91 Year Old Track and Field Star demonstrates Anti-Aging Value of Exercise

I have been saying this for a long time and here you go! Check out this 91 year old athlete who started her career at age 77!

On the third floor of the Montreal Chest Institute, at McGill University, Olga Kotelko stood before a treadmill in the center of a stuffy room that was filling up with people who had come just for her. They were there to run physical tests, or to extract blood from her earlobe, or just to observe and take notes. Kotelko removed her glasses. She wore white New Balance sneakers and black running tights, and over her silver hair, a plastic crown that held in place a breathing tube.

Tanja Taivassalo, a 40-year-old muscle physiologist, adjusted the fit of Kotelko’s stretch-vest. It was wired with electrodes to measure changes in cardiac output — a gauge of the power of her heart. Taivassalo first met Kotelko at last year’s world outdoor masters track championships in Lahti, Finland, the pinnacle of the competitive season for older tracksters. Taivassalo went to watch her dad compete in the marathon. But she could hardly fail to notice the 91-year-old Canadian, bespandexed and elfin, who was knocking off world record after world record.

Masters competitions usually begin at 35 years, and include many in their 60s, 70s and 80s (and a few, like Kotelko, in their 90s, and one or two over 100). Of the thousands who descended on Lahti, hundreds were older than 75. And the one getting all the attention was Kotelko. She is considered one of the world’s greatest athletes, holding 23 world records, 17 in her current age category, 90 to 95.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/magazine/28athletes-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Hospitals- no progress in Patient safety! To be avoided when possible!

The study, conducted from 2002 to 2007 in 10 North Carolina hospitals, found that harm to patients was common and that the number of incidents did not decrease over time. The most common problems were complications from procedures or drugs and hospital-acquired infections.

“It is unlikely that other regions of the country have fared better,” said Dr. Christopher P. Landrigan, the lead author of the study and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School. The study is being published on Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

It is one of the most rigorous efforts to collect data about patient safety since a landmark report in 1999 found that medical mistakes caused as many as 98,000 deaths and more than one million injuries a year in the United States. That report, by the Institute of Medicine, an independent group that advises the government on health matters, led to a national movement to reduce errors and make hospital stays less hazardous to patients’ health.

If you have not read the book yet titled "Confessions of a Medical Heretic" by Dr. Robert Mendehlson... i can not suggest it enough.

He explains that hospitals are like war zones in that they should avoided at all costs. NY Times reported yesterday:

Study Finds No Progress in Safety at Hospitals

Efforts to make hospitals safer for patients are falling short, researchers report in the first large study in a decade to analyze harm from medical care and to track it over time.

Among the preventable problems that Dr. Landrigan’s team identified were severe bleeding during an operation, serious breathing trouble caused by a procedure that was performed incorrectly, a fall that dislocated a patient’s hip and damaged a nerve, and vaginal cuts caused by a vacuum device used to help deliver a baby.

Dr. Landrigan’s team focused on North Carolina because its hospitals, compared with those in most states, have been more involved in programs to improve patient safety.

But instead of improvements, the researchers found a high rate of problems. About 18 percent of patients were harmed by medical care, some more than once, and 63.1 percent of the injuries were judged to be preventable. Most of the problems were temporary and treatable, but some were serious, and a few — 2.4 percent — caused or contributed to a patient’s death, the study found.

30 Day Intensive Yoga Teacher Training in Miami begins January 8th, 2011 and London March 5th, 2011

Fred Busch Power Yoga 200 Hour Yoga Alliance Teacher Training begins in Miami on January 8th, 2011 and in London March 5th, 2011 in company with Wayne Leal and Sweaty Betty.

The Miami Training is Intensive 30 Days. London Teacher Training with Wayne Leal is over 2 months.

for questions and/or to register email fbusch911@gmail.com subject 'teacher training'

Curriculum is Below

Fred Busch Teacher Training
Workshops/ TT Module Presentations



Intro to Yoga and Yoga Philosophy
What is Yoga? What is Power Yoga? How do the different styles of Yoga relate to each other? What is the goal of Yoga? How does Meditation relate to Yoga? This workshop will begin to answer all of these questions and many more and we look into the historical background of Yoga and Tantra and then relate it to the present day movement of Yoga around the world.

5 Koshas (Sheaths)
The 5 Koshas are an energetic understanding of a person visualized as layers or more or less density of energy. The body itself being the least subtle layer, and subsequent layers of prana, mind, wisdom, bliss form concentric circles around the Center of Your Being... the Atman. This discussion of the Koshas will focus on understanding how this vision of human anatomy is useful in todays world.

Learning to Self Practice- Opening Sequence, Sun A, Sun B
In learning to Self Practice, which is the most valuable skill in Yoga, it is important to know some fundamental principles which will keep you confident and doubt free, which happen to be the only obstacles to a consistent Self-Practice. This workshop will break down the Fred Busch Power Yoga Opening Sequence and Sun Salutations so as to create complete understanding of the sequence, the alignment, the point of gaze, and the correct breathing and attitude. With this workshop you will be empowered to begin your Self-Practice on days you don’t make it to the studio.
Drsti, Pranayama, Meditation


The 4 Paths and the 8 Limbs (Ashtanga) of Yoga
There are 4 Paths of Yoga classically known in India. This workshop will discuss the 4 Paths and how they differ and how they are similar. Karma Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Raja Yoga and Jnana Yoga are the 4 Paths of Yoga which will be discussed. From Raja Yoga comes the great Sage Patanjali, the greatest Yoga master of all time and the author of the Yoga Sutras. Inside the Yoga Sutras, between Books 2 and 3, is found the section on Ashtanga Yoga, the Eight Limb Path, and within it, Patanjali explains the scientific formula for enlightenment and bliss. This is a workshop dedicated to illuminating our intellects and preparing ourselves for Living Enlightenment.





Mastering Standing Poses in Self Practice
The standing poses in Power Yoga, Vinyasa Yoga, and other Hatha Yogas form the foundation for developing the strength and openness required to sit in meditation for long periods of time. The standing poses were developed much later in time and were created to build fitness, stability and good health. Their are many benefits to standing poses, however the benefits are even greater when the Asana is performed perfectly.
A good and aligned yoga pose creates powerful lines of energy in the body and the result is energetic flow that is both powerful and healing. This workshop will address the many alignment principle inherent in the standing poses of Power Yoga. We will discover here how many poses share the same alignment principles and learn to do visualize the ideal body and thus self correct yourself in Self-Practice.


Yoga Anatomy 1
Learn the bones, the joints, and the Muscles! This introduction to Physical Anatomy is well suited to beginners in the subject as we take it from the very beginning with Directional Terms and basic vocabulary. From there we learn the bones, types of joints, and the names and locations of the most important muscles in the body. We relate this info to Yoga by incorporating yoga poses that use the various muscles and feeling and seeing inside our own bodies for the pathway of the various muscle groups.

The Famous Fred Busch Food Talk
Fasten your seat belts and hold on tight, because this is often the most powerful presentation of information you will ever witness. In the Yoga Teacher Training version of the food talk, Fred will take no prisoners as he presents his understanding of the subject of Food. Welcoming all questions and all challenges, this workshop includes scientific discussions of the role of Vitamins, Minerals, Protein, Essential Fatty Acids, Enzymes, Probiotics, Immune System, Energy levels, Detox. Fred will discuss how easy it is to be an unhealthy vegetarian and will explain the principles to eating with more intelligence and more respect for biological design.


Yoga Sutras of Maharishi Patanjali
The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are one of the most important of all Scriptures in the world. Written by Patanjali in a Sutra form, designed to be hidden out in the open, the Sutras are the accumulation of Yogic and Tantric wisdom that existed from the antiquities. Patanjali presented all of them in one single volume and in doing so did a service for Humanity that is divine. Each Yoga Sutra is ‘independently intelligent’ as Fred’s master explains, they each by themselves can deliver you from bondage into enlightenment, also known as Kaivalya, Nirvana, Bliss, Samadhi. In this workshop we will read all the Sutras with English translation and discuss many in full detail.


Fred Busch’s Healing Sequences for Power Yoga
Most injuries start small and get worse over time due to aggravation, something called not listening to your body. This is very common in Yoga because most teacher don’t understand how to let the body heal itself while still doing daily yoga. Most Yoga teachers suggest to either take a week off, or just keep going and push through it!
The fact is that both of those approaches don’t work which is why people don’t easily heal themselves and injuries can become chronic and spread and implicate other muscles. This is not the only option! The Fred Busch Healing Sequences offer a means to continue your daily yoga practice, get stronger in your core, and become the most advanced Yogi of them all, all while healing yourself of whatever injury has been gifted to you.


Arm Balances and Intermediate Poses
In order to learn arm balances from the beginning it is necessary to understand which muscles are really responsible for creating the lift of the seeming ability to defy gravity. This lift generally comes from the core muscles and so this workshop targets and identifies the preparation poses required to master before arm balancing becomes easy. We will then practice the actual arm balances in a specific and detailed way to assure everyone know exactly how to enter the poses over time.

Poses in this workshop will include: Forearm Stand, Handstand, Astavakrasana, Bhujapidasana, Peacock, Side Crow, Crow, Koundinyasana




Chakras Workshop
The chakras are energetic vortices in the body that have been seen by the mystics and can be perceived in the auric field. They are psycho-energetic centers that represent the potential of human consciousness and a map of the territory of human evolution.
This discussion of the chakras will cover the individual Chakras Color, Element, Sound, Emotion, Gland, and Poses. We will discuss how being stuck in the first three chakras has limited most people from seeing the true potential of human bliss which comes from moving into the Heart Center and awakening the THIRD EYE.


Inversions and Backbending
Ready to learn as much as you can about Headstand, Shoulderstand, and Backbends?
This is the workshop for you! We will start with a comprehensive safety discussion about Headstand and Shoulderstand with relation to the cervical spine and thoroughly cover the contra-indications for Inversions. Then we will take those who are ready to experience and realize which muscles groups are actually responsible for mastery of the inversions. We will practice and learn all the preparation poses and then get ready to MOVE OFF THE WALL, If you are ready, and the time has come for you, and your backbends are reasonable. We will learn about the 2 DIFFERENT HEADSTANDS and practice both of them and then discuss and learn the details for Shoulderstand.

We will then address Spine and Back Bends and we will discuss how many students do backbends that are not very effective. In this detailed workshop on the nature of Back bending and front body opening, we will cover the many variation of backbends and why different versions are more suitable for different student types. Making sure your yoga practice is always serving you most effectively.




Sanskrit Alphabet

The Sanskrit Alphabet is a divinely realized continuum of sound waves that are harmonic to your Chakra system and resonant to the sound waves of the cosmos.
The Sanskrit Alphabet is sacred and incredibly healing when pronounced correctly.
This workshop will cover the basics to pronunciation of the 51 Letters of the Sanskrit Script of Devanagari. You will learn how to read elementary Sanskrit words and how to pronounce the names and words in the many sacred Sanskrit Mantras. We will cover the 5 Mouth Positions of Sanskrit and vowels and consonant sounds as well as the Anasvara and Visarga grammatical components. Make your chanting precise and feel the energetic difference in the sound waves vibrating within and around you.


Massage for Yoga Teachers

Just a few very simple massage techniques can make the difference between a good yoga teacher and great one. This very popular workshop (everyone loves massage and wants to learn to massage better!) focuses on the most practical and satisfying massage moves that help a person feel less tense and more relaxed. Fred Busch massage training for Yoga teachers is available to anyone who wants to learn a better quality of touch. For Yoga teachers this is invaluable information which will without question improve the quality of your classes and the quality of care for your students.



Chanting Sanskrit Mantras

This is a workshop designed to highlight the healing and illuminating effects of chanting Mantras in Sanskrit. Sanskrit sounds are scientific and specific frequencies that are associated with your Chakras and help to balance and energize them. We will cover several of the most Sacred Mantras on Earth: Gayatri, Maha Mritunjaya, Sri Ram Jay Ram, and several others as we also discuss the universal nature of Spiritual Enlightenment and bliss. We will focus on correct sanskrit pronunciation using the 5 mouth positions and the power of visualization and intention.


Pranayama, Meditation, Mala Beads

The system of Yoga and enlightenment as expressed in the eight limb path of Patanjali speaks of limbs Pranayama, Dharana, Dhyana, and then Samadhi. Patanjali’s formula for liberation places Pranayam before Meditation and Meditation before Samadhi. This is a very specific formulation and in this workshop we will explore and experience why this order of practice is so powerful. In addition we will learn how to use Mala beads in a seated meditation practice of silent mantra chanting. We will learn pranayama and meditation practices for your Self-Practice, giving you the tools for Living Enlightenment.

Teaching Techniques

Just because you are good in your yoga practice does not make you a good teacher. Teaching is a different skill, which is one reason there is a difference between a yoga teacher and a yoga master. We are seeking to be both Masters in our personal spiritual practice, as well as being great, expressive and charismatic teachers. This workshop will dissect what are the subtle skills that great teachers use to make their classes better than average. Use of music, tone of voice, pace of speech, and so many other factors are at play in the creation of an amazing yoga class for all participants. Skills of observation will be honed to prepare teachers to identify students who need special variations. This workshop will help you take your yoga teaching to the next level!


Pranayama Comprehensive Workshop

Many Pranayamas are described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Gerhand Samhita, sister scriptures from the middle ages. This workshop will cover almost all of the classical Pranayamas from the sacred scriptures. Each pranayama will be thoroughly explained and discussed, then demonstrated, then the class will experience.
Ujayi, Alternate Nostril Breathing, Sithali, Kabalabhati (Breath of Fire), Bastrika (Bellows) are all practiced in this very comprehensive introduction to the basics of Pranayama and the benefits they can incorporate into your life.


Prenatal Yoga

Learning how to teach pregnant women safely is an invaluable skill. This workshop is outsourced to our resident Prenatal Yoga Master Michelle Fonte and is designed to prepare the teachers understand the safety considerations in Pregnancy yoga. This workshop will also provide a beginners pre-natal yoga set for those who are interested in teaching Pre-Natal Yoga. This is usually run as a certification program, but certification is at complete discretion of the teacher.





Restorative Yoga

Restorative Yoga is one of the most advanced styles of Yoga to teach even though poses are all supported and relaxing and held for many minutes at a time. Restorative Yoga requires lots of information about the best ways to use props to create comfortable and sustainable poses for people to relax in. This workshop will cover the basics of theory about the healing benefits of Restorative Yoga and will then enjoy the experience of deep relaxation and renewal the comes from the healing and wonderful Restorative Yoga experience.


Yoga Nidra

Yoga Nidra is a guided relaxation experience which is practiced laying on the ground in Shavasana. Yoga Nidra is always guided because it requires the relinquishing of the mind to the guide of the meditation. Yoga Nidra is the ultimate restorative yoga pose. It is not sleeping! It is beneficial and deeply restful and healing as the brain is induced into the brainwaves that are most restorative and healing, the delta waves. We will discuss Yoga Nidra and then experience a 45 Minute Yoga Nidra guided by one of Fred’s Gurus.


Variations and Cues for Power Yoga

What is the most effective way to explain a Yoga pose to somebody? What are the best and most precise words to use? What is the least effort in speaking that can yield the most refined speech? This workshop will address this and do so in the context of a workshop on leading students through creative flow variations. There are literally infinite number of directions that can be taken from nearly every pose. This workshop will teach you to think creatively and be able to build your own safe, intelligent, and satisfying Yoga Vinyasa Flows.


Benefits and Contra-Indications in Yoga Asana

The many benefits of Yoga Asanas to health and mental well being could fill volumes. Yoga practice as a whole is beneficial and each of the individual poses within target different muscles, organs, glands, meridians, and visualizations. Each pose has specific benefits and this workshop will explore the main standing and seated poses and their benefits to strength, flexility, organs, glands and respiration.

Yoga poses can also be very dangerous if practiced by the wrong person. The wrong pose practiced by the wrong person can create injuries or other damage. Yoga teaching is a huge responsibility as you take another persons health and wellbeing into your hands. The other half of this workshop will discuss that are called Contra-Indications to Yoga Poses. These are conditions and situations that certain yoga poses are better avoided. We will cover the main diseases and conditions in a basic overview of what is contra-indicated in different scenarios. This information is mandatory for good and safe Yoga Instruction.


Teaching Privates

The art of teaching Private Yoga classes and very small groups is a skill that pays itself back a hundredfold. A Yoga teacher will generally make most of their money through teaching privately so the ability to be confident and resourceful in a home setting is required. Teaching 1 on 1 offers many opportunities and many challenges that group classes do not afford. This workshop will shed light on how to take advantage of the opportunities while avoiding any of the difficulties from the challenges so as to make your private clients very satisfied with their Yoga class and experience with you.

Obesity in the Developing world follows USA Obesity to epidemic level

Obesity in the developing world is following right behind the outrageous rate of obesity in the USA and other developed countries. Obesity is a crime against humanity in my opinion, especially childhood obesity. How can we let our children get obese? It is disgusting...truly. Let us prevent obesity and get the kids back in shape with exercise and good healthy foods that are not sugary, not fried, and not loaded with saturated animal fat and cooked proteins.

These poor kids are growing up and they have NO CHANCE to be healthy in adulthood because they are on a fast track to diabetes and heart disease and social ills. It is really something that is so preventable that this country needs to take a hard look at the obvious food industry culprits and interest groups like Dairy and Beef/Chicken rendering companies. Lets all wake up and stop following the heard off the cliff and knock some sense into our selves and leaders to stand up against this. It is almost a national security issue if everyone in the country is Fat how can we even defend ourselves? we certainly can not defend ourselves against the trillions of dollars that will be wasted dealing with the health care ramifications of an entire nation of overweight and obese sick people.

and now as the NY Times reports... the rest of the world is following our sad example.


Developing countries should act now to head off their own "obesity epidemic", says a global policy group.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) says obesity levels are rising fast.
In a report in the Lancet medical journal, it says low-income countries cannot cope with the health consequences of wide scale obesity.
Rates in Brazil and South Africa already outstrip the OECD average.
Increasing obesity in industrialised countries such as the UK and US has brought with it rises in heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
However, increasing prosperity in some developing countries has led to a rise in "Western" lifestyles.
Now the OECD warns that they are catching up fast in terms of obesity rates.
Across all the countries represented in the OECD, 50% of adults are overweight or obese.
Childhood obesity
Rates in the Russian Federation are only just below this, and while fewer than 20% of Indians are classed this way, and fewer than 30% of Chinese people, the body says things are worsening fast.

Cell phones and brain cancer... an epidemic that is growing so please use Speakerphone only!

To me it is a pretty simple fact. Radiation to the inner ear has a direct access to the brain and is not blocked by the bones of the skull like radiation would normally be. Long term exposure to the high levels of radiation emitted by all cell phones is causing an epidemic of brain tumors and brain cancer. Please everyone only use cell phones on SPEAKER PHONE and keep those things far away from your ear! Read below if you don't believe. NY TIMES reported today:

I’m paraphrasing here. But the legal departments of cellphone manufacturers slip a warning about holding the phone against your head or body into the fine print of the little slip that you toss aside when unpacking your phone. Apple, for example, doesn’t want iPhones to come closer than 5/8 of an inch; Research In Motion, BlackBerry’s manufacturer, is still more cautious: keep a distance of about an inch.

The warnings may be missed by an awful lot of customers. The United States has 292 million wireless numbers in use, approaching one for every adult and child, according to C.T.I.A.-The Wireless Association, the cellphone industry’s primary trade group. It says that as of June, about a quarter of domestic households were wireless-only.

If health issues arise from ordinary use of this hardware, it would affect not just many customers but also a huge industry. Our voice calls — we chat on our cellphones 2.26 trillion minutes annually, according to the C.T.I.A. — generate $109 billion for the wireless carriers.

The cellphone instructions-cum-warnings were brought to my attention by Devra Davis, an epidemiologist who has worked for the University of Pittsburgh and has published a book about cellphone radiation, “Disconnect.” I had assumed that radiation specialists had long ago established that worries about low-energy radiation were unfounded. Her book, however, surveys the scientific investigations and concludes that the question is not yet settled.

Brain cancer is a concern that Ms. Davis takes up. Over all, there has not been a general increase in its incidence since cellphones arrived. But the average masks an increase in brain cancer in the 20-to-29 age group and a drop for the older population.

“Most cancers have multiple causes,” she says, but she points to laboratory research that suggests mechanisms by which low-energy radiation could damage cells in ways that could possibly lead to cancer.

Children are more vulnerable to radiation than adults, Ms. Davis and other scientists point out. Radiation that penetrates only two inches into the brain of an adult will reach much deeper into the brains of children because their skulls are thinner and their brains contain more absorptive fluid. No field studies have been completed to date on cellphone radiation and children, she says.

San Francisco has become the first city in the US to require mobile phone retailers to post radiation levels next to the handsets they sell.

The board of supervisors, or council, voted 10-1 to approve the measure.

"This is about helping people make informed choices," said the law's chief sponsor, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell.

The mobile phone industry has pointed to studies that it says show mobile phone radiation was not harmful to people.

The South Beach Detox ONLINE and Local Versions available

If you want to improve your life in any way... eating smarter is a great way to start. It is not easy to just stop your habits and patterns without a bit of guidance. For this we have created the South Beach Detox to not only give you a great and effective Detox, but to also provide you with some very potent skills to live more attuned to your biology and thus receive the enormous benefits which come from wisdom in action.

The South Beach Detox will accomplish both a short term detox and a long term reprogram of your sometimes destructive patterns that are easily transcended with the right illumination.

Welcome to the South Beach Detox… where you will create your own Bliss.

The South Beach Detox programs are the perfect combination of Food, Exercise, and Meditation to create the ideal environment for your body to rest, detox, and recharge.

Let us begin by defining what a detox is, why they work, and then why the South Beach Detox is unique/special.

All Detox Programs operate under the principle that when we eat less, our digestive organs are requiring less energy and thus our body has this energy liberated for use in more important directions, like cleansing and healing.
The South Beach Detox is special for several reasons.

The Sobe Detox utilizes a proprietary three pronged approach that creates a specific positive feedback cycle virtually guaranteeing success and transformation.
Intelligent, Complete Nutrition, Exercise and Yoga, and use of Meditation and Awareness are the three components that feed on each other to create a snowball effect of positive transformation that can be experienced on every level of your being.

Most importantly you will learn how easy these skills are to perpetuate in your life after the Detox.

As you proceed through these next few days, please do as much resting and relaxing as possible. Take naps or rests anytime you can. Try to avoid unnecessary social events or conversations of any sort. Remember that this is special time for you to go within, feel the connection with your self, and above all, rest and relax.

During the days of the South Beach Detox it is suggested that you speak to very few people, if any, about your Detox. Staying quiet is one of the secret keys to success and this is especially true for a time when rest is so important.

And always know that as long as less energy is required by the digestive system, the body considers this rest, even if you end up going about your daily work.

Never be hungry. If you are hungry drink more ReNew Me Powder and fill your stomach up each time by drinking lots in a short time rather than slow sips.

So get ready to feel great! The key to the South Beach Detox is our combination of the Right Food, the Perfect Exercise, and Practice of Meditation and Awareness to bring a feeling of contentment and well being into our life! Enjoy the process of learning new things and feeling more peaceful everyday and experience this entire program as a blessing, a true opportunity, to realize your dreams.

For all details on the components of the South Beach Detox and other important information make sure you read the manual and listen to all the tracks in this program.

Prevention is the best solution! Please people let prevention save you from suffering!

It is impossible to overemphasize the value of prevention. There is no doubt that this is a complex and polluted world and sometimes ailments can not be prevented or are genetic. But that is more rare than you might believe and the fact is that we MUST do whatever we can to act intelligently so we can prevent the Cancer diagnosis that many people are receiving these days.

Cancer is not good. But it can be a sign that lifestyle needs to change and if heeded can lead to a transformational experience and bring enlightenment. The problem with Cancer is the diagnosis itself and the treatments and the lack of quality of life that can follow. Below is a NY Times article on the Side Effects of Radiation that were not well understood by the patient.

If you want to cure yourself of cancer, begin to research the thousands of cases of people who have cured their cancer through raw foods. The best place to cure cancer in the United States is Hippocrates Institute in Palm Beach, Fl.

Prevent Cancer by eating lots of well washed fruits, and vegetable based foods. Eat as much Raw Vegan Food as humanly possible... enjoying the blessings of Fruit that God put on this planet for us. Drink Green Liquids like Spirulina or A.F.A. Blue Green Algae (best) and exercise everyday. Exercise everyday with Yoga if possible, eat according to your primate biology (you are not an omnivore and certainly not a carnivore), and become aware of patterns of self judgment and self criticism and transcend with waves of gratitude and surrender.

This is the formula for the prevention of almost all disease. To the degree that our actions will assist us in prevention, these are the actions to take. Be smart, be aware and then do what you want! It is your life... just realize that health is the only WEALTH.

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NY Times 10/06/10

Wiry, fair-haired and in his 60s, the patient had received a prostate cancer diagnosis a year earlier. When his doctors told him that surgery and radiation therapy were equally effective and that it was up to him to decide, he chose radiation with little hesitation.

But one afternoon a month after completing his treatment, the patient was shocked to see red urine collecting in the urinal. After his doctors performed a series of tests and bladder irrigations through a pencil-size catheter, he learned that the bleeding was a complication of the radiation treatment.

He recalled briefly hearing about this side effect three months earlier, but none of the reports he had been given or collected mentioned it, and once he had recovered from the angst of the emergency room and the doctor’s office visits and the discomfort of the clinical work-up, he didn’t give it more thought — until a few weeks later, when he started bleeding again.

By the time I met him, he was in the middle of his third visit to the hospital. “I feel like I’m tied to this place,” he said. He showed me a plastic jug partly filled with urine the color of fruit punch, and he described a post-treatment life marked by fear of going to the bathroom and discovering blood. “If I had known that my life would be like this after radiation,” he sighed, “I would have chosen the surgery.”

Whether conducted at a laboratory bench or in clinical trials, medical research has long been driven by a single overriding goal — the need to find a cure. Usually referred to more modestly as a search for “the most effective treatment,” this standard has served as both a barometer of success and a major criterion for funding. Most published studies are marked by a preponderance of data documenting even minor blips in laboratory values or changes in the size of a spot of cancer or area of heart muscle damage on specialized X-rays. Some studies bolster the apparent success of their results with additional data on societal effects like treatment costs or numbers of workdays missed.

Few studies, however, focus on the patient experience.

The result of all this emphasis on cure has been a nearly embarrassing richness of choice for patients with diabetes, heart disease, H.I.V. infections and even some cancers. The increasingly sophisticated treatment regimens that now make up medicine’s armamentarium have transformed once life-threatening diseases into chronic ones, but in the process have given rise to a group of individuals who are caught in the unenviable position of living with an illness that never quite goes away. No longer forced to make once-in-a-lifetime life-or-death treatment decisions, they instead struggle each day with the side effects of the very treatments that keep them alive.

For many of these patients, the most important question becomes not “What treatment will allow me to live the longest?” but rather “Which treatment can I live with?”

Now, according to a paper published last month in the policy journal Health Affairs, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, a new initiative mandated by the federal health care overhaul, may offer a chance to alter the prevailing winds of medical research so the needs of this growing segment of the patient population are addressed. With a 21-member board made up of individuals from both the public and private sectors, the institute has a mandate to set the agenda for research comparing treatments for common diseases and to finance the most important studies. But according to the paper’s authors, the potential of such an enterprise will be fully realized only if the institute supports initiatives and strategies that place the patient experience not only front and center in research but also smack in the middle of the medical mainstream.

“To some extent, we’ve conquered death,” said Dr. Albert W. Wu, lead author and a general internist and professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “Now we have people living with chronic illnesses, and how they experience quality of life every day has become an important part of how they are doing and whether the treatments are worthwhile.”

To effectively capture the patient perspective, Dr. Wu and his co-authors propose making patient-reported outcomes a more routine part of clinical studies and practice and administrative data collection, in some cases requiring the information for reimbursement. For several months now, they have been incorporating data about patient experiences into routine medical practice at Johns Hopkins. Using a dedicated portal called PatientViewpoint.org, patients can, at the suggestion of their physicians, fill out surveys about their energy levels, social functioning, mental health, nausea and pain. The information is then handled like more traditional clinical testing; access is reserved for the patients themselves and their doctors.

Currently, the site is open only to patients diagnosed with breast or prostate cancer, but Dr. Wu and his colleagues hope that eventually all doctors will be able to order patient surveys that measure experiences like levels of pain, physical functioning or depression, proactively identifying results that are high or low, then reviewing those results with patients. And despite initial concerns that patients might feel overburdened by the questionnaires, most have been enthusiastic.

“Patients want to have more conversations with their physicians and other providers about these kinds of issues,” Dr. Wu said. “Sometimes it’s difficult to cover all this information during the medical encounter, and these surveys may be another opportunity to do that.”

Not all clinicians or researchers, however, are eager to embrace patient-reported outcomes. Many have never received training in the research methods involved and are skeptical about the value of a discipline or drill that is unfamiliar. “This is considered to be squishy, soft stuff,” Dr. Wu said. “It’s still not something you can order on a laboratory slip.”

Nonetheless, Dr. Wu is hopeful that the new Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute will provide more direction to all researchers, while establishing new and more comprehensive standards that require patient-reported and quality-of-life outcomes. “I think we have a real opportunity right now, and this institute has great potential to be a positive force in understanding how treatments work and what’s effective and for whom,” he said.

But he also cautioned: “We have to remember to include the patients. We have to include their perspective if we want to come up with evidence that they can really use to make better decisions for themselves about treatment and care.”

US Government Promoting Cheese and Warning against it at same time?

This is just fascinating. We need to take a hard look at the role food companies are playing in the overall degradation of our health. Yes it is peoples responsibility to eat for themselves, but the game is stacked unfairly against intelligence when the marketing and commercials come into play. It is not easy to resist the temptations and seductions of the campaigns.

And now the Federal Government wants to help market cheese? and is at the same time engaged in an anti-obesity drive that suggest cheese be drastically reduced from the diet?

If you want to fight childhood obesity, it is simple. Reduce or eliminate animal based foods from kids diets, eliminate refined sugars (as dangerous as cocaine in some ways), eliminate fried foods and fast foods. Exercise every day.

that is it! read below and see the details of government hypocrisy at its best!

Domino’s Pizza was hurting early last year. Domestic sales had fallen, and a survey of big pizza chain customers left the company tied for the worst tasting pies.

Then help arrived from an organization called Dairy Management. It teamed up with Domino’s to develop a new line of pizzas with 40 percent more cheese, and proceeded to devise and pay for a $12 million marketing campaign.
Consumers devoured the cheesier pizza, and sales soared by double digits. “This partnership is clearly working,” Brandon Solano, the Domino’s vice president for brand innovation, said in a statement to The New York Times.
But as healthy as this pizza has been for Domino’s, one slice contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat, which has been linked to heart disease and is high in calories.
And Dairy Management, which has made cheese its cause, is not a private business consultant. It is a marketing creation of the United States Department of Agriculture — the same agency at the center of a federal anti-obesity drive that discourages over-consumption of some of the very foods Dairy Management is vigorously promoting.
Urged on by government warnings about saturated fat, Americans have been moving toward low-fat milk for decades, leaving a surplus of whole milk and milk fat. Yet the government, through Dairy Management, is engaged in an effort to find ways to get dairy back into Americans’ diets, primarily through cheese.
Americans now eat an average of 33 pounds of cheese a year, nearly triple the 1970 rate. Cheese has become the largest source of saturated fat; an ounce of many cheeses contains as much saturated fat as a glass of whole milk.
When Michelle Obama implored restaurateurs in September to help fight obesity, she cited the proliferation of cheeseburgers and macaroni and cheese. “I want to challenge every restaurant to offer healthy menu options,” she told the National Restaurant Association’s annual meeting.
But in a series of confidential agreements approved by agriculture secretaries in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Dairy Management has worked with restaurants to expand their menus with cheese-laden products.
Consider the Taco Bell steak quesadilla, with cheddar, pepper jack, mozzarella and a creamy sauce. “The item used an average of eight times more cheese than other items on their menu,” the Agriculture Department said in a report, extolling Dairy Management’s work — without mentioning that the quesadilla has more than three-quarters of the daily recommended level of saturated fat and sodium.
Dairy Management, whose annual budget approaches $140 million, is largely financed by a government-mandated fee on the dairy industry. But it also receives several million dollars a year from the Agriculture Department, which appoints some of its board members, approves its marketing campaigns and major contracts and periodically reports to Congress on its work.
The organization’s activities, revealed through interviews and records, provide a stark example of inherent conflicts in the Agriculture Department’s historical roles as both marketer of agriculture products and America’s nutrition police.
In one instance, Dairy Management spent millions of dollars on research to support a national advertising campaign promoting the notion that people could lose weight by consuming more dairy products, records and interviews show. The campaign went on for four years, ending in 2007, even though other researchers — one paid by Dairy Management itself — found no such weight-loss benefits.
When the campaign was challenged as false, government lawyers defended it, saying the Agriculture Department “reviewed, approved and continually oversaw” the effort.
Dr. Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health and a former member of the federal government’s nutrition advisory committee, said: “The U.S.D.A. should not be involved in these programs that are promoting foods that we are consuming too much of already. A small amount of good-flavored cheese can be compatible with a healthy diet, but consumption in the U.S. is enormous and way beyond what is optimally healthy.”
The Agriculture Department declined to make top officials available for interviews for this article, and Dairy Management would not comment. In answering written questions, the department said that dairy promotion was intended to bolster farmers and rural economies, and that its oversight left Dairy Management’s board with “significant independence” in deciding how best to support those interests.
The department acknowledged that cheese is high in saturated fat, but said that lower milk consumption had made cheese an important source of calcium.
“When eaten in moderation and with attention to portion size, cheese can fit into a low-fat, healthy diet,” the department said.
In its reports to Congress, however, the Agriculture Department tallies Dairy Management’s successes in millions of pounds of cheese served.

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