Gov’t change must aid Due Process rights

American Association  for Health Freedom

Integrative Practitioners—Still Far From a

Level Playing Field

Integrative practitioners face an uphill battle in protecting their right to practice medicine in a manner that assesses the whole patient—mind, body, lifestyle, and genetics.  The entire U.S.  health system is designed based on a single standard of care.  Insurance rules, government reimbursement rates, treatment options, FDA and FTC regulations and enforcement, and state medical board policies are all structured based on a very narrow allopathic model.

Imagine what it is like to invest so many years and so much money into a medical education and residency– and then to lose your license because you used safe and effective natural remedies that have caused no harm and much good. This happens all too often. And the mere threat of it can and is used to intimidate doctors.

For many years, but also in recent months, we have worked for state medical board  reform. We want to be sure that all practitioners, including integrative practitioners, have fundamental due process rights during a disciplinary proceeding.

This legislative session, we assisted in efforts to reform Boards in Texas and North Carolina.  We had success in North Carolina. Legislation there included measures ensuring basic fundamental due process rights such as timely notice of the complaint, full disclosure of the alleged charges, a six (6) month time limit to complete an investigation, and a right to appeal any public disciplinary action.  The bill in Texas had great momentum but, due to a filibuster, the bill never reached a vote prior to the close of the legislative session.

Board reform is also needed with respect to patient privacy rights, conflicts of interest, and other problems with disciplinary hearings.  Boards should not have full access to patient records without patient consent.  Board members should sign under oath a financial disclosure form to ensure there are no relationships between a Board member and a medical practice, medical device company, or a pharmaceutical company that may influence the decision-making process.

The physician under investigation should have full disclosure of the experts the Board consulted in assessing medical competency to ensure that the expert is knowledgeable about the treatment modality under investigation and to ensure the expert has no financial ties that may influence his/her opinion.  Anonymous complaints prevent the physician from preparing a complete answer and defense.  By allowing anonymous complaints, competitors and pharmaceutical companies can file any complaint against an integrative practitioner and the physician has no way of confronting his accusers.

A small number of states have implemented legislation that protects a physician from being disciplined for practicing alternative or complementary medicine.  The integrative medicine community is growing and change is occurring.  But a true shift from the existing conventional “one standard of care” model to a more integrative practice model will require federal and state legislative changes, insurance industry changes, state medical board reform, public education, and ongoing consumer support.

How to Ferment Foods

Much interest in Fermented Foods

From what you have heard and read,  you seem to believe that “fermented foods” are a huge plus.  I don’t blame you.  Everybody talks about what it is and how it can all but rebuild your inner eco-system;  restore the gut flora, help you to assimilate the food you eat better;   clear up a bunch of problems and make the whole gut area “feel better”;  reduce your craving for sugar products and sweets in general;   and by golly, there is not too much “out there” to help you in your efforts.  Including here on my blog and for heaven’s sake, I’m always referring to it.  I know that I have raved on about my experiences with it now and then.  I have not however actually told you how to do this and maybe I should.     Surely you all know that I am a sharer and would gladly tell you what I know – but  felt that this was all covered when I explained how I learned about the fermentation process and its benefits from Wholesome Goodness (in my blogroll) and also from B.E.D.’s Donna Gates who often speaks on this subject and has shared her recipes with the world – often and is shown in the Body Ecology Diet book.  I remember speaking about Dom whom I found in Australia (his Kefir-Kraut)

Alyson’s tutorial (Wholesome Goodness) on “how-to Ferment Foods” is superb.  It is explicit and complete.  No point in trying to do over again, I don’t even want to when its already been done and superbly – and its available out there.   So this is why I have not given you a detailed account of how I do it or what I do.

While it is true that I tried to ‘teach my grand-daughters during those early, growing up years’  how to function in a kitchen, I did it mostly by osmosis.  Expected it to transfer into their eager little brains through their own desire to learn and copy what they saw.  Both learned how to sharpen knives, mince garlic, dice an onion, toss a salad and we always sat around a table and talked when we raised our forks to enjoy the blessings thereof.  Good years.  Even so, don’t see myself as a teacher – not these days.    When I want to make something special like Biscotti or fermentrd foods,  I amass all the recipes I value and  find I take something from here and something from there and most often, don’t wind up with the same thing twice and seem to run a very loose ship as they say.  The last time I made the veggies, I forgot about the hot peppers (recently bought and lying fallow in the frig) and I really miss them when I don’t include them.

Let’s Get Started

So, I am going to ramble just a little here on what I actually do to make a big batch.   It is a good practice to assemble all that you will need – bowls, tools, like knives and cutting boards, etc.,  get the food processor out and place all the fresh, stuff out on the counter: e.g. cabbages, carrots, onion, garlic, hot peppers and any other fresh, green leafy favorite on hand.   Sometimes I get out fresh ginger (to grate), and/or perhaps a bunch of cilentro (tossing out the stems).  One needs a number of glass jars – pick your own amount and numbers.  Alyson speaks of one-quart jars with those special lids.  But the jars I use are a strange assortment of bigger glass containers with a rubber ring and attached lid with a funny clasp on it.  Range in size from 1 1/2 qt to bigger ones – have about 8 of them.

The Water

I distill my own water and also, make my own colloidal silver which requires having purified water, but with no carbon filters of any kind so  I use, plenty of these big jars.  Seems I’m always into something ‘cooking’ in my kitchen.   Be sure you have un-polluted water on hand –   not a good idea to use municipal water due to the chemical  content – seriously! . .those chemicals can interfere with nature’s fermenting process.  Another consideration, up front, is to decide whether or not you want to make it the old fashioned way (letting nature do whatever it does)  or you want to use a starter which both Wholesome Goodness and B.E.D. recommend.  As it happens,  I’m about half and half on this point.  Frankly, I can’t see any difference, they both taste about the same to me.  The first time I made it, I couldn’t wait for the starter to come, so I had read a bit on it and found that the ancients did not rely on starters.  This is a chemical reaction which happens via nature’s innate wisdom – that works for me!  Most of the time I use BED’s Culture Starter as she assures the satisfaction of knowing that you ARE getting the very best cultures into your fermented  food  That is a comforting thought.

Not Quite a Recipe

I start with 2 or 3 heads of regular or red cabbage;    4 or 5 carrots, scrubbed;    at least one red onion or large white;   much garlic (6 – 8 cloves or a whole head) which is fine either crushed or finely minced;       4 or 5 Jalapeno peppers and maybe 4 – 5 of the smaller, hotter ones – the peppers must be opened to remove most of the seeds or else the fire would be too intense (for my taste)  Its really cool to add whatever other green leafy veggie you might have on hand like kale, bok choy and so on.  Or not,  just cabbage is fine.  One’s preference should dictate the choices.  Adding a large crisp apple into the mix is wonderful.  Adds a hint of sweetness, but the sugar part is mostly eaten up by the bacteria which develops in the fermentation period.    I like pretty and beautiful, so I quite naturally add as much as I can scrounge up for color and variety and try to plan for this personal pleasure. Your food stuff should be as fresh as possible and organic if you can (to assure that you are not getting all those darned chemicals we don’t really want)   Speaking of things we don’t want in the mix, it is wise to be aware that Donna Gates and others recommend that we NOT USE SALT of any kind to season this mix.  And this would be for the same reason – it slows the bacterial action and fermentation process down measurably.  Not a good thing.  If when eating your fermented foods, you feel it needs seasoning for your personal taste, by all means, use a little sea salt – go for it.

First We Assemble

Best to assemble all that you will need,   I have huge bowls which I questioned myself on when I bought them as they are really large and cumbersome and a nuisance to house.  But oh my,  I wonder how others manage to do all this if you don’t have these big bowls.   Get out your best butcher knife (sharpened) in order to cut the fresh produce into pieces which will fit into your food processor. It is good to use the slicing blade on cabbage, tho I personally like it grated (large) a bit better. Also, grate the carrots and onions and whatever else.  Slice or grate – your choice for both size and appearance.

CABBAGE:  Generally, plain ole cabbage is what most people use – me too.    Tho I have also made a great batch with 1 red cabbage and 1 white one and a batch of beets (scrubbed and stemmed).  It was gorgeous due to the red contents  and I really liked the flavors.          Rinse off your cabbage and remove and SAVE the courser outer leaves – these will (at the end) be folded, and stuffed into the tops of your jars to secure your “batch” submerged under the brine  – very important.  So this must be done BEFORE you start chopping stuff up.  Then, you can quarter your cabbages, and with the large butcher knife, stand each quarter in a way that you can sever the inner  hard core which is probably only good for one thing – to much on.

The Brine

Next,  the Brine we want to use.  Ideally, it can be a cup or so of the veggies you have already chopped up  placed into a blender to puree a little bit along with a couple of cups of that good, pure water (might want to buy some spring water), and then maybe a cucumber or two and/or a stalk of celery or two.  Sorry to be so vague, but I have no idea how much you will be making.  We want a pretty good slurpy mess to pour over the chopped veggies as they sit in the jars.  Want enough to cover completely and come up to within an inch or two of the lid.  Leaving room for the folded outer cabbage leaf which you have wadded up before putting the lid on.  I’ll tell you one of my own special little secrets.  This happened several months ago that I guess I also had no idea how far to go in my planning or gauging the amounts of anything – this was new to me.  I didn’t have enough of those outer leaves saved and now I was at the end and panic was mounting – what to do?   I had just spent hours in chopping and fixin and stuff, be damned if I was going to lose any of this  over some mis- calculation.  At the back of the silverware drawer is a collection of the pretty corks I liked and had saved (pack-rat that I am) from varying wine bottles over time.   So I used 2 -3 corks at the top of my jars to keep the veggies submerged.  Worked great, I kid you not. This is a resource I continue to use.  It pleases me.

The Starter Culture

If you do in fact want to use a starter, it must be done up front in the beginning as it needs a little time to waken, eat some thing and digest a little before it sets to work.  (Isn’t that just a glorious concept?) Empty one of the packets of Culture Starter from the box into about 1 1/2 cup warm water to which you have added either one teaspoon of sugar , honey, Agave, etc.  This must sit for about 20 minutes or longer while the L. Plantarum and other bacteria waken and starts digesting the sugar.  This is then added to the brine which is poured over the veggies.

Putting it all Together

Shred up your veggies and gather them into large bowls, tubs or what-have-you.   Because I use rather hot peppers in my choice,  I must also don those ridiculous disposable gloves.  The one time I didn’t do that, I was in serious distress with my hands for the rest of the day.  So lift and blend your mixture til its all pretty and the way that appeals to you.  Then start filling your jars by measured quantities.  Add to the jar, tamp it down tightly either with your fist, an old-fashioned potato masher or other tool;     add more, tamp down again till nearing the top.  Want to leave about 2 inches free at the top.  I don’t understand why, I just do it as that is what they all say.   Now is the time to fold the cabbage leaves you have saved and insert into the tops.  Push down.  (I put corks on top of that and push down again.) Pour over the brine into each jar and clamp or screw down your lids. fairly tightly.

Okay,  Here is my Final Secret:

This probably doesn’t happen to anyone else, I have no way of knowing.   I have a lovely pantry off my kitchen.  Its very convenient and practical.   The first time I made the fermented veggies, I had maybe 4 or 5 of those big jars and since they are rather large and take up some space, I put them high on a shelf where they would be undisturbed and under no threat whatsoever.  They leaked all over the place.    So since my very first time, I have learned to bring up the Coleman Cooler (used for cooling foods for a picnic) and place all the jars in that and just leave it on the floor in its quiet, safe environment where it is free to generate as much juicy overflow as it wants.   Since I wash it and clean it out after use, I’m sure one could use this juice.  But I’m a Virgo type who finds it difficult to share a bite of anything with anyone.  Ugh! I’m quite certain, its very healthy stuff, I just can’t drink it myself, tho I am sure it would heal something.

As an aside, its perfectly fine to save the brine from one batch to another – it is brimming with bacterial heavenly bodies

I generally leave my fermenting foods to percolate for 8 to 12 days.  Now that it is cooler,  especially.  Really warm weather will complete the process in a matter of days.   You can let your own taste buds be the judge.    Once you have determined it to be ‘cooked’, just put them in a frig which slows the process down.  They keep under refrigeration for many months they say.   I have never had any last that long.

About that Taste!

You have no doubt heard  that Fermented Foods or Kim-chi is an acquired taste?   It’s true.  For many people, it takes a little getting used to.   I remember how stunned I was after all that work and waiting to finally taste it and be so dumb-struck with the taste!  I emailed Alyson right away and she, God bless her,  got back to me just as fast, to hang in there, that I could get some corn chips or something to scoop up some quantity to get some of it into my body.  It was a good idea.  But by the time her message reached me, I had already got “used to it” and in fact, learned to really like it.  I try to take some of it with two out of three meals daily.    There are so many benefits its hard to enumerate.  One big plus is that I no longer worry about taking B-vitamins any more as my fermented veggies are making more and better Vit B than anything I could buy in a jar of pills.

Keep your eyes and ears open to find new and different recipes.  Be courageous – try new things, it really is fun.  Please drop me a line if you wouldn’t mind sharing how you are doing.                                                              Jan

Building Strong Muscles – B.E.D.

Little-known Secret to Building Stronger Muscles: Probiotics

by BodyEcology.com

Here’s a secret: the same probiotics that restore your inner ecosystem also make it easier for your body to absorb nutrients and build muscle!

Restoring balance in your gut with probiotics boosts immunity and digestion, but did you know these healthy microflora also aid in muscle growth and weight loss?

If you’re trying to increase lean body mass, adding fermented foods and drinks to your diet will ensure more efficient digestion. And that leads to increased energy, better workouts, and easier muscle growth and repair.

The Link Between Probiotics and Muscle Growth

Kenneth Bock, M.D., the author of The Road to Immunity, says that gaining lean muscle mass is more work with an unhealthy gastrointestinal tract:

“Your colon, stomach and small intestine digest food and absorb nutrients. If either of these processes is hindered, it can result in a loss of nutrients, which your body borrows from skeletal muscle.”¹

Muscle-building expert and registered dietitian, James Collier, agrees that a good supply of healthy bacteria makes protein more readily available to your muscles, and burns fat more easily.

Probiotics also help prevent intestinal infection, so your body is more likely to absorb more and better nutrients.

Now that you know how probiotics build stronger muscles, learn the most effective way to get these friendly bacteria thriving in your gut.

Will Probiotic Supplements and Mass-Market Products Do the Trick?

With the recent buzz about probiotics, it’s no wonder there are a lot of products at your local health food store designed to boost healthy microflora.

But how effective are they really?

How can you be sure that these probiotic supplements contain all the friendly microflora necessary to populate your gut, build your immunity, help you digest, and assist in lean muscle growth?

Unfortunately, the truth is that too many probiotic supplements vary widely in quality and potency.

One university study recently tested a wide variety of probiotic supplements and found that in four out of twenty products, no sign of living friendly bacteria was present.³

But What About Yogurt, You Say?

It’s true: many mass-produced food products such as Dannon Activa™ claim to decrease intestinal transit time.

While many yogurts do contain live active cultures, there are some problems:

• Many include some pretty awful sugars including fructose, cornstarch, and modified cornstarch. Like most yogurts sold in your store, all that sugar and unnatural ingredients will definitely feed pathogenic microorganisms, like candida. And by the way you can be certain that eating any form of sugar causes you to lose muscle mass.
• More importantly, most mass-produced yogurts (and fermented foods like sauerkraut) are not always potent enough to make a difference. 50% of products do not contain the healthy bacteria that they claim to have had at the time of manufacture.
• Even those that do have enough healthy bacteria may not have the right mix of healthy microflora to repopulate your inner ecosystem. If they’re not prepared in a way that allows the most beneficial bacteria and yeast to thrive in your digestive system, harsh stomach acids can kill probiotics.

In general, we at Body Ecology are not fans of yogurt, and instead, we recommend young coconut kefir to first help your body build up the dairy-loving bacteria that most people today are missing…and then milk kefir when your inner ecosystem is balanced.

If your body can digest dairy without symptoms, milk kefir is the better alternative to mass-produced or even home-made yogurt. Milk kefir is a cultured, enzyme-rich food that supplies complete protein, essential minerals, and valuable B vitamins. It is more alive than yogurt and it can also be made using raw milk from cows, goats or sheep. When you do not heat the protein in milk it is much easier to digest.

Young coconut kefir and Milk kefir are easy to make at home with Body Ecology’s Kefir Starter.

Unlike commercial yogurts which contain probiotics that do NOT colonize your colon, the bacteria and beneficial yeast in kefir can actually colonize the intestinal tract, which is they key reason you are eating these foods in the first place.

Milk kefir is also great food for anyone wanting to gain more weight via increasing muscle mass not fat. But, alas, not everyone can drink milk products today and are casein intolerant. Again, often drinking the young coconut kefir for a month or so and then slowly introducing dairy kefir may allow you to drink it safely. The young coconut kefir introduces the dairy-loving bacteria to your gut so that when you slowly introduce the casein-rich milk kefir, these bacteria (who were originally grown on milk) and can “learn” how to digest the new food. Just give them time to become skilled at breaking it down effectively by going slowly…about 1/4th cup per day for a week to ten days and then increasing in small increments.

Want to Accelerate Your Gut Recovery, Loose Weight, and Gain Lean Muscle Faster?

If you want to lose weight and gain muscle faster, then forget health food store probiotic supplements and revitalize your gut with potent, real fermented foods and drinks.

Probiotic-rich fermented foods and drinks multiply the nutrition in your food hundreds of times, nourishing you more with less food. On top of that, they help build healthy bacteria that keep you naturally slim. Research shows that people of normal weight have different bacteria in their guts than obese people.⁴

With a healthy inner ecosystem, you’ll feel satiated sooner.

Plus, microflora reduce cravings for processed sugars and alcohol – two big roadblocks to weight loss and a leaner body.

Here are some tips for easily incorporating probiotics into your diet the most effective way:

• Consume probiotic drinks, such as Innergy-Biotic, as an alternative to sugary sports drinks.
  
  Innergy-Biotic is a delicious, low-calorie source of probiotics that’s gluten-free and provides you with loads of energy. It’s a double whammy for good lean muscle growth – it’ll give you the energy you need for great workouts AND heal your digestive track for better nutrient-absorbtion.
  

Build Mucles Faster and More Effectively with Delicious Innergy-Biotic! Try this gluten-free energy performance drink, and you’ll never go back to those mass-produced, sugary sports drinks again! With Innergy-Biotic, you get a probiotic-rich whole food in liquid form that boosts your digestion of protein and other important nutrients for fast, effective muscle growth. Boost your energy and digestion today with Innergy-Biotic!.

• To make affordable, delicious fermented superfoods at home, try Body Ecology’s Starter Kits .
• To turn healthy vegetables into your fat-burning, muscle-building allies, make raw cultured vegetables. By introducing beneficial bacteria into your system, you’ll more effectively control your weight and set the stage for easier muscle building.
• Need a caffeine fix in the morning or for afternoon slumps? Instead, boost your energy naturally while healing your digestive tract with vitamin-mineral-probiotic rich Vitality SuperGreen.  Just add two scoops to eight ounces of water and watch your energy soar. If you’re trying to gain healthy weight, it provides extra nourishment with added to a larger meal.

However you choose to get in the best shape of your life, remember that lean muscle mass is key to a healthy body. Scientists agree that building muscle helps burn fat.

If you’ve been struggling with weight loss or your muscle growth is stalling, probiotics are the little-known tool for increased health and energy. With probiotics as part of your plan, you’ll have extra help that goes a long way.

U.S. Health-care killing us

This is the essay David Brooks referred to written by David Goldhill and appearing in the current issue of the “Atlantic” monthly issue.  I found access to it through CNN and hoped to share it with you.    Although disturbing, it is part of our multi-faceted  ‘health-care system,’  the parts of which most of us must contend.

. .                .      ..   . ~                             ~                             ~                                 . .

After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a system, he argues, that is not worth preserving in anything like its current form. And the health-care reform now being contemplated will not fix it. Here’s a radical solution to an agonizing problem.

by David Goldhill

How American Health Care Killed My Father

Illustration by Mark Hooper

Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.

About a week after my father’s death, The New Yorker ran an article by Atul Gawande profiling the efforts of Dr. Peter Pronovost to reduce the incidence of fatal hospital-borne infections. Pronovost’s solution? A simple checklist of ICU protocols governing physician hand-washing and other basic sterilization procedures. Hospitals implementing Pronovost’s checklist had enjoyed almost instantaneous success, reducing hospital-infection rates by two-thirds within the first three months of its adoption. But many physicians rejected the checklist as an unnecessary and belittling bureaucratic intrusion, and many hospital executives were reluctant to push it on them. The story chronicled Pronovost’s travels around the country as he struggled to persuade hospitals to embrace his reform.

It was a heroic story, but to me, it was also deeply unsettling. How was it possible that Pronovost needed to beg hospitals to adopt an essentially cost-free idea that saved so many lives? Here’s an industry that loudly protests the high cost of liability insurance and the injustice of our tort system and yet needs extensive lobbying to embrace a simple technique to save up to 100,000 people.

And what about us—the patients? How does a nation that might close down a business for a single illness from a suspicious hamburger tolerate the carnage inflicted by our hospitals? And not just those 100,000 deaths. In April, a Wall Street Journal story suggested that blood clots following surgery or illness, the leading cause of preventable hospital deaths in the U.S., may kill nearly 200,000 patients per year. How did Americans learn to accept hundreds of thousands of deaths from minor medical mistakes as an inevitability?

My survivor’s grief has taken the form of an obsession with our health-care system. For more than a year, I’ve been reading as much as I can get my hands on, talking to doctors and patients, and asking a lot of questions.

Keeping Dad company in the hospital for five weeks had left me befuddled. How can a facility featuring state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment use less-sophisticated information technology than my local sushi bar? How can the ICU stress the importance of sterility when its trash is picked up once daily, and only after flowing onto the floor of a patient’s room? Considering the importance of a patient’s frame of mind to recovery, why are the rooms so cheerless and uncomfortable? In whose interest is the bizarre scheduling of hospital shifts, so that a five-week stay brings an endless string of new personnel assigned to a patient’s care? Why, in other words, has this technologically advanced hospital missed out on the revolution in quality control and customer service that has swept all other consumer-facing industries in the past two generations?

I’m a businessman, and in no sense a health-care expert. But the persistence of bad industry practices—from long lines at the doctor’s office to ever-rising prices to astonishing numbers of preventable deaths—seems beyond all normal logic, and must have an underlying cause. There needs to be a business reason why an industry, year in and year out, would be able to get away with poor customer service, unaffordable prices, and uneven results—a reason my father and so many others are unnecessarily killed.

Like every grieving family member, I looked for someone to blame for my father’s death. But my dad’s doctors weren’t incompetent—on the contrary, his hospital physicians were smart, thoughtful, and hard-working. Nor is he dead because of indifferent nursing—without exception, his nurses were dedicated and compassionate. Nor from financial limitations—he was a Medicare patient, and the issue of expense was never once raised. There were no greedy pharmaceutical companies, evil health insurers, or other popular villains in his particular tragedy.

Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis. All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.

These are the impersonal forces, I’ve come to believe, that explain why things have gone so badly wrong in health care, producing the national dilemma of runaway costs and poorly covered millions. The problems I’ve explored in the past year hardly count as breakthrough discoveries—health-care experts undoubtedly view all of them as old news. But some experts, it seems, have come to see many of these problems as inevitable in any health-care system—as conditions to be patched up, papered over, or worked around, but not problems to be solved.

That’s the premise behind today’s incremental approach to health-care reform. Though details of the legislation are still being negotiated, its principles are a reprise of previous reforms—addressing access to health care by expanding government aid to those without adequate insurance, while attempting to control rising costs through centrally administered initiatives. Some of the ideas now on the table may well be sensible in the context of our current system. But fundamentally, the “comprehensive” reform being contemplated merely cements in place the current system—insurance-based, employment-centered, administratively complex. It addresses the underlying causes of our health-care crisis only obliquely, if at all; indeed, by extending the current system to more people, it will likely increase the ultimate cost of true reform.

I’m a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America’s lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system—largely problems of incentives—our reforms won’t do much good, and may do harm. To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.

These ideas stand well outside the emerging political consensus about reform. So before exploring alternative policies, let’s reexamine our basic assumptions about health care—what it actually is, how it’s financed, its accountability to patients, and finally its relationship to the eternal laws of supply and demand. Everyone I know has at least one personal story about how screwed up our health-care system is; before spending (another) $1trillion or so on reform, we need a much clearer understanding of the causes of the problems we all experience.

Paleo/Human Growth Hormone

www.ThePaleoDiet.com Loren Cordain, Ph.D. Issue: # 2009 – 37 / September 11, 2009 Jan, Hello! Welcome to The Paleo Diet Update. We invite you to use this information to maintain, or perhaps regain, the “good life.” That means having the mental and physical energy to accomplish your goals, and not be troubled with the many diseases that plague modern society. Thanks to Maelán Fontes and Pablo Martinez Ramirez, this update is also available in Spanish. By investigating how the human species evolved as hunter-gatherers, we learn what foods our species is adapted to eating. We can also research how modern-day cultures that continue hunter-gatherer lifestyles eat, and learn from the freedom they experience from many diseases common in the Western world. More and more, scientists are documenting how a Paleolithic diet of fruits, lean meats, nuts, seafood, and vegetables maintains optimal health, and can even reverse devastating illness. In this issue, we take a look at the affects of human growth hormone, and the best ways to ensure adequate levels of this important hormone. We’ll also show you how to make Mexican dining “Paleo”. Enjoy.	Loren Cordain, Ph.D. In This Issue Human Growth Hormone The Pros and Cons Ways to Make Mexican Dining “Paleo” Our Recommendations Follow Up and Feedback
Human Growth Hormone: The Pros and Cons by Wiley Long
Human growth hormone (GH), as you might suspect, is necessary for childhood and adolescent growth. Youthful levels of GH promote a healthy metabolism and an optimal ratio of lean muscle tissue to body fat. Among adults, GH deficiency is associated with excess body fat, and a decrease in extra cellular water volume1. Those with GH deficiency may also have a lower bone mineral content, lipid abnormalities, decreased insulin sensitivity, and decreased fibrinolysis1. The process by which a fibrous protein (fibrin) involved in the clotting of blood is broken down is known as fibrinolysis. Lipid refers to a fatty substance in the blood. A lipid disorder increases your risk for atherosclerosis, and thus your risk for heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure (or hypertension), and other health problems. Reasons for growth hormone deficiency Several studies have shown that the amplitude of GH pulses (GH is released from the pituitary gland in a pulsatile manner2) is reduced for both men and women as we age3. For men, GH secretion declines 50% every 7 years beyond 18-25 years of age2. This aging effect on the 24-hour mean serum GH is twice as great for men as it is for pre-menopausal women, so estrogens may limit the decline in GH2. Obese individuals, however, show profound suppression of GH secretion at any age2. Poor nutrition, inadequate sleep, and lack of physical fitness can also contribute to a decline in circulating GH that is independent of age4. Risks of growth hormone therapy GH replacement injections can cost up to $10,000 a year. Unfortunately, such GH treatments have been linked to increased risk for developing soft tissue edema, joint pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, and gynecomastia (abnormally large mammary glands in males)5. Safer, less expensive alternatives There are healthier and less costly ways to increase your GH levels. These include weight management, exercise, healthy sleep habits, reduction of high-glycemic-load carbohydrates, and specific nutrients. The Paleo Diet can be very helpful for increasing GH levels. This way of eating maintains the correct balance of calories from carbohydrate, protein, and fat to improve blood-lipid profiles, and lipid abnormalities are associated with GH deficiency. This balance also reduces your risk of heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure because a lipid disorder increases your risk for atherosclerosis. Emulating the amount of daily energy that our hunter-gatherer ancestors obtained from carbohydrate, protein, and fat also helps you to feel fuller, and burn more calories. This is key to managing your weight, and obesity can suppress GH secretion at any age. Other aspects of the Paleo Diet also help with weight management. The diet supplies nutrient-dense foods, while avoiding refined grain, sugar, and vegetable oil. Although these offer few vitamins, minerals, or phytochemicals, they contribute more than 36 percent of the energy in the average American diet. The Paleo Diet also offers another key strategy to help maintain optimum weight and increase GH levels. It reduces high-glycemic-load carbohydrates that contribute to obesity and suppress GH secretion. While GH deficiency is associated with below normal bone mineral content, the Paleo Diet helps to reduce the risk of osteoporosis. By maintaining an optimum sodium-potassium ratio, the diet not only reduces the risk of osteoporosis, but that of hypertension, stroke, kidney stones, gastrointestinal-tract cancers, and asthma as well. Specific nutrients shown to increase GH levels Even a relatively small amount (2,000 mg) of the amino acid glutamine has been shown to boost plasma GH levels6. Glutamine occurs naturally in many Paleo Diet foods, including meat (3 ounces of meat contain 3 to 4 grams of glutamine), fish, and eggs. Glutamine is also highly concentrated in raw cabbage and beets. Be aware that cooking can destroy glutamine, particularly in vegetables. Another amino acid, arginine, can increase the release of GH when the body is at rest. Combining arginine intake with exercise boosts GH levels even more7. High in protein, the Paleo Diet supplies many protein-rich foods that contain arginine. This includes eggs, meat8-10 (grass-fed beef, chicken, lean pork, turkey, and wild meat), nuts, (almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, coconuts, hazelnuts, pecans, pinenuts, pistachio nuts, and walnuts), seafood (salmon, shrimp, and tuna), and seeds (flax, pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower seeds). Raw garlic, onion and watermelon also contain arginine. Helping Yourself The Paleo Diet can help you get the nutrients that increase GH levels without the inherent risks or expense of GH therapy. Maintain the right balance of calories from carbohydrate, protein, and fat. This helps improve lipid profiles, stops obesity-related lowering of GH levels, and reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, and high blood pressure. Eliminate high-glycemic-load carbohydrates, cereal grains, sugar, and vegetable oil. This helps optimize your weight, which improves GH secretion. Maintain an optimum sodium-potassium ratio. This reduces the risk of osteoporosis (from GH deficiency-related lower bone mineral content), hypertension, stroke, kidney stones, gastrointestinal-tract cancers, and asthma. Increase consumption of foods with glutamine and arginine. Beets, cabbage, eggs, fish, garlic, lean meats, nuts, onions, seafood, seeds, and watermelon contain these amino acids that help GH levels. With the help of nutritious foods, the Paleo Diet can improve GH levels and provide many other health benefits. Next time, we’ll take a look at how antioxidants fight the damaging effects of free radicals, and what are the best sources of antioxidants. We’ll also show you how to make fun, non-alcoholic drinks for parties.
Ways to Make Mexican Dining “Paleo” by Nell Stephenson
During the summer months, I often fancy a nice Mexican meal! After living in Los Angeles for 15 years, I became quite spoiled by having the pleasure of experiencing authentic Mexican meals at the homes of friends and clients that were prepared by parents or relatives from different regions of Mexico. You might think Mexican food – isn’t that all rice and beans? Sour cream and tortillas? Yes, that is part of the typical diet, but it’s not ALL of the typical diet. Think guacamole, tomato salsa, char-grilled steaks, sautéed prawns and shredded chicken, just to name a few options! In keeping with exploring what to order at different restaurants, here are some great choices when you’re eating out Mexican style! Fajitas! Choose steak, chicken or prawns. Usually this dish will be a mixture of bell peppers, onions, perhaps carrots or other veggies, and protein sautéed in oil in a skillet. Ask them to hold the rice, beans, tortillas, and cheese, and order extra veggies instead. Ceviche! A fish-based dish, which is cooked using lemon or lime. It’s often served on a crisp tortilla, so just ask for it to be atop a bed of lettuce and eat with a fork instead of on the shell! Coctel de Camarones! This shrimp cocktail is different from our version with the red cocktail sauce on the side for dipping. It often has smaller shrimp mixed with cucumber and onion in a tomato base. Carne or Pollo Asada! Grilled skirt steak or chicken that’s lean, mean and tasty! Pescado! There will often be a fish option, so ask for it to be grilled and served with any veggie the chef has in house that day. Be creative too. If you’re at a more casual place, opt for grilled fish tacos (sans the tortilla), or, perhaps, a chopped salad (without the usual corn and black beans). Read the menu carefully and thoroughly in order to make the necessary substitutions as needed. At the end of the meal, you’ll be satisfied, but not stuffed. And, you’ll feel much better than your dining companion who ate the giant 1,500-calorie burrito with the works! “My son, who was diagnosed with MS in March, said that he noticed that he can tolerate the heat lately without a flare up. Plus, the symptoms that persisted in his hands are now only in one hand and are intermittent. This great news gives us the motivation to stay true to the diet. I can’t thank you enough!” We believe that if someone with MS starts the autoimmune version of this diet within perhaps 5 years of diagnosis, they have a good chance of returning to baseline and living a lifetime free of symptoms. Someone who has had the disease longer should be able to stop progression, but at some point, it appears that the nerve damage becomes permanent so complete recovery will not always be possible. Follow Up and Feedback In this section, we’ll share readers’ concerns and questions about nutrition and the Paleo Diet to help you better understand how to use the diet to optimize your health and fitness. We received the following concern: “Is there a problem with eating mostly fruits and little in the way of vegetables? I like almost all fruits and have been eating a variety of them with an average intake of around 350 grams of carb a day, and especially a lot of raisins. Am I missing out greatly by not consuming more vegetables?” Many vegetables contain health-promoting phytochemicals, as do fruits. Vegetables, however, typically have very low sugar content, and very high fiber content. We recommend that people who are overweight or have insulin resistance eat fruits that are lower in fructose. A table of fruits and sugars is available on our website. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published an article about the adverse effects of fructose in the epidemic of hypertension, obesity and metabolic syndrome, diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease. People who are obese and not active may have to limit fruits because their sugar content may adversely affect insulin metabolism. We also recommend that people do not eat high fructose corn syrup for this reason and other concerns. This information, and much more, is available online in our nutritional tools section. Although we can’t answer every question personally due to the number of letters received, we are very interested in hearing your thoughts, learning about your experiences, and understanding your questions. Many of the questions that we receive will be answered in future newsletters. Talk to you next week! To your optimum health, Wiley Long, M.S., Nutrition and Exercise Science Editor

Jobs. . its good to see you!

RETURN TO SPOTLIGHT

Apple’s Jobs talks about transplant

By Jessica Mintz
ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple Inc.  CEO Steve Jobs returned yesterday to the showman role that has helped define his company leadership, taking the stage for the first time since his medical leave to announce such new products as an iPod Nano that records video.

Jobs, who had a liver transplant this spring from a young adult who died in a car crash, got a vigorous standing ovation from many in the audience.   Looking thin and speaking quietly and with a scratchy voice, the 54-year-old CEO urged everyone to become organ donors.     “I wouldn’t be here without such generosity,” Jobs said.

Jobs had not appeared at such a product launch event since October. He bowed out of his usual keynote at the year’s largest Mac trade show in January and went on leave shortly thereafter for nearly six months.
At an event for journalists, bloggers and software partners, Jobs announced updates to Apple’s iTunes and iPhone software and unveiled a new iPod Nano with a built-in video camera.    Phil Schiller, Apple’s top marketing executive, also took the stage to announce price cuts and storage boosts to existing iPod Touch models.

Few chief executives are considered as critical to their companies’ success as Jobs has been to Apple’s since 1997, when he returned to the company after a 12-year hiatus, and Apple’s stock has soared and plunged on news and rumors of his health.    Shares in Apple reached a 52-week high of $174.47 yesterday before closing at $171.14, or $1.79 below Tuesday’s close.

PAUL SAKUMA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, “I’m back at Apple and loving every day of it.”

B.E.D. on “DHEA”

If You Really Want to Avoid Early Aging, Get to Know “DHEA”

by BodyEcology.com

Do you suffer from mood swings and fatigue? Is your health declining as you get older? Can’t keep the “middle age bulge” at bay?

If so, you may have low levels of DHEA.

As you get older, you may find that you struggle more to maintain muscle mass, feel tired more quickly, or perhaps you have developed rheumatoid arthritis or even osteoporosis. It is commonly believed that deterioration as we age is inevitable.

However current research indicates that we are not predestined to age in this regard, and by increasing our levels of DHEA before or even after they decline many of us can turn back the clock.

Low levels of DHEA have been linked to autism, arthritis, and depression. Keep you and your loved ones healthy and vibrant by following the DHEA-boosting Body Ecology program for wellness.

DHEA, or dehydroepiandrosterone, has become known as the ‘fountain of youth.’ It is made from cholesterol by the adrenal glands, which sit on top of your kidneys. Estrogen and then testosterone are both made from this steroid hormone.

The Anti-Aging Hormone?

Many people have turned to DHEA because it has been shown to increase bone density, treat Lupus and depression, and decrease the risk for heart disease. Another potential benefit is increased muscle mass and stronger immunity.

Someone who lacks essential levels of DHEA really can benefit from taking a supplement and they can be easily found in your local health food store. At Body Ecology, however, we feel it is important to use this supplement only after you’ve had your levels of DHEA checked by a health care professional. It’s a very simply saliva test.

So before you supplement with DHEA capsules, first check with your health care practitioner to make sure that you are in fact deficient in this hormone.

Anyone will benefit, on the other hand, by naturally increasing their DHEA levels with diet and some simple changes in your lifestyle.

Follow these guidelines to naturally increase DHEA in your body:

• Eat good fats with plenty of omega 3 fatty acids. DHEA is made from cholesterol, and your body makes cholesterol from healthy fats. You can get essential fatty acids from a variety of oils like ghee, raw butter, cod liver, coconut oil, red palm oil, flax seed oil, evening primrose oil, pumpkin seed and olive oils. For more information, read A Key Health Secret that Everyone Should Know: Eat a Range of Good Oils.
• Get a Good Night’s SLEEP! Your adrenal glands not only create energy, they also manufacture DHEA. If you suffer from adrenal fatigue as most people do today, you may have trouble sleeping AND your adrenals will not be able to produce adequate levels of too little DHEA to support your daily activities! Read more about how sleep affects your adrenals and how to nourish them.
• De-stress your life. Stress increases levels of two hormones: insulin and cortisol. These two hormones are sometimes called “the death hormones” because when blood levels of cortisol and insulin remain high, they suppress the youth hormone, DHEA. Stress also depletes the vitality of your adrenal glands that produce DHEA. So take time to breathe deeply, meditate, and spend time with friends and family. One of the most effective ways to immediately boost your DHEA levels is to be touched (as in having a great hand, foot, body or head massage). Learn more about The Proven Healing Power of Touch and how it can improve your health.
• Cut out sugar. Sugar creates acidic blood. To be healthy your blood should be slightly alkaline. When your blood becomes acidic this sets the stage for fungal, viral and bacterial infections and also for imbalances like cancer and diabetes.
  

  Nourish your thyroid to support healthy DHEA levels with Ocean Plant Extract.

• Feed your thyroid and your adrenals by eating plenty of mineral-rich sea vegetables – be sure to read Russia’s “Miracle” Heavy Metal Cleansing Sea Vegetable, “Laminaria Japonica“. Always cook or culture cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, kale and cabbage because they suppress the thyroid when they are eaten raw. Your thyroid is an active partner with the adrenals that produce DHEA so make sure it too is hearty. These two organs are tiny, but they are real workhorses in your body. Take special care to feed them right. Read Boost Your Thyroid to Boost Your Energy for more information.

We all want to age gracefully. Paying attention to your levels of DHEA is a great way to support yourself in healthy aging. The Body Ecology program, plus plenty of sleep, decreasing stress, and eliminating or reducing sugar intake can get you well on your way to turning back time.

Spending peaceful moments in nature — such as near water or in the mountains — is another great way to regenerate your adrenals and to find balance in life. Overall, proper nutrition and lifestyle are the two key secrets to finding your own fountain of youth.
Sources:

Low DHEA Level, DiagnoseMe.com http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C11446.html
Skerret, P.J., “DHEA: Ignore the Hype” QuackWatch.com http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/dhea.htm

• Copyright © 2009 Donna Gates; all rights reserved |

It’s a gasser – what to do

It may be that this lighter note would fit in here with all the heavy news out there at present.  Even so, I could hardly believe my eyes.   It seems no one in that Boston office knew what to do with this issue or the gassy employee and I am quite sure that its state of  ‘un-resolve’  have left quite a few of them uncomfortable.

Those of us who write as well as those who read this blog might find a solution or two.  They do regard this as a medical problem, but as it says, they can do nothing about it?  Well now, lets see, could it be that perhaps she is allergic to protein found in wheat?  or maybe poor lady can not digest the milk protein.  A terrific idea would be to remove both from her dietary regime for maybe a week and see what happens.  Then try adding back in only one – small amounts, for a few days to see how it goes.  If  no problem then, likely its okay to eat.    Many teach this “elimination diet” to find the allergen one might be sensitive to.  It could be chocolate, citrus, eggs or many other things.  But, by and large,  dairy and grains are the big culprit.  For most, it is dairy.     It seems her gut flora needs fixin’                                                                                  Jan

BUSINESS ETIQUETTE

Flatulence issue needs solution now

THE BOSTON GLOBE

Q: I have a co-worker who is extremely gassy. Management has spoken to her and even moved her around the office several times. Because it’s considered a medical condition, nothing can be done about it. She has a can of fragrant spray at her desk that she uses when she needs to, but sometimes that’s even worse. I’m almost tempted to quit.
—K.M., Appleton, Wis.

A: The fact that she has been moved several times shows she understands her flatulence is a problem. Management appears to have made an attempt to deal with the issue and might even be the reason she has the fragrance spray. Another approach is necessary.
Unfortunately, this situation has progressed beyond an etiquette issue in which the advice would be to have a trusted friend talk with her. Management needs to step in and find an effective solution. Her condition is causing a problem at the office that affects productivity, and potentially profits and worker retention.
The employees need to let management know the seriousness of the situation. Along with your colleagues, meet with management and request that a human resources worker be at the meeting as well.

David Brooks on Health Care

David Brooks’ very good mind and his thoughts on health care have somehow made me feel better.  He speaks of options which could work and a myriad of intelligent ‘others’ out there who have been diligently addressing these problems.  Tho it is late in the day for new directions, it might be worth an effort if enough people also thought so and informed their elected pols as to sincere interest.   Decide for yourself.  It is certainly more effective than my “broken-hearted carping to the president”

To Reform Health Care, Incentives Must Change

DAVID BROOKS   Writes for the New York Times

If I were given an hour to help Barack Obama prepare for his health-care speech this week, the first thing I’d do is ask him to read David Goldhill’s essay, “How American Health Care Killed My Father,” in the current issue of The Atlantic.  That essay would lift Obama out of the distracting sideshows about this public plan or that cooperative option. It would remind him why he got into this issue in the first place.Goldhill’s message is that the American health-care system is dysfunctional at the core. He describes how the system hides information, muddies choices, encourages more treatment instead of better care, neglects cheap innovation, inflates costs and unintentionally increases suffering.   The essay is about the real problem: the insane incentives. Goldhill is especially good on the way the voracious health-care system soaks up money that could go to education, the environment, economic development and a thousand other priorities.

Then I’d ask Obama to go to the Brookings Institution Web site and read a report called “Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Address Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth.” This report was written by a bipartisan group of experts, including Mark McClellan, David Cutler, Elizabeth McGlynn, Joseph Antos and John Bertko.   This report also focuses on perverse incentives. It’s got a series of proposals on how to restructure insurance markets, reorganize provider payments, change the way effectiveness-research findings are implemented and cap the employee tax deduction.  These aren’t pie-in-the-sky ideas. The authors have combed through the bills that are out there. They’ve taken good ideas that are in embryonic or neutered form. They show how the ideas would work if fully implemented. We’re not going to revolutionize 18 percent of the American economy overnight, but these proposals would put us on the path toward real reform.

Several months ago, Obama made a promise: People with health insurance would be able to keep exactly what they have. We all understand why he made that promise. He wanted to reassure people who are happy with what they’ve got. He wanted to mollify the industries that have a vested interest in the status quo.  But Obama’s promise sent the reform effort off the rails.  It meant that efforts to fundamentally reform the system got watered down.  Instead of true reform, we got a series of bills that essentially cement the present system in place.  The proposals do not fundamentally challenge the fee-for-service system.   They don’t make Americans more accountable for their health-care spending.  They don’t reduce costs.   They just add more people into the mess we’ve got.

The president made this promise to ease passage. But it ended up hollowing out the substance of the reform. And the political benefits didn’t even materialize. Voters are still spooked by the costs, the centralization and the cuts they are sure will come.

If I had an hour with the president, I’d tell him this is his ninth-inning chance. He can stay on the current path. He might be able to pass some incremental bill that extends coverage. But he won’t have tackled the fundamental problems that drove him to this issue. He won’t have cut healthcare inflation. He won’t have prevented a voracious system from bankrupting the nation, defunding the schools, pushing down wages and impoverishing the young.

On the other hand, he can shift back to the core issue: the perverse incentives that make this system such a mess. He can embrace proposals — like the Brookings proposals or, more comprehensively, the Wyden-Bennett bill — that address structural problems. This remains a politically risky strategy.  There are many industries that have an interest in making sure health-care spending rises to 20 percent of GDP,  and then 22 and then 24.

But the president’s in political hot water already. He got there trying to dodge the hard issues. He might as well be there because he’s fighting for something real.    There are many people telling him to go incremental. They’re telling him to just enlarge the current system a bit and pay for it by pounding down a few Medicare fees. But did Barack Obama really get elected so he could pass the Status Quo Sanctification and Extension Act?

This is not the time to get incremental. It’s the time to get fundamental. Reform the incentives. Make consumers accountable for spending. Make price information transparent. Reward health care, not health services. Do what you set out to do. Bring change.

Barack, you’re a heart-breaker

President Obama,

I can’t remember when I have been so disillusioned.  Til recently, I have (along with millions of others) had great faith in you.  That’s changed.  I am wondering what has caused such a radical departure from the committed, idealistic and truly intelligent man who ran for president in 2009.

The  platform you ran on, the hopeful things you  said – - surely not all this was just hyperbole to get elected!   I know you were in touch with the common people of the country – you looked us in the eye and understood what we were  going through and you promised to change the way things were done in Washington.   While you have made many, many intelligent moves, based on sound judgment and a caring nature,  the biggest things – the healthcare reform which would benefit ALL  citizens has been an enormous disaster and why wouldn’t it be?   You invited many of the wrong people to the table and expected to emerge with a solution?  It is evident that you didn’t have a plan and now there is far too much confusion and distrust;   it is doubtful anything can rescue us from certain financial disaster and chaos.

You had to know that single payer is  and was the true solution.  Healthcare as we experience it in the USA is a business that Insurance companies engage in for the purpose of profit.   The people’s needs have no priority in that system as long years will attest.    The Pharmaceutical Corporations are the other major interest which had a seat at the table and once again, they are in business for one reason only – PROFIT AND POWER.  You proposed negotiating favorable pricing structures with PhRMA for the benefit of “our people.”  That got tossed in a very poor negotiation which will cost Americans Billions.       They have wrested control of the FDA which also has books to balance for the main purpose of gaining complete control over all  of that which American citizens ingest in the name of what is allowable and proper to care for our species in the name of modern medicine, the way it is taught, understood and practiced.    Gone is our right to choose for ourselves what we wish to acquire to maintain health as we see fit.  Product by product our natural remedies are becoming unavailable to us – only chemicals are offered in their stead.  This is so very, very wrong  if not criminal.

Tho you came rolling in with an enviable momentum and total enthusiasm and trust of the people – that has been squandered.  The way healthcare is functioning successfully in the rest of the modern world (single-payer) soon became a pariah, a concept which could not function here.  Public option was the new buzz word.   Okay, if that’s what it takes we trust you.    Then the platform was in a state of flux from that point forward.  Its on – its off, we are open to discussion, still working on it.  There is no plan yet.   The republicans were NEVER going to cooperate.  Everybody but you seemed to know that.  We had the necessary bodies within our democratic party, but instead of uniting and firing them to a glorious win for our nation – our own party is at war with itself.  Mr. President, it comes down from the top.  You are our leader and you have not acted like one.    Lead us.  Get it done.

Please, please stop with the public oratory, it has worn thin and no mater how inspiring and lofty, it has lost much value due to it’s over-use and ineffectual outcome.   You REALLY need to roll up your sleeves and learn the fine art of arm-wrestling and start burning the less-glamorous  mid-night oil.

One more thing, couldn’t we save a whole lot of money and American lives  if we just brought our troops home?  Have you read any George Will lately?

Speaker Pelosi is hanging in there;  thousands of us all over our country have been hanging in there, but our president has thrown in the towel.  Health care REFORM can’t be done the way you are handling it.  What is the use of discussing it if we are not going to have “at a minimum”  – the Public Option.

I need this.  My fellow citizens need this.  So what now – we just sit here and go broke and decry the fates?  It’s not the fates, President Obama – you have given up without even showing us your muscles if you have any.

I have been sitting on this post for a week now, hoping that it was just the disappointed “kid” in me and it would go away after I slept on it.   But, it aint a-gonna do that.  I gotta tell you Barack,  I am broken-hearted.  And hey, I’m a senior on Medicare – - too old to be referred to as a kid.