Archive for April, 2010

Forgive me if you’re not in the U.S. – I’m going to comment on our historic new piece of legislation the media calls ObamaCare. It’s the biggest piece of socialized government ever foisted on the American public, by the most liberal president we’ve ever had.

The states are quickly lining up en masse to sue the federal government. Employers are panicking at the way their costs will rise, losing benefits for offering private health care plans. Our government will become the nightmarish bureaucracy that I remember from my childhood waiting for hours and hours in military hospitals for a prescription—only worse.

The new bill mandates that 85% of each dollar go to the claim, and 15% go to overhead/reserves. Currently private insurance companies have an average of 60% of each dollar going to claims and 40% to overhead/reserves. Essentially it’s a mandate that all insurance companies go out of business. The government won’t mind, though. It has made itself a massive new function: becoming the single option for healthcare for millions. It’s government at its worst—creating functions for itself, crippling the private sector, and always doing it worse than the private sector could do it.

Pre-existing conditions are just fine, you can still qualify for insurance. So now, simply wait to get insurance until you get cancer. (Which isn’t really “insurance,” is it?) This eliminates the funds that underpin insurance, where a pool of 100 healthy people paying into the pot funds the 1 sick person. Now there won’t be all the healthy people paying in.

And, there’s no limit on cancer treatment. So now, a person has a $250K limit? If she needs care up to $10 million (easy enough to do—I have a friend whose hemophiliac son’s care costs $1 million annually), that funding has to come from somewhere—and Obama’s math simply doesn’t account for this.

My point is that we are a nation of sick, tired, obese people. Two-thirds of us. If we continue at our current rate, every single American will be overweight in 25 years. (I’m sure that will never happen, but the point is that we’re on a freight train and the end of the tracks are in sight.)

You know I don’t usually like doom and gloom. I usually stay on the bright and sunny side of health and nutrition.

There’s a point to all this. What’s the answer?

I’ll go into it tomorrow. But the point is, I don’t have all the answers—but we’re asking the wrong question.

The headline in my paper, Mar. 26, is “Up to a Third of Breast Cancer Cases Could be Avoided.” Western countries could avoid 25 to 30 percent of breast cancer cases if they ate less and exercised more.

(That’s lowest-common-denominator stuff. What if they not only got thinner and exercised, but they ate POWERFULLY HEALING RAW PLANT FOODS EN MASSE EVERY DAY? Then how much breast cancer would be avoided? Two thirds? Almost all? I don’t know—but it’s exciting to think about.)

Carlo La Vecchia, head of epidemiology at University of Milan, said that what can be achieved with screening has been achieved, and now it’s time to move on to other ideas. Like prevention with nutrition.

The research discussed by researchers at a conference in Spain (sponsored by an agency of The World Health Organization) revolved around what is known about breast cancer AND what a sensitive subject it is.

Who wants to “blame” breast cancer patients for their disease? Certainly not their oncologists. Not me either! If you’re reading this and have breast cancer, I just want you to get well!

On the other hand, would any breast cancer victim deny those 7 out of 8 women who haven’t contracted the disease the opportunity to avoid it? To have the information necessary?

Your chance of contracting this disease is 60% higher if you’re overweight. In 2008, 40,000 women died in the U.S. and 90,000 in Europe. The more fat tissue you have, the more estrogen you produce—fueling excesses that put you at risk for this ugly disease dreaded by women everywhere.

We can’t avoid teaching people how to avoid breast and other cancers (and our #1 killer, heart disease) because we don’t want to hurt their feelings telling them it could have been avoided.

For the sake of everyone else, and for the survivors who have the chance to make lifestyle changes, let’s talk about prevention rather than just mammograms and chemo and radiation.

If we are going to continue to put up with outrageous rates of women cutting off , burning, and poisoning their breasts, well, we have to look at completely insane solutions like ObamaCare.

But if we’re willing to abandon the insanity and become calm, logical, and practical about our health, we must begin the journey back to our roots.

Back to the days when breast cancer was very rare.

The days when we ate greens, vegetables, fruits, from our gardens. When we also ate legumes, whole grains, clean animal protein in the winter, cultured milk and vegetables assisting our digestion and immunity. We didn’t have as much variety and choices. But we made our food in our homes, with simple, whole ingredients.

This is Chris, GSG webmaster, and Robyn is in Mexico, not Anaheim, sorry for posting the incorrect info.