The folks promoting the food documentary movie Fresh mentioned Mark Bittman’s TED speech in a recent blog posting. After watching Bittman’s talk from 2007, I searched the TED website to provide you a list of some of their best food related discussions.

As Dean Ornish points out in his short, rapid fire talk what we eat impacts our health. Each of the speakers make powerful points about our food system.

Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities | Video on TED.com

• Every day, in a city the size of London, 30 million meals are served. But where does all the food come from? Architect Carolyn Steel discusses the daily miracle of feeding a city, and shows how ancient food routes shaped the modern world.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/carolyn_steel_how_food_shapes_our_cities.html

Cary Fowler: One seed at a time, protecting the future of food | Video on TED.com

• The varieties of wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change. Cary Fowler takes us inside a vast global seed bank, buried within a frozen mountain in Norway, that stores a diverse group of food-crop for whatever tomorrow may bring.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food.html

Mark Bittman on what’s wrong with what we eat | Video on TED.com

• In this fiery and funny talk, New York Times food writer Mark Bittman weighs in on what’s wrong with the way we eat now (too much meat, too few plants; too much fast food, too little home cooking), and why it’s putting the entire planet at risk.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_what_we_eat.html

Eleni Gabre-Madhin on Ethiopian economics | Video on TED.com

• Economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin outlines her ambitious vision to found the first commodities market in Ethiopia. Her plan would create wealth, minimize risk for farmers and turn the world’s largest recipient of food aid into a regional food basket.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/elene_gabre_madhin_on_ethiopian_economics.html

Ann Cooper talks school lunches | Video on TED.com

• Speaking at the 2007 EG conference, “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper talks about the coming revolution in the way kids eat at school — local, sustainable, seasonal and even educational food.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches.html

Michael Pollan gives a plant’s-eye view | Video on TED.com

• What if human consciousness isn’t the end-all and be-all of Darwinism? What if we are all just pawns in corn’s clever strategy game to rule the Earth? Author Michael Pollan asks us to see the world from a plant’s-eye view.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html

Dean Ornish on the world’s killer diet | Video on TED.com

• Stop wringing your hands over AIDS, cancer and the avian flu. Cardiovascular disease kills more people than everything else combined — and it’s mostly preventable. Dr. Dean Ornish explains how changing our eating habits will save lives.
• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dean_ornish_on_the_world_s_killer_diet.html

By Deepak Chopra

Jeremiah Sullivan

How would you feel if you were told you had won $1 million? What if you only had a month to live? Information has the power to make you ecstatic or depressed in an instant. Deepak Chopra shows you how to gain control over the information and set your body free.

Why does bad news make us sad? Why does getting a raise make us want to celebrate? Not many people have thought about these questions. They seem too simple, yet in a way they are deeply mysterious.

In fact, the right answer can set your body free, while the wrong answer can prove to be an inescapable trap.

Right now, brain science can tell us part of the story. When someone tells you a piece of bad news (“Your bank account has been cleared out”), a different style of brain chemistry is activated from when you hear good news (“Congratulations, you got the job”). It isn’t possible to have an emotion of any kind without various neurotransmitters and other so-called messenger molecules that turn words into brain activity.

Brain researchers have been so excited by this discovery—that the brain “lights up” with every new experience—that only a few people have said: “Wait, you didn’t hit on the answer. You made the mystery harder to solve.”

And here’s why: How did mere words turn into chemicals? Information streams into your body every second. Not just “You got the job” or “Your bank account is empty,” but all the sights and sounds of the world. You cannot see or hear anything without the brain being activated at the chemical and electrical levels. Yet no one has the faintest idea how that magical transformation occurs. There’s enormous potential here for both good and bad. One person who gets bad news becomes devastatingly depressed while another quickly bounces back. One person becomes manic with good news and starts acting with irrational exuberance (think of the famous line from the movie Titanic: “I’m king of the world!”) while another person takes good news in stride.

Clearly you would be much better off if you had some control over the beneficial information that could transform your brain into a powerful resource for your own growth.

3 breakthroughs that can transform your life

It was a wonderful little bubble while it lasted. Getting up before dawn. Dressing in easy-to-peel layers for whatever the day might bring. Walking over to Boynton-McKay, a diner of rare perfection, where the wi-fi was as reliably good as the pancakes (a boon in connectivity-challenged Camden…) Ascending the stairs and more stairs of the town’s famous 19th century Opera House. A few minutes to mingle-navigate among tables of nibble-food before settling down for a morning of things worth thinking about.

But first, a little music. Logan Richardson’s soulful, playful, questioning sax riffs on “America the Beautiful” one day. Zoe Keating’s clear, deeply layered, architecturally precise, transcending cello pieces another. How lovely to start each day by not thinking. Just being. In the moment. Together. Brilliant.

And then it was off and running, from economics to education, urban decay to urban agriculture, environmental catastrophe to conservation hope, design theory to food design, cardboard robots to paper diagnostics, communications to comics, art to dance to music. To, to, to…

But as the last note of the Mark O’Connor-anchored jam session finale faded into festive applause and we trundled off in buses through the rainy dark to a cavernous transportation museum for one last party, the bubble had begun to weaken and thin. Faces, now familiar, circled by against an improbable backdrop of vintage automobiles, sci-fi bicycles and disconcertingly disembodied airplane parts.  A few final conversations and business cards. Some hugs and toasts. Promises to keep in touch, follow up, finish that thought. We stayed up until we couldn’t. By morning, the bubble was lost in the dazzling clarity of a New England fall day. One by one we left the the small town – Maine’s answer to Brigadoon – journeying back to the chaotic urgency of our daily lives. With each mile down the highway to Boston, and each minute in the sky back to Chicago, I could feel experiences recasting into memories, ready for sorting and analysis.

TAKE-AWAYS

Throughout the conference, Michelle Riggen-Ransom, Rachel Barenblat, and Ethan Zuckerman were absolutely brilliant live-blogging the talks and I recommend reading their posts, along with Kristen Taylor’s, on the PopTech blog to get a more detailed view of goings on.

Among the overarching themes: the serendipity of the amateur and the common sense of a cross-disciplinary approach. In short, the easiest way to see outside the box is to be outside the box.

Take, for example, the tale of the $12 computer (can be haggled down to $10). PopTech 2009 fellow Derek Lomas, who was working in India on”ethnographic design research on uses of mobile phones in urban and rural contexts,” found just such a miracle browsing a crowded electronics marketplace. It’s bare bones – hooks up to a television for a screen and runs on the 8-bit chip that powered 1980s-era Apple II computers and Nintendo game systems. So “vintage” is the tech, patents have run out, making it, for all intents and purpose, open source. Funded by a $180,000 MacArthur grant, Lomas and his collaborators the Playpower Foundation are developing software that combines educational aims with game-playing appeal. “It occurred to me that if this platform had just a few decent games, and one good typing game, it could be economically transformative,” notes Lomas, “because touch-typing can make a difference between earning a dollar a day or a dollar an hour.” Why invent an answer from scratch when you can assemble one cheaper? Innovation through shopping…

______________________________

Another theme: The most effective way to to trigger change is to provide a better alternative to the status quo.

For preventive medicine pioneer Dean Ornish, the shift from the “fear of dying to the joy of living is the key to the healthier future. For materials scientist Neri Oxman, it is moving from a Miesian reality where each building material has a specific function (steel for support, glass for light) to one inspired by Nature, where a single material yields a range of benefits (e.g., the structure of an egg shell evolved to provide strength as well as gas permeability). For clinical psychologist, Naif  Al-Mutawa, it is tackling Muslim stereotypes through the compelling comic book stories of Muslim superhero kids (“The 99″). Better is better.

MIT architect Sheila Kennedy, who has helped spearhead PopTech’s portable lighting project, points out the importance of opening up a space to new ways of thinking.  FLAP – Flexible Light & Power – is a Timbuk2 messenger bag outfitted with small solar array, battery and LED. A removable panel lined with reflective material amplifies the light from a tiny bulb cleverly tucked into a strap. AfriGadget’s Erik Hersman recently took some prototypes to Africa for field testing. But no matter whether a bag design turns out to be a viable answer or not, the thinking has shifted: Solar is not just for roofs and calculators any more. Now you can literally wear power on your sleeve.

______________________________

photo: Growing Power

Which segues into a third theme: Just add sunshine. Three ideas presented at the conference that are either dependent upon or inspired by photosynthesis have the potential to help significantly move the dial on climate change.

• Will Allen is a teacher and an inspiration for the potential of urban agriculture. His suite of Growing Power farms in Milwaukee and Chicago are designed as a series of nested ecosystems. Vermicomposting – turning garbage into wildly fertile worm castings – is the lynchpin. You start by creating soil so rich, it doesn’t require petro-based chemical additives.  From aquaponics set ups to raise fish by the thousands to a biodigester for converting food waste into energy, everything that can be harvested or recycled is. It is cleaner, healthier, oil-independent food system, with local “farm to fork” distribution networks designed to turn urban “food deserts” green.

• Willie Smits has plans for a similar polyculture fix, only rainforest-size. Trained in forestry, Smits career took a turn when he came across a sick orangutan in a Borneo market. Saving orangutans meant saving habitat, an increasingly difficult task when easy profits for palm oil led to wholesale conversion of ancient forests into modern superficially-efficient monocultures. Beyond the staggering loss of biodiversity, forest clearing fires, especially in peat-land forests, have led to “CO2 volcanoes,” spewing vast amounts of sequestered greenhouse gases skyward. Smits’ fix centers around the sugar palm, a short tree common in second-growth forest, which thrives only when grown as part of a polyculture and has a talent both for sequestering carbon (deep roots) and gushing a liquid that can be turned into sugar or ethanol. Smits has come up with a way to process the quick-to-ferment “juice” efficiently off-site. With the “juice” as the economic anchor, a suite of other forest products can also be sustainably harvested. Recently Smits set up a company, Tapergy, to implement his ideas. Notably, both Smits and Allen focus on jobs. Commodity monocultures destroy jobs and communities. Urban agriculture and tropical agroforestry create them.

• Chemist Daniel Nocera, by contrast, doesn’t want to raise plants but mimic them to generate vast amounts of energy. His epiphany: Plants routinely rebuild the mechanisms for splitting water in their leafy “fuel cells.” Scientists’ decades-long quest to find stable catalysts was not only futile but utterly misguided. Instead, his lab developed a resilient catalyst that could rebuild itself, making it possible to create both a better, cheaper fuel cell and process dirty water into drinkable water.

NEXT…

Perhaps the most exciting announcement at the conference was about a new fellows program for scientists, which takes us back to cross-disciplinary common sense. As the speaker list already demonstrates, science is an essential part of creating change for the greater good.

The further promote and support collaborations, some suggestions:

1) Develop a session or a workshop focused on tech transfer, focusing on both the legal and marketing angles.

2) Add data visualizations to the program and on the website showing connections between speakers. With such a multi-disciplinary list, connections transcend program groupings.  For example, Smits could just as logically been grouped with Michael Pollan and Will Allen.

3) Open the PopTech Creative Reuse Workshop at 8 a.m., one hour before the conference. Put out coffee as bait for early risers. I completely missed the workshop. The daily speaker sessions tended to go long, so there wasn’t much time to scoot over afterward. During breaks, the tendency was to mingle, network and nosh on site. Restaurants chosen for lunches were all located in the opposite direction.

4) Develop an online book store search-able by title, author and subject.

Now to wait for the videos to post, just in time for the long winter cozy season…

In his letter from the editor of Ode Magazine this month,  Jurriaan Kamp  points out that 70 percent of healthcare costs are spent on heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity–diseases that are not healed by drugs and medical technology.

His point is that these diseases can be reversed through proper diet–that a healthy diet is the best medicine.

Dean Ornish, author of The Spectrum Diet has also promoted this concept and has taken patients off of medication and reversed heart disease by putting them on a healthy diet.

I’ve seen this myself in many friends who have eliminated diabetes, reduced or eliminated heart medications through a combination of diet and exercise.  They look substantially different and their medical tests show they are measurably healthier.

The title of this post is exaggerated of course.  It takes more than just a change in diet to eliminate chronic diseases, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.

Change or Die: The Three Keys To Change At Work And In Life
Alan Deutschman
Harper Paperbacks (2007)

Deutschman asserts that both individuals and organizations are involved in a process of natural selection and will survive the competition only of they can adapt to their environment. According to Charles Darwin, “There is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, and it follows that any being, if it varies however slightly in any manner profitable to itself under the complex conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected.” Deutschman seems to believe (and I agree) that the process of evolution can serve as a case study of creative destruction. According to Joseph Schumpeter, it is a “process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one.” Creative destruction occurs when something new kills something older. For example, personal computers. The industry, led by Microsoft and Intel, destroyed many mainframe computer companies, but in doing so, entrepreneurs created one of the most important inventions of this century. Schumpeter asserts that the “process of creative destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.” Individuals as well as organizations must constantly adapt or they will fall behind and eventually perish.

Deutschman’s main topic in this book is “how to change when change isn’t coming naturally: when the difficulties persist. He identifies and then explains how to use three “keys” to release change from what James O’Toole has so aptly characterized (in Leading Change) as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of comfort.” Deutschman calls these keys the “Three Rs”: Relate (i.e. “Your form a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that inspires and sustains hope”), Repeat (i.e. “The new relationship helps you learn, practice, and master the new habits and skills that you need”), and Reframe (i.e. “The new relationship helps you learn new ways of thinking about your situation and your life”). Of special interest and value to me is Deutschman’s brilliant use of case study material that focuses on how people in three quite different categories – heart patients, criminals, and workers – eventually were able to achieve significant changes in how/what they thought, felt, and did. In each instance, there is a central figure who plays a prominent role, such as Dean Ornish who has been trying for three decades to change the health care system in the United States and Mimi Silbert who founded the Delancey Foundation project in 1971 to rehabilitate ex-felons, prostitutes, substance abusers, homeless, and others who have hit bottom. Leaders such as Ornish and Silbert are motivated by knowing that they can enjoy and improve lives right now. “That’s the idea that I’ve tried to convey. I’m not advocating change because it can make your life or your organization better at some distant time in the future. I believe that engaging with people and learning new skills and ideas are among the greatest pleasures of everyday life…So, kind reader, that’s my parting wish for you: Change and thrive!”

Voici ce que je propose : faire connaître les travaux du Dr McDougall et de ses collègues. De nombreuses ressources sont disponibles en anglais sur le sujet. Or ces travaux demeurent presque sans écho dans la francophonie.

De quoi s’agit-il? Des mérites et des vertus qu’offre une alimentation végétalienne et très faible en gras, c’est-à-dire excluant les aliments d’origine animale et les matières grasses ajoutées.

Plusieurs variantes existent. Ma préférence va à celle du Dr McDougall, mais c’est aussi la plus restrictive. Je les présenterai toutes avec objectivité et au mieux de mes connaissances. À l’opposé, la diète du Dr Ornish est probablement la plus libérale (elle est végétarienne); c’est aussi la plus connue du public. Elle est également mieux documentée. Personnellement, c’est celle que j’ai d’abord adoptée.

Que ce soit pour préserver sa santé, sa vie, celles des animaux, de l’environnement, ou pour des motifs économiques, toutes les raisons sont bonnes pour adopter une alimentation végétarienne ou végétalienne.

Pour ma part, je cherche à informer plutôt qu’à convertir. Savoir, c’est pouvoir choisir, et c’est être en mesure de le faire de façon libre et éclairée. Au cours des dernières années, l’alimentation est devenue une affaire presque idéologique, et donc éminemment personnelle. Ouverture, flexibilité et souplesse restent de mise. Trop souvent, le végétarisme revêt les atours du fanatisme. Carnivores, soyez rassurés, vous êtes les bienvenus dans mon univers extra maigre!

Dean Ornish shares new research that shows how adopting healthy lifestyle habits can affect a person at a genetic level. For instance, he says, when you live healthier, eat better, exercise, and love more, your brain cells actually increase.

Ron Paul weighs in on the “health care debate” (more like a pro-socialized medicine cheering) on Larry King Live, which aired on August 11, 2009. The two statist physicians, Dr. David Scheiner (Obama’s former personal physician and a member and supporter of the Physicians for a National Health Program that “supports a national single payer health program”) and Dr. Dean Ornish (the founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute and a medical editor at The Huffington Post blog)) who are on the same panel with him support the government control of health but want to take it further. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer sits in for King and “moderates” the absurd “debate.”

Scheiner, who is FOR the U.S. conversion to a “single-payer health care” apparatus, goes into defense mode for his precious “one-size-does-not-fit-all” policy, saying the following:

DR. DAVID SCHEINER: Well, you know, the question is, right now there are 89 representatives in the House, in, uh, the House that support single-payer. Sixty percent of physicians support, uh, single-payer. My organization, there are 16,000 physicians who are fighting for single-payer. The question is I don’t think the public has adequately been informed as to what single payer is. It has been so demonized. Medicare works! Now why is Medicare expensive? Because it takes care of old, sick people. If it were universal, the costs would be spread out. If the administrative costs were lower, they, they…we would be able to afford it. I don’t know why people are so frightened. A national health insurance doesn’t mean that we have socialized medicine. We have private doctors. Free choice! Patients do not have free choice today. They have to go to the doctor; their insurance company says. They have to go the hospital, the laboratory. The medication constantly changes, because they tell us it’s not in their formula. I want the public to have freedom of choice single payer gives them.

This nonsense that Medicare “works” is like saying the U.S. Post Office “works.” It is so inefficient and bureaucratic and saturated with globs of red tape that doctors, registered nurses (RNs), and other medical practitioners are forced to comply with that the costs of Medicare are going through the roof. Plus, Medicare underpays doctors, who either quit the profession because they can’t pay for the costs of their overhead or they are forced to spread the costs to their other patients who aren’t on Medicare. Yeah, Medicare is “working” all right.

His claim here is enough to break out into laughter: “Now why is Medicare expensive? Because it takes care of old, sick people.” No, Dr. Scheiner, it’s not the reason why Medicare is breaking the bank. It’s cost prohibitive because the agency coerces physicians to charge the highest amount to their customers (just as the private insurers do, as mandated by federal rules and guidelines) and it’s in the red because it spends more on tax revenues than it takes in. Plus, it incentivizes the elderly to use the program more than they would; thus, the service mandated by government is, through the forces of the government-created market, rationed, and the demand for Medicare by the seniors exceed the supplies available to provide for them. That’s WHY it is so expensive.

Here’s the entire clip for people to enjoy:

[Cross-posted at Let Liberty Ring and the Peace, Freedom, and Prosperity website.]

Is Health Care Reform About to Go the Way of No Child Left Behind?

Excerpt

The White House has now shown itself willing to cave on the two essential elements of real health care reform — drug price negotiations and having a public option (s. Wall Street Journal). 

Both are crucial to containing costs. The right to negotiate drug prices is how free markets operate — taking advantage of economies of scale and the bargaining power that comes with bulk purchasing. To give this up should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in a functioning capitalist system, as opposed to what we are increasingly becoming: an oligarchy of powerful interests. In the same way, having a public option is the only meaningful way to provide competition leading to lower insurance costs.

Giving us health care reform without those key ingredients is like serving a PBJ sandwich without the peanut butter or the jelly… Read more (by Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post) 

It’s greatly appreciated that Dr. Dean Ornish – new HuffPost’s Medical Editor (here’s his latest post)  – will be recruiting writers with a wide range of wellness related perspectives which may help to overcome the current costly and inefficient health care plan.

Supplementary: Global Haplifnet Roundups

haplif – Frank Kalder (HuffPost profile/comments)

Because we live in a materialistic culture bent on the nihilistic destruction of objective values, many financial advisers tell us to never shop when we are hungry. A quintessential example comes from a Wiccan guru site called the “Money Instructor.” Read the money-loving abominations here. If you scroll down on this page to the section entitled “Don’t Shop on an Empty Stomach,” you will read the following intellectually malnourished drivel:

Don’t shop when you are hungry.  People tend to buy more, and a larger amount of the things they don’t need when they are hungry, so always shop with a full stomach.  Also, prepare to dress more warmly, since supermarkets are often cold, because the cold temperatures actually makes you hungry so you buy more!

First, I want to start out by putting an assumption of mine out on the table: we need food. In recent years, scholarship has confirmed this.

The mistakes in the above paragraph’s conjectures are so numerous and interconnected that I don’t know how to order my refutations. I’ll just go sentence by sentence, and apologize now for any lack of cohesion. Consider the sentence

People tend to buy more, and a larger amount of the things they don’t need when they are hungry, so always shop with a full stomach.

First, no empirical evidence whatsoever is offered in support of either the explicit claim that people buy more things they need and don’t need when they are hungry, or the implicit claim that being full reduces the phenomenon of buying many and unnecessary things. But let’s say the first claim – that hungry people buy what they don’t need – is true. Given Plato’s Law of Symmetry, will it not also be true that full people fail to buy what they do need? This follows axiomatically.

Next, consider the language game being played with the word “need.” How is this word being employed? It’s not obvious. The author cannot possibly mean need in the Singerian sense, since according to Peter Singer we don’t need money. There is 0% probability that “The Money Instructor” believes this, especially since the function of shopping when you are full is evidently so that you can have more money to bathe in while you are at home.

So obviously The Money Instructor is using “need” in a less severe, but still substantive sense. Maybe “need” is relative,” in the sense of “I need potatoes more than I need ice cream sandwiches.” But Dr. Atkins has proven that potatoes are in fact worse for you than ice cream sandwiches. So perhaps the comparison is celery vs. cotton candy. I “need” celery, because I need a category of which celery is part: “healthy food.” But I don’t “need” cotton candy because it is not part of the category “healthy food.” But wait? Can you taste a straw man? Who eats cotton candy because it is in the category “healthy food?” Answer: psychopaths at MSNBC.

So here’s the crux: We eat cotton candy because it is part of other categories: fun, or human parties, or piety, or some other category. The Money Instructor, and Wiccan nihilists like her, think the only value on mother earth is money, and hording it in your house. If we affirm other values, like making our grandchildren smile, we will acknowledge that purchasing things we don’t need is actually purchasing things we do need. Because we need to make our grandchildren smile.

But back to the pseudo-economics/psychology. Who exactly are you shopping for? Most basically, you are shopping for yourself. Let’s ignore for the moment the reality of guests and grandchildren and girlfriends, since The Money Instructor apparently thinks they don’t exist. Are you shopping for your hungry self or your gorged self? Obviously you are shopping for your hungry self. And solipsism teaches us that no one knows your needs better than you. So by deduction no one knows the needs of your hungry self better than your hungry self. Unless you are an ascetic and think satisfying physical desires is wicked, you can’t resist the force of this argument. If you aren’t hungry, you will rationalize – at the expense of the part of you that actually needs to eat – all sorts of evils, like not buying hummus, or ice cream sandwiches, or bread, or even baby carrots for that matter. You’ll buy two dozen eggs and bottled water and a multivitamin and you’ll steal exactly one paper plate. That sounds horrific, a veritable holocaust of a financial philosophy.

So my advice is: shop when you are hungry. Not too hungry, or else you’ll faint in the store, or hallucinate and buy the wrong things, like Triscuits instead of Club Crackers, or Meijer brand Mac and Cheese instead of Kraft. But shop when you’re in the mood for approximately one hardy meal. Your hungry self will thank you now, three hours from now, and three hours after that. Your midnight hungry self will thank you. Your morning self will thank you. Your guests will thank you. Your grandchildren will thank you. You will have good physical sensations at regular intervals throughout the day. You will not need to take a multivitamin. The only thing you sacrifice is the chance to roll around in your cash that you didn’t spend on chips and salsa. But rolling around in cash is gross, and unusual.

If you notice the top, you will see a new page, Health Journey.  I’m sharing this story because it might help a few people.

In 1999, I told friends and several Intel colleagues about my experience with Sleep Apnea and its treatment (a CPAP machine).  And, this helped a few people.  When I lost a lot of weight on Atkins in 2000, and shared that, other folks were motivated to lose some weight.

So, perhaps my story might also help a few folk improve their health.

Of course, there is also a selfish motive in this.  By blogging the path that I have chosen, a low-fat vegan diet, I am further motivated to stick with it.

Integrative Medicine Summit Washington DC
Feb. 25-27, 2009

Must see videos – don’t miss. View online for FREE.
Dr. Dean Ornish’s video is a must. He received standing ovations, don’t miss it. It seems the META-Medicine Integrative Health Coach Training is one of the few (if not only …) to offer a comprehensive bio-psycho-social diagnostics model and health coach certification.

The Integrative Medicine Summit was organized by the Institute of Health, several Integrative Medicine departments at Duke, Harvard and other Universities supported and financed by the Bravewell Collaborative (philanthropists).

This has been an amazing experience. 600 Politicians, Senators, National Institute of Health, IOM, University Professors, Doctors, Naturopaths, TCM, Homeopaths and other practitioners coming together.

The reason why I went there was mainly for National Yoga Month, to get large organizations, insurance companies and government more involved. But the more I listened and talked to people the more I saw how timely and excellent META-Medicine fits into the current developments and “Zeitgeist”.

Some highlights and impressions:

* Major push in US towards an Integrative Medicine model
* Understanding that health care needs to change, is not affordable anymore.
* All parties (business, health insurance, health professions, patients) seem to agree.
* President Obama has promised to reform health care with a major focus on prevention
* Over the next 6 weeks the new health reform will take shape and it the plea from the organizers was to become active, talk to local senators, politicians and push for an integrative health care model.
* All CAM organizations were asked to join the campaign and create public awareness and a strong push for change.
* Dean Ornish was by far the best speaker (before he had to rush to the Capitol for a Senate hearing to testify about how health care can be improved). His points was that he and many other renowned researchers have done plenty of high quality studies on how heart disease, diabetes, cancer can be reversed up to 70% by lifestyle changes (bio-psycho-social, for example plant based diet, yoga, meditation and other lifestyle changes … which are basically what we including in our therapy plans, right) and that it is time to put this knowledge into action.
* Prevention on a national scale from kids to adults is necessary and will increase quality of life and health care costs.
* One point often mentioned was that because of the current financial crisis there is a willingness to look at new options especially ones that bring health care cost down.
* I talked to Dean Ornish, Memeth Oz (Oprah), James Gordon (white house commission for CAM), Larry Dossey and many other profs, doctors, therapists especially from Universities. Seems most universities have or starting Integrative Medicine Center already. They are not fully integrated yet into the traditional main complex but there is increased openness to do so.
* Senator Harkin who was instrumental in founding the US Government NCCAM National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine was extremely supportive and he will do anything in his power to create an Integrative Health Care System with this upcoming health reform.
* He also confirmed that the intent is to rename NCCAM to National Center for Integrative Health Care (not medicine but health… which was a big part of the discussions. Focus on Health, not disease or medicine).
* United Health one of the biggest US health insurance companies intend to move from a service reimbursement (per therapy.. which means the more you therapy the more money you make…) to a solution/results oriented reimbursement model (which focuses on quality, e.g. being or creating health is rewarded, not being sick the way it is now)
* Several discussions were about biopsychosocial model and Integrative Health Coaches.
* It seems there are only 1 or 2 Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certifications available in US right now
* Whenever I talked to people about our META-Medicine model, they were amazed.
* It seems the META-Medicine Integrative Health Coach Training is one of the few (if not only …) to offer a comprehensive biopsychosocial diagnostics model and health coach certification.

Integrative Medicine Health Coaches are the center piece of today’s health care system.

Please forward this link to your friends and network. It is very important that we spread the message and let health professionals and patients know about the power and future of Integrative Medicine.

Thank you.

Johannes Fisslinger
International META-Medicine Association

Because your body has fevers in order to heat up germs to death, and exercise artificially causes your body temperature to rise, it follows as an axiom of symbolic logic that exercise will (or can) help to kill germs.¹

I’ve known this for many years, just through common sense. But it’s hard to find a straight discussion of this issue, even on the Google. Here’s a smattering:

“Dr.” Ed Laskowski (I once knew a trombone player named Laskowski) says, from his Mayo bully pulpit, that in general you shouldn’t exercise if your symptoms are “below the neck.” For now just ignore the metaphysical ambiguity of his statement. At least he’s correct that symptoms “above the neck” – which include fevers – allow for exercise. And although he later advocates “common sense,” he fails to appreciate the real reason why exercise might “help you feel better,” i.e., by killing germs and diseases.

According to the self-discredited Findarticles.com (“This article is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice”), we should be scared of exercise. This piece would be flatly dishonest, if it weren’t so confused.  First it says that “Working out when you have a fever can cause your body temperature to rise even higher.” But this is exactly the point! After all, a fever itself does this. Then the article, determined to find as many scare tactics as it can, does a total non-sequitur: “Exercise may cause a virus to invade the heart muscle or pericardium, the sac around the heart.” That makes sense why? Later there is this gem: “If you’re exhausted after a post-illness workout, you may be exercising too hard.” Tell that to Lance Armstrong.

Next we have a Catholic website that obviously specializes in irony, accusing other people of mythical beliefs. Exercise doesn’t eliminate toxins? Well maybe if we ate exercise, then it would. Anyway this article admits that “Fever raises your … body heat. Exercise also does this.” Well, what on Earth do the Catholics think fevers are for? It is not a bad thing that exercise takes some of the burden off your body by raising the heat level for it. Who needs a fever when you have a couple miles of sidewalk?

This hippie website advocates self-destruction, actually suggesting you try to lower your fever, immediately after admitting fevers help kill germs. Moving on.

Finally, Dr. Mirkin talks some sense into the Internet. He points out correctly that athletes regularly have body temperatures at otherwise dangerous fever levels, like 103.8 and 101 and 107.8. Add to this the fact that athletes are healthier than the rest of us, and you shouldn’t be so surprised.

One symptom of illness is that we become slothful, lying around the house, waiting for mothers to bring is soup. Don’t listen to this destructive instinct in your body. When you are ill, engage in a substantial cardiovascular workout, possibly with some heavy lifting.

¹This blog post is not intended to be a substitute for medical advice

Spectrum é um programa cientificamente comprovado para aumentar o bem-estar, viver mais tempo, perder peso e ganhar saúde. O seu autor, Dean Ornish, foi considerado pela revista Time, uma das 50 personalidades mais influentes da sua geração.

From the TED Talks website:

This past week, my eighty-five-year-old aunt had a heart catheterization and she received a pacemaker. Since she has no children, I was down in Florida for the surgery. Although her surgery was prompted by heart irregularities, the surgery was elective. The surgeon was a decent and competent man; yet I cannot help but reflect on the economics of her surgery.

My aunt is about 100 pounds overweight; she eats terribly and has done very little exercise, even walking, for at least 30 years. After her hospital stay, she was transferred to a rehabilitation center. Not pleasant for her or the taxpayer.

According to Shannon Brownlee’s excellent book Overtreated, there are more than 2 million heart catheterization procedures performed in the United States each year. Of those 2 million, 1.2 million are elective—meaning, like my aunt, the patient has symptoms but is not in immediate danger of dying. Of the 1.2 million elective procedures, 160,000 are inappropriate, “according to cardiologists’ own rules.” Most importantly, Brownlee writes, “The latest research…suggests that the vast majority of elective cardiac procedures are no more effective at preventing heart attacks and death than medical management, which involves giving patients drugs and counseling.”

I don’t know if Brownlee includes dietary and exercise advice as “counseling.” By my own observations of the number of overweight health care professionals and the horrific food served in hospitals to sick patients, I’d conclude that the medical industry is singularly unqualified to provide such counseling.

Dean Ornish is perhaps the most well-known physician promoting dietary and lifestyle changes as alternatives to drug and surgery for heart patients. He observes that, “More than $30 billion were spent last year on angioplasties, yet randomized trials clearly show that they don’t prolong life or even prevent heart attacks for most people. In contrast, studies show that most heart disease is completely preventable today, simply by changing lifestyle.”

To be sure, the dietary portion of the Ornish program is rigorous—whole grains, beans, fresh fruits, and vegetables are stressed—while animal food, fats (less than 10%) and processed foods are minimized. Ornish is not the only one who has come to these dietary recommendations. No, I am not naïve enough to believe in magic bullets; but the evidence is overwhelming that health care expenditures would fall dramatically if Americans moved toward this type of diet.  This raises many questions:

1. Should individuals who don’t take responsibility for their health be allowed to transfer their healthcare expenses to the rest of society?  In other words, should they be bailed out?
2. As long as the medical industry is set up to focus on treating acute sickness through expensive drugs and surgeries, how will medical costs ever be significantly reduced?
3. Why do so many Americans grow up without even a rudimentary knowledge of what contributes to a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle?

And there is a larger question: When will our current health care system collapse? The current system is simply too expensive and wasteful. We cannot afford it!

We have seemingly learned nothing from the collapse of our housing and banking industries. When the housing bubble was well underway, experts assured us that housing prices could go up at a rate of 30% per year for many more years. Anyone who had even some knowledge of the history of bubbles understood that these forecasts were made by people who were ignorant, or by government officials, or industry shills.

Should we now trust so-called healthcare experts who tell us that more government involvement will fix what ails our health care system? More government involvement?  What has government involvement given us already? How about financial incentives to pay for expensive drugs and procedures rather than incentives that encourage prevention? How about an educational system that teaches little of what promotes health? How about privileges to the drug companies and the AMA?

Mish Shedlock has called taxpayer supported banks “zombie banks”—they are the living dead of the financial industry and they would collapse without bailouts. But what of zombie patients—those who take little responsibility for their health and consume much of our healthcare resources? I have no easy answer. Americans are bighearted; we give generously to charities that help those who played no part in their misfortune. But we cannot continue to fund zombie patients.

Am I being cruel and heartless? The day will come when the healthcare bubble will burst; we will no longer be able to afford the current health care system. Those who take little responsibility for their own health will be suddenly wrenched off their support system; that will be real cruelty. It is far better to begin the process of change now while there is still time for individuals to get the care they need as they wean off the old system and adjust to new realities.

By DEEPAK CHOPRA , DEAN ORNISH , RUSTUM ROY and ANDREW WEIL

In mid-February, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the Bravewell Collaborative are convening a “Summit on Integrative Medicine and the Health of the Public.” This is a watershed in the evolution of integrative medicine, a holistic approach to health care that uses the best of conventional and alternative therapies such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture and herbal remedies. Many of these therapies are now scientifically documented to be not only medically effective but also cost effective.

Martin Kozlowski

President-elect Barack Obama and former Sen. Tom Daschle (the nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services) understand that if we want to make affordable health care available to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then we need to address the fundamental causes of health and illness, and provide incentives for healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing only drugs and surgery.

Heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer and obesity account for 75% of health-care costs, and yet these are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle. As Mr. Obama states in his health plan, unveiled during his campaign: “This nation is facing a true epidemic of chronic disease. An increasing number of Americans are suffering and dying needlessly from diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, asthma and HIV/AIDS, all of which can be delayed in onset if not prevented entirely.”

The latest scientific studies show that our bodies have a remarkable capacity to begin healing, and much more quickly than we had once realized, if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause these chronic diseases. These studies show that integrative medicine can make a powerful difference in our health and well-being, how quickly these changes may occur, and how dynamic these mechanisms can be.

Many people tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser or high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle — what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support — can be as powerful as drugs and surgery. But they often are. And in many instances, they’re even more powerful.

These studies often used high-tech, state-of-the-art measures to prove the power of simple, low-tech, and low-cost interventions. Integrative medicine approaches such as plant-based diets, yoga, meditation and psychosocial support may stop or even reverse the progression of coronary heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, prostate cancer, obesity, hypercholesterolemia and other chronic conditions.

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that these approaches may even change gene expression in hundreds of genes in only a few months. Genes associated with cancer, heart disease and inflammation were downregulated or “turned off” whereas protective genes were upregulated or “turned on.” A study published in The Lancet Oncology reported that these changes increase telomerase, the enzyme that lengthens telomeres, the ends of our chromosomes that control how long we live. Even drugs have not been shown to do this.

Our “health-care system” is primarily a disease-care system. Last year, $2.1 trillion was spent in the U.S. on medical care, or 16.5% of the gross national product. Of these trillions, 95 cents of every dollar was spent to treat disease after it had already occurred. At least 75% of these costs were spent on treating chronic diseases, such as heart disease and diabetes, that are preventable or even reversible.

The choices are especially clear in cardiology. In 2006, for example, according to data provided by the American Heart Association, 1.3 million coronary angioplasty procedures were performed at an average cost of $48,399 each, or more than $60 billion; and 448,000 coronary bypass operations were performed at a cost of $99,743 each, or more than $44 billion. In other words, Americans spent more than $100 billion in 2006 for these two procedures alone.

Despite these costs, a randomized controlled trial published in April 2007 in The New England Journal of Medicine found that angioplasties and stents do not prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients (i.e., 95% of those who receive them). Coronary bypass surgery prolongs life in less than 3% of patients who receive it. So, Medicare and other insurers and individuals pay billions for surgical procedures like angioplasty and bypass surgery that are usually dangerous, invasive, expensive and largely ineffective. Yet they pay very little — if any money at all — for integrative medicine approaches that have been proven to reverse and prevent most chronic diseases that account for at least 75% of health-care costs. The INTERHEART study, published in September 2004 in The Lancet, followed 30,000 men and women on six continents and found that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90% of all heart disease.

That bears repeating: The disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable simply by changing diet and lifestyle. And the same lifestyle changes that can prevent or even reverse heart disease also help prevent or reverse many other chronic diseases as well. Chronic pain is one of the major sources of worker’s compensation claims costs, yet studies show that it is often susceptible to acupuncture and Qi Gong. Herbs usually have far fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals.

Joy, pleasure and freedom are sustainable, deprivation and austerity are not. When you eat a healthier diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you think more clearly, have more energy, need less sleep. Your brain may grow so many new neurons that it could get measurably bigger in only a few months. Your face gets more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. Your heart gets more blood flow, so you have more stamina and can even begin to reverse heart disease. Your sexual organs receive more blood flow, so you may become more potent — similar to the way that circulation-increasing drugs like Viagra work. For many people, these are choices worth making — not just to live longer, but also to live better.

It’s time to move past the debate of alternative medicine versus traditional medicine, and to focus on what works, what doesn’t, for whom, and under which circumstances. It will take serious government funding to find out, but these findings may help reduce costs and increase health.

Integrative medicine approaches bring together those in red states and blue states, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, because these are human issues. They are both medically effective and, important in our current economic climate, cost effective. These approaches emphasize both personal responsibility and the opportunity to make affordable, quality health care available to those who most need it. Mr. Obama should make them an integral part of his health plan as soon as possible.

Dr. Chopra, the author of more than 50 books on the mind, body and spirit, is guest faculty at Beth Israel Hospital/Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ornish is clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Mr. Roy is professor emeritus of materials science at Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Weil is director of the University of Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine.