Welcome back to Prevention Not Prescriptions Tuesday.This is a weekly forum where we’re coming together to inform and inspire each other to healthier living. Tuesdays are our chance to take our health into our own hands and say “hell no” to more pills and the pharmaceutical industry’s endless search for profits.
Healthcare...it's complicated.
A philosophical take on prevention
The most compelling thing I learned about healthcare last year is that above all else it’s COMPLICATED! The year long debate showed that anything you can say about healthcare has another side, a mitigating issue, an unconsidered side effect. Remarkably, this is true even with the idea of preventative health. Increasingly, prevention is moving from the margins of healthcare to take a center stage. It was certainly one of the things that Obama called for in his campaign, and this is not surprising since preventative healthcare is often very popular with consumers. We see it as a corrective to the worst aspects of biomedicine. Rather than waiting till we are sick, when medical or surgical intervention can be difficult, painful, and costly, why not tend to people before they get sick? By heading off sickness before it starts we can side step the pain, expense, and limited effectiveness of corrective interventions. That sounds good, but I’m afraid even here healthcare is complicated and the picture is not so simple. Continue reading...
The most compelling thing I learned about healthcare last year is that above all else it’s COMPLICATED! The year long debate showed that anything you can say about healthcare has another side, a mitigating issue, an unconsidered side effect. Remarkably, this is true even with the idea of preventative health. Increasingly, prevention is moving from the margins of healthcare to take a center stage. It was certainly one of the things that Obama called for in his campaign, and this is not surprising since preventative healthcare is often very popular with consumers. We see it as a corrective to the worst aspects of biomedicine. Rather than waiting till we are sick, when medical or surgical intervention can be difficult, painful, and costly, why not tend to people before they get sick? By heading off sickness before it starts we can side step the pain, expense, and limited effectiveness of corrective interventions. That sounds good, but I’m afraid even here healthcare is complicated and the picture is not so simple.
The major complication surrounding the notion of “prevention” is that the idea leaves itself open to multiple interpretations. This allows “preventative medicine” to be defined in a way that looks a lot like the “interventionist medicine” that it is meant to correct. Over the last 30 years, the pharmaceutical industry has catapulted itself into the corporate colossus we know today not primarily by discovering cures but by extending its reach to more and more chronic conditions for which people can take one, two, three, and more medications for years, and years, and years. This process of selling people on more and more diseases with more and more medication interventions does not stop with “treatment,” it easily morphs into treating the not-sick in the hopes of preventing disease. Thus, even if we are not sick, our doctors are constantly telling us to “know ourselves.” What is our blood pressure, our glucose, our cholesterol, our genetic risk factors, our anxiety, our mood level, our menstrual cycle, our hours of sleep? If we check all of these things, there is a good chance we will find something not “normal,” and guess what, there is a medication (or two or three) for each of these. If we follow out this definition of preventative health then each of us will be taking more and more medications for a longer and longer period of time.
Like everything else in medicine, all of these preventative medical measures are also complicated and I don’t have the space to work through the many pros and cons for each. What I do want to suggest is a very simple alternative logic of prevention. Instead of only using a logic of prevention based on “know ourself” let’s add a logic of “caring for the self.” Here I draw on the work of historian and philosopher Michel Foucault and in particular his study of classical Greek and Roman cultures. Reading a number of texts from these classical eras, Foucault investigates how people in these cultures came to understand and approach themselves. He found that Greco-Roman cultures exhibit a relation to the self which instead of being predominantly based on a principle of knowing oneself is based around the maxim: “Take care of yourself.”
For Foucault, these classical modes of self are chiefly about cultivating and tending to oneself as a practice and a process. They are in sharp contrast to the idea of know yourself that has been overemphasized in modern societies. From this perspective we spend too much time trying to know our IQ’s, our grade point averages, our career status, and our multiple risk factors and diagnoses, and we spend too little time following the maxim take care of yourself. As a result, the practice and process of caring for the self has been relatively forgotten. To re-member these practices of caring for the self, we must develop what the Buddhist call “mindfulness.” We must learn to live in the present, to pay attention to our feelings, to process our painful emotions, and to find ways to get our needs met—whether those needs are bodily needs like nutrition, shelter, and exercise, personal needs like meaning and purpose, relational needs like companionship and community, social needs like ethical work and fair employment, expressive needs like exposure to the beauty and the opportunity to be creative, environmental needs like walks in nature and sustainable living, generative needs like giving time and energy to a neighbor, or spiritual needs like attunement to a higher consciousness or to a religious community.
When we tend to ourselves in these ways we tend to our health because our body is not simply a machine. Our bodies are dynamic living organism with multiple healing capacities for responding to pathogens, toxins, stress, and disequilibrium. When we care for ourselves, we shore up our bodies multiple healing capacities. And, when we do this, we are far from being selfish because tuning into our own needs rapidly reveals our connections to the needs of others and to the world. For me, it is this is approach to “preventative healthcare,” one that brings us back to the cares of the self, that truly deserves our support. And it is this version that we must reinforce so that it doesn’t become lost the cacophony of other voices on “prevention.”
Read this week’s full Prevention Not Prescriptions line-up.
Welcome back to Prevention Not Prescriptions Tuesday. This is a weekly forum where we’re coming together to inform and inspire each other to healthier living. Tuesdays are our chance to take our health into our own hands and say “hell no” to more pills and the pharmaceutical industry’s endless search for profits.
Jamie Oliver's food revolution. Yes!
Marion Nestle's take on the real food reality show
I’m not much of a TV-watcher but from what I’ve been hearing about Jamie Oliver’s new series, I thought I had best take a look.
Don’t miss it. Get your kids to watch it with you.
Oliver, in case you haven’t been paying attention, went to Huntington, West Virginia (ostensibly the obesity capital of the world), TV crew in hand, to reform the town’s school lunch program.
Take a deep breath. Try not to get turned off by Oliver’s statement that “the food revolution starts here” (no Jamie, it doesn’t). Try not to cringe when he calls the food service workers “girls” and “luv” (OK, it’s a cultural problem). Remember: this is reality TV. Continue reading...
I’m not much of a TV-watcher but from what I’ve been hearing about Jamie Oliver’s new series, I thought I had best take a look.
Don’t miss it. Get your kids to watch it with you.
Oliver, in case you haven’t been paying attention, went to Huntington, West Virginia (ostensibly the obesity capital of the world), TV crew in hand, to reform the town’s school lunch program.
Take a deep breath. Try not to get turned off by Oliver’s statement that “the food revolution starts here” (no Jamie, it doesn’t). Try not to cringe when he calls the food service workers “girls” and “luv” (OK, it’s a cultural problem). Remember: this is reality TV.
With that said, let’s give the guy plenty of credit for what he is trying to do: cook real food. What a concept!
And let’s cut him some slack for what he is up against: USDA rules that make cooking too expensive for school budgets, entrenched negative attitudes, widespread cluelessness about dietary principles as well as what food is and how to cook it, and kids who think it is entirely normal to eat pizza for breakfast and chicken nuggets for lunch, neither with a knife and fork.
What impressed me most is that Oliver is going about addressing these barriers in exactly the right way. From my observations of school food over the years, the key elements for getting decent food into schools are these:
A principal who cares about what kids eat
Teachers who care about what kids eat
Parents who care about what kids eat
Food service personnel who not only care what the kids eat, but also know the kids’ names.
For a school food program to work, all of these elements must be in place. That’s why the school food revolution must be achieved one school at a time.
Watch Oliver go to work on these elements in this one school.
Teacher that I am, for me the most moving – and hopeful – sign was what happened in the classroom. Oliver holds up tomatoes and asks the kids what they are. No response. Not one kid recognizes a potato or knows it as the source of French fries.
How does the teacher react? As any great teacher, she recognizes a teachable moment and uses it. When Oliver returns to that class, the kids recognize and can name vegetables, even an eggplant.
This program has much to teach us about the reality of school food and what it takes to fix it. That is why I so appreciate the comments of the New York Times reviewer. His review ended with this comment:
One thing noticeably absent from the first two episodes is a discussion of any role the American food industry and its lobbyists might play in the makeup of school lunches and in the formulation of the guidelines set for them by the Agriculture Department. If Mr. Oliver wants a real food revolution, it can’t happen just in Huntington. Yes!
This article originally appeared on Marion Nestle’s blog FoodPolitics.com and has been re-posted with permission for Prevention Not Prescriptions Tuesday.
Marion Nestle is a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and Professor of Sociology at New York University. She has been a member of the FDA Food Advisory Committee and Science Board, the USDA/DHHS Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, and American Cancer Society committees that issue dietary guidelines for cancer prevention. She is the author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health.
Read this week’s full Prevention Not Prescriptions line-up.
Listen to Kathleen’s interview with Marion Nestle.
Welcome back to Prevention Not Prescriptions Tuesday. This is a weekly forum where we’re coming together to inform and inspire each other to healthier living. Tuesdays are our chance to take our health into our own hands and say “hell no” to more pills and the pharmaceutical industry’s endless search for profits.
Healthier negotiations...
A conscious approach to prevention
What exactly is prevention?
Most of us would agree that we want to live as long as possible, as healthy as possible. Prevention, then, becomes a means to achieve that goal.
We do preventive things – or we don’t do non-preventive things – to maximize our quality and quantity of life. We eat healthy foods – or we avoid unhealthy foods. We don’t smoke. We drink alcohol in moderation. We exercise regularly. Prevention helps us manage that balancing act toward achieving our goals of living our longest and healthiest lives.
Most of us would agree that we want to live as long as possible, as healthy as possible. Prevention, then, becomes a means to achieve that goal.
We do preventive things – or we don’t do non-preventive things – to maximize our quality and quantity of life. We eat healthy foods – or we avoid unhealthy foods. We don’t smoke. We drink alcohol in moderation. We exercise regularly. Prevention helps us manage that balancing act toward achieving our goals of living our longest and healthiest lives.
The problem is - nobody is perfectly preventive. We slip up all the time. C’mon – you know you snuck that cupcake last week! Tuesday you didn’t feel so well, so you skipped your workout. Oh, the guilt!
And what about those 10 or 20 or how-many-more years of life when prevention wasn’t even on your radar? Did you ever get a sunburn when you were a kid? How long did you stay on birth control? Did those unconscious acts ruin your chance for a long and healthy life?
Further, sometimes prevention guidelines change. Remember when margarine was considered healthier than butter? Hormone replacement therapy was the solution to menopause, too. Further research has shown us that those truisms aren’t quite so true anymore. Yet we bought-in for years. At what expense?
Most of us make the best choices we can when we are consciously making choices. It’s too late to change yesterday’s prevention mistakes, but it’s not too late to take a different, more conscious approach to prevention starting today.
So let’s look at prevention as a series of conscious negotiation opportunities with ourselves. Just like the NATO treaties, or the price we’re willing to pay for a house; ask yourself, what are you willing to trade in order to stay as healthy as possible for as long as possible? For each of us, the answers will be different.
Want to eat that piece of marbled steak or sprinkle salt on your food? OK. Maybe once in a great while it won’t hurt. But indulging too frequently will mean you are trading that steak for a year of life, or the chance of a heart attack, a stroke or even Alzheimer’s disease.
Wish you could light up a cigarette? That drag might feel great in the moment. But ask yourself if that moment is more important than years of breathing easily or worth exposing your children to second or third hand smoke so they, too, may develop lung problems.
Already downed three cookies when one would have been plenty? Fine. Your negotiation might be to do an extra hour on the treadmill to prevent that weight gain. Then accept that diabetes may be in your future if you do so too often. If you don’t mind insulin injections for the rest of your life, then it may be worth the trade.
Think of prevention as your ability – and need – to actively negotiate each day for a healthier and longer future. Yesterday’s non-preventive habits could cut your life short by 10 or 20 years. But renegotiating with yourself today might mean you are healthier till the end, or that you can buy back those lost years because you’ve made wiser choices.
It’s a struggle, for sure. Temptation is a constant nag. But once you begin active self-negotiation, you’ll be able to internalize what’s important to you with a clarity you’ve never had before. It’s your positive step toward keeping the Prevention Police at bay.
Now, may I offer you a jelly doughnut? Or would you prefer an apple? Just what are they worth to you?
Trisha Torrey was recently on The Kathleen Show to talk about her new book, You Bet Your Life! The 10 Mistakes Every Patient Makes. In this must-hear interview, Trisha explains the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to their health care and shares everything you need to know to get the best treatment possible for you and your family.
Listen here:
Read this week's full Prevention Not Prescriptions line-up.
Welcome back to Prevention Not Prescriptions Tuesday. This is a weekly forum where we’re coming together to inform and inspire each other to healthier living. Tuesdays are our chance to take our health into our own hands and say “hell no” to more pills and the pharmaceutical industry’s endless search for profits.
Get your fit on
Time is on your side
One of the questions I get the most is, "How long did it take you to get in shape?" I get this about once a week. They look at me and try to access whether this is a do-able task for them and whether they should start penciling in their workouts. When I tell them "years", I see that mini eye-roll, body-sag and the look of "forget it." But when I tell them, I've been maintaining my fitness for a while and that my real transformation took about 6 months, they begin to perk up. And when I tell them I trained for my first competition before my baby was two and took 2nd, they are intrigued...read more.
One of the questions I get the most is, "How long did it take you to get in shape?" I get this about once a week. They look at me and try to assess whether this is a do-able task for them and whether they should start penciling in their workouts. When I tell them "years", I see that mini eye-roll, body-sag and the look of "forget it." But when I tell them, I've been maintaining my fitness for a while and that my real transformation took about 6 months, they begin to perk up. And when I tell them I trained for my first competition before my baby was two and took 2nd, they are intrigued… so it is possible!
Yes. Quite.
People are so worried about how hard it will be and how long it will take that they forget how much easier it is to feel good… and how much easier it is to live in the same size…and how much easier it is not have to worry about your weight all the time. Let me tell you, I've been on both sides of the fitness fence, and THIS is easier…by far.
So let's talk time.
How long have you been worrying about your weight? How often during the day do you think about something to do with food and your body? How much time have you spent leafing through fitness and health magazines and books? How many times have you gone through the drive-through? How much time have you spent shopping for bigger clothes that "fit" you better? How much extra cardio have you done to make up for your nutritional sins? You want to talk about taking up time…THINK about all you could do without all that wasted time on useless tasks that only push you back, not move you forward…really think about it.
Now think about all the time you will GAIN by feeling stronger and more energetic. Think about the freedom of your thoughts when you are not worrying about what to eat, how much, and whether you'll have something that fits you for your important event. Imagine a seamless life feeling fit and strong without the constant struggle and sadness about your reflection.
Getting fit and healthified isn't nearly as hard or complicated as you might think, or some might want you to believe. It only seems complicated because there is a whole market that preys on your desperation for the ultimate "bikini body" and knows you want it in "only 14 days!" It's a bunch of junk. THIS is what complicates things. The ONLY part that requires some real work is getting the right information and holding onto your motivation. Yes, that my friends, you have to work on. But here's the good part…there is a reward for doing so. The best reward…a renewed, stronger, empowered, enthusergized you!
There are a few key elements you need to put into place to start down your road to success.
Put your workouts on the calendar and STICK TO THEM. Your health is just as important as Janie's dentist appointment. Get cozy with the word consistency.
Grab your TUDE. This is your gratiTUDE and your attiTUDE. Be grateful for the body you were given and that you are able to move it for its pleasure and betterment. Throw some energy and attitude into your workouts and move with purpose.
Look at getting HEALTHY, not losing weight. If 95 percent of what you eat is healthy, you'll never have to count a calorie again and the layers will disappear all on their own.
Don't weigh yourself. If you MUST, only do it once or twice a month. The numbers can throw you off your game and the trick is to stay ON your game long enough to win.
Give yourself a realistic timeframe. Goals and timelines are great to keep you focused and goal oriented, but don't try to cram all your health into a month. You'll just burn out and give up.
Get the right information for YOU! Don't listen to your friend's aunt's cousin who read a book by some guy talking about how you should eat the rind of the lemon before you workout. (I made that up…don't do it.) I know this info seems assessable and easy to try, but talk about a waste of time. Hire a trainer or find someone knowledgeable to help you, afterall, the quickest way to learn something is to have someone show you how.
Be stern with yourself, not hard on yourself. Don't let yourself get away with the excuses, but don't beat yourself up either. You have to be your own best cheerleader.
So stop looking at the clock and wondering how long it will take and just start. We all know that when you stare at the clock, time moves slowly, but when you don't… time flies.
Listen to Kathleen’s interview with Heather for more get-fit inspiration:
Heather Frey is a 30-something mom turned personal trainer and the creator of the first trainer matching Web site called SmashFit.com. Her work has been covered on NBC, in Oxygen Magazine, and on BodyBuilding.com.
Read this week's full Prevention Not Prescriptions line-up.
Welcome back to Prevention Not Prescriptions Tuesday. This is a weekly forum where we’re coming together to inform and inspire each other to healthier living. Tuesdays are our chance to take our health into our own hands and say “hell no” to more pills and the pharmaceutical industry’s endless search for profits.
Getting past the "protein myth"
Kathy Freston talks conscious eating
When I tell people that I'm a vegan, the most popular question, by far, inevitably follows: "But, how do you get enough protein?"
There it is again, I think, the meat industry's most potent weapon against vegetarianism -- the protein myth. And it is just that -- a myth.
In fact, humans need only 10 percent of the calories we consume to be from protein. Athletes and pregnant women need a little more, but if you're eating enough calories from a varied plant based diet, it's close to impossible to not to get enough.
The way Americans obsess about protein, you'd think protein deficiency was the number one health problem in America. Continue reading...
When I tell people that I'm a vegan, the most popular question, by far, inevitably follows: "But, how do you get enough protein?"
There it is again, I think, the meat industry's most potent weapon against vegetarianism -- the protein myth. And it is just that -- a myth.
In fact, humans need only 10 percent of the calories we consume to be from protein. Athletes and pregnant women need a little more, but if you're eating enough calories from a varied plant based diet, it's close to impossible to not to get enough.
The way Americans obsess about protein, you'd think protein deficiency was the number one health problem in America. Of course it's not -- it's not even on the list of the ailments that doctors are worried about in America or any other countries where basic caloric needs are being met.
What is on the list? Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity -- diseases of affluence. Diseases linked to eating animal products. According to the American Dietetic Association, which looked at all of the science on vegetarian diets and found not just that they're healthy, but that they "provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."
They continue: "Well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood and adolescence ... Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, as well as lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease; vegetarians also show lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer."
Dr. Dean Ornish writes of his Eat More, Weigh Less vegetarian diet -- the one diet that has passed peer-review for taking weight off and keeping it off for more than 5 years -- that in addition to being the one scientifically proven weight loss plan that works long-term, it "may help to prevent a wide variety of other illnesses including breast cancer in women, prostate cancer in men, colon cancer, lung cancer, lymphoma, osteoporosis, diabetes, hypertension, and so on ...."
So when people ask me about protein, I explain that protein is not a problem on a vegan diet, that the real problems that are plaguing us in the West can be addressed in part with a vegetarian diet, and that I get my protein the same way everyone else does -- I eat!
Beans, nuts, seeds, lentils, and whole grains are packed with protein. So are all vegetables as a caloric percentage, though they don't have enough calories to sustain most people as a principal source of sustenance. And these protein sources have some excellent benefits that animal protein does not -- they contain plenty of fiber and complex carbohydrates, where meat has none. That's right: Meat has no complex carbs at all, and no fiber. Plant proteins are packed with these essential nutrients.
Plus, since plant-based protein sources don't contain cholesterol or high amounts of saturated fat, they are much better for you than meat, eggs, and dairy products.
It is also worth noting the very strong link between animal protein and a few key diseases, including cancer and osteoporosis.
According to Dr. Ornish (this may be the most interesting link in this article, by the way -- it's worth reading the entire entry), "high-protein foods, particularly excessive animal protein, dramatically increase the risk of breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart disease, and many other illnesses. In the short run, they may also cause kidney problems, loss of calcium in the bones, and an unhealthy metabolic state called ketosis in many people."
The cancer connection is spelled out at length in a fantastic book by Cornell scientist T. Colin Campbell, called The China Study. Basically, there is overwhelming scientific evidence to implicate that animal protein consumption causes cancer.
And just a few quick anecdotal points:
Olympian Carl Lewis has said that his best year of track competition was the first year that he ate a vegan diet (he is still a strong proponent of vegan diets for athletes).
Strength trainer Mike Mahler says, "Becoming a vegan had a profound effect on my training. ... [M]y bench press excelled past 315 pounds, and I noticed that I recovered much faster. My body fat also went down, and I put on 10 pounds of lean muscle in a few months."
Bodybuilder Robert Cheeke advises, "The basics for nutrition are consuming large amounts of fresh green vegetables and a variety of fruits, to load yourself up with vibrant vitamins and minerals."
A few other vegans, all of whom sing the praises of the diet for their athletic performance: Ultimate fighter Mac Danzig, ultramarathoner Scott Jurek, Minnesota Twins pitcher Pat Neshek, Atlanta Hawks Guard Salim Stoudamire, and Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Tony Gonzalez.
And let's not forget about tennis star Martina Navratilova, six-time Ironman winner Dave Scott, four-time Mr. Universe Bill Pearl, or Stan Price, the world-record holder in bench press. They are just a few of the successful vegetarian athletes.
Basically, vegans and vegetarians needn't fret about protein, but many Americans do need to worry about their weight, heart disease, cancer, and other ailments -- many of which can be addressed by healthier eating, including a vegan or vegetarian diet.
Vegetarians and vegans get all the nutrients our bodies need from plants, and will thus, according to the science, be more likely to maintain a healthy weight and stave off a variety of ailments, from heart disease to cancer.
For answers to other popular questions about conscious eating, please check out my previous post on the topic here.
Happy eating!
Listen to Kathleen's interview with Kathy Freston:
Kathy Freston is a renowned personal-growth author and spiritual counselor. She is the author of several best-selling books on the topic of life and health, including Quantum Wellness: A Practical and Spiritual Guide to Health and Happiness. Kathy’s work has been featured in several prominent magazines and TV talk shows, including Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show and Oprah.
Read this week’s full Prevention Not Prescriptions line-up.
I'm a filmmaker, writer, and talk radio host. After a decade of schlepping drugs for big pharma, I finally got the ovaries to walk away from my career as a pill pusher and share what I knew on the big screen. I wrote and directed the feature film Side Effects (starring Katherine Heigl) as well as...(Read full bio)
The making of Side Effects starring Katherine Heigl
