ARE YOU TOXIC?

When a warning light comes on in our car or it fails a safety inspection, we investigate and perform the needed maintenance. Why do we care more for our cars than our bodies?

Here are ten toxic symptoms that you should not ignore. Is your body asking for toxic relief and a personal tune-up?

1. You are over or under weight.
2. You have less energy than you would like.
3. You are irritable, depressed or unable to sleep.
4. You are fatigued, achy or arthritic.
5. You have colds, flu or just don’t feel well more often than you would expect.
6. Your skin is pallid.
7. You have an offensive body odor or bad breath.
8. Your skin or eyes are itchy.
9. You have seasonal or other allergies.
10. You are not as mentally sharp or you are unable to concentrate.

Here are ten ‘toxic’ facts.

1. The tap water you drink may contain chlorine and other toxic chemicals. 
2. Well water, without filtration and purification, can contain bacteria, viruses, polluting chemicals and inorganic minerals
3. Showering with unfiltered water allows more chlorine to enter your body than from the water you drink
4. Drinking less than 8 glasses of water per day allows toxins to build up in your body.
5. Soft drinks have chemicals and are not equivalent to water; for every soda you need to drink and additional seven glasses of water to neutralize the chemicals.
6. Coffee is not equivalent to water; for every cup of coffee you need to drink and additional four glasses of water to neutralize the chemicals.
7. Prescription or other medications are often highly toxic.
8. Kids and pets transport toxins into your environment
9. Dampness in your home can be a source of mold
10. You should not smell smoke or odors in your home because what you smell is potentially a toxic gas.

Our Chemical Report Card

The National Geographic recently paid $15,000 to have one reporter tested for internal toxins. The Pollution Within, October 2006 reported that he tested positive for 165 of 320 chemicals including DDT, PCBs, lead, mercury, and dioxins, substances that have been banned or restricted in the US for decades. They also found new pesticides and plastic ingredients, along with chemicals found in fragrances, on the surface of non-stick fry pans and those used to make water-resistant and fire-safe fabrics.

Until recently, no one measured levels of chemical exposure in the American population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention began testing as scientists suspect that man-made chemicals are linked to very significant increases in the rates of autism, cancer, leukemia and other diseases. Scientists have to know the exposure rates before they can measure the health impact. In fact some of Duncan’s tests were done in Canada as no US laboratory was appropriately equipped.

The article states that “Duncan can go toe-to-toe with a Midwestern cornfield for pesticide variety-16 of 28 tested for were found. Don’t try to set him on fire either, as his blood is rich in BDE-47, a common fire retardant…”

As a child, he played in a dump that was later declared an EPA superfund site. He grew up near a river lined with factories making agricultural chemicals, soap and cars, and nearby fields were sprayed with DDT and other pesticides. There was mercury in the fish he ate and he drank water contaminated with PCBs. The PDBE flame retardants responsible for the most worrisome of his results came from treated fabrics he wore and the upholstery he sat on.

In toxicology, dose is everything, and many of Duncan’s results were no higher than the CDC mean levels for Americans. But he was tested for only 320 of the 80,000+ chemicals the EPA estimates are in common use in the US. He is currently healthy but at this point no one knows with certainty what levels are safe or what the long term effects might be.

While the National Geographic report makes it clear that we can’t escape the chemicals in our food, air or water, the article doesn’t specify what could or should be done about the chemicals that build up in our body!

Here’s what we recommend. Equip your home with a high quality air purifier (not a passive filter) to eliminate VOC (Volatile Organic Compound) off gassing from the materials in your home. Drink filtered ozonated water and shower in filtered water that is chlorine free. Finally, adopt a nutritional cleansing diet to help your body eliminate toxins.

We cannot give you our chemical report cards as the cost of testing is prohibitive, but we know that we feel better, look better, sleep better and experience fewer aches, pains and allergies once we a adopted a lifestyle designed to disrupt the disease cycle.

Don’t sit passively waiting for the disease process to consume you and destroy your quality of life. Disrupt your own disease cycle by taking control of your personal environment.

Real Healthcare Reform

Maybe I am stupid but I just don’t understand why no one is talking about truly reforming our healthcare system by shrinking the insurance footprint not enlarging it. In my mind it is excessive health insurance and not insufficient health insurance that is driving costs. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Over the years we have created a “cost recovery” culture where everyone wants to get back at least as much as they put in to their health insurance. This is, of course is impossible, but it also encourages abuse. People are making high cost visits to the doctor even for the simplest cold, because they have paid for it. We also believe we can do anything to our body and when it breaks, the doctors can fix it with a knife or a pill and the cost will be covered by insurance … after all, we have already paid for it. Excessive insurance has caused us to abandon personal responsibility.

But insurance and personal accountability are not mutually exclusive, we have good and affordable coverage for our cars and homes without any loss of personal responsibility. You would never hear someone say “I want to wreck my car so I can have the insurance company pay to fix it … because I have already paid for it”. People readily accept the fact that they pay several hundred dollars each year to insure their homes and most will never collect a single cent; it is insurance, not a prepaid credit card.

We buy new tires and re-carpet our homes and would never think that these routine items should be covered by insurance. But when it comes to health insurance, for some reason we think it should cover colds and scrapes, Viagra and the Pill. Why? How did we get from the concept of insurance against disaster to universal and unlimited coverage?

Excess insurance has stifled competition and driven up prices. We have come to believe that doctors and pills can fix anything with the insurance company picking up the tab; we have become unwise consumers. We don’t take care of ourselves and we don’t shop wisely for the services we do need.

If the market was willing to pay for a policy that covered oil changes and new tires, some company would surely be willing to sell it, but several things would happen. First the cost of insurance would skyrocket, second the cost of an oil change would be $190 instead of $19. Jiffy Lube would have to pay people to file all the paperwork and argue with the insurance company about every filter and belt. In addition, because the consumer is not paying the bill they would not shop wisely and so prices would rise.

Don’t blame insurance companies, they are simply providing what consumers demand, and don’t blame doctors, they are simply trying to cover their costs and make a profit so they can continue to provide services to their clients. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the doctors and insurance companies making a profit. The problem lies not with the providers, but with the consumers. As Pogo famously said, “I have met the enemy and it is us”.

So how do we stop the madness?

1. Stop covering routine medical services with insurance. Specifically, encourage insurance companies to offer affordable coverage that excludes routine medical services and individuals to abandon this insane concept that insurance should cover everything. We have a start at this with the high deductable policies, but that needs to be made universal.
   
   
2. The easiest way to change consumer behavior is to change the tax laws. Stop allowing companies to provide tax-free employee health insurance. This would drive this (major) component of the insurance marketplace to start (for the first time) shopping wisely. Higher priced excess-coverage policies would become less attractive if the employee were paying for them out of after tax dollars.
   
   There is also a tax equality component. Self employed and unemployed individuals don’t get a tax break on their insurance, and no one gets tax-free auto or homeowners insurance. What makes corporate employees so unique that they should get their coverage tax free?
   
   Sure those who lose this unjustified tax break would be unhappy, but they would get over it. Remember when credit card interest was no longer deductible. People got over it very quickly.
   
   
3. Encourage insurance competition by allowing insurance companies to write policies anywhere.
   
4. Drive down the cost of routine medical services by increasing competition and lowering the cost of providing these services.
   
   One way to do this is to change the laws to encourage the free market to develop more walk-in clinics staffed by Nurse Practitioners. A huge percentage of doctor visits are for things that a qualified nurse could easily handle.
   
   This would free up millions of doctor hours and decrease or even eliminate the “doctor shortage” we have.
   
5. Get serious about electronic medical records. Paper management and the errors are driving up costs.
   
   
6. Enact tort reform to stop the abuse of the system and to protect the walk-in clinics from inappropriate suites and excessive settlements. Move the responsibility for health decisions back to the patient where it belongs.
   
7. Prohibit exclusion based on preexisting conditions. It may be necessary at least temporarily to move the most severe cases over to Medicare to prevent this from driving up costs.
   
8. Create laws to curb the abuse of emergency room services. Lowering the cost of routine services would help this in any case.
   
9. Consider enacting a government safety net but only for the most severe of the severe situations. For example it might only kick in if an individual’s healthcare costs exceeded $3 million.
   
   
10. Make our elected officials live with the same rules the citizens live by.
    

What I am proposing is a 3-tiered system. The first tier would be the individual and he or she must cover out of pocket healthcare costs up to some amount, $3,000/year per individual or $5,000/year for a family for example. Second allow private health insurance to cover catastrophic events up to say $3 million in a lifetime. Finally, the government should provide a policy that covers those individuals who exceed the private insurance cap. I don’t know what the cap value should be, but it should be set so that only a very small percentage ever reaches the threshold.

There would be very little cost to the government and whatever cost there is could be easily covered by savings on government employee insurance and the elimination of the unjustified tax break given for company paid health plans.

Free Radicals

We are not talking about aging Black Panthers; we are talking about tiny atoms that wreck havoc inside our bodies. For those of us who were educated in biology prior to ‘free radical’ thinking, you may well be asking what they are, where do they come from and how can you make them go away.

Free radicals are simply atoms that are missing an electron. These atoms naturally seek to be properly balanced and they achieve balance by stealing electrons from our healthy cells. The result is cell damage or cell death. This produces sickness, aging and diseases such as cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and many others.

We shouldn’t underestimate the threat free radicals pose to our health. They are associated with, or causal factors in nearly every known disease. The bottom line is we have to deal with the free radicals if we want to remain healthy because we simply can’t avoid them.

There are many sources of free radicals: smoking, stress, sunlight, pesticides, pollution, medications, foods and food additives, X-rays, exercise, chlorine in water, mercury in seafood and just living your life. So if we can’t avoid them, how do we neutralize or eliminate them?

Since free radicals are seeking to steal electrons, you neutralize their impact by providing antioxidants that have atoms with an extra electron that they give up to free radicals. Antioxidants protect your cells and DNA from damage, and in some cases they can actually repair damaged DNA before it replicates. In non-medical terms, to avoid free radical damage, you must simply supply enough antioxidants in our diet to counterbalance the free radicals that are in your body. Thus, antioxidants are your defense against aging, sickness and disease. Maintaining proper antioxidant levels is vital to your health.

Antioxidants are found in fruits and vegetables, nuts, oils, beans, and other foods. They are also found in high quality vitamin supplements (A, C, E, Beta-carotene, Lutein and Lycopene). Given that most adults do not eat the right foods to provide antioxidant protection, the American Medical Association recommends supplements. The supplements should include many types of antioxidants and be natural for maximal absorption by the body.

There are a number of companies that sell antioxidant products. Click here to compare their cost and antioxidant power. I sell the Xten™ product. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing this product.

If you want to be healthy, think ‘radicals’ and take antioxidants

Disrupt The Disease Cycle

Mary Madsen, a dear friend who serves on the Board of Directors of the Foundation For Caregivers http://www.ffcg.org/ that I established after my wife’s death, worked with me to write a series of short articles focused on getting and staying healthy. These are based on our research and our own experience. The message we present is designed to help you understand and take actions to Disrupt The Disease Cycle. With Mary’s permission, I will republish these articles in this blog over the coming months.

We are reminded daily of the consequences of disease. One of two men and one of three women will get cancer in their lifetime. Fibromyalgia, unheard of 15 years ago, is now common. Chronic fatigue syndrome, Alzheimer’s, hypertension, stroke, diabetes, and many other diseases are viewed as inevitable when they need not be. The scientific, medical, and increasingly mainstream media are reporting on a growing body of research that definitely links many illnesses to toxins in our bodies.

The World Health Organization recently reported that 24% of the disease burden (lost years of healthy living) is attributed to “modifiable environmental factors;” things that we have the knowledge or technology to control. The National Geographic dedicated much of their October 2006 issue to the causes and effects of chemical toxicity. I am working on a future post entitled ‘Our Chemical Report Card’ this will be a summary of their published findings.

In retrospect, the link between toxins and illness seems obvious. More than 40 years ago Rachael Carson published Silent Spring and we “discovered” that the proliferation of chemicals was devastating our wildlife, forests, and waterways. How could these same chemicals not affect our own health? Some of course saw the linkage; many of us missed the obvious. To remain healthy, we must act to Disrupt the Disease Cycle.

Disrupt the Disease Cycle is a phrase that proposes a proactive approach to health management based on an understanding of the fundamental cause of disease. Consider, for example, that approximately 80% of cancers are due to factors that have been identified and can potentially be controlled. Diet, tobacco use, air and water pollution, alcohol, medications, the HPV virus, and radiation are some things we all need to control to avoid cancer. Cancer isn’t an event. It is a process we can disrupt.

If you want to live healthy longer, you must modify environmental factors that make your cells sick. You need to lower the amount of toxins you ingest, remove to the fullest extent possible those that have collected in your body, and maintain a lifestyle that will slow the rate of reintroduction and toxic buildup in your body. You have to do things that promote cellular health and natural cleansing. This requires a bit of knowledge and guidance.

I am not a medical professional and I cannot diagnose or give medical advice. But I can research and compile publicly available data, distilling it to what I believe are key issues and vital information you need to consider in order to proactively manage your health. I can encourage you to maintain a healthy lifestyle, control your personal environment and provide your body with the nutrition it needs to handle today’s toxic onslaught. If you Disrupt the Disease Cycle you can Retire Healthy!

Health and Happiness

At any age, but particularly at retirement age, happiness requires three things. The first is health; without health your life will be less than it could or should be. The second is money. You don’t have to be rich but you need enough money to live, to pay your bills, and hopefully enough to partake of some of the pleasures that are available. Finally, you need time. Not only on a day-to-day basis, but time in the sense of years of healthy living so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labors.

Today I will talk about health. I am not a doctor, so don’t take what I say as “medical advice”. Essentially, it is just good common sense.

If you read my first entry, you already know that I lost my wife to cancer and then had my own cancer event. I could write a book about what this does to your head, and I would guess that each of us would have a different reaction, but for me it raised a single question “why” that I felt driven to answer. Not why did this happen to her or to me. That would have been the first step to insanity or at the very least depression. My “why” was why is this happening to so many people.

A figure you hear a lot is that 80% of all illnesses are lifestyle related. To me, that meant that if I took the proper steps, I could prevent, or at least delay, 80% of the illnesses I can expect to experience in my “golden years”. My goal then was to try to figure out what these steps were, to figure out how to "disrupt the disease cycle".

I read everything I could get my hands on. A lot of it was medical babble far beyond my ability to comprehend. However, I did find some real gems, often sitting in plain sight in easily obtained and very readable texts. Whenever I could I searched for others who could corroborate the "kernels of truth" that I discovered. I was surprised to find that most were well know and well documented. Although many are incredibly simple, few are being used by the medical profession.

I will try to cover the basics here, but remember these are just the basics. Each of these subjects is covered by one or more books, so what I write here will just touch the surface. In each case I will try to provide enough for you to gain some measurable benefits if you take even the simplest of steps. But, I urge each of you to take a little time to follow these strings further to see where they lead you.

The debilitating conditions we suffer today aren’t sudden occurrences, they build slowly over time and it all comes back to cellular health. Every cell in your body is replaced within one year, most multiple times in a year, some in a matter of days. These new cells are built with the materials your body provides, and so your cellular health is a reflection of what you consume and how you treat your body. Unless you are actively managing your intake and exercise, each succeeding generation of cells become slightly less healthy until ultimately a sufficient number of cells cease to function as they are designed and that is when you “discover” that you have an illness.

This gradual eroding of our cellular health is not inevitable; it can be slowed, and in some cases even reversed. Here are three simple things you should start doing immediately to slow this gradual deterioration. First try to limit (eliminate would be ideal, but it is seldom practical) those things that damage your cells: toxicity, cigarette smoke, pesticides, soft drinks (these are nothing but water and chemicals that your body can’t use), processed foods, and chemicals in lotions, deodorants, hair treatments, etc., are some of the most common. Reducing stress is also important to cellular health.

Second, try to help your body shed the toxicity, including all those dead cells I talked about above, by drinking at least 8 glasses of water each day – coffee, tea, and sodas don’t count. In fact they are “polluted” water bringing more toxicity with every swallow. Your body needs water, just water.

Exercise regularly so that you work up a good sweat, yes a sweat. Perspiration is one of your body’s best cleansing agents and muscle action is vitally important. A mini-trampoline is actually one of the best ways to get most of your muscles moving, but if nothing else is available simply shake your arms and legs. Muscle action causes your lymph system to circulate and your lymph system is what carries the toxicity away from the cells. Do you know that in China many doctors require you to do “lymphatic exercises” for at least 30 minutes before they will see you? They believe that most ailments are due to clogged lymphatic systems. Exercise can help get it moving.

Limit the amount of deodorant you slather under your arms. Antiperspirants in particular plug your pours and that keeps your body from cleansing. At the same time the deodorant is putting more toxic chemicals into your body so this is a double negative. Here is a tip: limiting your red meat intake will benefit you at multiple levels. First you will find you have less body odor so you will need less deodorant. Second you will probably see your weight and your blood chemistry improve. Maybe even to the point where you will need fewer medications. I will talk about alkalinity in a future blog and red meat, actually most meats, are acidic when cooked. So try to cut back.

Third, start taking high quality nutritional supplements so that your cells will have the proper building materials with which to construct new cells. I will do an entire blog entry on this subject, it is a biggie. Just remember, you would never build a house out of scrap wood, why are you allowing your body to build new cells out of garbage nutrition? To do so only speeds cellular deterioration, ultimately leading to illness.

In summary, limit your toxic intake, and work to eliminate the toxins that build up in your body. Drinking sufficient water and exercising are two simple steps that will help. Finally, no matter what you think, you are not getting sufficient nutrition in your food so you need to start taking high quality nutritional products to feed your cells.

Just to make a full disclosure, I do sell nutritional supplements; that is part of my personal “Plan B”. But that fact does not alter anything I have said. You still need to feed your cells.

What is your "Plan B"?

Let me start by telling you that this blog is written specifically for people who are approaching, planning for, or already in retirement. My purpose is to urge you to develop a "Plan B".

For most, your “Golden Years” are not looking so golden. Your 401K is greatly diminished, your home value is ½ what it was and you may well be underwater on your mortgage. You may be out of work and if you are over 60 you are basically unemployable. Even if you are employed, your company's retirement plans may be underfunded and at risk.

Health insurance is being overhauled on the backs of seniors; Social Security has already announced there will be no 2010 COLA so you just took the first pay cut. If Congress has its way, Medicare will soon take huge hit, your second pay cut.

You need a Plan B focused on: 1) staying healthy and 2) creating an income stream that is independent of your investments, your company retirement, and Social Security.

Back in 1968 Eldridge Cleaver said, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem”. What I am proposing is that you must “Be The Solution”. No one is going to bail you out. You can’t count on the Government or your company; your house value is not about to bounce back and as for your investments, well, who knows. If things work out, that's great, but what if they don’t? What is your “Plan B”?

Let me tell you my story. I will turn65 in January. I had a great career; I made good money as an international business consultant and I traveled extensively. In 2004 I was at the top of my game. I had a contract in Paris (2 weeks a month) and a long term deal in Tokyo. My wife of 25 years and I had just bought a new 4,500 sf home on ½ acre in Northern VA. All but the last of our children had made their way through school and were out living their own lives. We were not rich but we had a good life and a nice nest egg, a large portion of which was “secure” in the equity of our home. We were well positioned for retirement in five or so years.

One day in August of 04, my wife came home complaining of stomach pain; 3 hours later she couldn’t get out of bed, 8 months later she was dead. The cancer’s appearance was sudden, it was brutal, and it overwhelmed our lives in so many ways. You can read My Story if you want to know more.

Health insurance took care of all but about $75,000 of her medical costs; my financial meltdown began when I had to stop working to take care of her and our then 15-year old daughter. Stopping work meant no income. Three months after my wife passed, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Fortunately it was early stage and through surgery it was removed and I recovered completely.

As a single parent my ability to travel was severely limited; it was impossible to rebuild my former career. I was then over 60 and with the economy starting to slow there were few opportunities for employment. When the economy started to tumble, I was able to liquidate some investments, but there was little I could do as my home equity disappeared.

Losses from my wife's illness, my career change and investments were devastating. I had no Plan B; I had to start from scratch. "Welcome to Wal-Mart" was starting to sound ok.

This blog will focus on how I developed my Plan B, what I learned, alternatives I considered and some of the mistakes I made. Through it all, my goal is simple; I want you to construct your own Plan B. I will offer suggestions, talk about alternatives and even act as a coach should you want.

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