Sassafras Station Blog

Archive for February, 2010

In what is probably the least surprising news of the day, Business Week reports that Americans are not that fond of the health care reform that is being pushed by the President and Congress.  Well, duh!

The problem is that the people that have put the legislation forward are some of the most egotistical people on the planet.  They think their sh#@ don’t stink as they say and will probably push the legislation forward because they probably won’t admit that they were wrong.  Worse than that, I have seen political research that says it is worse for a politician to change their mind than it is to do the wrong thing because waffling (changing your mind frequently) is attacked more in the press than just doing something stupid.

I hope there is reform of some sort.  The medical industry (drug companies, hospitals, insurance companies, etc.) all need to be addressed.  It is ridiculous that these companies are getting rich while the rest of the country suffurs.  I just hope we can do the right thing, but am fearful something stupid will happen.

Click the link at the bottom if you need more confirmation that the current health care reform is not what most people want.

While half of Americans want some kind of health reform in the next two years, nearly 40 percent say it would be a good thing if the legislation proposed by the Democrats and President Barack Obama never materializes. And one-quarter aren’t sure if health reform would be good or bad for the country, a new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll finds.

"Essentially what they’re saying is we want reform but we don’t trust or like what we’re seeing now," said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll, a service of Harris Interactive.

Poll Shows Eroding Support for Health Reform – BusinessWeek

Now this is reality TV worth watching.  It is really good to see this from multiple levels.  First, a reality show that is dedicated to truly helping people is long overdue.  Hopefully it will catch on.  Second, being recognized for doing work that will truly help one of the biggest problems around the world (obesity) is pretty cool.

The show, called Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution USA, will be on ABC this year.  It is being produced by Ryan Seacrest (you’ve heard of that show called American Idol he hosts haven’t you?).  Hopefully, this powerhouse lineup will ensure that this show is seen by a lot of people and truly shows people how to make healthy changes in their lives.

Check out the entire article by clicking on the link after the excerpt below.

“We’re thrilled to award the TED Prize to Jamie Oliver,” said TED Curator Chris Anderson. ”His work directly tackles one of the most distressing issues the world faces… the obesity epidemic. In this year in which his TV show launches in the United States, we look forward to helping him achieve even greater impact.”

The television show mentioned is Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution USA, which will start in 2010 on ABC, and be produced by Ryan Seacrest. The series will show Oliver giving healthy makeovers to places around the U.S.

Jamie Oliver Wins $100K TED Award For Battle Against Childhood Obesity « ecorazzi.com :: the latest in green gossip

I don’t even know where to start on this subject.  I will try to keep from typing 4 letter words and cursing the whole medical industry in this post, but rest assured I am thinking them in my head and if anybody was in hearing distance I would be shouting them out loud.

In one of them most challenging economic times this country has ever faced, the idea of a company hiking its prices by 40% on what is pretty much an essential product is utterly despicable.  Unfortunately, they are not the problem.  The problem lies in the doctors and hospitals.  It lies with the drug companies and corporations that run medical facilities as cash cows where the unfortunate are raped and pillaged.  It is unacceptable.

Our president and elected officials have one thing right – reform is needed.  Unfortunately, they are being paid by those that are the problem.  It isn’t insurance reform that is needed, it is the industry that needs to be changed.  It should be illegal for a hospital to charge $50 for an aspirin – this is a real number from a real medical bill my grandmother got.  One simple, over the counter aspirin (probably not even name brand) was billed at $50.  Why is this acceptable?  Why is this not being addressed?  Simple, there is no money to be made by addressing the ridiculous costs.  Instead, we are going to force people to buy insurance that will pay these prices and everybody makes money while the person that is sick gets screwed.

You can read the article if you choose, but it will probably only make you mad.  Unfortunately, we cannot count on our elected officials to help us because they are mostly in the pocket of big business.  Our only recourse is to get healthy and hope we don’t have to subject ourselves to medical care very often because we will get screwed virtually eveyr time.

The parent company of Anthem Blue Cross on Thursday defended its 39% increase in premiums for individual policyholders in California, saying the rising rates reflect soaring medical costs but are "very competitively priced when compared with other California plans."

Anthem’s parent company defends health insurance rate hike – latimes.com

In an admirable move that probably has nothing to do with profits (maybe PR though), some providers of school lunches are pledging to make their meals healthier.  While this may seem like a small step (and it is), every change has to start somewhere.  Hopefully, this program will expand and more children will be exposed to healthy foods – not just ketchup which was once considered a vegetable by school lunch standards (it still might be, but I don’t know for sure).

The more exposure we can give to health initiatives, the more people will be aware of the problem.  Teaching our kids is the right place to start because they are still open to new things unlike older people who are much less likely to change their eating habits.  Change will be slow, but hopefully it will be for the better.

Check out the link below the excerpt for the whole story.

The National Restaurant Association applauded school lunch providers Aramark, Chartwells Educational Dining Services of Compass Group North America, and Sodexo, which joined with First Lady Michelle Obama in a groundbreaking pledge to help eliminate childhood obesity within a generation.

Fight Against Childhood Obesity Gets Help From NRA – Restaurant News – QSR Magazine

It seems like we are a long ways away from hearing the last of the H1H1 (Swine) Flu.  While this is being recognized around the world as a hugely overstated scam, there are still PR campaigns being run to get people to think all the over-hyped propaganda was worth while.  In the excerpt below, you can see the state of Minnesota is proclaiming the benefits of the vaccine and already starting to push the next round of vaccines.

What is even worse than the media trying to tell people how great the vaccine was, is companies trying to make a buck on selling the vaccine even though it is not needed.  A friend saw a sign at the Walgreens pharmacy instructing pharmacists to push the H1N1 vaccine to every customer whether they needed it or not in order to help slumping profits.  This sign literally existed and while I am sure it will be moved further out of the way because they definitely weren’t happy that my friend had seen it, it will continue to be pushed on unsuspecting customers.  We are taught to trust our pharmacists and this is a clear violation of that trust and probably borderline illegal.

On Wednesday the Minnesota Department of Health reported that for the fourth week in a row there were no deaths from H1N1, and no hospitalizations for the second straight week.

H1N1 squelches seasonal flu in Minn. | StarTribune.com

Heart disease kills many men and women every year.  Even though it is proven to be very dangerous, it appears that there are many women who don’t know a lot about heart disease or don’t take it seriously enough.

In a fairly large study, women were surveyed to see how much they knew about the number one killer of women.  The survey uncovered some disturbing information including the fact that many women wouldn’t go to the hospital if they were having known heart attach symptoms.  Additionally, it was found that minority women were less likely to know a lot about heart attacks.

This article is definitely worth a few minutes to read, especially if you are a women.  Click the link below the excerpt to be taken to the original article.

Researchers at New York-Presbyterian Hospital surveyed 2,300 women 25 or older by phone and online to determine who knew that heart disease was the No. 1 killer of women, and what they would do if they might be having a heart attack.

Many Women Misinformed About Heart Disease

As people start to live longer lives – yes, there are people living longer healthier lives – more parents are having children at ages older than 40.  This does not come without problems though.  According to the study I read about today, mothers that are older than 40 are 50% more likely to have  a child with autism when compared to a mother in their 20’s.  There is also increased risk when the father is older, but it is not as high.

I really don’t have a lot to read into this article, but wanted to share it with you.  I included a couple paragraphs from the original article and a link at the bottom for the whole thing.  Check it out if you are interested in having children past the age of 40.

Mothers older than 40 were about 50 percent more likely to have a child with autism than those in their 20s; the risk for fathers older than 40 was 36 percent higher than for men in their 20s.

The study suggests the risk of a woman over 40 having an autistic child was still less than 4 in 1,000, one expert noted.

Parents’ ages tied to autism in new study | NewsOK.com

The dangers of smoking have been well established and are pretty much universally accepted.  The dangers of 2nd hand smoke, inhaling smoke from somebody else’s cigarette, has also been shown to be dangerous.  A new study indicates that smelling the smoke on somebody’s clothes could also be dangerous.

This latest potential danger, coined “third hand smoke”, is highly controversial and really isn’t well documented yet.  It is an interesting possibility, though, and should give everybody reason to think again about smoking and being around people who smoke.

Read the excerpt from the article below then click on the link at the bottom to be taken to the original article if you would like to read more about this controversial research.

In the tests, contaminated surface exposed to "high but reasonable" amounts of the pollutant nitrous acid – emitted by unvented gas appliances and in car exhaust – boosted levels of newly formed TSNAs 10-fold.

BBC News – ‘Third-hand smoke’ could damage health

I wrote about the Mediterranean diet last week and couldn’t help but bring you another article about the benefits of this low fat and low read meat diet.  In this study published in Science Daily, it is shown that the diet eaten by people in the Mediterranean may reduce the risk of  dead tissue areas in the brain that have a negative impact on mental capacity.

If you aren’t familiar with it, the Mediterranean diet is high in vegetables, fruits, legumes, and fish and low in saturated fat, red meat and poultry.  For this particular study, 712 people were studied in three groups.  Those that most closely followed the typical Mediterranean diet had the lowest incident rate of the brain damage being studied.

Below is an excerpt from the article with a link below that to the original article that is published on ScienceDaily.com

The study found that people who ate a Mediterranean-like diet were less likely to have brain infarcts, or small areas of dead tissue linked to thinking problems.

Mediterranean diet may lower risk of brain damage that causes thinking problems

One of the biggest problems with our diets is that portions have gotten completely out of control.  What used to be a large drink at McDonalds is now called a small.  A large is the equivalent of what used to be 2 large drinks.  Packaged food tricks you by putting 2 servings into a container that is obviously intended to serve one person.

In an unusually responsible move, the FDA is actually doing what is right for the consumer and creating standards for serving size that are realistic so people aren’t deceived into thinking they are eating healthy when they are not.

Below is a quick excerpt from the article with a link below that to the original article.  Check it out and see what you might be missing about portion control.

The FDA’s newfound enthusiasm for realistic portion sizes on packaged food is a long overdue acknowledgment of what Americans have known for years — nobody eats only six tortilla chips.

FDA’s Fight Against Portion Size Trickery: It’s About Time | BNET Food Blog | BNET