ClydeStyle

Category: Health

  • Resolutions should be a way of life

    Of the 50 percent of Americans who make resolutions, 90 percent of them break their resolution by the middle of January.

    It seems that the end of a year gives us a temporary conscience. It bothers us enough to acknowledge that there are things in our lives that need fixing, but nothing about the New Year makes us want to do anything more than admit it and move on.

    We know that there are people who don’t need to be in our lives and there are things we need to just flat out stop doing. Whether that is ending a destructive relationship or maintaining a healthy blood sugar level, we need to be far more serious about this.

    Here is a practical way to keep your resolutions. Don’t do a resolution for a year; do them by the day, hour or even minute.

    A resolution is a way of admitting we’re wrong and need to be better regarding something in our life. Why not make the idea of resolving ourselves a way of life? What would be wrong with keeping the imperfection ever before us – even to the point of letting others know that you recognize the need to change in this area. Then legitimately work on it. Really commit to the change and raising the bar of expectation in your life.

    By doing this daily, I think you will find that those around you will begin to acknowledge a different you. After all, that’s what we all want anyway, right?

  • I can’t?

    Isn’t it funny how the mind works? I remember when I was in grade school and instead of attempting to master math, I spent the most productive hours convincing myself that math was “too hard” and that it “made no sense” and that it was “stupid to do.”

    I really convinced myself of that. Imagine that? I discovered years later that I could totally get my mind to buy into something. Today, it makes me take inventory of my life experiences to see what else I have talked myself into.

    Some of us have talked ourselves into marriage. Some of us had to convince ourselves that the things are parents did were not wrong, it was just the way they expressed their love. Some of us had to convince ourselves that we are worthless and have no value. Still others have convinced themselves that they are the problem and not the other person. Some are convinced that their spiritual leader must be right, or he wouldn’t be a spiritual leader.  All of this convincing causes us to live in pain – whether emotional, spiritual, mental or physical – we’re hurting … real bad!

    It seems we have forgotten the simple lessons when someone is trying to sell us something. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If it takes some convincing, then it was probably the wrong thing. There is always a reason why we have our reservations. But it seems we have a soft spot for ourselves. We want to believe that we care enough about ourselves to never lead US astray.

    Unfortunately we do it often.

    I can convince myself to love, hate, fight, hold a grudge, spend money, be comfortable with being wrong, gossip, mistreat people and settle. There is no end to what I can convince my mind to do.

    Did you catch what I just said?

    All of us have the ability to convince ourselves of anything. What if we were to convince ourselves to seek positive change, be honest with ourselves and those around us. What if we convinced ourselves to save money, love one another, glorify God or even resist the devil.

    We need to take a self inventory of what we believe and how we came to believe it. Were we convinced by someone or self? Is what we believe true? To search ourselves and answer these questions is another way we can be free.

    We could totally eliminate the words “I can’t” from our lives.

    Then what would our reality be? What would it be like for us to exercise this over ourselves for the betterment of self. Is it too late for a situation or circumstance to be effected by this? Will we let fear stop us from doing what the rest of our being already knew to do?

    Let’s not waste our minds on “I can’t.”

  • Racism – is it really all just in our heads?

    Clyde is traveling in Nashville this week and asked me to “fill in” for him with a post about an article I ran across on MSNBC about children with a rare genetic disorder that causes them to ignore race and skin color. Learn more about what this unusual condition is teaching us about the origins of racism and gender stereotypes.

    Ann M. Richardson

    I read an article today about children born with a rare genetic disorder known as Williams syndrome that causes them to have a complete lack of social anxiety.

    An interesting by-product of this defect is that the children have no racial biases, according to a researcher from the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

    Normally, children show clear preferences for their own ethnic group by the age of three, or sooner, according to other research. In fact, children without the defect consistently associate positive traits (friendliness, kindness, etc.) to people that are the same race as themselves.

    When asked a negative question, “Which is the naughty boy?” children without Williams syndrome indicate that the naughty boy is the one from the “other” race.

    Williams syndrome is caused by the absence of a gene that affects the brain and other organs. People with this syndrome are “hypersocial,” meaning that they don’t experience the anxiety, nervousness, and self-consciousness that plague the rest of us – especially adolescents.

    Sounds like it would be great if we all had Williams syndrome, doesn’t it?

    Can you imagine what it would be like to live in a world where no one hated anyone just because of the color of their skin or their ethnic background? And no one got the jitters when they had to speak in front of a group of people?

    Sounds like utopia to me.

    But Williams syndrome does have some drawbacks.

    Kids with Williams syndrome (WS) will put themselves at risk to help someone else while giving no thought for their own safety. Despite considerable empathy for others, the disorder leaves them unable to process and assess what scientists call “social danger signals.”

    Or what I call a lack of plain old “street smarts.” The kind of wariness that tells you when to walk away (or even run) from a fight – or when “something just doesn’t feel right.”

    Not surprisingly, this lack of street smarts puts WS kids at greater risk for rape and physical assault.

    So is racism really “all in our heads?” Or is it all biological? And if it is biological, can we do anything about it?

    According to researcher Andreas Meyer-Lindenburg, WS kids may be missing critical genes, but:

    “We are not saying that this is all biologically-based and you can’t do anything about it [racial bias]. Just because there is a genetic way to knock the system out, does not mean the system itself is 100 percent genetic,” he said.

    The study shows that racism requires social fear. “If social fear was culturally reduced, racial stereotypes could also be reduced,” Meyer-Lindenberg said.

    Another interesting thing learned from this study: although children with Williams may lack street smarts, they do hold gender stereotypes just as strongly as normal children.

    Meyer-Lindenberg says that we now know that “gender and race are processed by different brain mechanisms,” Meyer-Lindenberg said. Other researchers have learned that in the brains of people with WS, the amygdala — where our emotions reside — fails to respond to social threats. While the amygdala is normal, it is misdirected by the pre-frontal cortex — the CEO of the brain — to block all social anxiety.

    Scientists theorize that this interaction in the brain affects racism, but it does not seem to play a role in the formation of gender stereotypes.

    Meyer-Lindenberg and his colleagues at the University of Heidelberg are using brain imaging to get a clearer picture of how racism and sexism are differentiated in the brain.

    The German study was published in the journal Current Biology.

    Click here to read the complete article I read on MSNBC.

    Clyde will return this Sunday – in the meantime, share your comments with me about this article.

    Let me know what you think:

    • Is racism due to nature or nurture? Do we learn it or is it biological?
    • If it is biological, can we do anything about it?
    • And what are the implications of this research? Will we soon have a”pill” available that eliminates racism?

  • Health care reform: A Start?

    The events of the past few weeks have made it very hard for me to be a proud American. But not for the reasons you may think!

    I’m still not sure how I feel about the health care reform. I know I was for the original draft. I’m still one of those guys who believe that just as our schools, fire and police departments and libraries function on a “universal” way of paying them – i.e., taxes. Our health care system would survive just fine if we adopted a plan similar to France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Canada or Great Britain.

    These do not all function on a “universal” platform, but what they all have in common is that they have stopped trying to make a profit off of someone else’s illness.

    All of these countries have fared well on the World Health Organization rankings for health care systems. We are a dismal 37 on that list. Is there no one else bothered by the fact that as great a country as this is, there are 36 other places in the world that have a better health care system than ours?

    When you compare a country’s health care system to ours – let’s use Greece for example – Greece has about as many doctors as we have pastors and priests. Medical school is free in Greece and of course you know that not only is medical school costly in America, but lobbyists have even sought to control the enrollment and federal funding for it here. Those in Greece live longer, have better access to preventative medication and don’t suffer the insurance “fights” we have to for coverage.

    It should be a crime in our country for someone to die only because our health care system failed them. It should be a crime that someone dies because we allowed an insurance company to refuse payment. And no one should die in our country because they couldn’t afford the cure.

    It seems that we have taken a hands off approach to health care in that, “if it doesn’t affect my family – oh well!”

    I was watching a local newscast in Detroit a few weeks ago and a Republican member of Congress mentioned that he was against the health care reform bill and later in the same conversation bragged of being a cancer survivor. The reporter conducting the interview challenged the congressman on his stance with the health care bill by saying, “It seems that you are one of the lucky ones. What if you couldn’t afford the cancer treatments? I guess then I’d be talking with someone else …”

    As I said earlier, I thought that I was for this bill. It started to change and even after reading and searching through the entire proposed reform bill – something we independents like to call research – it dawned on me that most of this bill doesn’t even go into affect until 2015!

    That’s a problem!

    It seems that there are many items that will “pop up” or take effect down the road long after we’ve forgotten about it. No explanation was given for this.

    And then, the president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield endorsed this bill.

    That’s a huge problem.

    Insurance companies (HMOs in particular) created this problem and have been the enemies since the 70’s. For Blue Cross and Blue Shield to give it the thumbs up, means something is wrong.

    And finally, the passage of this bill exposed the “ugliest” part of our capitalistic society. It showed that the men and women placed in Congress – by our votes – could be bought.

    Congress said things, did things and wasted many tax dollars to only get paid for their services through donations from the private sector. No one (Republicans or Democrats) has written any legislation to stop this madness. Why is it just “OK” for a senator to waste tax player money filibustering on a subject he really is out of touch with? Then after all is said and done, we find that said senator has received a generous donation from the industry he filibustered for.

    All in all, I believe that the health care reform bill is better than what we had. More Americans will receive health care coverage and the denials for preexisting conditions should eventually go away.

    With that said, before we can really make strides in our health care system, we must all first CARE.

  • Yes, we really can!

    This week I decided to try something a little different and let a friend of mine take the podium. And her topic dovetails nicely with a post I am writing for next week.

    Ann Richardson is a friend (disclaimer) and a former colleague of mine from my newspaper days. She shares a lot of my views and we both think it is because we share the same birthday! Enjoy!

    And stay tuned for next Sunday’s post when I share my two cents worth with you about the great health care reform debate!

    If you’ve been watching the news lately, it’s no secret that obesity in the United States has exploded. Recent statistics say that over half of all adults in the U.S. are either overweight or obese.

    And unfortunately, obesity is becoming all too common in our children, too – disproportionately affecting minority kids (African American, Native American, and Hispanic).

    Being overweight as a kid increases the risk of developing high cholesterol, hypertension, respiratory ailments, orthopedic problems, depression, and Type 2 diabetes.

    In 2000, the total cost of obesity for children and adults in the United States was estimated to be $117 billion ($61 billion in direct medical costs).

    We need to do something – NOW – because all of this is preventable.

    I was delighted to hear that Michelle Obama has made it her own personal crusade to fight childhood obesity during her tenure as First Lady.

    Mrs. Obama has at least one ally in her fight – and he lives in Boulder, Colorado.

    I learned about Rob Nagler when I ran across an article in Sunset magazine about the nonprofit organization he founded whose goal is to make walking and biking to school a part of every kid’s daily routine.

    According to the article in Sunset, in 1969 about 88% of kids who lived within a mile of their grade schools either walked or biked to school. Today, only about 16% do.

    That’s a statistic that Nagler decided to help change – starting with his own two kids and their classmates at their Boulder, Colorado school.

    Nagler, a computer engineer, found a way to track kids who rode their bikes or walked to school by installing a solar-powered scanning device at school. The device reads an ID tag placed on a child’s backpack or bike helmet and uploads the data into an online database.

    Each child (and the school) can track their progress – and keep tabs on the “incentives” that each kid earns as he/she racks up the miles. The incentives are small, but fun – like colored plastic bracelets that denote a different level of achievement; stickers; and the ultimate in cool prizes: an iPod.

    Boltage is a very successful program. Fifteen schools in four states have installed the devices and have programs of their own.

    But don’t take my word for it: check out the scoreboard on their site.

    As of Dec. 1, 2009, the kids have:

    • Walked/biked more than 258,000 miles
    • Burned more than 9.2 million calories
    • Saved 24, 306 gallons of gasoline
    • Made 184,423 round trips between home/school
    • Saved 482,083 lbs. of carbon

    Pretty impressive!

    The kids love it.

    And they’re learning to make exercise part of their daily routine – while reaping the health benefits of an active lifestyle and doing what they can to help the environment.

    Boltage’s goal is to reach 40,000 public schools – will your school be the next one to start a program?

    If you want to start a Boltage program at your local school, click this link to the Boltage website.  If you want to read more about the Boltage story, click this link to a PDF copy of the story I read in Sunset magazine.

    

  • Food: Do you know what you’re eating?

    I’ve been doing some research as of late to determine what type of diet would work best for me in the upcoming year. You see I diet for at least the first quarter of the year and then quit — another story and another blog.

    Anyway, I discovered some things that made me really think about the places I eat and the entrée’s I order.

    Without getting specific to any food chain, I’m wondering how many of you know that many sit-down restaurants have regular meals that far exceed 1,200 calories. I mean if you were to go to one of these chains and order  say a gourmet turkey burger with fries and a diet beverage, you would be consuming, in that one meal (even if you only eat half the fries), more than 1,000 calories!  On the other hand, if you ate a burger from one of the popular fast food restaurants, you would need some fries to equal the calorie count of the gourmet turkey burger.

    I was shocked by this. I thought that eating in a sit-down restaurant was healthier than eating at a fast-food restaurant. It really depends on what you eat, but the fast-food chains have gotten much better with their menus than some of the sit-down places.

    Another shocker was that some restaurants offer you a nice, thick, juicy steak, but they don’t tell you that their steak carries carbohydrates. Meat shouldn’t have carbs unless it’s breaded. I’ve never seen a breaded New York strip steak. This would be a nightmare for a diabetic. Say the diabetic is counting their carbs (as any good diabetic would do) and they didn’t want to go over 75 carbs. This diabetic would count the carbs in the baked potato or rice pilaf, but would not expect to have to count 22 carbs hidden in the meat!

    The carbs in this meat would be the food additives allowed by that “food safety governing body” to preserve the meat for an extended period. They say it’s safe. Unfortunately, these restaurants are not required to submit nutritional information on the menu. The state of New York has made this mandatory for their restaurants. Every state should adopt this law.

    I guess the gripe here is that you have lots of folks who sincerely want to lose weight and without accurate nutritional information, they are destined to over-eat.

    Some might be thinking that if they knew the risks, some would still partake and that’s a fair assessment. However, if just 13 percent of the obese population would lose weight because they had nutritional information at their finger tips, would it be worth it?

    Or even better, what if our insurance premiums were lowered as you lost weight. What a novel concept!

    We need to know where our food comes from and how it’s processed. This should be common knowledge in our country.

    As great a country as America is, we could solve the obesity problem. Unfortunately what’s happening is that too many industries are benefiting from the “fat” in America and once that happens, things never seem to get better.

    Our food is not grown anymore, it’s engineered. And are we to believe that additives can’t be placed in our food to make us healthy, speed up our metabolism or burn fat? Sure it could. But look at all of the money that would be lost if we totally eliminated obesity: Some forms of hypertension, cancer, diabetes, high cholesterol, strokes and heart disease, to name a few. We won’t totally wipe out these diseases, but wow what a dent we could make.

    I guess all we can hope for now is to buy organic and hope that the new heads of that “food safety governing body” get a conscience from somewhere and use their power for the good of us all and not just to line their own pockets. Here is the link to Food, Inc.’s website:

    http://www.foodincmovie.com/index.php

    I would also recommend the documentary, “Supersize Me.” Watch it for FREE at Hulu.com. Here is the link: http://www.hulu.com/watch/63283/super-size-me.