Giving up Sodas

Photo by fimoculous 

The New York Times posted a couple of articles recently about doctors and under-the-table payments. One article is Who Else is Paying Your Doctor? and the other is Drug Firms to Report Money Paid to Doctors. I think that's a good start (at least for reporting), maybe actually enabling us to know who pays our doctors, assuming we can ever find the reports... but I think there's much more to health care than "the doctor".

It seems to me that prevention is the least expensive way to be healthy, and going to doctors for treatments once you become ill is the most expensive. Plus, when something goes wrong (as it eventually will with a poor diet) the doctors may not "cure" you. They may merely prescribe drugs, treatments, or maybe operations that permit you to live with your afflictions. 

It has been five years since I had surgery to remove my gallbladder, but in retrospect I think it could have been prevented if I had known as much about eating right, and real food, as I do now. If so, I wouldn't have had the surgical expense and aftercare, the trauma to my body being cut open, and I sure wouldn't have the resulting adhesions that now double me over occasionally.

Drugs and/or operations are for the most part just crutches after the injury. Eating right is far cheaper in the long run, and the resulting quality of life is far greater... and that's the advantage of prevention over treatment.

The problem is that we are complacent, even with less than optimal health, and no one wants to give up their sodas, diet sodas, artificially sweetened fake coffee creamers, donuts, chips, McD's and other junk food. We even fool ourselves into believing that sweetened fruity, non-fat yogurt is actually healthy! No one wants to increase their food budget with organic salad greens, fruits, vegetables and free-range eggs/meats in place of sodas, chips, donuts, burgers, fries and pizza, even though they would probably come out cheaper without the junk in the grocery line, not even even considering the additional cost of medical care later on.

Health Care vs Illness Care

We should start naming things as they really are, not what someone would like us to believe. What we really have is Illness Care, NOT Health Care. Very little money is ever spent to promote "Health Care" because Health is NOT profitable.

The human body is extremely complex, and we have hundreds of thousands of internal interactions going on at any given moment from our 400 hundred trillion cells. Those interactions are also interdependent, and although our bodies have the ability to fabricate some of the components, we still need some raw materials for manufacturing them.

Jump rope, Photo from tedkerwin

For a different picture for understanding, think about the group children's game we call jump rope; when typically done by 3 or more children it's called long rope jumping. If you have 3 children and a rope, you can play. Remove any one component, and there's no game. 2 children and a rope but no jumper... no game. 3 children and no rope, no game.

Micronutrients (meaning we don't need much of them) like the fat-soluble vitamins have a 'game' (interaction) going on in our bodies too, and if any one of them is MIA, the 'game' suffers. Please note that these essential fat-soluble vitamins can only be dissolved in saturated fats in the body (hence their name). A healthy liver will store any excess, unlike the water-soluble vitamins which we rapidly excrete in urine. 

Photo by Public Domain Photos

Photo by julesjulesjules m

Vitamin A (egg yolks, liver, whole milk, cheese) is needed for eyesight, in other words "essential for the neural transmission of light into vision". All the fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, K) need a bit of all the others to function (play the game) properly.

I find it interesting that the amount of Vitamin A in egg yolks in the Netherlands is more than twice the amount in the US. I wonder why? What they are fed (non-GMO?) and how they are raised? Curious. source

Photo by Peber the Swede

Photo by andrewmalone

Vitamin D (from sunlight, or oily fish like herring, salmon and sardines) helps the body absorb and use calcium, but you also need to ingest enough of the right kind of calcium for it to work... and then it takes Vitamin A to make the interaction work, too. (Vitamin A binds the Vitamin D receptors). Likewise if you take calcium supplements but don't get enough A or D, the calcium is useless.

Gluten-free (coconut flour) Fried Oysters, by NourishingCook

Oysters Rockefeller, photo by Argyleist

For Vitamin D to work, it also needs the minerals magnesium (green vegetables, nuts, whole grains), zinc (oysters, wheat germ, liver) and boron (green vegetables, fruit, nuts). The other catch is you also need enough Vitamin K (green leafy vegetables) to regulate the entire fat-soluble system.

The fat-soluble vitamins (except E) come from the very animal foods the "health care" industry tells us to reduce or avoid altogether: eggs, butter, and organ meats like liver. (BTW, coconut oil is considered a good saturated fat but contains almost zero vitamins and minerals. The main benefit in coconut oil is the Lauric Acid content, which promotes the "good" cholesterol, HDL.) 

There are many, many other nutrients which are equally essential for good health, and our bodies can utilize them all much better in the form of real food rather than supplements. However, just like the fat-soluble vitamins, most are interdependent on a host of others for maximum nutritional function. Who tells or teaches us that??

It seems the best way to have real health care is in our own hands. If we don't take responsibility for ourselves and our health, who will??

Try this: On your own, research some foods for their nutritional amounts. Research your own nutritional needs for the foods that supply them. If the information comes from research, find out who paid for the research; it is too often biased. Look for the sin of omission, where they tell us the part they want us to know rather than the whole picture.

The spin on many industrialized foods now being promoted as "healthy" is just that: spin. I have to be vigilant about reading labels on foods. A package of crackers I picked up in the natural foods market last weekend had huge advertising all over the front of the box exclaiming "Now made with whole grains!". When I read the label, sure enough there were whole grains... but last on the list just before the chemicals (labels are required by law to list ingredients in descending order of the quantity). The first ingredient was "enriched white flour"... I put it back on the shelf. Deceptive advertising, in my opinion.

Getting and staying healthier is much harder when the truth is so hard to find amongst all the hype. In my opinion, food labels should also list ALL the vitamin amounts, as well as all the herbicides, pesticides, irradiation and chemical washes the food has endured.

I repeat: It seems the best way to have real health care is in our own hands. If we don't take responsibility for ourselves and our health, who will??

Hide your Salt Shaker

 Rock Salt Photo from nate steiner's photostream

Now the Feds want to regulate salt...

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

"We can't just rely on the individual to do something," said Cheryl Anderson, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who served on the Institute of Medicine committee. "Food manufacturers have to reduce the amount of sodium in foods."

So, the FDA wants to regulate the amount of salt in manufactured foods, which on the surface sounds like a good idea. In my opinion, manufactured 'foods' are way too high in sodium. Of course in my opinion manufactured foods aren't real foods at all, but that's not relevant to this post.

Salt essential for animal life in small quantities, but salt is harmful in excess to plants and animals. The sodium it provides regulates the heartbeat and the body’s balance of fluids. And not only does salt keep you alive, it’s also pretty tasty. Salt flavor is one of the basic tastes, making salt one of the oldest, most ubiquitous food seasonings, and salt is essential to much of our food preservation. 

Salt works in tandem with fat and sugar to achieve flavors that grip the consumer and do not let go — an allure the food industry has recognized for decades. “Once a preference is acquired,” a top scientist at Frito-Lay wrote in a 1979 internal memorandum, “most people do not change it, but simply obey it.”

So instead of controlling the salt, maybe the Feds should control ALL the known but hidden addictive ingredients so prevalent in our foods, and making us fat and unhealthy?

Back in March, when I wrote about gun control, I questioned why the government has the right to regulate things like helmet laws, or seat belt laws. Now that the Feds are in the Health Care business they want to regulate things which, in their opinion, will make us healthier? (And save them money on our healthcare costs?) As long as the Feds continue to promote the erroneous opinion that natural saturated fats are bad, and GM products are good, we will have rising health care costs, and salt has very little to do with it.

I drink real cream (not half and half) in my morning coffee... the almost real stuff (not totally real because it is pasteurized). What would keep them from deciding that's too much saturated fat in their opinion, and they outlaw cream? Or that no one should ever have a cocktail because it leads to alcoholism in a few people?

Corporations enter the Battle

Cargill is the world's largest marketer of salt products, with the ability to sell over 18 million tons annually. Last November, they kicked off a campaign to spread their own message, with star chef Alton Brown, to promote cooking with salt. They are aware of the health concerns and are recommending 'smarter salting'...

“Salt is a pretty amazing compound,” Alton Brown, a Food Network star, gushes in a Cargill video called Salt 101. “So make sure you have plenty of salt in your kitchen at all times.” Mr. Brown suggests sprinkling it on foods like cookies, fresh fruit, ice cream and coffee. "You might be surprised by what foods are enhanced by its briny kiss."

I'm not against salt at all, and in fact I agree with Alton Brown on the importance of salt in foods. I just wish Mr. Brown wasn't speaking for Cargill. I use salt in my cooking (haven't tried it ice cream) and most of the salt I use is grey salt, full of minerals, hand harvested from the coast of Brittany. Much of my food would taste pretty bland without a pinch of salt. (Salt used in cooking and at the table, coupled with naturally occurring salt in foods, all together add up to well under 1/4 of the average daily intake of most Americans.)

It's not the salt alone that I worry about. I'm leery of giant corporations in general, for the power and influence they can bring to bear, and more so when they launch a dedicated 'sales' campaign. Over this past winter, road salt increased 156% in some areas. Grocery prices are up and expected to increase 7.5% every year for at least the next 5 years, especially staples... and certainly salt is a staple in every kitchen.

Here are some remarks about Cargill, from Wikipedia:

Cargill, Incorporated is a privately held, multinational corporation, and is based in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota. It has grown into the country's largest privately held corporation (in terms of revenue).

Cargill's business activities include purchasing, processing, and distributing grain and other agricultural commodities, and the manufacture and sale of livestock feed and ingredients for processed foods and pharmaceuticals.

The company also supplies approximately 22 percent of the United States domestic meat market. All of the eggs used in McDonald's  restaurants in the United States pass through Cargill's plants. They are the largest poultry producer in Thailand.

I'm sure the battle will go on, and probably with a furor, since the FDA thinks it is their appointed duty to save us from ourselves.

Feeling Disturbed, Isolated and Very Alone...

I must admit tonight I am deeply disturbed by a number of things happening all over my country: some are happening in my government, some are happening in my food supply, and some are happening in many of my fellow Americans. And it seems there's not a thing I can do about any of it.

I think I almost understand what some of the Native Americans must have felt at what the White Eyes did to them... slowly... but inexorably.

I read a lot of blogs... blogs of all kinds. I read some because they tinker, or garden as I do, or they eat or cook as I do, or they have the same issues about government control of our food as I do. Or, they write tantalizing word pictures that dance around in my imagination and all's right in my world.

I also read a lot of the political fringe blogs just to know what they are thinking... and I even agree with some of them who think our federal government has been overstepping its bounds with laws that are not legal under our Constitution. Where in our Constitution does it say the government should control automobile manufacturing? Or control the financial sector? Or health care?

The health care bill that just passed could be the place where many will finally draw the line. Already several states have begun the legal process to challenge the new health care legislation as unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, a militant blogger is encouraging civil disobedience via throwing bricks through the windows of political (Democratic) offices, and those acts are being reported in several states just today. Personally, I think encouraging something like sit-ins would have been smarter. I don't agree with violence, even when the militants say violence put Hitler out of business... and Mussolini... and kept Texas from being Mexican.

The new health care bill is over 2,000 pages long and I have only read portions of it. Frankly, I wonder who has read it in its entirety. (Sound familiar, kinda like the Patriot Act that passed without anyone but the authors reading it, or even having a copy, because politicians were in fear after 9-11?) And just what are the 'earmarks' for 13 states in the final health care bill?

I do know part of the bill just passed allows for something like 27,000 new IRS agents. Dunno what for though, since that agenda wasn't noted. Sunday night, soon after passage of the bill, I heard a Senator from Tennessee (my closest news station is in Tennessee) say on TV that Tennessee cannot afford the matching funds required by this bill. The state is already in the red and has already cut many Medicare programs across the state, even limiting how many doctor's visits you can have. (Medicare is always partly funded by each state.)

Here's what another blogger posted, and although I don't agree with a lot he says, I tend to agree with this: "At the heart of the Medicare reform battle was a very simple fact. The current Medicare program is broke. The current Social Security program is broke. Most of the States in the nation are broke. America must borrow a billion dollars a day to maintain its huge entitlement programs. The interest on treasury notes alone is daunting."

I feel very alone, very isolated by the government of this country that I love and is my home, isolated even by the governments at the state and local level who are required to report any dissent to Homeland Security. I doubt Homeland Security knows or cares that I don't like okra, but you can bet they know I don't like how Monsanto and Friends 'buy' favorable government rulings.

To say what I think anymore is to be labeled anti-government, which equals terrorist in their minds.

Are We Getting Dumber?

The University of Virginia Hospital is a huge complex, part of the UVa School of Medicine, and also part of their nursing school... and it is where I travel 250 miles to see specialists in health care not available locally.

When I first started going up there 3 years ago, the parking garage spat out a stiff paper slip with a time stamp on it. Once at the appointed office, someone would rubber-stamp my parking slip, which I gave to the attendant when exiting the garage, and got free parking.

Last fall, the slips had become larger green slips with a magnetic stripe. The offices gave me a pink slip with a magnetic stripe to turn in with the green one for free parking. There was still an attendant, and I assumed some change-over was in process.

The University must have spent millions for the magnetic time-stamp system, and the machines I saw today upon exiting the garage. The machines have a slot to insert the green slip, visually marked, and another slot to insert the pink slip to "pay" the parking... and the gates open.

Only... there is still an attendant, just no longer in the booth. The attendant takes your green slip and inserts it in the machine, then inserts the pink slip in the appropriately marked slot, and the gate bar rises. I asked her why, and her reply was that people couldn't figure out how to do it.

Now I'm no mental giant, but even a 5 year old kid should be competent enough without even being able to read... See the picture of the green slip, magnetic stripe up, and a huge arrow to the slot. Put the green slip in the green slot. Same for the pink slip. Duh.

The University has spent millions for a system we are too dumb to use, and so they must pay for both the system AND the attendants. I wonder what that will add to the cost of my health care? I wonder if that kind of expense is in the fine print of any health-care bill?