Food For Thought

I was thinking the other day about what information may be interesting or simply helpful. So, I thought “what do I do every day for minimally an hour a day?”  I look at health sites, mostly the current information on “what’s not working.”  I have a morbid curiousity about such things for whatever reason and its usually to do with the pharmaceutical [pharma] industry.  I can’t help myself, no matter how I try, I still think the industry has to be comprised of a bunch of greedy criminals.

Let me say, upfront, that Nourished Magazine is my favorite link. It’s educational, helpful, and steered at the helm by those-in-the-know.  How great is that?  What else is there?  Not much. If I want to know something I check here first. The others are simply additional information in the news that I feel a need to track.  But, one doesn’t really have to. I don’t feel a need to read about the dangers of smoking because I don’t happen to smoke.  I don’t often read about the side effects of pharma drugs because I don’t take them.  Yet, I know about them.  It frees up some time for what I need/want  to read. Yahoo.  There’s plenty.

As a tangential aside, I wasn’t that impressed with Michael Moore’s “Sicko.”  He was trying to get some firemen and volunteers [9-11] medical help in Cuba.  Granted his intentions were honorable.  However, the method of prescription drugs to pacify the symptoms, was not.  I posted him a note [probably one of a 1,000] at the beginning of his research and begged him to reconsider his story line that was misguided.  Instead I wanted him to reveal the bill of goods we’ve been sold when it comes to most allopathic medicine. [For the record, if I fall off my motorcycle, take me to the nearest ER].   Can you imagine the uproar had he taken on the cancer industry, pharma once again being the drug supplier, hospitals being the pushers? Wow, I would have loved to have seen that documentary!  

I settle for reading about these things “live” in the news, each little pill dropping further and further from the solution. And, you know what, that information has been in the alternative media for a minimum of 7 years before it hits mainstream press. That’s my experience.  Granted there’s got to be some ’scripts out there that are helpful.  I don’t know what they are, but there’s got to be.  I’d hate to think the pharma complex is making all this money without helping someone.  Yet, the paradox is that we all know the body heals itself, given half a chance, good nutrition and often some additional non-traditional methods.

Let me attempt to focus on the cup as half full.  There is more to celebrate on the NET than there is to fear!  About 6 years ago, my mother-in-law and I were sitting at my computer.  I described the Net to her as 8,000 libraries in her basement [she was a former librarian], hooked up to her computer, with ready access. She has Parkinson’s Disease [PD] and I asked her what stage her doctor told her she was in: he hadn’t told her about the stages and she hadn’t researched it.

The stages of PD are researched and described as well as the stages of AD [Alzheimer's Disease].  For some, it’s comforting to know what’s going on: for others, perhaps, morbid.  There’s nothing stopping one from applying “slowing down” methods, however.  Who’s to say it can’t be put into “remission?!”  Although I pulled up over 500,000 info sites on PD,  she opted not to consider sending for a notebook full of healing tools to help her.  She fell many times: so many times I don’t want to tell you until finally,  it was decided “well, maybe it is PD causing “these spills.”  I know I’m falling into the allopathic naming-the-disease trap yet not for a minute do I fall into the trap of thinking the solution lies within the same dogma. 

Which leads me to my first site,  http://www.thehealthresource.com/research_options.cfm  although it doesn’t give the reader any educational tidbits, that’s not its nature: it’s selling comprehensive packages/report on medical conditions.  If you order a comprehensive package and’/or individualized report, you get everything about i.e. alternative cancer treatment.  I ordered  a report for a client years back and I was impressed.  It would have taken me weeks to compile the data within the notebook on Crohn’s Disease.  I seem to attract people who need to read everything under the sun about their condition and I understand that. 

Additionally, The Health Resource will identify the top doctors in your area and who have treated it successully.  That’s $195. The above report is  not cheap at $400 bucks, yet, it was a huge notebook.  Personally, I’d go for it as a hospital stay just isn’t my first choice.  To their credit, this statement was on their website. “Financial Strains? We never want the cost of our research to keep you from getting the information you need in order to make the best decisions regarding your health.”  They send out a free newsletter periodically as well.

It used to be that nutrition was considered “alternative medicine.”  Being in the Bay Area in CA [San Francisco area], I am occasionally naive. I still find it difficult to imagine that one cannot believe the connection between nutrition and health.   Nine years ago,  I gave a talk during a lunch at a senior citizen center to an upscale crowd of about 60 retirees.  I got practically booed off the podium by an elderly gentleman for talking about Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the name for mad cow disease in humans which is named after two doctors.  [I've never understood the glory of having  a disease named after me].  I told this gentleman in no uncertain terms that there were a few people interested in what I had to say [going organic] and I was going to say it. He could wait his turn.  Well, I proceeded with TIME magazine blaring it on the cover and if it’s in TIME magazine, it must be true, right?  *chuckle* It’s mainstream press and I’m not adverse to using anything remotely ligit in getting my point acrossed to an audience that subscribes: the talk went on as planned.  I  wanted to drop a seed into their minds about the possibility of a misdiagnosis of AD and mad cow disease.  Which leads me to another favorite link of mine.

http://www.mercola.com/  Dr. Joseph Mercola is a chiropractor and extraordinarily generous with his information.  http://www.mercola.com/townofallopath/index.htm  I showed this video clip to my college students and they got it after about 3 times over the course of the quarter…it’s a true paradigm shift attempting to see how we treat the symptoms [ of most problems] &  not the problem.  It’s a great, satirical clip.  I can’t verify his products, but they seemingly look harmless.  I’m not one for a lot of pills, alternative or otherwise, but I understand a need for them from time to time.

http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=v8WA5wcaHp4    You Tube is something else. This link was posted on the NT Yahoo Group page and it dispels the ‘fat’ myths.  You can find just about anything if you want to mess around a bit.  But, there’s another more direct route.  Check out what I read once a week:  http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/discussingnt/  It’s chock full of help and although I love the blog format better, i.e. Nourished Magazine, this has its merits. It’s also the group that has a potluck once a month with a guest speaker in my area, has started a buying co-op and its members are most helpful to newbies.

Lastly, http://www.newstarget.com/  I like this one for its political satire and some of its nutritional information, like its war on processed foods and political updates regarding health. It has good nutritional-focused cartoons that make me laugh. 

I’d be interested in your favorite links. Leave me a few.  As always, I love visiting and chatting with you. It makes me happy.

Do what makes you happy. *See* you again!  Abrasitos!

About the Author...

It has taken me years to unlearn much of what I learned about psychology and health. Suffice it to say, I believe in home schooling, the work of Price, Fallon, Enig and Cowan and one's right to be happy in one's life. My husband and I live in Sunnyvale, CA with seven fabulous cats. They teach us to take a nap when the urge strikes, to eat heartily when hungry and to stretch into the new day. La Vida es Bueno!