Three famous doctors and one mega-Pastor have hatched a health plan.  It’s called “The Daniel Plan” and thousands at the Saddleback Church are losing weight and just plain getting healthier.  Here’s what’s happening at The Daniel Plan.

WHAT DO you get when you create a health team with a plan devoted to educating and encouraging people to improve their health, and the players are Dr. Oz, Dr. Hyman, Dr. Amen and Pastor Rick Warren, among others?

Answer:  The Daniel Plan.

Well, unless you’re a member Pastor Rick’s Saddleback Church, that answer begs the question:

“What’s the Daniel Plan?”

Answer: A health strategy with the medical input of heart surgeon Doctor Oz, functional medicine specialist Dr. Hyman and brain health expert Dr. Amen… and the spiritual guidance and community backing of Rick Warren, Pastor of one of the largest churches in the Nation, the Saddleback Church.

You may have heard about Rick Warren from his national best seller, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?.  Rick Warren has, and continues to sell, so many copies of this book that he not only does not take a salary from the church, but also donates most of his earnings to charity.

So, I would venture to suggest, that the man’s heart is in the right place, even if I can’t bend my mind to his religiosity.

(No, I don’t really think it’s “God’s Prescription for Your Health” as one particular byline states, nor do I think anything humans can do would “glorify God” as the byline on the web site suggests.  But, right down here on earth, The Daniel Plan sure could be your prescription to improve your health!)

Why The Daniel Plan?

The reason I’m writing about the Daniel Plan is because several thousand adherents to the plan are losing weight and getting healthier.

It’s obvious that the plan’s methodology is working, and that should be no surprise given the input of those aforementioned doctors, as well as the ability of Pastor Rick to exhort his flock to follow the righteous health path.

And it’s that last point, I think, that’s the real key to success – having a “flock” and a “path”.  The flock is a group of like-minded, connected individuals who support each other along a proven path that leads to health.

This approach has a statistically higher chance of success than trying any behavior modification program by yourself and of your own construction.

The Daniel Plan embraces “The Simple Six” Core Principles:

1. CONNECT for Success – Get in touch with your health and with others!
2. RELY on God’s Power – Willpower is not enough. You need God’s power.
3. EAT Delicious Whole Foods – Imagine the Garden of Eden as your food source.
4. MOVE Your Way to Health – Get going. The more exercise, the more energy!
5. THINK Sharper and Smarter – Better brain health = better life!
6. HEAL for Life – Make a game plan for permanent changes that heal.

Given that this plan speaks to church-going folks and is animated by a church pastor, the agnostics and atheists among you might allow the Plan its principle #2.  Certainly, it can’t hurt to believe that a power greater than yours is guiding you past the fridge at midnight.

Check out the success stories, and this video full of testimonials which looks like this —->

(Suggest you allow the stream to load before playing the video otherwise it may be choppy.)

And here’s a success story about Chef Jenny Ross.

UPDATE: Dr. Hyman in the HuffPost today (1/31/12) reports the following Daniel Plan results:

“Not only were there estimated weight reductions of 250,000 pounds but also equal reductions in medication use, hospitalizations and doctors visits. And it was free.

In a survey after 10 months of the program, participants reported the following:

An average weight loss of 13.5 pounds (and 18 pounds for those who said they followed the program closely)
72 percent of those who wanted to lose weight did
53 percent reported increased energy levels
34 percent reported better sleep
27 percent improvement in blood work
20 percent reported improvement in blood pressure
11 percent reported reduction in medications
31 percent reported improvement in mood

Those who did the plan together lost twice as much weight as those who did it alone.”

There’s a rich amount of information at The Daniel Plan site.  The program is comprised of Eat, Move, Think, Heal and Connect, each with all the component parts necessary to get healthy.

For example:

Eat delves into nutrition, recipes, budgets and Superfoods.

Move gets into motivation and fitness programs for an individual and family.

Think presents the information helpful to understand behavior modification and brain health.

Heal speaks to mental health, hormones, energy, weight, skin, etc.

Connect ties in success stories, God and community.

The search function also brings up lots of information for a particular query. For instance, I searched at the site for “weight loss” and got these results:

The Daniel Plan Conquer Your Cravings
Studies show that people who maintain weight loss eat a healthy breakfast. Add
a dash of cinnamon. This fragrant spice has been found to help regulate blood …

The Daniel Plan Eating Out Rules
I’m going to order a salad to lose weight and be healthy. Because I’m … Often we fool ourselves into thinking that, “if I eat a salad, I’ll lose weight and be healthy.

The Daniel Plan – Food Groups
Calories, Hyman · Calories Count, Amen · Get Dunked · Why Most Diets Don’t Work ·

The Daniel Plan Shopping List
National Weight Control Registry · Why Most Diets Don’t Work

The Daniel Plan Vitamin Supplements
Sleep more soundly, lose weight and improve your overall health and vitality.

The Daniel Plan Recommended Foods
Calories Count, Amen · Get Dunked · National Weight Control Registry · Why Most Diets Don’t Work

The Daniel Plan – Get Your Kids Involved Early
7 Tips to Lose Weight · Calories, Hyman · Calories Count, Amen · Get Dunked · National Weight Control Registry · Why Most Diets Don’t Work

The Daniel Plan Main Dishes
Two bricks, individually wrapped in aluminum foil, make the best heavy weight for pressing …

If you’ve gotten this far without clicking over to The Daniel Plan, might as well fulfill your curiosity now.  Here’s the link.

Related posts:

1. Dr Oz and the 14-Day Reboot Diet Plan
2. Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead — The Reboot Plan
3. Niko Alm and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

Do you know which foods you eat contain genetically modified substances?  No, you don’t, because unlike in Europe – where GMO foods are banned — the Monsanto-friendly FDA in America says “no labeling required”.  Should you be concerned?

WHAT DO you think of a large, rich, strong, politically connected company that seems to be hell bent on controlling the world’s food supply?

Wonder how such a company could do this?

How ‘bout by creating their own patented seeds that appeal to large corporate farmers because they are disease and pest resistant.  This angle takes care of market demand because the farmers produce greater yield and save on pesticides.  (A short-sighted benefit given that under this model, farmers can not save their own seeds, but must buy from Monsanto each year.)

At the same time, a company bent on controlling food production needs to ensure it’s got the legal and political cover to protect its rights to the seed, so that when such seeds pollinate the land of farmers who have not purchased it, the company can demand payment and threaten legal action. Which Monsanto has done. Goliath against David, although this time Goliath usually wins.

Diabolical strategy.  Unfortunately, this is not fiction.

This is the story by the reviled Monsanto and its GMO venture.  “GMO” – genetically modified organism, which in this case are the seeds that have genetically altered, but which, nonetheless, have been declared by America’s FDA (“Food and Drug Administration”) to not be materially different from non-GMO seeds. The FDA says GMO is safe.

How did the FDA come to that conclusion?

Well, apparently they didn’t.  Recently, thousands of memos have been uncovered that show ample evidence for a contrary conclusion, but this information was hidden. 

Why? 

Could be that the then head of the FDA’s policy was a former Monsanto attorney, who – after his stint with the FDA – jumped on the revolving door back to Monsanto as a Vice President.  A job well rewarded.

What makes the FDA’s position stranger is that Europe has banned GMO foods, and that many animals won’t eat it, including rats.  But Americas do, usually without knowing it, because in this country food labels need not specify that GMO ingredients are used.

There are many people and organizations devoted to bringing this matter to the public’s attention.  If just a small percentage of consumers refused to buy GMO foods, the food manufactures would not use them, and the farmers would not grow them, and – most sweet of all – Monsanto’s plan for world-wide food domination would be terminally pissed upon.

Monsanto would no longer have reason to sue farmers that did not buy their GMO seeds, but whose farms were so pollinated.  Monsanto could go back to producing and selling seeds as Nature made them.

The Institute for Responsible Technology and the Organic Consumers Association are two of many organizations fighting against the Goliath Monsanto and  GMOs in the US.

The Institute for Responsible Technology’s web site will get you up to speed on this issue and suggest how you can do your part to ensure that no one company dominates our food chain with a product that not only may be inferior and harmful to Nature’s seeds, but could eventually overtake them.

Organic Consumers Association has a very informative newsletter that you can subscribe to.  The recent article is entitled: Monsanto Nation: Taking Down Goliath.

If you have a creative bent, how about participating in the No GMO T-shirt Design Challenge? Design an inspirational t-shirt around the theme of “food fight”. There are eight more days left to submit your design and/or vote on one you like.  You can learn about this, and check out the design submissions at the Food Fight Challenge.

 
Finally, if you need an extra push to get concerned, at minimum, or – better yet – get into gear and take action, then watch this short video that lays out the problem and the solution:

IT’S TIME FOR A FOOD FIGHT from NO GMO on Vimeo.

Related posts:

1. The Dirty Dozen and Clean 15 – Food to Live By (Watch)
2. Easily Avoid Cancerous Plastics and Food Containers (Bisphenol A) — Watch
3. Sunday Special: An Inconvenient Truth about Our Food — Watch

The Food Plate is in, and the Food Pyramid is history.  The healthy diet is simpler now, is better, and comes with a host of interactive tools that aim to suggest a diet that will work for you.  But there are a few issues I have with these tools.  If you’re muscular, you won’t get the correct advice.  And what’s with the milk!?

THE USDA released today their new food plate that replaces the old food pyramid.  As I wrote in The New Food Pyramid is a Plate, the Obama administration, in part lead by Michelle Obama, has been studying how to remake the food pyramid so that information about diet is more relevant, useful and true.

This is the job of the new “Plate” which is divided into four sections – fruits, grains, proteins and vegetables, with a side of diary.  The statements alongside the Plate at ChooseMyPlate.gov are these:

Balancing Calories

● Enjoy your food, but eat less.

● Avoid over-sized portions.

Foods to Increase

● Make half your plate fruits and vegetables.

● Make at least half your grains whole grains.

● Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) milk.

Foods to Reduce

● Compare sodium in foods like soup, bread, and frozen meals ― and choose the foods with lower numbers.

● Drink water instead of sugary drinks.

Gone are any references to sugars, fats or oils, and what was once a category called “meat and beans” is now simply “proteins.” Next to the plate is a blue circle for dairy, which could be a glass of milk or a food such as cheese or yogurt.

Doesn’t seem like rocket science, does it?  But there’s a few things that are new and good to know, such as specifying that the grains you eat are “whole” grains, not the decimated white variety that constitutes the typical bread, bagel, pasta and pizza.  Or that half the Plate should be fruits and veggies, not white grains.

There’s more, much more at the site that might be useful to people not well versed in what constitutes healthy diets, such as information for specific audiences (pregnant women, preschoolers, kids, weight loss), information for professionals, multimedia presentations, and interactive tools.

I jumped into Interactive Tools.

Interactive Tools

Here’s what’s presented in Interactive Tools:

Daily Food Plan – Get a personalized plan just for you.  Quick access to food info – food groups, calories & comparisons.

Daily Food Plans for Preschoolers – Get your child’s Plan today.

Food Tracker – Feedback on your food and physical activity.

Daily Food Plans for Moms – Start out right as a new mom or mom-to-be.

Food Planner – Plan what to eat to help reach your personal goals.

I decided to try the Daily Food Plan. I entered my stats, age, gender, weight, amount of daily physical activity and came up with this warning:

“The weight you entered is above the healthy range for your height. This may increase your risk for health problems. Some people who are overweight should consider weight loss. Click here (new window) for more information about health risks and whether you should try to lose weight, or talk with your health care provider.”

This is the long-winded version of what I usually get when using the BMI calculation, which truncates the above message into something like, “You’re Overweight”.

That’s because neither of these systems accounts for muscle mass.  Muscle weighs about 40% more than fat and if you have more than the average bear, the extra pounds associated with the muscle is measured as fat.

I’m not being delusional.  At 6’4”, I have a 36” waist and 46” chest – not the data sample for someone who needs to “talk with your health provider.”  But according to the BMI calculation and that used to determine the Daily Food Plan, 215 pounds is too heavy for me.

Why Milk?

My next pet peeve is this American love affair with milk.  People, the milk referred to here is made by cows.  Cows make the milk for calves, not people.  OK, maybe 1% or 2% milk will help you avoid growing the three pounds a day that a calf does, but why is it so valuable to one’s diet that it’s included in the new Food Plate?  Is it simply a matter of the diary lobby?

Diets for Kids

For some reason, the individually created diet plans for kids still uses the now jettisoned pyramid symbol.  I inputted data for my niece, Isa, when she was five years old for the pre-schooler diet plan.

The inputs are age, gender, and amount of daily physical activity.  This is the result for Isa:

Note that at the bottom of the pyramid are the amounts by weight of each of the new Plate food categories that are thought to be correct for Isa.  (Again, just don’t get the milk thing.)  What you can’t read is that statement at the bottom, which says:

“This Plan is a 1600 calorie food pattern. It is based on average needs for a 5 year old girl who is active more than 60 minutes a day. Your preschooler’s food needs also depend on how fast she is growing and other factors. Your child’s doctor can track her height and weight over time to identify specific needs. A preschooler should not be urged to eat these exact amounts — their needs may differ from the average.”

My 2 Cents

Overall, I’m pleased with the new Plate given the supporting material at ChooseMyPlate, the government site from which I’ve been getting the above information.  If people are willing to be guided by it, this country may divert the mounting health catastrophe that lies before us.  (If you think I exaggerate, read my five-part series on obesity staring with, The Seriously Serious Problems of Obesity.)

My two nits have already been mentioned:

1. The tool for determining if you’re overweight and thus what your diet should be does not take into account those who are muscular; and
2. Milk is not some panacea food… some people do not well digest milk sugars, and there are many healthy alternatives, such as almond milk, hemp milk (if you’re the milky type) or simply water.

Do let your friends know about the The New Food Plate, particularly those who could use a nudge in a healthy direction, and most certainly for those who have overweight children who make the rules about what gets bought at the grocery store.

Yep.

Related posts:

1. The New Food Pyramid is a Plate
2. On a Budget? Good, Healthy Food is Often Cheaper (Watch)
3. Six Best of 2010 — Food, Diet and Nutrition

As the New York Times puts it: “Goodbye to the Food Pyramid, Hello to the Dinner Plate”.

This pyramid is on its way out.

UPDATE:  Yes, it’s Thursday, June 2, 2011, and as the USDA promised, the new Food Plate has launched in all its glory, which you can read about (after getting prepped below) at Yes, Choose My Plate!.

THE OBAMA administration is about to bury the food pyramid and launch a more relevant, instructive and simpler food plate, to be revealed in all its glory on Thursday, May 2, 2011.

Nutritionists by and large will not mourn the end of the pyramid, for although it has been recognized by millions of American kids and parents, it’s been considered to be too confusing and woefully flawed.  Flawed because it did not distinguish between healthy foods like whole grains and fish and the rather unhealthy foods such as white bread (white anything, really, foodwise!) and bacon.

Could the new food "plate" to replace the "pyramid" look like this?

The detail of this new plate icon will not be revealed till Thursday, but I for one am eagerly awaiting it with the hope that it will, indeed, be clearer and more instructive than the pyramid.

But it might not matter much.

I don’t want to be negative about this, but are Americans’ diets really guided by any food pyramid, plate or even the exhortations of their doctors?

Empiricism suggests not; rather the real influencers seem to be price, convenience and marketing.  The new “plate” will not overcome such powerful instigators.

I hope I’m wrong.

(If you just can’t wait till Thursday to find out what’s good to eat, check out my posts, Diet 101 and A Blueprint for Eating Right.)

Related posts:

1. Yes, Choose My Food Plate!
2. Mind Over Food — 7 Steps for Food Control
3. Six Best of 2010 — Food, Diet and Nutrition

Consumer Reports has added another service – Consumer Reports Health – to help demystify what is good and not so good for your health.  Take a look at what they’re offering.

I’M NOT in the business of hawking other people’s stuff, but I’d like to share an email from Consumer Reports with you that my sister just forwarded to me.

Consumer Reports declares itself to be an unbiased reviewer of many things that we buy.  For some, it’s the consumer bible about effectiveness, durability, quality, etc., particularly from a comparative perspective – one product vs another.

Consumer Reports is now offering ConsumerReportsHealth.org for $9 per year (first year).  As they say in the email:

“ConsumerReportsHealth.org provides objective, evidence-based Ratings for medical treatments, drugs and natural medicines. We rate health products and services with the same expertise and independence we use to rate cars, electronics and appliances for more than 70 years. And as long as you remain 100% satisfied you will receive the benefits of automatic renewal with continuous access to ConsumerReportsHealth.org”

Here are examples of the information that would be made available:

As someone who blogs about health matters, I can tell you first-hand that there’s a lot of conflicting and confusing information out there in the marketplace.  This might be helpful.  Know that I haven’t used the service, yet, and would not be compensated in any way by Consumer Reports if you subscribed.

If you have used this service, please let us know what you think in the Comments section below.

Related posts:

1. Newsweek’s Ms. Begley’s Five Health Care Lies
2. Debunking Health Care Mythmaking with Healthcare Journalist J.R. Reid
3. Health Advice for Women (and men) – A Sauvignon Tale

Aubrey de Grey says we can avoid aging.  OK… well… who is Aubrey de Grey, and why does he think that humans can avoid aging?

Aubrey de Grey

FAMOUS BRITISH researcher on aging, Aubrey de Grey, claims he has drawn a road map to defeat biological aging.  He provocatively proposes that the first human beings who will live to 1,000 years old have already been born.

His plan (watch below) calls for identifying all the components that cause human tissue to age, and designing remedies for each of them — forestalling disease and eventually pushing back death. He calls the approach Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS).

As MIT puts it:

“Aubrey de Grey is a man of ideas, and he has set himself toward the goal of transforming the basis of what it means to be human.”  MIT Technology Review

Over the years, I’ve been bumping into Aubrey de Grey all over the Internet, particularly at TED.com.  The man is obviously brilliant and has compelling research to affirm his claims, which in part, boil down to the following explanation.

Aging begins before birth and happens as a side effect of metabolism, Aubrey claims.  Metabolism causes damage, but the damage is relatively minor for much of our lives until it accumulates sufficiently to manifest as some pathology (the scientific study of the nature of disease and its causes, processes, development, and consequences).  So, it goes like this:

Metabolism –> Damage –> Pathology

During the last 20 years of research, scientists have not found any other examples of, or reasons for aging other than these:

-          Cell loss/atrophy

-          Death-resistant cells

-          Nuclear mutations and epimutations

-          mtDNA mutations

-          Protein crosslinks

-          Junk inside cells

-          Junk outside cells

And thus these (above) are the very finite areas that must be controlled or extinguished in order for leap in longevity to occur.

What does all this mean to you?

Right now, not much… but if you want even a slim chance of living an extended lifespan, you must last long enough for age-reducing remedies to be developed for humans. (They’re already being tested on mice and other animals.)  That means, cleanse yourself, eat right, exercise and clean out the garbage in your head.

Watch a very bright and entertaining Aubrey de Grey hold court:

Some posts that will help flesh out this one:

Ray Kurzweil’s March to Extend Life

It’s Detox Time

Diet 101

The 4 Addictions – Which 1 is Yours?

The Homestead Workout — Watch

Related posts:

1. “How To Live Forever”, a new film by Mark Wexler
2. Watch: Aging… Let’s Slow it Down! (Barbara Walters)
3. Top 10 Health Posts of 2011

KEEPING WITH the week-long tradition of making Sunday’s post a billboard for interesting stuff written by others that I’d like highlight, today I submit for your delight:

– Dr. Patricia Fitzgerald’s take on the perturbing information about our food industry brought to national attention by the movie, Food, Inc.,

– Author Kathy Freston’s report on meat: Is it really that natural for us to eat?

– A rather unappetizing, but truthful video about how Pork Rinds are made.

An “inconvenient truth” about our food.

If you haven’t already seen Academy Award nominee, Food Inc., the startling and insightful documentary about how food is made in America, you owe it to yourself to go rent the DVD and then proceed to get outraged.

Go ahead… let it all out.  Catharsis is good!

Learn about  bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won’t go bad… which sounds pretty good until you consider the new strains of e coli (the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually), the widespread obesity (66% of us overweight or obese) and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults and children.

Check out the trailer for Food, Inc., and then read Dr. Patrica Fitzgerald’s insights about this important documentary:

Shattering the meat myth

Think that humans always ate meat and thus it’s as natural as breathing and shouldn’t be altered?  Well, there’s strong evidence contrary to that view.

Author Kathy Freston reports in this post, Shattering The Meat Myth: Humans Are Natural Vegetarians, that through most of our history human beings had diets very much like great apes – mostly a plant-based diet, drawing on foods picked with our hands. Research suggests that meat-eating probably began by scavenging the leftovers that carnivores had left behind.  This dramatically changed when humans began raising their own food: animals, fruits, vegetables and cereals.

Pork Rinds

They contain the three food ingredients we love – fat, sugar and salt – and when you add the crunch, pork rinds can be pretty irresistible to some palettes.

Wanna see how one company converts about 120 million pounds of pork skin into 40 million pounds of pork rind?

Well, in case you haven’t seen Food, Inc. and thereby have gotten enough behind-the-scenes industrial food production footage to last a lifetime, here’s a video for you:

Related posts:

1. Six Best of 2010 — Food, Diet and Nutrition
2. On a Budget? Good, Healthy Food is Often Cheaper (Watch)
3. Monsanto, GMOs and the Food Fight Challenge — Watch

A great job in creating awareness, but has the Susan G. Komen for the Cure organization lost its way, or is spending its funds appropriately?

[Update: Research has also shown that Curcumin, the active ingredient in the common spice, Turmeric, has properties that also reduce the expression of these deadly molecules within cancer cells and can potentially slow the spread of breast cancer.  Story here.]

The “Pink Ribbon” campaign has made the public very aware of breath cancer.  Even NFL players wear pink wrist bands and cleats to bring attention to the disease.  This is great, because America loses 40,000 women a year to breast cancer.

Awareness we have, but what has been done to reduce the incidence of breast cancer?

Those pink ribbons have been slapped on many different products, some of which experts say may actually may augment the incidence of breast cancer, such as fast food (Kentucky Fried Chicken) and alcohol (wine bottles), the consumption of which is a proven risk behavior for breast cancer.

If marketing could cure breast cancer, there would be a cure, says Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action, who once had the disease.  A lot of money has been raised without a corresponding reduction in the breast cancer rate, she affirms.  In fact, the Susan G. Komen organization – the world’s largest breast cancer charity —  has raised about $1.5 billion for research since its inception in 1982.

Is the money being spent effectively?

I often wonder about this because it seems that every month, a few hundred women dressed in pink walk past my home, as they raise money for this dreaded disease.  I see that the cars honk as they pass by.  I see how righteous everybody feels who is walking and assisting those walking.  And behind each walker is a bunch of people who put up some amount of money per mile that the pink-clad walker walks.

What’s happening to the money?  Is it subsidizing pharmaceutical companies that seek to make drugs that they will solve for thousands of dollars?  Is it being spent on marketing?

NPR’s Jacki Lyden interviewed Barbara Brenner of nonprofit Breast Cancer Action to get her perspective on the subject.  Brenner criticized Susan G. Komen and their corporate sponsors for “raising awareness,” but taking little action.

Lyden also spoke to Katrina McGhee, of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, who defended the organization’s record, citing a reduction of mortality of 31% over the last two decades, and essentially curing early stage breast cancer.

Listen to the interview below (transcript here) and then please speak your mind by telling us what you think in the Comments section below.

Related posts:

1. Dr. Oz on Preventing Breast Cancer (Watch Video)
2. Can Dairy Cause Breast Cancer? Prostate Cancer?
3. Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests

Some ordinary people think so, but (apparently) few in the medical establishment.

Jim Simpson and his Hemp Oil

JIM SIMPSON is an ordinary guy that has devoted his life to making “hemp oil”, distributing it freely and campaigning for the government (Canadian) to recognize that it cures cancer.

He must feel alone, cause it seems very, very few of the “officials” we rely on will address his claim, much less back it.

However, Mr. Simpson does have the sworn affidavits of four dozen people who claim they’ve been cured of cancer and/or other pernicious ailments.  He also  has the testimony of a few courageous medical doctors.  Very few.

The hemp oil referred to here is not the kind you can buy in a health food store to dress up your salad — it has none of the THC (the main psychoactive substance in the cannabis plant) that is thought to be theraputic; rather the hemp oil (often referred to as “hash oil“) allegedly used to cure disease is the stuff with THC.   Your grocer doesn’t sell it.  And smoking marijuana will not deliver the goods.

I have no idea about the veracity of the claims made by Jim Simpson, his associates and “patients”.  But I found the video to be persuasive enough to want you to know about the possibility of hemp, or hash, oil having curative properties.  If interested, go to the link below and watch the video.

Here’s the link to the video

Related posts:

1. Dr. Oz on Preventing Breast Cancer (Watch Video)
2. Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests
3. Can Dairy Cause Breast Cancer? Prostate Cancer?

Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move obesity guidelines and report to the president

REGULAR READERS of this blog know that I follow the obesity dilemma that has overtaken the USA, especially among our children.

For if the current trajectory is not disrupted, this new generation will be far less healthy than their parents; in fact, the diabetes epidemic could dramatically reduce their quality of life, reduce their lifespan and wreck the health care system.

Sounds dire because it is.

This has become First Lady’s Michelle Obama’s clarion call. As I wrote about here, she is the face and bully pulpit behind the Let’s Move campaign to draw attention to and solutions for an overweight generation where one of three children are overweight or obese.

One in three!

Studies find that about 1 in 5 children becomes overweight or obese by age 6, and that more than half of obese children become overweight before the age of 2. Nearly 6 percent of infants younger than six months are overweight, the report says, up from 3.4 percent between 1980 and 2001.

After spending a few months marshaling resources to study, investigate, exhort, the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has delivered its report to the president: Solving the Problem of Childhood Obesity within a Generation.

There are about 70 recommendations in this report, such as this: Women could help reduce childhood obesity by maintaining a healthy weight when they become pregnant and by breast-feeding their babies.

Mrs. Obama has said she wants to help solve the problem in a generation so babies born today will come of age at a healthy weight. The report says that could happen if childhood obesity rates dropped to 5 percent by 2030.

Here’s a look at the report’s table of contents; perhaps there are nuggets in it for you:

Table of Contents

The Challenge We Face

I .Early Childhood

A.Prenatal Care

B.Breastfeeding

C.Chemical Exposures

D.Screen Time

E.Early Care and Education

II. Empowering Parents and Caregivers

A.Making Nutrition Information Useful

B.Food Marketing

C.Health Care Services

III. Healthy Food in Schools

A.Quality School Meals

B.Other Foods in Schools

C.Food-Related Factors in the School Environment

D.Food in Other Institutions

IV. Access to Healthy, Affordable Food

A.Physical Access to Healthy Food

B.Food Pricing

C.Product Formulation

D.Hunger and Obesity

Related posts:

1. Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” Campaign
2. The Seriously Serious Problems of Obesity, Cancer and Obesity
3. A Lesson from Dead Fitness Icons and Overweight Kids