let’s clarify a couple of things. For starters, when you go to your doctor for an illness, (are you ready for this?) you are NOT receiving health care. That’s right, you heard it here first, it is NOT health care. It is SICK care. It is DISEASE care. You are going there because you are sick, or have a disease. You are there because for some reason, your body has broken down and is not doing what it’s supposed to have done, you body’s function has decreased enough to where an illness has temporarily (hopefully temporarily) won the fight for who is in charge inside you. This is true for the flu, a sinus infection, pneumonia, and diseases such as cardiovascular issues, diabetes, cancer etc. So, you have chosen to go and get some help via medications to suppress said sickness/disease/symptom in the hopes that either your body will kick in again and knock down the issue, or you can at least keep it down to a dull roar.
Please hear me, I am not condemning going to get treated for your disease. It is necessary sometimes. Otherwise, the results could be severe, even fatal. I am reminded of a patient I had a few years ago that didn’t seek care fast enough, and lost the lower ½ of his leg to a diabetic neuropathy. (More on this guy later). I am only trying to get us to think differently about health care vs. sick care or disease management. Remember, the type of thinking that we’ve developed so far in our country with regards to health and wellness has gotten us to where we are now, which is a very sick nation, with rampant obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many other diseases of lifestyle. That same type of thinking will not get us out of this rut, and will keep us reliant on medications, surgeries, and, of course, insurance plans.
Do you realize that much of our illness/disease in this country is caused by lifestyle decisions? What if we started thinking radically differently about our lifestyles? Obesity, diabetes, stroke, and heart disease are things that cost us directly when we have to deal with it, and indirectly when they reach epidemic levels as they have here in our country. What if we changed that?
Do you realize how much cheaper it would be for us if we only learned how to take better care of ourselves? If our thinking was so radically changed that we no longer tolerated putting toxins in our bodies that are disguised as food, we would chart a totally different course for ourselves, our families and our country regarding health. If we sought out health care providers that focused primarily on lifestyle changes, and supporting us in those endeavors, what would that do for us? If we joined a gym and actually used the membership, or started a walking group, how different could our lives be? It would cost us personally so much less for starters. And it would cost the nation much less too! Follow me here: The sicker we are as a nation, the more we have to use health insurance. The more we have to use health insurance, the less the insurance companies profit. They tend to not like that much, so our premiums go up. When our employers have to pay more in premiums, it cuts into their profits. That loss of profit is usually offset by the company charging the consumer more for their product or service. Do you see how every time one more of us gets sick and has to seek out sick care, it has an impact on the entire country? This doesn’t even count lost productivity because of absent workers! When you look at it in this way, the concept is staggering!!
This is supposed to be a time of “change”, so how can we change this situation? Seek out wellness oriented healthcare providers. Let them work with you in making lifestyle changes that will help you step closer to wellness. This is what we do at our office every day. We teach people what it means to eat better, move better, rest better and think better daily. We set goals for them, we support them as they work through changing 20, 30, 40 years or more of thinking in the old paradigm. It’s fun to see them lose 40 pounds under our supervision and feel “better than ever” as one 60+ year patient told us. It’s exciting to see people’s cholesterol levels normalize. It’s rewarding to hear how a person has learned to deal with stress so much better that they finally feel rested when they wake in the mornings. It IS possible. It IS happening right now. It CAN happen for you, and it would benefit not only you and your family, but our great nation as a whole!
So, back to my diabetic patient with the prosthetic leg. He chose NOT to learn to eat, move, think and rest better, he chose NOT to pursue true health care. I saw him a while back. He’s now in a wheelchair, with BOTH of his legs now removed from the knee down. A very sad story for a young man. A very costly process for him. A huge lesson for us all.
“Health Care” is NOT expensive, “Sick Care” is.
Until next time, BE WELL!
Dr. Bruce
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Real Food vs. Edible Food Like Substances
Here's a GREAT article about real food, I LOVE IT!!
« Natural Cures Blog Carnival, A Little Chocolate Love
Wisconsin Raw Milk Hearings »
Real Food Challenge Attracts CNN Spotlight
By Kimberly Hartke | Published: March 10, 2010
Vicky @ CNN Headquarters Atlanta GA.
Creative Commons License photo credit: Morales Photo
My Real Food Challenge
by Guest blogger, Jenny McGruther, Nourished Kitchen blog
There’s something revolutionary about real food, something subversive about traditional foods. There shouldn’t be.
Real food, traditional food, is nothing extraordinary. There should be no cultural shock to enjoying fruits and vegetables, grains and beans, milk and meat grown, raised and prepared through the time-honored practices and traditions that nourished human health for millennia. But there is.
Raising animals with true, holistic care and respect to their natural diets and proclivities has been lost to confinement operations. Nurturing and cherishing the soil to optimize the production of heirloom fruits and vegetables has been lost to massive farming operations and mono-cropping. Farm fresh milk, drunk greedily the morning the cow or goat was milked, has been lost to the denaturing effects of ultra-high temperature pasteurization and homogenization. After all it’s to protect our health, isn’t it?
Moreover, we’ve not only lost the art of farming, but also of preparing food with care, attention and appreciation. Where we would have learned time-honored traditions of preparing nourishing foods as we tugged at our grandmother’s aprons, we’ve been taught instead to microwave our suppers and that freshly baked “from scratch” pastries and breads come from a box.
As a result, not only has our health as a nation suffered, but so has our culture. We’ve lost our heritage.
As the traditional foods movement has grown, many of us our muddling our ways through our journeys into real food – rediscovering the lost arts, but it’s a tricky road with no grandmother to hold your hand and show you how to mash the sauerkraut just so, or how to soak flour in buttermilk to make the lightest biscuits.
In early February, I challenged my readers at Nourished Kitchen to clean up their cupboards and reinvigorate their passion for real and traditional foods; moreover, my goal was to introduce the practices and fundamental aspects of traditional foods to an audience who so desperately wanted to learn what modern agriculture and food processing forgot.
So we made it happen – over 950 of us. I made the claim that real health comes from real food and that real food never comes from a box as I brazenly suggested that participants rid their pantries of processed foods: white flour, white sugar, refined vegetable oils and – gasp! – even agave nectar. I asked participants to make meals of vegetables and grass-fed meats and properly prepared whole grain. Every day there was a new assignment, new learning and a new goal.
We learned to sprout, sour and soak our way through phytic acid with the best of them. We lovingly tended to and babied our sourdough starters – celebrated when they rose high and wept when they failed. We made cheese – some the easy way with fresh yogurt and others were more adventurous. We ate our carrots and peas with butter, real butter, and we ate our fresh greens with plenty of olive oil. We relished our meat, eggs , fish, broth and even liver. And we washed it all down with sour, sweet and effervescent draughts of home-brewed kombucha.
Most importantly, we learned to give back to our communities: our farmers markets had more volunteers; our food banks found fresh, real foods, at their steps. A non-profit or two may have even found new members and donations to support their good work protecting farmers rights and supporting nutrition advocacy and education.
Eventually, what we were doing – over 900 of us on the challenge – caught the ear of a CNN reporter who covered the 28-day Real Food Challenge and Nourished Kitchen on CNN Health. And that is how liver and lard landed on the homepage of CNN.com.
It shocked many of CNN’s readers. After all, how could lard be good for you?!? How could someone, in this day and age, seriously advocate eating meat!?! My goodness, you’ll have to pry the Cheetohs from my cold, dead hands.
A nutritionist, who may well have benefited from taking the challenge herself, even touted the benefits of processed foods like low-fat milk and canned green beans, while those tried-and-true challenge participants scoffed.
Sure, the challenge wasn’t without its … well … challenges as addressed by the article on CNN. For many families, especially those previously unfamiliar with traditional foods and the Weston A Price Foundation, the challenge was struggle. Some families had never prepared a meal without the aid of a package or a box before embarking on the challenge. Others found the expense of real food a shock – though it can be easily mitigate through proper kitchen management. Yet everyone, no matter where they succeeded or where they struggled, learned.
Now that the challenge has ended, it still effects its goal. Participants found their passion for all-natural, real foods and many of them are still choosing to continue on the path of traditional foods. Moreover, others have emailed me to let me know their migraine headaches disappeared, that their ever constant gastrointestinal distress has ended and still others have expressed that after months or years without a menstrual cycle, their cycles have returned.
Real food truly brings health, not only for our bodies but for our culture and for our nation’s foodsheds.
Jennifer McGruther, a mother and farmers market manager in Crested Butte, Colorado, blogs about real food and the value of growing your foodshed at Nourished Kitchen where she features many nourishing recipes, publishes monthly recipe cards and feature articles on the real and traditional foods movement. If you’re interested you can also sign up for the next round of the 28-day Real Food Challenge or get involved at Nourished Kitchen.
« Natural Cures Blog Carnival, A Little Chocolate Love
Wisconsin Raw Milk Hearings »
Real Food Challenge Attracts CNN Spotlight
By Kimberly Hartke | Published: March 10, 2010
Vicky @ CNN Headquarters Atlanta GA.
Creative Commons License photo credit: Morales Photo
My Real Food Challenge
by Guest blogger, Jenny McGruther, Nourished Kitchen blog
There’s something revolutionary about real food, something subversive about traditional foods. There shouldn’t be.
Real food, traditional food, is nothing extraordinary. There should be no cultural shock to enjoying fruits and vegetables, grains and beans, milk and meat grown, raised and prepared through the time-honored practices and traditions that nourished human health for millennia. But there is.
Raising animals with true, holistic care and respect to their natural diets and proclivities has been lost to confinement operations. Nurturing and cherishing the soil to optimize the production of heirloom fruits and vegetables has been lost to massive farming operations and mono-cropping. Farm fresh milk, drunk greedily the morning the cow or goat was milked, has been lost to the denaturing effects of ultra-high temperature pasteurization and homogenization. After all it’s to protect our health, isn’t it?
Moreover, we’ve not only lost the art of farming, but also of preparing food with care, attention and appreciation. Where we would have learned time-honored traditions of preparing nourishing foods as we tugged at our grandmother’s aprons, we’ve been taught instead to microwave our suppers and that freshly baked “from scratch” pastries and breads come from a box.
As a result, not only has our health as a nation suffered, but so has our culture. We’ve lost our heritage.
As the traditional foods movement has grown, many of us our muddling our ways through our journeys into real food – rediscovering the lost arts, but it’s a tricky road with no grandmother to hold your hand and show you how to mash the sauerkraut just so, or how to soak flour in buttermilk to make the lightest biscuits.
In early February, I challenged my readers at Nourished Kitchen to clean up their cupboards and reinvigorate their passion for real and traditional foods; moreover, my goal was to introduce the practices and fundamental aspects of traditional foods to an audience who so desperately wanted to learn what modern agriculture and food processing forgot.
So we made it happen – over 950 of us. I made the claim that real health comes from real food and that real food never comes from a box as I brazenly suggested that participants rid their pantries of processed foods: white flour, white sugar, refined vegetable oils and – gasp! – even agave nectar. I asked participants to make meals of vegetables and grass-fed meats and properly prepared whole grain. Every day there was a new assignment, new learning and a new goal.
We learned to sprout, sour and soak our way through phytic acid with the best of them. We lovingly tended to and babied our sourdough starters – celebrated when they rose high and wept when they failed. We made cheese – some the easy way with fresh yogurt and others were more adventurous. We ate our carrots and peas with butter, real butter, and we ate our fresh greens with plenty of olive oil. We relished our meat, eggs , fish, broth and even liver. And we washed it all down with sour, sweet and effervescent draughts of home-brewed kombucha.
Most importantly, we learned to give back to our communities: our farmers markets had more volunteers; our food banks found fresh, real foods, at their steps. A non-profit or two may have even found new members and donations to support their good work protecting farmers rights and supporting nutrition advocacy and education.
Eventually, what we were doing – over 900 of us on the challenge – caught the ear of a CNN reporter who covered the 28-day Real Food Challenge and Nourished Kitchen on CNN Health. And that is how liver and lard landed on the homepage of CNN.com.
It shocked many of CNN’s readers. After all, how could lard be good for you?!? How could someone, in this day and age, seriously advocate eating meat!?! My goodness, you’ll have to pry the Cheetohs from my cold, dead hands.
A nutritionist, who may well have benefited from taking the challenge herself, even touted the benefits of processed foods like low-fat milk and canned green beans, while those tried-and-true challenge participants scoffed.
Sure, the challenge wasn’t without its … well … challenges as addressed by the article on CNN. For many families, especially those previously unfamiliar with traditional foods and the Weston A Price Foundation, the challenge was struggle. Some families had never prepared a meal without the aid of a package or a box before embarking on the challenge. Others found the expense of real food a shock – though it can be easily mitigate through proper kitchen management. Yet everyone, no matter where they succeeded or where they struggled, learned.
Now that the challenge has ended, it still effects its goal. Participants found their passion for all-natural, real foods and many of them are still choosing to continue on the path of traditional foods. Moreover, others have emailed me to let me know their migraine headaches disappeared, that their ever constant gastrointestinal distress has ended and still others have expressed that after months or years without a menstrual cycle, their cycles have returned.
Real food truly brings health, not only for our bodies but for our culture and for our nation’s foodsheds.
Jennifer McGruther, a mother and farmers market manager in Crested Butte, Colorado, blogs about real food and the value of growing your foodshed at Nourished Kitchen where she features many nourishing recipes, publishes monthly recipe cards and feature articles on the real and traditional foods movement. If you’re interested you can also sign up for the next round of the 28-day Real Food Challenge or get involved at Nourished Kitchen.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Mercury In High Fructose Corn Syrup?
Yes, still another reason to avoid the toxic HFCS. Just read this article from January last year in the Washington Post. Here are a few quotes from it:
MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.
HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.
"Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply," the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.
MONDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Almost half of tested samples of commercial high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) contained mercury, which was also found in nearly a third of 55 popular brand-name food and beverage products where HFCS is the first- or second-highest labeled ingredient, according to two new U.S. studies.
HFCS has replaced sugar as the sweetener in many beverages and foods such as breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments. On average, Americans consume about 12 teaspoons per day of HFCS, but teens and other high consumers can take in 80 percent more HFCS than average.
"Mercury is toxic in all its forms. Given how much high-fructose corn syrup is consumed by children, it could be a significant additional source of mercury never before considered. We are calling for immediate changes by industry and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] to help stop this avoidable mercury contamination of the food supply," the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's Dr. David Wallinga, a co-author of both studies, said in a prepared statement.
Go Green Day
I have been getting a lot of interest in our NanoGreens products, we will be putting our own testimonials together soon, but here are some from around the country at this link: (The link won't post????) http://www.biopharmasci.com/hp/sng/testimonials.asp (copy and paste to your browser)
Join us for our "Go Green" day on March 17 to get sample tastes of all of our Nano products (NanoGreens, NanoReds, NanoPro, NanOmega3), fruit smoothies and my special concoction of juiced apple/carrot/kale and ginger!
Come see how easy it can be to start "Being Well"!!
Until next time....Be Well!
Dr. Bruce
Join us for our "Go Green" day on March 17 to get sample tastes of all of our Nano products (NanoGreens, NanoReds, NanoPro, NanOmega3), fruit smoothies and my special concoction of juiced apple/carrot/kale and ginger!
Come see how easy it can be to start "Being Well"!!
Until next time....Be Well!
Dr. Bruce
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