Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann from Minnesota has called upon Americans to once again converge on Washington in a last minute protest to stop the House from passing the health care reform bill. Bachmann asked tea party protesters and all concerned citizens to not just protest outside the Capitol, but actually go to congressional offices and visit their representatives.

I had the misfortune of riding the Metro train into Washington Thursday, along with a sizable group of these protesters, where I was able to look at a goodly number of them up close and to listen to some of the conversations.

That experience seemed to perfectly mesh with a story I was at that moment reading in the Washington Post, which said that about 75 percent of the country’s 17 to 24-year-olds are ineligible for military service, largely because they are poorly educated, overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces.

Glancing from the paper up to the people surrounding me on the train, it was quite obvious that the story was basically correct. Listening to the conversations only confirmed that feeling.

Will this be the caliber of citizenry, which might be influencing how you or I will live in the next few years, or the way, in which our children and grandchildren will be forced to live?

President Obama’s Wednesday trip to Wisconsin, to emphasize the need for an improved education seemed more necessary than ever before…

Technorati Tags: Bachmann, Caongress, conservatives, Education, Health Care reform, military, obesity, protest, tea baggers

This is partly based on a recent AP story

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While we discuss health-care reform, healthy food and environmental conditions, as it turns out, there’s still another issue to be addressed – extremely heavy patients. Although morbidly obese people can probably be found in almost every country and on almost every continent, this could most likely be filed under the ‘Only in America” category.

A panicked Kansas ambulance crew had a critically ill patient, but the man weighed more than 1,000 pounds and could not fit inside the vehicle. And the stretcher wasn’t sturdy enough to hold him.

Finally somebody had an idea. They could use a forklift to load the man – bed and all – onto a flatbed truck. There was no other choice.

As the nation battles the obesity crisis, ambulance crews are trying to improve how they transport extremely heavy patients, who become significantly more difficult to move as they surpass 350 pounds. And caring for such patients is expensive, requiring costly equipment and extra workers, so some ambulance companies have started charging higher fees for especially overweight people.

The move to modify ambulances is just the latest effort to accommodate plus-sized patients. Some hospitals already offer specially designed beds, wheelchairs, walkers and even commodes.

Ambulance companies say it’s time for insurance providers, Medicaid and Medicare, or patients themselves to begin paying the added costs, which are cutting into their razor-thin profit margins.

In the past, ambulance companies often absorbed the extra expense of serving the obese. Now they are adding charges similar to those already imposed on intensive-care patients, people requiring multiple medications and patients on ventilators.

Transporting extremely heavy people costs about 2.5 times as much as normal-weight patients. It takes more time to move them and requires three to four times more crewmembers, who often must use expensive specialty equipment.

Shawnee County Commission last summer raised ambulance fees from $629 to $1,172 for critical-care patients and people who are 500 pounds or heavier.

In Colorado Springs, Colo., and the Nebraska cities of Omaha and Lincoln, the fees are $1,421 for an extremely obese patient, compared with $758 for a typical patient.

Before those ambulances had heavy-duty equipment, crews just had to make do, often calling in burly firefighters to help lift patients.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has long said that nearly a third of Americans are obese. About 5 percent of the population is morbidly obese, meaning they are more than 100 pounds heavier than their ideal weight.

Some critics say the higher fees are a form of discrimination.

Higher payments for heavy patients are commonplace in Oregon and Washington because the insurance industry there acknowledges the additional costs.

Ambulance companies say the insurance industry is their best hope for closing the financial gap.

As with any medical service, ambulance companies bill private insurers or government health care programs. Medicare and Medicaid do not pay extra for transporting the extremely obese, although that’s something the ambulance industry wants to change. The uninsured are charged directly, but many of them cannot pay.

Proponents of the extra fees say obese patients are grateful for equipment that eliminates the need for flatbed trucks and forklifts.

Like many ambulance companies, a unit in Topeka recently spent about $10,000 to retrofit an ambulance with equipment that accommodates patients weighing up to 1,600 pounds. Ambulance services with helicopters also are creating larger patient compartments and adding stronger gurneys.

Sales of specialized lift systems nationwide are expected to reach $193 million by 2012, up from $75 million in 2004, according to EMS Insider, an industry newsletter. The sale of specialized stretchers is expected to nearly double to $50 million in 2012.

Technorati Tags: ambulances, forklifts, heavy, obesity, patients

As the health-care reform efforts gather steam, with even some Republicans, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger urging passage of the reform bill and saying that he supports President Obama in this regard, other reforms, besides the improvement of the health insurance system appear to be badly needed as well.

Even though the United States now spends $2.4 trillion a year on medical care – which is much more per capita than comparable countries – we rank near the bottom in rankings on premature deaths caused by illnesses such as diabetes, epilepsy, stroke, influenza, ulcers and pneumonia, according to research by Commonwealth Fund.

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad has commented on these not really surprising findings, saying:

“All of these countries have much lower costs than we do, and they have higher quality outcomes than ours.”

These sad statistics are probably not due solely to the inadequacy of the U.S. health care industry, which has actually proven to be quite good, at least in certain, top facilities. This is not to say that it is good, or even adequate in most places, particularly in view of its exorbitant cost.

Other causes include of course our basic diet; all of those adulterated foods, which much too often are the only ones available to the average citizen. The food additives, the healthy, natural ingredients removed either in order to increase profit, ease of processing and transportation, or simply to cater to our now perverted tastes.

Considering the fact that the average container of so-called full-strength soft drink contains the equivalent of about 17 teaspoons of sugar – which isn’t even sugar, but the ever-present High Fructose Corn Syrup, should give all of us pause. And if it isn’t sugar, it is Aspertame, NutraSweet, or some other low-calorie sweetener, which could be even worse.

Just think how the epidemics of obesity, diabetes and other diseases would most likely fade, if we stopped stuffing ourselves with such totally unhealthy substances.

Meanwhile, it appears that we are at risk even from formerly healthy, natural foods as well. As it turns out, cultivation, processing, storage and transportation introduce all kinds of dangerous food-borne diseases. Most risky appear to be: leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts and berries. Apparently bacteria, from E.coli O157:H7 in spinach to scombrotoxin in tuna, are contaminating more and more of these essential foods. People who have eaten them suffered a range of illnesses, from mild stomach cramps all the way to death.

In addition, potatoes have emerged as threat to health, because many processors and restaurants have been putting them through the same machines, which were already contaminated by raw meat and poultry.

The FDA has been under fire for years for failing to adequately ensure food safety. A wave of recent food borne illnesses has placed increasing public pressure on Congress to do something about it.

As it stands, it appears that we should grow all of our own food, and avoid almost everything coming down the pike from the food producing and serving industry – and that of course includes those awful soft drinks – and providing that we do have health insurance, be very careful which medical establishments we actually trust our lives to.

Another option for some might be to move to another country, where the food supply hasn’t been so totally messed by greed and stupidity. Italy comes to mind as one of the possibilities. The Italians do take their food seriously and are minimally if at all interested in imported foodstuffs, considering their own as the best. This attitude extends to particular regions. As an example:  Sardinians eat “Sardo” food and drink Sardo wine and beer, with hardly anything coming over even from the Italian mainland.

We know that this is impractical for most people, but why should almost everyone be forced to play Russian roulette with their health in arguably the richest country in the world?

This brings up another issue. Much has been said about the dangers of smoking. The funny thing is that in most other developed countries, where smoking is more prevalent than in the U.S. people are generally healthier. Could it be the chemicals added by manufacturers to the cigarettes, rather than the tobacco itself?

Technorati Tags: cancer, contamination, diabetes, E.coli, food industry, medical industry, obesity, processed foods, reform, soft drinks, tobacco, US Health Insurance

If you are reading this, you probably are interested in being fit and healthy. That is great! We are happy to have you here. Exercise is very, very important in order to be slim, healthy, fit and attractive. That said, we shouldn’t forget the role that diet plays in our health and fitness.

The old saying that “you are what you eat” couldn’t be more accurate in these days of processed foods, food additives, genetically modified (GM) plants and animals and generally incredibly adulterated food supply.

Remember your last visit to the neighborhood supermarket? Did you notice all kinds of novel products of food science on the shelves, those often in packages festooned with health claims? Well, if you’re concerned about your health, you should probably avoid most food products that make health claims and that is simply because health claims on a food product could be a good indication that it’s not really food, but in fact a food product, not something that you would want to eat, if you intend to stay healthy.

Have you thought what the so-called “American cheese” is made of? As it happens, it is not really a cheese at all, but generally manufactured from a set of ingredients such as milk, whey, milk fat, milk protein concentrate, whey protein concentrate, salt, and that mixture for some strange an unexplained reason meets the legal definition of cheese here in the U.S. Avoid it if you possibly can!

Although the public hasn’t really been informed about the fact that a huge percentage of formerly perfectly healthy plants, in particular corn, have been genetically modified, that is indeed the sad truth, in the U.S. at least. The reasons for this are multi fold. The first and foremost is as usual profit and savings for the producers, processors, wholesalers and retailers. The industry will of course counter these facts by saying that they have simply made the plants more resistant to disease and to parasites, which of course requires less spraying with poisonous chemicals (read more profit) and that this is of course better for us, the economy and the environment. If you have been blessed with at least an average IQ you really should not take these claims at face value. In addition, nobody, but nobody knows at this fairly early stage of genetically modifying everything in sight, what the effects of this practice will be both for humans and their long-term health, for the animals, the plants, the environment and for the planet at large.

That’s all fine and dandy, but how do you know that the fresh-looking food product that you pick up the supermarket has not been messed with by the food industry? The short answer is: you don’t. Since genetically engineered soy and corn are used in many processed foods, it is estimated that over 70 percent of the foods in grocery stores in the U.S. and Canada contain GM ingredients. The problem is not just in the “classic” variety of processed foods, meaning, packaged, canned and/or frozen, but also in the fresh-looking fruits and vegetables laid out in the produce section of your store. There is no way of telling whether the corn, or the apples, or anything else for that matter hasn’t been messed with in some way by someone along the line. At least the packaged foods have ingredients listed on their labels. Here you can find out that almost everything nowadays – even the foods that none of us would have suspected – contains corn in some form and the ever-present poison of the modern world: high fructose corn syrup as well as a bewildering array of chemicals, the discovery of which in your “food” should make your hair stand on end.

Let’s not forget the artificial, low, or no-calorie sweeteners. Have you noticed that obese people often drink diet drinks? And why do we have a diabetes epidemic in this country? Avoid these sweeteners like the plague. Even though normal sugar might not be the healthiest substance around, it is still hugely more healthy that aspartame, Nutra Sweet, Splenda or high fructose corn syrup.

In short, if you want to lose weight, you probably have a better chance of succeeding if you stick to sugar, rather than all of the other artificial sweeteners.

Buy locally produced food. This is particularly important for those people, who are lucky enough to live near the place they were born, as the genetic makeup of plants and animals from a given area is related to that of the people born in that particular area as well and agrees with them much better than something carted from thousands of miles away.

Do not buy water in plastic bottles. Get a filter and some stainless steel, or aluminum SIGG bottles and despite the convenience try not to use your microwave oven so much, or the Teflon coated pots and pans.

Read the labels, ask questions, and demand pure, unadulterated foods. You might not always be able to get them – at least not right away – but if enough of us question these irresponsible practices of the industry, refuse to buy their products and demand access to a “clean” food supply, the industry will eventually be forced to comply and adjust. Let’s just hope that it isn’t too late.

Technorati Tags: diabetes, foods, genetically modified, Health, high fructose corn syrup, obesity, processed

Would the fact that we are having summer-like temperatures in October, hardly any snow in places winter, after winter, along with an extreme drought and the melting ice caps be enough? Or maybe the well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize awarded  to IPCC and Al Gore?I wonder if the happily polluting Chinese and Indian economies, or the millions of SUV-driving Americans would agree that the present bout of global warming is at least partly caused by humans? According to a very recent Greenpeace report just three of China’s largest power companies created more greenhouse gas emissions last year than the entire United Kingdom.

Why is there so much resistance by some to explore and implement alternative energy sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, wave and so forth? Could it be that certain fossil fuel lobbies are exerting way too much influence upon our decision making?

Some say that about 1,000 years ago the Vikings encountered a “Green Land” in Greenland and that the climate fluctuations are nothing new and are simply what Mother Nature does, even without our input.

That’s at least partly true, with an important caveat: The present warming trend is proceeding much faster than all of the previous ones and unless we help Mother Nature by very quickly reducing the emissions that we are so enthusiastically creating and pumping into the atmosphere, there’s a distinct and frightening possibility that unlike the previous Earth cooling and warming episodes, the present trend might become simply irreversible.

Don’t let the skeptics convince you that humans do not have a role in global warming. Those could very well be the same “geniuses”, which have in fact voted for the neocons during the 2004 U.S. presidential election.

Look around you. At the millions of Hummers, Yukon XL’s, Ford Excursions, Chevy Suburbans, or the totally ludicrous new crop of huge pick-up trucks from Ford, GM and Chrysler. These enormous, badly designed, gas-guzzling monstrosities not only “process” and emit much more pollutants than a reasonably-sized vehicle, but when their sheer size is taken into consideration, their manufacture uses up considerably more raw materials, energy and produces more carbon emissions that it should.

And yes! Driving those ridiculous vehicles IS ecologically incorrect in every possible way. In addition, it is highly doubtful that anyone, who buys that kind of a vehicle, without a supporting reason, such as: work, owning a farm, horses, etc. is an enlightened, and/or educated person. In short: I wouldn’t feel guilty about prominently showing the middle finger to some drivers of humongous SUV’s, who use them simply to haul groceries, kids, commuting, or going to the movies. What a price for “keeping up with the Joneses”!

I have test-driven some of these vehicles. Frankly, I hate the design, the handling and the overall feel and unless someone has an overpowering and uncontrollable urge to move a refrigerator, I cannot imagine any person in his right mind, who would want to have, or drive a crappy vehicle of that sort.

Also, why does almost everybody in the U.S. insist on driving cars with automatic transmissions? I would not even CONSIDER a vehicle, unless it had a nice manual tranny.

I suppose that automatics do make sense in the case of people, who are handicapped, or infirm, but for normal driving?! Come on! Is everyone out there retarded, or terminally lazy? I know that getting stuck in traffic and commuting are not much fun, but have you all forgotten the joy of driving and efficiently shifting through the gears? The manual transmissions are better in practically every conceivable way in comparison to automatics.

In addition – despite the claims of the manufacturers – we could save millions of gallons of fuel EVERY DAY, if people were smart enough and not too lazy to drive “normal” cars.

We all can help. By influencing politicians, by realizing that the new and profitable ethanol fuels are not the solution, but are quickly becoming a part of the problem, by installing and using energy efficient bulbs, driving less, cycling more and walking.

Not using drinking water in plastic bottles would be helpful in many ways. Billions of plastic containers are laying around everywhere. Transporting tap, or even spring water from faraway places uses huge amounts of energy and generates more pollution. Get a water filter and reusable bottles.

Reducing the catastrophic epidemic of obesity is also a prime consideration. Most of the fat people become that way not only because of lack of exercise, but also because they keep eating crap, the sort of “food” that our processed food industry has been feeding us for at least two generations. High fructose corn syrup seems to be present in most U.S. non-alcoholic beverages. Avoid it like the plague!

Most of our foods here have been adulterated in some way by now. The industry has either added some chemicals, or taken away some natural and often healthy ingredients. At the very least, our food supply has been contaminated to some degree by pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics and hormones.

Haven’t you noticed that most obese people drink “diet” drinks? Doesn’t that tell you something? Why do you think that there are so many diabetics as of late? While sugar might not be the healthiest substance around, it is still much better than corn syrup, Aspartame, or Nutrasweet. Take note!

I realize that finding unadulterated food has become very difficult, but it is not impossible. Try harder and buy from local producers and farmers. Your body and Mother Nature will thank you.

Technorati Tags: conservation, Environment, global warming, obesity, pollution