SATURATED FATS

They recently showed on GMA how much saturated fat can affect your arteries in record time.....it was amazing to watch the results of the blood tests on the 2 reporters before and after eating a high fat meal....scary actually ....no wonder we are getting sicker and sicker.
We all need fat in our diets but we can eat foods like avocados, almonds or walnuts all high in fat but highly nutritious.Or we can add the right amount of olive oil to what we are eating which is very healthy , but no, we love bacon, fried chicken and the mac and cheese which is so high in saturated fat and overworks our heart.The GMA feature showed that our blood goes back to normal after a few hours or a few days depending on what we eat ,how much we eat and how long we have been eating it, as we keep eating like this day after day our blood gets thicker and thicker and harder to be pumped throughout our body therefore giving our heart, liver, kidneys etc. too much work to clean them and keep us healthy.
The doctor doing the tests was distressed and depressed as he remarked "this is how we are killing America" yes sir, not only America - these things have been shipped to 3rd world countries in massive amts. and we are also doing it to ourselves in the name of progress, like the new "made in Jamaica" vegetarian foods that have just come out.....the ingredient list almost takes up the entire bag and if you can pronounce one word you good!
Watching the reporters put their lives on the line to let us see, since we won`t hear,it came to me that it's just like how I keep preaching and I wonder if anyone is hearing....... so here I go one more time:
- Choose foods as close to, or in their natural state.
- Eat as little as possible the foods that come in boxes, jars and cans, that way we avoid preservatives.
- Eat foods with ingredients you can pronounce and look for the one word ingredient e.g.the ingredient of spinach is spinach....... choose the food with the short ingredient list, the longer the list the more additives and processing.
- Avoid anything thing with too long a shelf life
Also most important - remember the word is still moderation.

ANOTHER TAKE ON CANCER CARE COST

Funny, right after I blogged about the cost of cancer care and whether spending all that money makes sense , here comes the following article in last Sunday's Gleaner on the very same topic:

Not only is cancer deadly, but it can also be financially debilitating, costing as much as $100,000 per month for hospice or palliative care.
To afford care, the patient either needs to be rich, or insured.
"The cost of health care is becoming more and more forbidding and it is, therefore, extremely helpful to get insurance," says Sister Mary Andrews, administrator of the Consie Walters Hospice in Kingston where cancer patients get palliative care in the end stages of the disease.
"Two million dollars can disappear very quickly," she said.
Cancer is acknowledged as one of the biggest killers in Jamaica, but the Cancer Registry data end at 1999, when there were 2,697 deaths, and an assessed cancer prevalence of 140.5 per 100,000 population.
Early detection can reduce costs a great deal, says Sister Mary, although in some cases the disease recurs with further need for treatment.
But the cancer might be discovered in stage three or four, which is the end stage. At this point, lifespan would be shorter than a person with early detection, and costs would differ phenomenally.
"If you have years of treatment, then you can anticipate a health bill which is exorbitant. With hospice care, it's helpful to have insurance," Sister Mary said.
"Hospice care can use up a lot of your resources, especially for pensioners. One needs to prepare."
For a "subsidised" price of $2,000 daily, patients of Consie Walters get 24-hour nursing care, accommodation, meals, and laundry service.
Medication is an additional $45,000 monthly, depending on the types of medication needed, and whether the patient has National Health Fund (NHF) registration.
With the NHF card, medication can be as cheap as $40 per drug monthly; without NHF, it can be $3,500 for monthly supply of one drug.

I remember clearly my own experience of signing a cheque for J$330,000 and saying to myself "this for me to burn up my insides, what's wrong with this picture?"
I fully understand the story of the famous British conductor and his wife - Conductor Downes, wife die in Swiss suicide clinic . Oh to live in a country where you have a choice.....this could never happen in Jamaica as we are highly religious and believe if you take your own life you are going straight to hell!
My take on the whole matter is - yes , we are all going to die but why die DRUG FILLED AND TOXIC! NOT TO MENTION BROKE! As the old time saying goes - PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE!

CANCER/PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ?

The exorbitant cost of cancer drugs makes me wonder.....is it really worth it? The choice really boils down to quantity or quality of life. A recent article in the WSJ looks at questions being asked about the Cost-Effectiveness of Cancer Drugs for example after paying US$80,000 per treatment people are asking themselves if it's worth being in debt but still having to walk with a walker and still be in horrific pain.
Most of us don`t think our treatments through, we just succumb to pressure and go along with the fear and scare tactics.....a few like Farrah Fawcett - march to their own beat but without the full picture, so they are fighting but not reaching anywhere.....We hear Ryan O`Neal saying that every time they got rid of 2 tumours from her liver 2 more would pop up - no surprise because she was doing nothing to make her new cells grow back healthy.... remember the coke-a-cola can by the side of her bed?
We bankrupt ourselves, go through tremendous pain, break down our minds and bodies because we just don`t know what to do.
I am listening to them talk abut the Oxycontin that MJ was taking, it seems as if prescription drugs are making us all crazy,just like how they have found out that all these uneccessary tests these doctors are telling us we need,we don`t need ,its the same way we are taking drugs we don`t need,but soon can`t live without.
It just came on the news that MJ would take 10-40 Xanax a night (hearsay,not a fact) it couldn`t be the Xanax we all hear about, if it is, it's a wonder he lasted so long.... remembering my friend who just died.... she was given Oxycontin which she took 4-6 times daily and was told she should take it whenever she needed. When she got them she said she asked the doctor "aren`t these narcotics, should I be taking so much of them?" - his answer was.."IT WON`T MATTER".....Lawd!
Bedside manners very necessary here !!.....but aside from that being a little too blunt, I just think doctors have gone crazy with prescribing...too many of them playing Dr. Feelgood.
We need to stop going for the quick fix and realize that we need to treat ourselves better not by spending big money, but by eating good food and having correct information... that is what helps us have a longer, healthier life.

MJ....THE GREATEST!

My thoughts on being a genius means you get too much of one thing and too little of the other, brain overload on one side of the brain.....hence MJ`S music and creativity on one side and on the other side what we would consider strangeness (you notice geniuses are always people we consider quite mad) although the quote of the memorial service belonged to Al Sharpton "there was nothing strange about your Daddy,it was strange what he had to deal with"...Is it because we just don`t understand? Some people are convinced that MJ's "strangeness" - the masks, the plastic surgeries, the reinventing himself etc. was orchestrated to keep him in the public eye, so he might have truly been a genius on all sides of his brain.
Who but MJ would ask if people invented harps and violins and trombones and pianos how come we can`t invent a new instrument? Makes perfect sense doesnt it?
Who else but MJ wanted to use his body as a guitar or a drum etc......Who else but MJ could think of making his music video into a short film (THRILLER)- a first! Who is going to sell 150 million albums? Britney Spears??? Give me a break!
Who else but MJ would think that since he was Peter Pan and they said he couldn`t have children playing with him all the time,as it was improper, then he would have his own children so he could have permanent playmates....Which other entertainer can dance,sing, choreograph and write music at his level....which other entertainer can dance better than the back up dancers?.....and finally, who else but MJ could decide that since he couldn`t sleep (geniuses rarely do, they can`t turn off their brain) he would use an anesthetic to sleep! An anesthetic! As a sleep aid???????
As someone who has had anesthetic 24 times.....this is just mind-boggling. As he said "It knocks you out like that!" It certainly does and it kills you like that too...Look how many people having surgery in hospital settings do not wake up from anesthetic much less when it's used as an at home drug! I can`t wrap my head around it....
He is the King of pop. Bigger than that says Barry Gordy. In death he is going to make Elvis look like he`s not trying..... his indebtedness is going to go through the window just go on Amazon.com now he holds the top 9 positions of record sales. He knew he could spend and give away money (300-500million given to humanitarian causes without fanfare) as it would all come rolling back, pressed down and multiplied.
SO HE`S NOT A FREAK - HE`S A GENIUS!
To quote Dallas Austin:"THIS GUY IS FROM ANOTHER PLANET!"
sorry,WAS.......

TRAVELLING WITH RAW FOOD

Listening to Kevin Gianni and his wife talk about the top 10 raw foods to take on the road from an episode of The Renegade Health Show I got the impression that raw food was not exciting, as most of the food were in powder or seed form, and I understood clearly (although I have always known) why it's so hard for people to eat raw food, much less eat healthily on the road..... I can just imagine Jamaicans who want their rice and peas and chicken eating Chia seeds or any form of food in powder form......most of them don`t even want to have porridge without condensed milk ( I eat no form of porridge, cooked or raw) so I can't imagine them putting any form of powder in a bowl, adding only water and drinking it !
They then showed all kinds of things to add flavour to salads etc. most of us are salad-ed out, so on top of the dressings we are going to need something else......big food as Jamaicans would say...... I can also imagine the reaction to the fermented foods, as most of us think fermented means the thing has spoilt......well I am here to tell them that Kombucha is the fermented health drink that G.T.DAVE used to cure his mother of breast cancer...... he is now enjoying all the perks of this amazing drink - millions of dollars. Here is his story according to an article on SFGate.com :

Twelve years ago, Dave was a teenager living in L.A.'s tony Brentwood district with his parents, whom he describes as "very spiritual." He had dropped out of Beverly Hills High School because he found it difficult to relate to the values of his peers there. "I started feeling like my high school environment was not healthy for me," he recalls.
With his parents' blessing, he took the GED test and, shortly thereafter, enrolled at Los Angeles City College. Then his mom was diagnosed with breast cancer.
When she underwent testing, the doctors were amazed that her large tumor, which consisted of precancerous cells, had not metastasized. When asked whether she had been doing anything unusual,she said the only thing she could think of was that she had been drinking kombucha. The doctors told her whatever it was she was doing, that she should keep doing it.
Dave's parents had received their mushroom tea from a friend who had gotten it from a monk, and they loved it. It made their skin glow, his mom lost weight and his dad's hair thickened. After the diagnosis, Dave's mom researched kombucha and found evidence that it deters cancer. (She continues to drink it long after a successful course of chemotherapy and a lumpectomy and has been cancer free since then).
Dave, 16 at the time, decided to quit school altogether and dedicate himself to making the beneficial beverage. "My mom is everything to me," he says. "Thinking that I could lose her and that there was something that could help her and help others motivated me to start the company."

So maybe fermented food is not such a bad idea after all - I also have a few tips of my own for eating healthily while on the road. The things that I carry with me are mainly the following:

Purified water in stainless steel containers,
'Raw' dehydrated sweet potato or yam chips,
Any kind of cookies that my son has prepared (this week was walnut),
Teas:last week was black walnut, guinea hen weed, pau de Arco and dandelion root.
If my son prepares cho cho or cauliflower pate I take that in a container packed with ice paks and when I reach my destination I use lettuce and make rolls with them.
If ackee is in season I buy ackees, take them out the pods and take out and discard the red tissue in the middle (I don`t know what it's called) and eat them as a snack as I drive along, or put cayenne pepper on them and there is a meal....also any fruit that is in season and found as I drive along also goes in the car for later.
Add to that my glyco nutrients (Avanced Ambrotose powder),my 'Greens Best' powder which is a blend of organic greens and I`m good to go.

I think my road-food selection sounds a little more interesting than the Giannis, don't you?
On the video they were wondering why their melons had very little seeds, sometimes none.....I guess it's like the seedless grapes I wonder about?......Thank God our melons are all local and have plenty seeds and as to our other delicious local fruits,what a blessing! MANGO SEASON THIS YEAR WAS A LITTLE TOO KIND TO ME AS I GAINED 9 LBS.!!!! 6 MANGOES A DAY WILL DO THAT TO YOU. But honestly,I must say that this mango season has been like none other. My holistic practitioner nearly had a tree as it's much too much fructose going into my body on a daily basis...ah dear, hope I didn`t do any damage.......It was good though!
On to the next season of fruit.....did I hear GUINEP? CAN`T WAIT!

COMFORTING RITUAL?

Reading this N Y TIMES article Losing a Comforting Ritual: Treatment I realized that what I`ve thought all along is so true. A lot of us find comfort in our cancer treatments.......we form a bond with our caregivers and some of us are happy like that. We look forward to going to our treatment as it's time to link our friends.
I`ve always felt that a lot of us use illness to get attention. We thrive on being ill, some of us cry wolf, wolf so often that we don`t even know when we are pretending and when it's real.....
We know what we call to us usually manifests,but we still succumb. Some treat it, as the man in the NY Times piece does as a habit,something to do and when it's not there we have withdrawal symptoms. Then there are the ones of us who don`t like being sick for a minute and do everything we can to bond with no one. Our bout with cancer is a bad memory....everything is in temporary mode, in other words "I`m here now but I`d rather be at work, so I need no one praying or fawning over me".....It's always harder for those around us because although we are the ones feeling the pain, our loved ones have this feeling of helplessness. Maybe treating going to do radiation as if we are going to a job helps all concerned, so maybe he has a point, but that's a "job" I need to lose quickly, just the smell of it all jars me into wanting to be better and quick.
Recently a close friend of mine died of cancer and the lesson I learnt out of it is we need a close friend going through it with us.......someone between us and the caregivers .... someone other than our spouse, they are usually too upset to focus. We need someone who knows our likes and dislikes before illness took us down..... someone who can tell us it's all right to let go as a lot of us fight to stay,and talk for us when the pain gets too much for us to communicate .... I notice Alana Hamilton was always at Farrah Fawcett's side, very important!

Michael Pollan gets it

“The chronic diseases that now kill most of us can be traced directly to the industrialization of our food ” - Michael Pollan.
I loved the 'Omnivore's Dilemma' and now Michael Pollan has a new book out called "In defense of food".... ...that phrase you see popping up everywhere comes from it.......EAT FOOD, NOT TOO MUCH, MOSTLY PLANTS.....I guess that's the summary.
Pollan is the person that Obama has been listening to....in a Time interview of Obama , he quoted quite a bit from a open letter Pollan had sent to him while he was a Presidential candidate. People are campaigning for Pollan to be the next Secretary of Agriculture,there is even a petition going.....but no matter what, he is knowledgeable and I love what he says, : "the modern way of eating leads to chronic diseases. As soon as you get away from the western diet you are going to get healthier. It's the elephant in the room that the food industry would rather not pay attention to."
In case most of you reading this in the west didn`t realize...this is serious business!
Recently on GMA they were telling us that the healthiest diet is the Mediterranean diet. VEGETABLES, FRUIT& NUTS, BEANS,OLIVE OIL, and the RED WINE which they have with their meals..... all in moderation.
The survey was carried out on 23,000 Greek men and women and it showed that they all live well into old age so the conclusion is that eating like they do improves survival because it helps guard against heart disease,cancer, diabetes etc.
Check out these videos from Dr. Mercola on this whole Genetically Engineered Foods thing and whether or not they are dangerous.