Namaste, Greetings.

                             

  

I love this.  

                              

Kate called late afternoon yesterday.  It took awhile for her to receive the money from Western Union, but it did arrive and she made it to the hotel without further problems. Hopefully, all will go well from now on, and she won't let this one bad person spoil her trip.

Kate is a writer/editor.  She will appreciate this:            

  

     Grammar:

     The difference between knowing your shit,

     and knowing you're shit.  

Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

     Our daughter flew to London yesterday for a conference/vacation.  Upon arriving at Heathrow Airport her wallet was stolen leaving her without cash, credit cards, or ATM-debit cards.  Luckily she still has her passport and cell phone, so was able to call us early this morning.
     With much difficulty we were able to wire her some money through Western Union, but they do not make it easy!  After an hour of trying we were unable to complete the transaction by phone, although their website states it is easy to do.  We had to wait for our local Western Union office to open for the day.  Then it went okay since we had a debit card and luckily had some extra cash in our checking account, something we normally do not have.
     Hopefully, she has picked up the cash by now and is on her way to her conference and hotel, and has been able to contact all her credit card companies to cancel the old cards and send new.

     This is what makes travel so very difficult.  Having to travel by air is irritating enough, but then theft is a real problem.  While in Chicago on a business trip, Dean's wallet was stolen by a professional gang of pickpockets.  One of my brothers had his wallet stolen in South America.  Our daughter had her wallet pick-pocketed while in Italy.  When Dean and I were in India we were constantly on guard with money divided between different pockets, some concealed inside our clothes, and I carried a slash-proof travel purse.

     Coincidentally, we watched the DVD, "The Way," last night.  In it, Martin Sheen goes to Europe after his son (Emilio Estivez) dies in an accident, to claim the body.  He proceeds to complete the historical pilgrimage, The Way of St. James, (Camino de Santiago), which his son had started.  He travels by foot across France and Spain, meeting some companions along the way, and staying in hostels, or large dormitories by night.  Watching that movie last night I noted that I would have had to sleep with all my belongings wrapped in my arms for fear of theft.  And a theft does occur in the movie.
     The world is a dangerous place, sometimes, and it has given me trust issues.
     "The Way" is an inspirational story and the cinematography is great....all in all, a nice movie.

Traveling is a brutality.  It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all the familiar comfort of home and friends.  You are constantly off balance.  Nothing is yours except the essential things--air, sleep, dreams, the sea, the sky--all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.  
                                                 Cesare Pavese


Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.     Paul Theroux



                                              

The Rise of the Power Vegans

     Some of America's most powerful CEOs and bosses are becoming vegan.  Steve Wynn, Mort Zuckerman, Bill Clinton, Russell Simmons, Bill Ford, Biz Stone, Mike Tyson, John Mackey, and Alec Baldwin are among them.  CEOs are smart and this gives them the opportunity to control their own health.  It also just makes good business sense, as health care costs are rising precipitously in this country.  
     See the article in Bloomburg Businessweek.
                     http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_46/b4203103862097.htm


     There is another kind of Power Vegan.  Timothy "Desert Storm" Bradley is an undefeated (28-0) vegan prize fighter.  On June 9 he will fight the defending welter-weight champion, Manny Pacquiao. He is among the growing number of vegan professional athletes.  Read the article from the Wall Street Journal here.
                     http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204520204577247533423440946.html



     Consider gradually transitioning to a plant-based diet;  if not for your health or your budget or your athletic prowess, do it because it is becoming the "in" thing to do.

                             

Cancer cells do not grow in a vacuum.

     Update time.....Dean's second chemotherapy went fine.  He feels so much better than his first go-round with chemotherapy a year ago.  Whether it is the fasting he is experimenting with, or the exercise he is trying to maintain, it is going pretty well.  He discovered, during week 2, that he can't fast and run, so he is walking more on fasting days.  Also, he learned that it is miserably hard to travel for business after chemo, and exercise, and try fasting.  Hopefully this is his last business trip for a few months.

     My bad....I haven't been doing my plank-a-days every day so have to start my streak of doing them for an entire year all over again.  Today will be day one.
                                           

     I have been keeping up with the jogging, however, but wish I was doing more.  My race looms just 11 weeks away.  At some point I have to really increase my long runs.   Hopefully, when the weather warms up.......spring cannot come too soon, for me.

     M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is finally going to start a clinical trial this summer to explore whether improving patients' diets and nutrition, levels of physical activity, stress management and social engagement can help them avoid a cancer recurrence and increase survival.  They will follow 120 breast cancer patients.  A control group will receive the standard care without the lifestyle interventions.  Both groups will be monitored for immune function, endocrine function, insulin and glucose metabolism and more.  Cancer cells do not grow in a vacuum.

One must not forget that recovery is brought about not by the physician but by the sick man himself.  He heals himself, by his own power, exactly as he walks by means of his own power, or eats, or thinks, breaths, or sleeps.     Georg Groddeck, "The Book of the It" 1923

Are you into barefoot running?

     If you are, you will appreciate these funny videos on "The sh*t barefoot runners say" and "The sh*t runners say to barefoot runners."

     http://www.invisibleshoe.com/1304/

     http://www.invisibleshoe.com/1332/

                                     

                                                    reblogged form pinterest.com

Cholesterol

    Health-savvy consumer that you are, you know that blood cholesterol is an important marker for disease risk.  According to T. Colin Campbell, PhD, "Lower blood cholesterol levels are linked to lower rates of heart disease, cancer, and other Western diseases, even at levels far below those considered 'safe' in the West."  In his research, as blood cholesterol levels decreased, cancers of the liver, rectum, colon, lung, breast, leukemia, brain, stomach and esophagus decreased.  Most Americans know that high cholesterol affects your heart, but aren't aware of the cancer connection or the link to diabetes.
     Several prominent American heart disease researchers and physicians have stated that, in their long careers, they have never seen heart disease fatalities among patients with cholesterol levels below 150 mg/dl.  (Drs. Bill Castelli, Bill Roberts, and Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr.) Studies show that consuming animal-based protein increases blood cholesterol levels.
     That information gave me a goal--- to aim for a total cholesterol below 150 mg/dl.  I know that I am just an experiment of one.  What works for me may not work for everyone, but here are my results.  I have been vegetarian for eighteen years now. My last total cholesterol level, as a vegetarian, was 158 mg/dl.  I was very happy with that.  But my most recent blood cholesterol level, as a plant-strong, unprocessed food, vegan, who is now age 60, was 128 mg/dl.  This life style works just as advertised!  (according to my laboratory, norms for total cholesterol for Americans are 125-200 mg/dl, note that averages for people in other countries are lower).
     In addition, my fasting blood sugar 2 1/2 years ago as a vegetarian was 100 mg/dl.  (normal 65-99 mg/dl).  That was one point above normal, or prediabetic.  This time around, as a vegan, it was 89 mg/dl and well withing the normal range. I'm thrilled.....my labwork confirms that this life style works for me, for whatever reason.  Be it the diet, adding more consistent exercise, or losing a little weight--- I need to keep this up.

Life is the great experiment.  Each of us is an experiment of one---observer and subject---making choices, living with them, recording the effects.    George Sheehan



                            (source, www.be-healthy-happy-beautiful.tumblr.com)

Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. Albert Einstein

      You may have read the news this week that the first artificial meat will be produced later this year.  It is called "in-vitro meat" and is created in a laboratory from thousands of animal stem cells.  The first pork sausage will be produced in about 6 months, the first hamburger in a year.  Scientiests think it is inevitable that the world will have to resort to in-vitro meat in the near future to feed the world's burgeoning population as livestock production methods are unsustainable.

               http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8733576/First-artificial-burger-to-cost-250000.html

    Let's set the moral and ethical arguments aside for now, as they are far too complex for me.  Let's just consider the animal welfare and environmental effects.  Professor Mark Post of Maastricht University, who is leading the research,  says that using synthetic meat could reduce the environmental footprint of meat production by up to 60%.  Hey, lets reduce the environmental footprint of meat production by 100% by just not eating meat!  We will also solve many of our health woes in the process.
     This new form of meat production would also decrease the number of animals being slaughtered for food.  That is a good thing, but if we all just stop eating meat we would decrease the number of animals being slaughtered for food to zero.  That would be a great thing, and so much simpler and less costly than using stem-cell researchers to produce meat.  Remember Einstein....let's make everything as simple as possible.
     Albert Einstein was possibly the greatest scientist to date, and was a vegetarian in his later years, although he had supported the idea for a much longer time.  In a letter he wrote shortly before becoming vegetarian he said that he "had always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience."  He also stated that "Nothing will benefit health or increase chances of survival on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."  I believe him.