The uber-doctor tells us what healthy is.
The Columbia professor and celebrity doctor on five simple ways to be healthy.
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Thursday, November 13, 2008
Big Think - FEATURE Mehmet Oz
Interesting - Mehmet Oz is one of the few "Oprah guys" I like.
The uber-doctor tells us what healthy is.
The Columbia professor and celebrity doctor on five simple ways to be healthy.
The uber-doctor tells us what healthy is.
The Columbia professor and celebrity doctor on five simple ways to be healthy.
In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents’ Genes Are in Competition
Whether this turns out to truly explain mental illness or not, it seems to be a rather intriguing updating of genetic thinking, especially in the area of hereditary illnesses.
From The New York Times (posting the whole article this is a couple of days old now):
From The New York Times (posting the whole article this is a couple of days old now):
In a Novel Theory of Mental Disorders, Parents’ Genes Are in Competition 
Annie Marie Musselman for The New York TimesBernard Crespi of Simon Fraser University and a fellow researcher propose that a tug of war between genes can tip brain development.Two scientists, drawing on their own powers of observation and a creative reading of recent genetic findings, have published a sweeping theory of brain development that would change the way mental disorders like autism and schizophrenia are understood. The theory emerged in part from thinking about events other than mutations that can change gene behavior. And it suggests entirely new avenues of research, which, even if they prove the theory to be flawed, are likely to provide new insights into the biology of mental disease.
At a time when the search for the genetic glitches behind brain disorders has become mired in uncertain and complex findings, the new idea provides psychiatry with perhaps its grandest working theory since Freud, and one that is grounded in work at the forefront of science. The two researchers — Bernard Crespi, a biologist at Simon Fraser University in Canada, and Christopher Badcock, a sociologist at the London School of Economics, who are both outsiders to the field of behavior genetics — have spelled out their theory in a series of recent journal articles.
“The reality, and I think both of the authors would agree, is that many of the details of their theory are going to be wrong; and it is, at this point, just a theory,” said Dr. Matthew Belmonte, a neuroscientist at Cornell University. “But the idea is plausible. And it gives researchers a great opportunity for hypothesis generation, which I think can shake up the field in good ways.”
Their idea is, in broad outline, straightforward. Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock propose that an evolutionary tug of war between genes from the father’s sperm and the mother’s egg can, in effect, tip brain development in one of two ways. A strong bias toward the father pushes a developing brain along the autistic spectrum, toward a fascination with objects, patterns, mechanical systems, at the expense of social development. A bias toward the mother moves the growing brain along what the researchers call the psychotic spectrum, toward hypersensitivity to mood, their own and others’. This, according to the theory, increases a child’s risk of developing schizophrenia later on, as well as mood problems like bipolar disorder and depression.
In short: autism and schizophrenia represent opposite ends of a spectrum that includes most, if not all, psychiatric and developmental brain disorders. The theory has no use for psychiatry’s many separate categories for disorders, and it would give genetic findings an entirely new dimension.
“The empirical implications are absolutely huge,” Dr. Crespi said in a phone interview. “If you get a gene linked to autism, for instance, you’d want to look at that same gene for schizophrenia; if it’s a social brain gene, then it would be expected to have opposite effects on these disorders, whether gene expression was turned up or turned down.”
The theory leans heavily on the work of David Haig of Harvard. It was Dr. Haig who argued in the 1990s that pregnancy was in part a biological struggle for resources between the mother and unborn child. On one side, natural selection should favor mothers who limit the nutritional costs of pregnancy and have more offspring; on the other, it should also favor fathers whose offspring maximize the nutrients they receive during gestation, setting up a direct conflict.
The evidence that this struggle is being waged at the level of individual genes is accumulating, if mostly circumstantial. For example, the fetus inherits from both parents a gene called IGF2, which promotes growth. But too much growth taxes the mother, and in normal development her IGF2 gene is chemically marked, or “imprinted,” and biologically silenced. If her gene is active, it causes a disorder of overgrowth, in which the fetus’s birth weight swells, on average, to 50 percent above normal.
Biologists call this gene imprinting an epigenetic, or “on-genetic,” effect, meaning that it changes the behavior of the gene without altering its chemical composition. It is not a matter of turning a gene on or off, which cells do in the course of normal development. Instead it is a matter of muffling a gene, for instance, with a chemical marker that makes it hard for the cell to read the genetic code; or altering the shape of the DNA molecule, or what happens to the proteins it produces. To illustrate how such genetic reshaping can give rise to behavioral opposites — the yin and yang that their theory proposes — Dr. Crespi and Dr. Badcock point to a remarkable group of children who are just that: opposites, as different temperamentally as Snoopy and Charlie Brown, as a lively Gaugin and a brooding Goya.
Those with the genetic disorder called Angelman, or “happy puppet,” syndrome practically dance through the day, have difficulty communicating and are demanding of caregivers. Those born with a genetic problem known as Prader-Willi syndrome are placid, compliant and as youngsters low maintenance.
Yet these two disorders, which turn up in about one of 10,000 newborns, stem from disruptions of the same genetic region on chromosome 15. If the father’s genes dominate in this location, the child develops Angelman syndrome; if the mother’s do, the result is Prader-Willi syndrome, as Dr. Haig and others have noted. The former is associated with autism, and the latter with mood problems and psychosis — just as the new theory predicts.
Emotional problems like depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder, seen through this lens, appear on Mom’s side of the teeter-totter, with schizophrenia, while Asperger’s syndrome and other social deficits are on Dad’s.
It was Dr. Badcock who noticed that some problems associated with autism, like a failure to meet another’s gaze, are direct contrasts to those found in people with schizophrenia, who often believe they are being watched. Where children with autism appear blind to others’ thinking and intentions, people with schizophrenia see intention and meaning everywhere, in their delusions. The idea expands on the “extreme male brain” theory of autism proposed by Dr. Simon Baron-Cohen of Cambridge.
“Think of the grandiosity in schizophrenia, how some people think that they are Jesus, or Napoleon, or omnipotent,” Dr. Crespi said, “and then contrast this with the underdeveloped sense of self in autism. Autistic kids often talk about themselves in the third person.”
Such observations and biological evidence are hardly enough to overturn current thinking about disorders as distinct as autism and schizophrenia, experts agree. “I think his work is often brilliant,” Dr. Stephen Scherer, of the University of Toronto and the Hospital for Sick Children, said by e-mail message of Dr. Crespi. At the same time, Dr. Scherer added, “For autism there will not be one unifying theory but perhaps for a proportion of families there are underlying common variants” of genes that together cause the disorder.
The theory also does not fit all of the various quirks of autism and schizophrenia on flip sides of the same behavioral coin. The father of biological psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin, in the late 1800s made a distinction between mood problems, like depression and bipolar disorder, and the thought distortions of schizophrenia — a distinction that, to most psychiatrists, still holds up. Many people with schizophrenia, moreover, show little emotion; they would seem to be off the psychosis spectrum altogether, as the new theory describes it.
But experts familiar with their theory say that the two scientists have, at minimum, infused the field with a shot of needed imagination and demonstrated the power of thinking outside the gene. For just as a gene can carry a mark from its parent of origin, so it can be imprinted by that parent’s own experience.
The study of such markers should have a “significant impact on our understanding of mental health conditions,” said Dr. Bhismadev Chakrabarti, of the Autism Research Center at the University of Cambridge, “as, in some ways, they represent the first environmental influence on the expression of the genes.”
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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Craig Photography Interviews Peter Kater
I've enjoyed some of Kater's music over the years. Cool to see his interview with John Craig.
Peter Kater is a Multi-Platinum Selling pianist-composer, Kater, has received 5 Grammy nominations in the last 5 years and has scored over 100 television programs and films including 11 Off and On-Broadway plays. He is also a proud recipient of the prestigious Environmental Leadership Award from the United Nations.Read the whole interview.
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The Daily Show - Thomas Friedman
Thomas Friedman talks with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, about Hot, Flat, Crowded, his recent book on green energy.
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P.J. O'Rourke - We Blew It
P.J. O'Rourke, writing at the Weekly Standard, bemoans the failure of the conservative movement to do anything with its time in power. He makes a lot of good points that, if the conservatives would have followed them, I and most Americans would be devout conservatives. Alas, it never happened.
On the other hand, he thinks everything about liberalism is wrong, and that it was nearly dead when Reagan was elected. Worldviews like liberalism do not die -- they wax and wane, but never disappear.
Anyway, here are a few of his thoughts.
On the other hand, he thinks everything about liberalism is wrong, and that it was nearly dead when Reagan was elected. Worldviews like liberalism do not die -- they wax and wane, but never disappear.
Anyway, here are a few of his thoughts.
An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble.
*
In our preaching and our practice we neglected to convey the organic and universal nature of freedom. Thus we ensured our loss before we even began our winning streak. Barry Goldwater was an admirable and principled man. He took an admirably principled stand on states' rights. But he was dead wrong. Separate isn't equal. Ask a kid whose parents are divorced.
*
In how many ways did we fail conservatism? And who can count that high? Take just one example of our unconserved tendency to poke our noses into other people's business: abortion. Democracy--be it howsoever conservative--is a manifestation of the will of the people. We may argue with the people as a man may argue with his wife, but in the end we must submit to the fact of being married. Get a pro-life friend drunk to the truth-telling stage and ask him what happens if his 14-year-old gets knocked up. What if it's rape? Some people truly have the courage of their convictions. I don't know if I'm one of them. I might kill the baby. I will kill the boy.
*Government is bigger than ever. We have fattened the stalled ox and hatred therewith rather than dined on herbs where love (and the voter) is. Instead of flattening the Department of Education with a wrecking ball we let it stand as a pulpit for Bill Bennett. When--to switch metaphors yet again--such a white elephant is not discarded someone will eventually try to ride in the howdah on its back. One of our supposed own did. No Child Left Behind? What if they deserve to be left behind? What if they deserve a smack on the behind? A nationwide program to test whether kids are what? Stupid? You've got kids. Kids are stupid.
We railed at welfare and counted it a great victory when Bill Clinton confused a few poor people by making the rules more complicated. But the "French-bread lines" for the rich, the "terrapin soup kitchens," continue their charity without stint.
The sludge and dreck of political muck-funds flowing to prosperous businesses and individuals have gotten deeper and more slippery and stink worse than ever with conservatives minding the sewage works of legislation.
*
Is there a moral dimension to foreign policy in our political philosophy? Or do we just exist to help the world's rich people make and keep their money? (And a fine job we've been doing of that lately.)
If we do have morals, where were they while Bosnians were slaughtered? And where were we while Clinton dithered over the massacres in Kosovo and decided, at last, to send the Serbs a message: Mess with the United States and we'll wait six months, then bomb the country next to you. Of Rwanda, I cannot bear to think, let alone jest.
And now, to glue and screw the lid on our coffin, comes this financial crisis. For almost three decades we've been trying to teach average Americans to act like "stakeholders" in their economy. They learned. They're crying and whining for government bailouts just like the billionaire stakeholders in banks and investment houses. Aid, I can assure you, will be forthcoming from President Obama.
Then average Americans will learn the wisdom of Ronald Reagan's statement: "The ten most dangerous words in the English language are, 'I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help.' " Ask a Katrina survivor.
He goes on and on, disparaging everything about liberalism (where he is only partially correct).
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Scientific American Frontiers - Chimp Minds
From Scientific American Frontiers, a great episode on Chimp Minds (courtesy of Hulu).
Season 15 : Ep. 4 |26:07
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TED Talks - Doris Kearns Goodwin: Learning From Past Presidents in Moments of Crisis
Doris Kearns Goodwin is one of my favorite people - her book on Lincoln (Team of Rivals) is a classic study of how a great politician made himself into one of our greatest presidents. This TED Talk is another great piece of her thinking.
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about what we can learn from American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson. Then she shares a moving memory of her own father, and of their shared love of baseball.Goodwin is one of the great popularizers of presidential history. Her books on Lyndon Johnson, the Kennedys, and the wartime Roosevelts all became best-sellers, thanks to her ability to tell a truly human story around these larger-than-life men and women.
Her latest book, Team of Rivals, follows Abraham Lincoln, a brilliant young country lawyer, as he rises to the US Presidency and draws his former political opponents into his circle of advisors. (The book is the basis for Steven Spielberg's next film.)
Goodwin nurses a parallel fascination for baseball, the subject of her beloved memoir Wait Till Next Year. In 2007, she was a finalist candidate for the presidency of Red Sox Nation.
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The Psychology of "The War on Terror" and Other Terms for Counterterrorism
Framing is a huge topic in psychology these days. Framing refers to how we contextualize an idea or an agenda:
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A frame in social theory consists of a schema of interpretation—that is, a collection of stereotypes—that individuals rely on to understand and respond to events.[1][page # needed]
To clarify: When one seeks to explain an event, the understanding often depends on the frame referred to. If a friend rapidly closes and opens an eye, we will respond very differently depending on whether we attribute this to a purely "physical" frame (s/he blinked) or to a social frame (s/he winked).
Though the former might result from a speck of dust (resulting in an involuntary and not particularly meaningful reaction), the latter would imply a voluntary and meaningful action (to convey humor to an accomplice, for example). Observers will read events seen as purely physical or within a frame of "nature" differently than those seen as occurring with social frames. But we do not look at an event and then "apply" a frame to it. Rather, individuals constantly project into the world around them the interpretive frames that allow them to make sense of it; we only shift frames (or realize that we have habitually applied a frame) when incongruity calls for a frame-shift. In other words, we only become aware of the frames that we always already use when something forces us to replace one frame with another.[2][3]
In recent history, I can't think of any issue that has been more poorly framed that our effort to reduce Islamic terrorism. The metaphor that we have been using -- the "war on terror" -- puts us at war with a whole people, not an idea. Crucial mistake that represents the Bush administration mindset.
Scientific American Mind ran a great article looking at this issue and how to reframe the metaphor we use in the counterterrorism effort.
The Psychology of "The War on Terror" and Other Terms for Counterterrorism
How we characterize an issue affects how we think about it. Replacing the "war on terror" metaphor with other ways of framing counterterrorism might help us curtail the violence more effectively
By Arie W. Kruglanski, Martha Crenshaw, Jerrold M. Post and Jeff Victoroff
Vladimir Dmitriev/iStockPhoto
Key Concepts
- Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used a war metaphor to define counterterrorism strategy. Such a description may simplify a complex reality, making it more mentally manageable, but it may also oversimplify and distort reality.
- Metaphors can guide national decision making. The wars that began in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 clearly demonstrate that the concept of a war to combat a method of violence used by nonstate agents is more than rhetoric.
- Viewing counterterrorism through the lens of law enforcement may yield more tightly focused tactics that are less costly than war and less likely to provoke resentment and backlash.
- Relating counterterrorism to disease containment or prejudice reduction shifts the focus to the psychological underpinnings of terrorism and, in doing so, may suggest successful long-term strategies that chip away at the motivations of terrorists.
On the eve of our national election, we realize that one challenging issue facing the next president is how to address terrorism and the options for counterterrorism. As psychological research has made clear, what he and his administration say about these issues will influence how the public thinks about them—and will affect our national and international policy. [For more on the power of words, see “When Words Decide,” by Barry Schwartz; Scientific American Mind, August/September 2007.]
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, the Bush administration has used a battle metaphor: the “global war on terrorism” and the “war on terror.” Such descriptive terms simplify complex realities, making them more mentally manageable. But they do not adequately represent the complexities of the problem, resulting in selective perception of the facts, and they may reflect the views of only a few key policy makers. Nevertheless, they can guide national decision making. The wars that began in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 clearly demonstrate that the concept of a war to combat a method of violence used by nonstate agents is more than rhetoric.
Although the war metaphor has some advantages, the next president should consider other terms that lead to thinking that is more nuanced—and ultimately more effective. Viewing counterterrorism through the lens of law enforcement, for example, may yield more tightly focused tactics that are less likely to provoke resentment and backlash and are also less costly than war. Two other metaphors—relating counterterrorism to disease containment or prejudice reduction—home in on many of the deeply rooted psychological underpinnings of terrorism and, in doing so, suggest strategies that may chip away at the motivations of terrorists and thus may be the most successful at squelching the scourge in the long run [see “Inside the Terrorist Mind,” by Annette Schaefer; Scientific American Mind, December 2007/January 2008].
Here is a key passage from early in the article.
The war metaphor helps to define the American perception of the threat of terrorism. If terrorism is war, then the national security, indeed the existence, of each side is threatened. The conflict is zero-sum; the outcome will be victory for one side or the other. Being in a state of war also requires national unity, and dissent is easily interpreted as unpatriotic. The solution has to be military. Thus, the Department of Defense must play a lead role in shaping policy, and the president’s duties as commander in chief must take precedence over his other tasks. An expansion of executive power accompanies the war metaphor: measures that would not be acceptable in peacetime, such as restrictions on civil liberties and brutal interrogation practices, are now considered essential.
But in several ways, the struggle against terrorism differs significantly from conventional war. First, the entity that attacked the U.S. in 2001 was not a state. It was an organization, al Qaeda, with a territorial base within a weak “failed state,” Afghanistan, whose ruling Taliban regime was not internationally recognized. Since 2001 the entity that the U.S. is fighting has become even more amorphous and less like a state. It has progressed from the so-called terrorist organizations to an ideology that aspires to world domination. David Brooks, writing in the New York Times on September 21, 2006 , called it “chaos theory in human form—an ever-shifting array of state and nonstate actors who cooperate, coagulate, divide, feud and feed on one another without end.”
Victory in a war on terrorism is similarly difficult to define. A typical war ends in the capitulation of the enemy, but al Qaeda is unlikely to surrender formally. In 2006 the revised (2002) U.S. National Security Strategy, articulated in a White House “wartime” document, set a goal “to defeat global terrorism.” It will be difficult to tell when this objective, which involves eradicating a method of violence and a way of thinking, has been met. As a result, the war drags on, breeding disappointment with the results and a public outcry to bring the troops home.
The psychological rationale of war is to bring the enemy to its knees and to convince it and its support base that terrorism is counterproductive. And yet experience in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Ireland, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip suggests that the use of military force does little to “prove” the inefficacy of terrorism. Military strikes against terrorist targets may temporarily interfere with terrorists’ ability to launch their operations, but they do not generally lessen the motivation to engage in violence—and may even boost it as a result of the enmity that foreign occupation typically engenders and of the injustice and excesses of war.
The war concept also deafens ears to the underlying troubles of the terrorists—the frustrations and grievances that may have fostered terrorism, as well as the belief systems that lent it ideological sustenance. Meanwhile the metaphor encourages stereotyping and discrimination against members of the broad social categories to which terrorists may belong, such as Muslims, Saudi Arabians or Middle Easterners.
Finally, framing counterterrorism as war has considerable costs. It threatens to corrupt society’s values, disrupt its orderly functioning and reshuffle its priorities. War calls for the disproportionate investment of a nation’s resources, with correspondingly less left for other concerns, including the economy, health care and education. “Collateral damage,” ethnic profiling, harsh interrogation tactics and unlimited internment of suspects may all be condoned in the name of security and excused by the uniqueness of circumstances the war concept implies. These costs are especially steep in a war that has no definite end.
Read the whole article.
As far as I can see, framing this issue as a war removes all subtlety from the situation. Like it or not, there are infinite shades of gray in all of this, not a simple black and white, wrong and right opposition. The article helps to explain how we might better frame the issue.
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Zen Habits - How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work and Life
A cool article from Zen Habits on How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work and Life.
Read the whole article to find out how to create that balance we all seek.How To Find That Elusive Balance Between Work and Life
“Balance is beautiful.” - Miyoko Ohno, Japanese bridge designer
Article by Leo Babauta
I have a close friend named Norm who is a great photographer and a great person in general … recently he was telling me that all he does is work.
That might sound familiar to some of you — I’ve certainly been there at different points in my life, although these days I have to say that I’ve found a pretty good balance between all the important things in my life, including work, family, and other things I’m interested in.
Norm asked me to write a post about work-life balance, because although I think Norm is pretty happy with his life, he’s interested in expanding his life beyond work. I think it’s an interesting question that most of us have to address at some point or other.
Work *Is* Life, To Some Extent
The first thing to point out is that work isn’t separate from life — it’s a part of it. For some people, it’s not a fun part of life, but for others, it’s a passion. Either way, it’s a part of our lives, good or bad.
Of course, when people talk about a work-life balance, they mean that we should find a balance between work and our personal lives, which is definitely true. But it’s important to realize that if work is really something you love, you don’t need to cut it short in order to spend more time at home in front of the television.
So the key is to remember that what we’re looking for is a balance between the things we love — not just work and the rest of life, but work and family and hobbies and chores and everything else.
What Do You Love?
What are the things you love to do? That’s the question to start with. My friend Norm loves photography, but I think he also really enjoys jiu-jitsu and spending time with close friends, among other things. For myself, my favorite things in the world include spending time with my family, writing, reading and running. What’s on your short list?
One of the things on your list might be your work — or the work you want to do (as opposed to the work you’re doing right now). But others could include your favorite hobbies or other passions, ways to relax and have fun, exercise or other outdoor activities, reading and learning, shopping or eating or entertainment, volunteering, or spending time with people who are important to you. There are as many other possibilities as there are people in the world, of course.
Create your short list now, and then continue to the next section.
Creating Space in Your Life
It’s time to take a Big Picture look at your life — how are you spending your time right now? How long do you work (and how much of that time is spent on doing what you really love about your work)? What do you do before and after work? What do you do on your days off?
Now think about all the things you do, and how many of them are on your short list. For the things not on your short list, what can you eliminate? Some things might be big commitments that are hard to get out of — but over time, you can get out of them. Learn to say no, and learn how to tell people that you can no longer commit to doing something. It’s not always easy, but remember that this is your life, and you should do what you really want to do, not what others want you to do.
Really think hard about how you can eliminate the non-essential things in your life (the non-short list stuff). Work on this over time, and create the space in your life that you need for the things you love. Be sure to allot that time you’ve created to the things on your short list — don’t just use it up with television or other space fillers.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2008
High-fructose Corn Syrup Is NOT Good for You
The evil people who make high-fructose corn syrup (The Corn Refiners Association) are pushing their drug in a new series of commercials and a new website. Here is one of the commercials.
Here's what they didn't say in the ad, and would rather you didn't know, courtesy of Dr. Jonny Bowden at T-Nation.
Here's what they didn't say in the ad, and would rather you didn't know, courtesy of Dr. Jonny Bowden at T-Nation.
The Corn Refiners Association, representing the makers of high-fructose corn syrup, is indeed fighting back after years of bad publicity. The commercials are everywhere. Here's the first one. The second, in which a hot chick offers a doofus guy an ice pop and he stutters, "But, duh, this has, like, high-fructose corn syrup," doesn't appear to be available online anymore. Which is a shame.I especially love it when she patiently explains to him in her best "talking to a slow adult" tone that high-fructose corn syrup is natural 'cause it's made from, gosh, corn! And it's perfectly fine "in moderation." Silly boy. (If you put "high-fructose corn syrup" into the search engine on YouTube, you'll find some wicked parodies of the ads.)
Well, if that foxy lady offered me a poisoned mushroom I'd probably fall for it, but the facts don't change, and high-fructose corn syrup is the same dreadful crap it's always been. But, since it is the subject of massive confusion, I'll try to clear things up. Several issues are in play here, and they overlap.
First things first: In the beginning there was plain old table sugar, also known by its scientific name, sucrose. Sucrose is a disaccharide, meaning it's a blend of two simple saccharides, or sugars, in this case glucose and fructose.
Take a molecule of glucose and a molecule of fructose, link them with a chemical bond, and you've got yourself a molecule of sucrose. Put a bunch of those molecules together in a bowl, place the bowl on the table at the IHOP with a little spoon, and you're in business.
Now, it's pretty much a given that a high intake of sugar is bad for you, and a list of all the reasons why would fill this whole column. So let's save that for another day. What's interesting for our purposes today is that a fair amount of research has been done investigating exactly which of the two components of table sugar is worse for you. And fructose is the hands-down "winner."
Don't misunderstand me: The fructose found naturally in an apple is absolutely fine. But the difference between fructose in an apple and fructose in a soda is the difference between a beautiful fur coat on a wild fox and that same fur on the back of a fat lady at the opera. It's gorgeous on its original owner. On the lady, not so much.
In its original setting, fructose is surrounded with healthy nutrients, phytochemicals, and fiber. When it's extracted and made into a liquid sweetener, it's a nightmare.
Interestingly, fructose doesn't raise blood sugar very much, leading to the absolutely boneheaded idea — popular for a while — that it's a "good" sugar for diabetics. Fructose has now been shown in studies to lead to insulin resistance. It's also the sugar that most raises triglycerides, a serious risk factor for heart disease. In short, it's bad news.
Something else to consider: Table sugar used to be expensive. The average Joe could afford it, of course, but for food manufacturers wanting to sweeten products it was a high-ticket item. So its prohibitive cost was one reason you didn't find sucrose in every single food item we bought. Even Cokes and Pepsis only came in eight- or 12-ounce sizes.
Then, because of situations that involved all sorts of political wheeling and dealing and resulted in both sugar tariffs and corn subsidies, manufacturers were highly motivated to find a solution to the problem of expensive sugar. Enter high-fructose corn syrup.
Take a subsidized crop like corn, perform a bunch of chemical operations on it, and voilà , you had something that was even sweeter than sucrose at a fraction of the cost. It could be added to virtually everything on the table, making those items tastier and, of course, more profitable.Now here's where it gets tricky. Chemically speaking, high-fructose corn syrup really isn't that different from table sugar. In case you didn't take your gingko this morning and have already forgotten the first paragraph of this story, sucrose is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose. High-fructose corn syrup, at least the most common kind found in soft drinks, is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose.
It's not a huge difference, but the problem is that it's everywhere, including foods that were never sweetened before. It's the major sweetener found in soft drinks (it's been used in Coca-Cola since 1985, for example), which constitute a double-digit percentage of the calories we consume as a nation. One form of it, which is used in baked goods, has an even higher percentage of fructose.
Thus, we're now consuming more fructose than ever. Even though HFCS is only slightly higher in fructose than table sugar, people who drink a lot of soda can easily consume 20 to 30 grams of additional liquid fructose each day.
The Corn Refiners Association's pro-HFCS ads make two arguments:
• It's no worse than sugar. Okay, maybe, but that's like saying Salems are no worse than Marlboros.
• It's natural because it's made from corn. Maybe so, but so is ethanol, and I'm not drinking that either.
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Greg Mortenson Brings Education to Afghanistan
If we really want to win the falsely named "war on terror," the real task is to win the hearts and minds of the people, especially the minds. The majority of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan are uneducated -- at least in the tribal areas where the Taliban reigns.
Greg Mortenson is doing just that. He is the author of Three Cups of Tea, a book that is now required reading in graduate level education for military counter-intelligence students.
It's a compelling piece. Education - to me - is the bottom line for any attempt to improve the lives of others. That this man who had nothing -- he sold all his possessions in order to keep his promise to those who nursed him back to health after his failed attempt on K2 -- was able to turn his promise into reality with dozens of schools built serving thousands of children should be an inspiration to all of us.
Part of what makes Mortenson's project work is that is funded by individual Americans -- which demonstrates to the Pakistani and Afgani people that American's do care about their well-being (contrary to the bombings by the US Military). We all can help with this project:
Central Asia Institute
Pennies for Peace
Here is Mortenson speaking at UC Santa Barbara.
Greg Mortenson is doing just that. He is the author of Three Cups of Tea, a book that is now required reading in graduate level education for military counter-intelligence students.
In Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time , Greg Mortenson, and journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the journey that led Mortenson from a failed 1993 attempt to climb Pakistan’s K2, the world’s second highest mountain, to successfully establish schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to promote peace with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote communities in central Asia. Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world—one school at a time.Outside Magazine followed Mortenson into one of the roughest regions -- the Wakhan Corridor.
If any region of the country stands apart, it's the remote, sparsely populated Wakhan Corridor, which has been spared much of the recent bloodletting. Carved by the Wakhan and Panj rivers, the 200-mile-long valley, much of it above 10,000 feet, separates the Pamir mountains to the north from the Hindu Kush to the south. For centuries it has been a natural conduit between Central Asia and China, and one of the most forbidding sections of the Silk Road, the 4,000-mile trade route linking Europe to the Far East.
The borders of the Wakhan were set in an 1895 treaty between Russia and Britain, which had been wrestling over the control of Central Asia for nearly a century. In what was dubbed the "Great Game" (a term coined by British Army spy Arthur Conolly of the 6th Bengal Native Light Cavalry), both countries had sent intrepid spies into the region, not a few of whom had been caught and beheaded. (Conolly was killed in Bokhara in 1842.) Eventually Britain and Russia agreed to use the entire country as a buffer zone, with the Wakhan extension ensuring that the borders of the Russian empire would never touch the borders of the British Raj.
Only a handful of Westerners are known to have traveled through the Wakhan Corridor since Marco Polo did it, in 1271. There had been sporadic European expeditions throughout the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In 1949, when Mao Zedong completed the Communist takeover of China, the borders were permanently closed, sealing off the 2,000-year-old caravan route and turning the corridor into a cul-de-sac. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, they occupied the Wakhan and plowed a tank track halfway into the corridor. Today, the Wakhan has reverted to what it's been for much of its history: a primitive pastoral hinterland, home to about 7,000 Wakhi and Kirghiz people, scattered throughout some 40 small villages and camps. Opium smugglers sometimes use the Wakhan, traveling at night.
Among the diverse people Mortenson has befriended, the idea of Three Cups of Tea is crucial. With the first cup of tea you are a visitor, with the second you are a friend, and with the third you are family. Once you are family, these people will die for you.
The December issue of Outside features "No Bachcheh (child) Left Behind," the article that got me interested in doing this post (the article will not be online until January, 2009).There are about 550 Wakhi families in the western Wakhan, and he and Sarfraz had identified 21 villages that needed schools. "Educating girls, in particular, is critical," he continued. "If you can educate a girl to the fifth-grade level, three things happen: Infant mortality goes down, birthrates go down, and the quality of life for the whole village, from health to happiness, goes up. Something else also happens. Before a young man goes on jihad, holy war, he must first ask for his mother's permission. Educated mothers say no."
I asked him how the villages paid for their half of building and supporting a school.
"Often they provide labor in lieu of money," Greg replied, "but most of the money in many Afghan villages outside the Wakhan comes from growing poppies."
"Opium."
"Opium," said Greg. "It can't be eliminated. These villages are desperately poor. They're utterly dependent on this income. Eliminating opium farming will only cause more poverty and more hopelessness, which will cause more killing and more wars."
I let it rest.
In 2004, Afghanistan produced 4,200 tons of opium, 87 percent of the world's total supply. The revenue from the illegal trade was estimated at $2.8 billion, roughly two-thirds the amount Afghanistan receives in foreign aid. In 2005, the U.S. allocated about $774 million to the effort to eradicate poppy farming in Afghanistan. Is there a better way? The Senlis Council, an international drug-policy think tank, recently proposed a radical alternative: Legalize opium for medicinal purposes.
India is already licensed by the International Narcotics Control Board, an independent watchdog group that monitors the trade of illicit and medicinal drugs, to grow opium and produce generic pain medication for developing nations. Afghanistan could do the same. The cost of creating such a program has been estimated at only $600 million. Ideally, the farmers would get cash, the drug lords would get cut out, the developing world would get more pain-relief medicine, and the major demand for the global traffic in heroin could be drastically reduced.
It's a compelling strategy—accepting the reality on the ground rather than fighting it—and it's exactly how Greg operates. He doesn't get caught up in moral abstractions; he focuses on what works, no matter how tortured or contradictory.
It's a compelling piece. Education - to me - is the bottom line for any attempt to improve the lives of others. That this man who had nothing -- he sold all his possessions in order to keep his promise to those who nursed him back to health after his failed attempt on K2 -- was able to turn his promise into reality with dozens of schools built serving thousands of children should be an inspiration to all of us.
Part of what makes Mortenson's project work is that is funded by individual Americans -- which demonstrates to the Pakistani and Afgani people that American's do care about their well-being (contrary to the bombings by the US Military). We all can help with this project:
Central Asia Institute
Pennies for Peace
Here is Mortenson speaking at UC Santa Barbara.
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Robert Augustus Masters - "I Have Cancer"
Sad news, but prostate cancer is treatable and responds well to a variety of alternative approaches, which is what Robert has chosen to do.
NOVEMBER 9, 2008
I HAVE CANCER
We all have cancerous cells, but only in some of us does cancer take up residence, having successfully fended off our immune system.
Cancer. We have an incredible amount of information about it, but still do not know it very well. Billions have been spent on studying it, but very little has been spent on listening to it.
Cancer is not much more than cells gone awry, cells out of touch, cells without natural communication, the lines cut, the messages garbled, the march toward colonizing new territory operationally akin to an army blindly following a blind commander, intoxicated with imperialistic ambition and consumerist frenzy. Cancer is cellular chaos, cellular insanity — in killing its host, it kills itself, with no more intelligence than that of a mass of lemmings going straight over a cliff’s edge. Still, it has something to say.
We’ve had a much-publicized, very expensive war on cancer for quite some time, and we’re not exactly winning. Standard procedures for dealing with cancer, regardless of their sophistication, often only make more trouble; for example, when our immune system gets battered and bombed — as a “side-effect” — by a particular treatment, we’re made more susceptible to cancer occupying us in places other than our original cancer site. And so on. Not that standard procedures aren’t sometimes called for, but we easily tend to overrely on them, frequently being too quick to opt for surgery or chemotherapy or various forms of radiation, not giving our body enough of a chance to heal itself. We are inculcated with the notion that to deal with cancer we must busy ourselves attacking it, fighting it, zapping it, battling it, conquering it — in short, making war on it.
The trouble is, the war that we are making on cancer is itself carcinogenic, providing us with little more than a smattering of Pyrrhic victories.
Yes, plenty of valuable research has been done regarding the biochemistry and mechanics and treatment of cancer, but very little of it has been done in the context of our innate wholeness. We keep looking for the chemical protocol, the synthetic magic bullet — more war! — not realizing that what really is needed is an approach that is truly integrative, including the very best of both conventional and nonconventional treatments. Over and over again, research has demonstrated that various plants cause cancer cells to die in vitro — so why not put a lot more money and energy into studying this, along with the psychoemotional and psychospiritual dimensions of cancer? Why not get at the root of it? Haven’t we already done enough pruning? Isn’t it time for a radically integral approach to cancer?
It’s time we dropped the war — and our overuse of war metaphors — and started listening more closely to cancer, however difficult or challenging that might be. Viewing cancer as an enemy is not particularly helpful, for doing so keeps us too removed from cancer, immersed in fear-based adversarial stances. Cancer cells are cells that have lost their way. They are way, way out of balance. They have no center, other than that of the densest sort of mob mentality. They give growth a bad name. But we nonetheless could listen more closely, especially given that decades of pushing cancer away have not made it go away. Listen — what do you hear cancer saying?
I’m listening because I have prostate cancer. A couple of weeks ago on a sunny Friday afternoon, I heard the news, looking with Diane and my urologist at the stark printout of the prostate biopsy I’d had a week earlier, which stated that three out of the ten biopsy samples (obtained by punching ten holes through my rectal wall so as to reach my prostate) showed cancer. One of the samples suggested that the cancer may have spread beyond my prostate. The urologist quickly made his argument that surgery — cutting out my entire prostate — would be my best option. Yes, I’d be impotent for the rest of my life, but his job, he brightly said, was to keep me alive as long as possible. Etcetera. We didn’t stay much longer, already intuiting that surgery wasn’t the way to go.
After a weekend of intensive research, I knew not only that surgery was out, but also that I did not want to have any radiation treatment. My intuition was loud and clear. More than a few cancer patients die not from their cancer, but from the treatment of their cancer. Not that I thought that radiation would necessarily kill me, but I sensed with increasing certainty that my prostate cancer could be treated naturally. So I waded and sifted through alternative approaches — and there are an abundance of them! — eventually deciding to take a mix of powerful herbs that had been shown in clinical trials to, at the very least, reduce prostate cancer. I was already very healthy, and had a good diet, but now took this further, ingesting fitting supplements while keeping to a diet that didn’t support cancer.
And, most importantly, I listened to my cancer. It wasn’t hard to decipher its message: Slow down, and not just for a few days or weeks! As much as possible, only put energy into what is truly life-giving. Slow down, now and now and now.
This was easy to hear, but it was not easy to let in the reality of how this would impact my life, especially my work. I have, for a long time, worked very hard doing my psychotherapeutic and group work. It’s work that I dearly love, but now I see that I cannot do nearly as much of it, realizing that the best use of my energies is in training others to do the kind of work I do — and even that may be up for question, as I go more deeply into my healing process.
So I will be cutting back on my groupwork, doing far less traveling, and will be cutting back even more on my individual sessions. Perhaps this will change once my cancer has receded into insignificance or even complete absence; or perhaps not. My intuition is that I will have cancerous tissue until I am consistently slowed down and settled into a way of working that fully serves my well-being.
In all this, Diane is right with me. I am grateful to have such a deeply loving, supportive, and deeply attuned partner. The presence of my cancer has shaken us profoundly, and at the same time has brought us even closer together. The corner I am turning is a corner that we are turning together, in deeply vulnerable, life-affirming mutuality.
I’m viewing the healing of my cancer in two primary and simultaneous ways: restorative and transmutational. It makes sense to me to attempt to restore the natural intelligence of cancerous cells; this means getting a sufficiently powerful mix of nutrients into their domain, along with a clear stream of focused awareness and compassion. The effort to do this brings me into deepening alignment with my needed healing. As I internally “see” my cancer, I keep my gaze both focused and soft, both precise and spacious, energetically sensing, touching, and entering my cancer.
However much my cancer responds to this, it will also be encountered in a transmutational context, meaning that any cancer cells that cannot be restored to healthy functioning will simply be consumed by white blood cells, so that their constituent nutrients become but fuel for new cells, healthy cells, cells that are thriving. Cell death, cell birth. Whatever portion of my cancer doesn’t respond, or respond fully enough, to restorative treatment, will get to provide, through its death, essential substances for healthy growth. This is simple practicality, needing no aggression to be optimally effective. No war.
My cancer won’t let me off the hook until I am consistently living in accord with its message. This is its gift to me, which I gratefully accept.
- Robert Augustus Masters
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