Jumping for Joy in this Economy

It is easy to find things wrong right now. So many people have lost jobs, lost retirement investments, had pay or hours cut, lost health benefits. It is a very upsetting time for most people when it comes to money and feeling secure or successful. It is very easy to get stuck in the upset of it all.

Now see what happens when 25 young men, who are friends and very frustrated about not finding jobs, come together and help each other. They are jumping for joy because in just 11 days they earned an all-inclusive trip to Costa Rica and have $3200 in their pockets. How did this happen?

They discovered a Plan B to replace income and restore hope. It is a new way of thinking and living in this era of upheaval and change. Earning money becomes about making a difference for others too. It is the opposite of the corporate greed we’ve been seeing. Lots of people need Plan B right now. It is a personal way to get the economy back into our hands and to help not only ourselves but our country in the process. I love Plan B. It feels great to jump for joy no matter our age.

Take just a minute to watch this video and picture feeling this enthusiasm. Isn’t it a great feeling? Did a smile break out all over your face? It can happen for you too. You should ask ME about Plan B. Really, you should!

10 Surprises About Multivitamins and Your Health

A new study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine is seriously flawed. It claims that multivitamins are useless in preventing cancer and cardiovascular disease in women. The women in the study were not actually given multivitamins, just asked if they take them. There was no quality control about what kind they took or how much they took or how often they took them or how long they had been taking them. Not very scientific, would you agree? This prompted me to write about our health and vitamins.

10 Surprises about Multivitamins and Your Health: How to make informed, intelligent choices and avoid costly mistakes

1.Choose natural sources rather than their chemical look-alikes that may be cheaper but are poorly absorbed. USP on the label means test tube synthetic vitamins made by pharmaceutical companies. The source of the vitamin does matter.

2.Choose natural sources that have been standardized so you know how much of each nutrient you are getting with every serving. If it is not on the label, that company probably does not have quality testing to assure you how much you are actually getting each time you take it. They may have tested the original products for their nutrition components, but have no idea how much is actually in each bottle or tablet of the finished product. This is a big deal for you.

3.Cheap is not better. You want to have the best science and technology at your back to build your health.

4.Taking single synthetic vitamins separately can lead to toxic spikes and may actually harm you. Several big studies of Vitamin A, E and C had to be stopped because people were getting worse. They drew the wrong conclusion. Yes, chemicals taken in isolation are a problem. This is not the same as taking vitamins in food or food-based complexes.

5.Some vitamins only work in the human body in the presence of specific phytonutrients (plant nutrients). For example, natural vitamin C is absorbed by the body in the presence of rutin. Ascorbic acid is not Vitamin C but a chemical look-alike and has no rutin present for absorption. Big problem.

6.Minerals that are in most multivitamin supplements are mined from the earth. They are essentially rocks. Nanotechnology attempts to make the rocks more absorbable by grinding them into teeny, tiny pieces. No matter how small, still rocks!

7.Plant absorbed and digested minerals are recognized by our bodies as food. It is how we were designed to get minerals, by eating plants rich in minerals. Since our soils are depleted of minerals, we need to use plants that are grown in mineral-rich environments and then made into a supplement with standardized or consistent amounts in each serving. If it is not on the label, again beware. They don’t know so you don’t know.

8.You can have small deficiencies easily because our food supply is no longer nutrient dense (today you must eat 10 oranges to get what you used to get in 1 orange) and because of the false belief that synthetic (chemical) vitamins can do the job. These deficiencies set the stage for poor cellular health over time.

9.You cannot have cells that work properly and keep you healthy without the important vitamins and minerals present every day. Your body is relentless in its process of building new cells. If it doesn’t have what it needs, the result is an unhealthy or impaired cell(s). Your health actually hinges on what is invisible to you.

10.Pharmaceutical drugs can deplete certain nutrients and are often vitamin specific in doing so. Find out what vitamins are either not absorbed or depleted from your body stores for each drug you use. Some examples are: antibiotics destroy B-Complex vitamins and vitamin K; birth control pills destroy folic acid, vitamins C, B6, B12, B1 and E; cortisone often use to alleviate arthritis symptoms destroys vitamins A, B6, D, C and zinc and potassium.

And one more BONUS! This time about two little proteins. Here’s a bit of surprise from the universe to ignite your imagination.

Small can play BIG. Did you know that two proteins called actin and myosin allow the butterfly’s wings to flap and butterflies to fly. The same two proteins are responsible for the beating of the human heart. A tiny bit of nutrition with a big impact! With our cells, little plays Very BIG.

Dealing with Loss

Two recent quotes:
A Sufi saying, "When the heart grieves what is lost, the spirit rejoices over what is left."

Another by Ernest Holmes, "In the midst of sorrow, the joy of life persists."

One of my favorite poems was written in 12th Century Rome by a Rabbi, Judah Haleve. I include it now in memory of my dear friend, Adie. December 26, 1916 – December 20, 2009

‘Tis a fearful thing to love
What death can touch,
To love, To hope, To dream
And oh, to lose
A thing for fools. This
But a holy thing, A holy thing to love.
For your life has lived in me,
Your laugh once lifted me,
Your word was a gift to me,
To remember this brings painful joy.
‘Tis a human thing, love
A holy thing, to love
What death can touch.

As one of Adie’s tennis friends remarked, Adie ran up to the net with his entire being. He ran up to the net of life this way.

Remembering Adie

My friend Adie Suehsdorf died in December just before his 92nd birthday. He was the king of remembering details. Adie was also a gifted writer and wordsmith. He had a flair for that poetic twist that said so much and yet rang real and straight. In 1974 while in China, he met Zhou En-lai and then wrote a New York Times article in which he described him as a man comfortable in himself who never tried to blow the cloak from your shoulders. Those words also describe my friend Adie.

I spoke at his memorial service recently. I talked about another steadfast gift from Adie. He believed in me and I reflected on the power of having someone believe in you, something we can in turn give to others. Later, as I worked in my garden, it occurred to me that Adie was one of those people who knew how to believe, period. It was the place he came from and it did not make him gullible. Today, it seems so common to meet doubt and cynicism, so common that it parades as what is real. The longing to believe rose up and elected our new president, however. The Audacity of Hope comes from believing in something that matters.

That capacity to believe is essential and it precedes proof.

Resveratrol - Why Wait?

Last Sunday, Jan. 26, on CBS, 60 Minutes, they featured a research team and story about Resveratrol. They called it the Fountain of Youth pill and talked about how it turns on the survival gene that extends life by decades and prevents lots of those dreaded age-related illnesses that ruin your life and finances. The researchers saw the possibility of 90 year-olds looking, feeling, and being able to do things like 60 year- olds.

And what is Resveratrol? It is a natural substance in the skin of grapes that protects them from the invasion of bacteria and it turns out it is good for us too. The universe, it seems, has many of these mutual benefit arrangements between plants and us. How considerate!

The researchers then announced that it would take about 5 years to turn this into a drug at the cost of about three-quarters of a billion dollars. That’s B for Billion. Think big cost for those pills. The 60 Minutes reporter failed to ask the next most obvious question: If it is already in nature and we know how powerful it is in promoting health, why do we need to make it a drug?

On top of that, to make it a drug you have to turn it into a chemical toxic substance. It won’t be able to go from Phase 1 to Phase 2 of the new drug approval protocol without first demonstrating how much will kill half of their laboratory animals. It is call LD 50 or Lethal Dose 50.

Should we just drink more red wine instead? I don’t know how well Resveratrol survives the processing and aging of red wine. Does it remain biologically active and do we know how much you get in a glass of red wine? Does it vary with the winery? I love my glass of red wine with dinner. Yet, how much would I have to drink to get enough Resveratrol to make a difference?

For me, I’ve been getting Resveratrol for about a year now in my supplement, in capsule form. With this new data I will continue for sure. With this kind of good news, why wait? Good science is so important. If you are with me, don’t get just any Resveratrol. Make sure the science is there and it is natural and still alive.

Watch the video from 60 Minutes: