How Do We Force Healthcare Change?

It has been several weeks since I have posted to this blog.  The holidays have come and gone, my end of the year bookkeeping and tax preparation is nearly complete, and we have survived a ton of nasty weather here in Iowa and all the cancellations and disruptions in schedule it created.  My boys are back in school.  My high school student finally got his finals completed after Christmas and snow days, and my college student is back on campus after having a long Christmas break and surgery to remove his wisdom teeth.  We have also had a loved one in and out of the hospital which brings me to my topic for today.

Have you ever thought about how difficult it is to complete your life?  After spending a lot of time in hospitals and nursing homes lately, I have been contemplating this issue.  It is so sad when a person becomes unable to enjoy anything about their life.  Are we really benefitting anyone by artificially keeping people alive with medications and interventions when they barely realize they are here and have no hope of recovery?  What do we do about this problem?

Here are some of my conclusions.  Just because a medical intervention is available does not mean it is the best choice.  I have seen many people who were told they needed a surgical procedure to “improve” their condition.  Afterward, they were worse off than if they had opted to live with the condition.  The same thing happens with some medications.  The side effects turn out to be worse than the condition the medication was meant to treat, yet the doctor will not allow you to discontinue it.  They add another medication to the list instead.  All medical interventions also come with a financial cost.  Sometimes it is a very significant financial cost, and these costs affect all of us even if you do not use the medical system.  If you have health insurance and pay taxes, you are paying for the medical system.

What do we do about this problem?  Great minds have been struggling with this question and the powerful law makers in Washington have been debating it.  Maybe it comes down to personal responsibility.  We are responsible for our own health.  We must make choices that are smart for us.  In order to do that we must force the medical system to change.  The individual must be allowed to seek medical advice and choose their own course of action rather than being forced to do whatever the doctor and insurance company determine is best.  We need to be allowed and encouraged to gather facts and make decisions about our own health and the health of our loved ones, and we should not have to be “difficult” to accomplish it.  How do we force this change?

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Avoid Holiday Overeating

Holidays are special times with our family and friends.  Many of us enjoy special meals with traditional foods during the holidays, but there are a few things you can do to keep from overdoing it.

First, remember to take your Healthy For Life supplements.  They will help to satisfy your appetite more quickly, keep your blood sugar levels more stable, and keep your immunity up so you will stay healthy.

Eat healthfully during non-celebration meals.  If you starve yourself before a celebration, you are more likely to really overdo it.  Remember to emphasize protein and natural fats and limit the carbohydrates.

Get some fresh air during the holidays.  It will help you reduce stress and focus on something other than food.

Experiment with a few low carb dishes for holiday meals and parties.  You may find something new to add to your favorites list.

Finally, remember that holiday meals are still just meals and that a small amount of a particular food tastes the same as a large amount of it.  The taste doesn’t change as you consume more of it.  Take the time to fully enjoy each mouthful of every special treat you eat.  Then go back to eating natural, healthy, lower carb foods at the next meal.

I wish you a very happy holiday season filled with blessings and joy.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

We Are An Amazing Creation

I believe that God created us with an amazing ability to heal ourselves.  He also created the perfect food to fuel our perfect bodies.  I believe he wants us to be healthy so we can do the work he created us to do.  Unfortunately, we seem to have decided that chemicals are better than food and that assaulting our immune systems with chemical healing agents and chemical prevention agents is better than allowing our immune system to adjust to the viruses, bacteria, and diseases in general that we encounter.  Preventing the small health challenges that come our way is not natural.  The body needs these challenges to become stronger.  For example if we never tax our muscles, they become weaker and weaker.  Soon we can not lift anything or walk any distance, because our muscles have become so deconditioned they no longer function properly.  The same thing happens with our immune system.  You have to be exposed and recover from minor illnesses to strengthen your immune system for big fights with nasty illnesses.  If you do not use it, you will lose it.

Our bodies are remarkable because they are very smart and conservative systems.  If your heart does not need to beat any faster to sustain your effort, it slows down.  If you are not under any stress or physical load, your blood pressure decreases.  If the pupil of your eye does not need as much light, it constricts.  If you do not need all the fuel (food) you put in, your body will store it or use it for structure.  God created a very smart system!

Then we take our wonderful, perfect gift and feed it the wrong fuel.  We eat food that has all the natural nutrition ripped out of it and instead has chemicals and additives to try to fool our bodies into thinking it is food.  This deplorable circumstance even starts with our babies who many times never get to taste the milk from their mother that is so perfect for them in every way and actually changes in composition as the baby grows.  Who decided that powdered, fake milk mixed with chemical-laden water was better for a baby than the milk produced by the body that gave birth to it?  As we grow our kids today, it gets worse from there.  Rarely, do people eat real food any more.  We need food that is natural, not food from a package.  Think back to when your grandparents and great grandparents prepared their meals.  That is how we should be eating.  We should be eating meat or fish, vegetables, fruit, and a few baked goods thrown in for variety and pleasure.  I am so frustrated when I see people eating cereal or nothing for breakfast, granola bars or worse for lunch, and fast food for dinner.  How do you expect your body to run like a Ferrari when you are feeding it the fuel fit for a jalopy?  You add to it the stress and pace of our lives, and the medications that many think are necessary to keep them alive, and we wonder why we are all sick.  Taking more medications is not the answer!  We need to get to the root of our health problems and help our bodies heal themselves.

There is also the expense of our keeping people sick system.  The medical industry has a very significant vested interest in keeping us sick.  If we take a medication, then we need another one to counter the effects of the first one, then one to counter the side effect of that one, and before you know it we are taking a long list of medications.  It is a great money maker for the pharmaceutical companies, but someone has to pay for all those medications.  Also if the pill you are taking causes side effects significant enough that you need another pill to cover them up, it might be time to consider another medication.   There may even be a way to naturally solve the health issue.  The problem is there is no money in that, and money drives the system.  Unbelievable!  Where is the good sense God gave us?  I urge you to stop, get off the medical treadmill, look at available research yourself, use common sense and reason, and give your body the chance to heal itself as the primary course of action.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Brian Peskin Live

What an exciting night last night!  I got to hear Brian Peskin give a lecture live in Johnston, Iowa, and his information is life changing.  He spoke to a packed-out house of 300 people interested in naturally improving their health.  He is a research scientist who started talking about parent essential oils and a lower-carb diet about twelve years ago and now has multiple articles published and has authored three books about life systems engineering.  I have learned a tremendous amount of information from him about how the body utilizes food, how to keep it healthy, and how to fuel it properly.  He has devoted his life to discerning scientific fact and delivering it to us in an understandable and useable format.  I owe a huge debt of gratitude to him for the information he has provided, and I highly recommend you attend one of his lectures or read some of his work.  Check him out at www.brianpeskin.com.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Low Carb Diets Work

Last week on the TV show “The Doctors,” one of the segments was about a woman who had lost weight on a low carb diet.  She had lost around 25 pounds, looked great, and said she felt great.  The doctors expressed concern that a low carb diet was not healthy and they tested her blood.  They seemed surprised to find that her blood test results were extremely healthy.  I can tell you why they were healthy, and I am not a doctor.  We are not supposed to be living on carbohydrates as a main element in our diet, especially if we are not highly active.  We should be consuming mainly protein, natural fat, and lower-carb vegetables and fruits.  Anything that can sit on a shelf should be consumed sparingly.  Especially if you have any blood sugar regulation problems, you should moderate your carb intake.

Consider the fact that too many carbs make you gain weight.  Carbohydrates in your system make your pancreas secrete more insulin than protein or fat.  Insulin is a fat storage hormone.  So too much insulin in your system will cause you to gain weight.  Another consideration is that cancer cells burn sugar for energy.  If you have cancer cells in your system somewhere, and we all probably do, then it just does not make sense to have too much of their favorite food available.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Refuse To Be A Lab Rat

A lack of scientific information when the practice of medicine started was understandable.  However, even back then the medical community refused to believe scientific proof that did exist.  Dr. Semmelweis was fired in 1848 for demonstrating that hand sterilization stops infection.  It took ten years for hand sterilization to become an accepted practice.

Today, it still seems that ten years or more must pass before scientific truth becomes accepted in medical practice.  There is a tremendous amount of information available and accessible today, and yet the medical field still insists on using us as lab rats.  Have the flu and H1N1 vaccinations been properly tested?  What are the long term health effects?  What will happen to people who are on preventative medications for several decades?  Does anyone know?  What are the environmental effects of having these medications in our waste?  Can we trust what public officials tell us regarding these issues?

Not only are we being used as lab rats, but true scientific information is being supressed or ignored.  We are told that alternative treatments are not the accepted standard of care or they are not accepted by the insurance company as payable treatments.  Never mind that they might actually be safer and more effective than traditional treatments.  Unbelievable!  Why are we letting our health care be dictated by insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and soon the government?   For an example of what I’m talking about, listen to this lecture on statin medications (cholesterol lowering meds) by Brian Peskin.

A large majority of people are taking these statin medications to lower their cholesterol.  You regularly see advertisements on television touting the benefits of them.  The side effects they list scare me.  Yet, I get the feeling that people fear they will die of a heart attack tomorrow if they refuse to take these medications.  The government told us that senior citizens were choosing between these medications and food back when they were developing the Medicare drug plans.  Are we sure these medications are worth the amount we are charged for them?  Why do you think the pharmaceutical companies can afford to advertise medications on television?  I suspect it is because the profit margins are tremendous!  Financial gain and political power are driving the field of medicine, not scientific fact, and I resent it.  As a matter of fact, it angers me.  I would venture a guess that our entire health care system would not need an overhaul if health decisions were based on scientific fact coupled with good common sense.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Carbohydrate=Sugar=Body Fat

There has been plenty of buzz about carbohydrates in recent years.  We have heard about the Atkins diet, stars talking about low carb diets, and the South Beach diet in the news.  What is missing, however, is an explanation of why all of us should limit carbohydrate intake.  Maybe we should take a look at our physiology and see what makes sense.

It is a well accepted fact that eating a lot of sugar is not good for us.  What is not taken into account is that any form of carbohydrate turns into sugar in our system after it is digested.  The only difference between a complex carbohydrate and a simple carbohydrate is a matter of about fifteen minutes in terms of how long it takes it to turn into sugar in your body.  When the body is presented with a dose of sugar, it produces insulin to bring the sugar in the blood back under control.  Insulin is defined as a fat storage hormone.   When insulin levels are elevated in the body, we very efficiently store body fat.  It makes sense that in order to minimize the insulin response in our body, we should limit the amount of carbohydrate we consume.  Limiting your carbohydrate intake will allow you to maintain or lose weight, help keep you from getting type two diabetes, and decrease your risk of heart disease and cancer.  Do a little experiment with yourself as the subject.  Take a couple of weeks to gradually reduce your carbohydrate intake to about 60 grams a day.  After maintaining that level for a week, you will find that you feel better, have more energy, have less heart burn, have less food cravings, and sleep better.  For even more pronounced benefits, try to get your 60 grams of carbohydrate a day from natural foods such as fruits and vegetables.  Your body will thank you with improved weight, energy, and health.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Do You Need Supplements?

Do we need supplements?  I do.  Maybe you do too.  Actually, most of us probably do need them today.  Our diets are deficient in essential fatty acids and also minerals.  We may also need a supplement to help us cleanse impurities from our system.

Essential fatty acids are lacking in our diet, because it is difficult to preserve them in food.  While they are present in seeds, nuts, fish, and other foods, food processing and cooking either removes or destroys them.  These oils are essential because every cell in the body needs them, yet the body cannot produce them.  They must be consumed.  An oil supplement that contains the parent or source omega oil is important to allow for the derivatives, or alternate forms, to be produced by the body as needed.  Fish oil is not recommended because it is difficult to obtain a pure source and it has very few parent or source omega oils.  It is mostly derivatives.

Modern farming practices have left much of the soil depleted of important minerals.  This in turn leaves our food supply deficient.  Minerals are important for good health, because they act as cofactors with our vitamins.  Without minerals available in our system, the body cannot efficiently use the vitamins which are still available in our food supply.  When choosing a mineral supplement, it is very important to choose a source that is recognized as food by the body.  A truly chelated mineral supplement binds the mineral to a protein allowing the body to accept it as food.

We are subjected to many impurities in our air, water, and food.  As these impurities build up in the body, it can cause fatigue and illness.  An herbal cleanser can help to remove the impurities from our system.    One of the best ones available is an old Canadian Indian formula called Essiac.

If you would like further information, please visit www.best4uinc.com.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Flu Shot Saga Continues

I have to admit that the entire flu shot situation is very frustrating for me. On our news today, there were two reports regarding flu shots. One was that some Canadian officials have decided to hold off on distributing the seasonal flu shots to everyone.  They have noticed a disturbing trend that indicated those who have had seasonal flu shots are more suseptible to the H1N1 virus.  Click this link to read the article.  There was also a report on the local news that while the preservative thimerosal has been outlawed in most vaccines in Iowa, multi-dose seasonal flu shots do still contain it.  If you want to be sure to avoid the mercury in thimerosal, you have to ask for a single dose vaccine that does not contain thimerosal.  Be aware that even if the vaccine is preservative free, it may still contain trace amounts of thimerosal.  You must request a vaccine that is thimerosal free.  The health department official interviewed during the report said the shots that contain thimerosal were nothing to worry about.  I guess that would depend on how much mercury your body has been exposed to over the years, how efficient your body is at excreting that mercury, and how sensitive your body is to the effects of mercury in the first place.  I dare to suggest we don’t know how all these factors will effect each individual.

I am also distressed that the pharmaceutical companies can afford to spend large sums of money advertising the flu shots.  In the last couple of days, it seems like every commercial break now has a spot promoting the flu shot.  Don’t they have a better use for their resources?  I am pretty sure that anyone in the United States who wants a flu shot knows that the shots are available and also knows multiple places where they can get one.

Denise Owen, denise@best4uinc.com, www.best4uinc.com

Esau, Discipline, and Health

In worship today, our pastor talked about the story of Jacob and Esau.  Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.  He chose instant gratification over long-term benefit.  One way I could summarize this would be discipline.  In order to be successful you must exercise discipline.  Our society has somehow decided that taking a pill is better than making lifestyle changes to stay or become healthy.  Our doctors have decided that we won’t make lifestyle changes that they recommend, so they don’t even bother to address those possibilities with us.  They give us what we want . . . a pill.  What we seem to forget, however, is that there are side effects with every single medication available.  Some of the side effects are minimal and worth the risk, but many are significant and dangerous.  Many of the side effects are bothersome enough that another medication is prescribed to address them.  We are also not advised by the prescribing doctor about these side effects or given the option of choosing for ourselves whether we want to risk these side effects.  They think if we are informed, we might imagine these side effects.  I encourage you to choose to be disciplined to become healthy.  Make informed choices about your diet, any supplements you take, your exercise habits, your stress levels, your spiritual life, and your social life.  If these topics interest you, please visit my web site at www.best4uinc.com and sign up for my free electronic newsletter, “Healthy Solutions.”