And I'm going to assume you don't know who Zoe Harcombe is, because I know a person like yourself who hates bias, would never willingly post something from her blog, since:

"Zoë Harcombe is an author, nutritionist and cholesterol denialist from Wales. Harcombe disagrees with mainstream medical advice on dieting. She has been criticized for promoting misleading health advice that is not based on scientific evidence.[2] She sells a fad diet known as the "Harcombe Diet".[3]"


Because I know you hate it when there are unproven claims and so on.

Nutritionist? Really?

I'm overweight, had a heart attack 9 years ago when I was 30. I'm on low sodium diet, have 2 cordis brand stints in my chest. Grade 1 diastolic dysfunction from a little scar tissue on left ventricle.

I had severe depression and the heart attack at 30 messed my head up fierce in my thinking. First off I've never had a physical before then and I've never been sick. When my parents caught flus and I didn't they had me tested and I was a 1 in 10 or 100 thousand I forget that are immune to flu. Once a year I donate blood here in Ga that is sent to Emory in Atlanta I get paid $350 for my blood once a year.

But back to heart attack since I never had physical due to never sick I knew I was not eating healthy and used to smoke and nicotine is a vascular constrictor. It triggered the attack and was my last cigarette. It scared the addiction out of me and never had withdrawals.

But my severe mental depression although obese I became scared to eat, I went on starvation diet. I'd drink water but no food at all.

After 5th day I was so weak I couldn't move. Later I realized it takes a lot of calories to move my fatass. But I had a new danger that almost triggered cardiac arrest.

I live alone and was able to crawl to phone and call 911. They first thought it was another heart attack but heart was slowed but no problems. They did blood test and took 7 vials. About 6 hours later was the embarrassment.

Doctor came in, along with psychiatrist, nutritionist, and another counselor. I was hypokalemic. Which means potassium was dangerously low almost fatally low. Which was red flag for usually the stereotypical teenage girl with anorexia.

Took 2 IV bags of riggers lactate, shot of potassium, a little amphetamine to boost blood pressure up to normal and 24 hour observation on regular saline IV.

I still have severe depression due to weight. I have degenerative disc disease in my back so I can't get around very good. My diet is set at 1800 calories yet my I only lose 1 to 2 pounds a month. Extensive testing has shown my metabolism has come to a stop. So even though I eat very little calories and low sodium protein diet with barely any carbs with no metabolism the body only stores it as fat because at zero metabolism the body thinks it has to store instead of burn thinking its starving but its not.

But my cardiologist and general doc are trying an extremely dangerous and risky treatment to try and JumpStart my metabolism. I have to record my blood pressure hourly and go in once a week for ekg and blood enzyme test but they are using a drug not made for this as "off label" use and you aren't supposed to even use it with heart disease but that's the strict monitoring by both my doctors. The controversy is they are using adderall to force my metabolism up. Your body is forced to burn through energy stored, and the idea is once my metabolism kicks back in it should stay up on its own.

Tests look promising its my second week on it and I was averaging 1-2 sometimes 3 pound loss in one month. Now since the low dose adderall trial I lost 5 pounds in 1 week!!!

And that little victory has done wonders for my severe depression. I've actually got hope.

Agreed.

And @newtboy is right. In the media, men are being pushed into unnatural representations of men's physiques now, in a way they haven't been in the past.

It is the comic book, super hero, action hero thing.

Again selling to men but the sexual aspect of it is skewed differently. More like -- men want to LOOK like them, not penetrate them. Ha. But the destructive message is the same to men as it is to women -- you are not worthy enough if you don't look like this.

Hence my comment said that the makeup of the future would enhance their masculinity, not make them sexually desirable. More manly, to be attractive to women, not to men.

Did you know that all that ab action in the movies is not "natural"? That right before a movie scene is going to filmed, the actor works with his nutritionist and personal trainer for at least a couple of days beforehand? They work to minimize body fat for just that day. Makeup is also used to enhance the ab definition. And that right before the camera rolls, the men do crunches to make the muscles stand out even more?

I say this because I read an interview/article about a man who was working hard to look like those guys in the movies. He was so relieved to learn that his failure to exercise his way into looking like those movie images wasn't his fault.

He didn't know. HE DIDN'T KNOW.

This is not good for men's psyches, goldurn it.

So, you can't argue against my points, so you change your argument?
You said we are sliding into socialism...I showed you that's wrong and now you say 'sliding to more government' is the same thing. They are not.

You are listening to talking heads. The republicans may promise to 'undo what was done' but in reality they don't do that (they don't really even try, they just try to look like they are, how many 'votes' to 'repeal' the ACA?) but instead increase their control at every turn.

1) Wow! A point we agree on!
2) Um...so you want to say the minimal wall street regulations were 'screwing corporations' and removing them is 'unscrewing them'? Well, lets just leave it at 'I totally disagree' that going back to reasonable rules (rules the republicans removed before, causing the insanity in the market for 25 years) is 'screwing business', it's forcing business to not screw everyone else by fraud.
3) If the government IS in charge of the program (and it is, because states failed miserably to do it themselves) there should be reasonable 'rules' on how to do it. Those 'rules' in this case should be determined by nutritionists, not politicians. Catchup is not a vegetable. It's really just one more swipe at the Obamas for no logical reason in my eyes.
4) It's hilarious that when it's for something you like, you are all pro-federal power to override the states/local laws, but when it's not (like a federal lunch program) they shouldn't be involved.
Socialism and corporatism are the reverse of each other. I should not have to be the one to teach you that.
We disagree as to which party is running faster towards 'oligarchy'. We disagree because you think Faux actually shows NEWS, but they ONLY have propaganda on Faux, not news, not reporting, only editorializing. Those who watch Faux are consistently less informed than those who watch NOTHING. Repeatedly proven fact.

Both parties have failed, so you think we should go for the crazed, farther right splinter party...you know the Naz....oh...sorry...I got confused....teabagger party. They might not all be lynching nuts, but most certainly are. I've seen and talked to them, and walked through rallies. It's not a myth.
Because they were not registered republicans does not make them either democrat or independent, most of them just think the republicans don't go far enough to the right...kind of like a certain German party from the 30's I can mention.

EDIT: I guess since it's OK for the republicans to off hand legislate against the known wishes and vote of the people because they 'control the laws in DC', you would have no problem with Obama using executive powers to bypass congress and to line veto the budget to remove all the superfluous BS the republicans added to it? The president has that power and can executive order and line item veto all day long...but you would be having a fit if he did, no?

If that is all true (and I read through much of the linked study and made little sense of it since I'm not a nutritionist and only took one semester of advanced molecular biology, it was particularly technical and hard to follow), then golden rice seems to be the exception.
As I read it, 55-70% the RDA was the maximum vitamin A that could be expected, with the range being quite large. (oddly they cite a 200 gram rice dose given in the study has 1.3mg b-carotene/3.8 to get .34mg retinol, then a 100 gram dose is estimated to provide 55-70% EAR , then they say a 50 gram dose, a more reasonable amount for children to eat, would provide the same amount as the 100 gram dose did?) Even if it can supply 1/2 the daily allowance of vitamin A (which I'm not sure it can from the study you cite), that still does not make it 'safe' to release into the 'wild', or 'better' than natural, easy to grow alternatives as unknown long term side effects have not been studied. It may be better than doing nothing, or even better than natural alternatives, but without long term studies we simply can't know. That's my main point.
$10K a year is not much for a farm to make, most small farms make far more than that, but also need to spend all they make to keep going. That limit seems to say they DO intend to charge most farmers for this seed eventually. If that's $10K a year profit, I'm OK with that.
I would say we should hold up potentially life saving technology until we know the unintended side effects, we should not experiment on the needy (or the public in general) and claim it's in their best interest. We certainly should not do it in secret, as in non-labeled gmo's.
Monsanto is not the only bio-tech company that acts like this, just the most public. Most GMO creating bio-techs are pitbulls about protecting their 'intellectual property', even when it floats onto someone's property without their knowledge.
I stand corrected, she did say that. I missed it. I do not claim they don't have higher yields, I think that's their whole point and I think they do a decent job of producing more. I just don't see that higher yields are worth the possible long term damage and I think more, longer term, double blind studies need to be done by disinterested parties. Long term side effects can take a long time to show up, and with something this new to the food source, it deserves careful consideration, not profit driven usage.
Again, 'golden rice' is an exception if you are correct. My limited experience is with Monsanto corn and soy, which seem to be in a different category. Most GMOs are not made with variety, and ARE made to have a clear adaptive advantage, so I made an assumption that 'golden rice' would be the same. My bad. Even with that though, the genes WILL end up mixing with some other non-gmo rice, making it difficult or impossible to ensure your crop is not gmo of that's what you want. They may not dominate, but if they end up causing cancer in 10 years, and by then 99% of rice is 'contaminated', then what? I just think safety (edit: I meant to say forethought) is the better part of valor, and better that a few go without today than open the possibility of all going without tomorrow when patience and thoughtful examination can prove safety. Of course, I'm not going blind of vitamin A deficiency or starving from lack of corn...so perhaps my opinion doesn't matter.
To a few of your other points, if gmo's are safe, prove it (Monsanto and the like) and do it incontrovertibly and publicly, then we'll all want them. If the argument is that 'stupid hippies have convinced everyone they're bad, so we have to sell them in secret', that argument doesn't hold water in my mind. Monsanto could certainly afford a public service campaign if the science was in, but the LONG term studies aren't done yet.
Teaching someone to grow peppers or other vegi's seems easier than modifying a crop and spreading the seeds, it takes about 5 minutes and adds variety. I think that's better than treating them as un-teachable and experimenting on them.
...and I agree with the scientists in sciencemag, destroying the test fields isn't helpful and answers nothing.

@enoch, thanks for your comments. I thought it better to respond directly to your profile than on the video, about which we're no longer discussing directly. Sorry for the length of this reply, but for such a complex topic as this one, a thorough and plainly-stated response is needed.

You wrote: "the REAL question is "what is the purpose of a health care system"? NOT "which market system should we implement for health care"?"

The free market works best for any and all goods and services, regardless of their aim or purpose. Healthcare is no different from any other good or service in this respect.

(And besides, tell me why there's no money in preventative care? Do nutritionists, physical trainers/therapists, psychologists, herbalists, homeopaths, and any other manner of non-allopathic doctors not get paid and make profit in the marketplace? Would not a longer life not lead to a longer-term 'consumer' anyway? And would preventative medicine obliterate the need for all manner of medical treatment, or would there not still remain a need to diagnose, treat, and cure diseases, even in the presence of a robust preventative medical market?)

I realize that my argument is not the "popular" one (and there are certainly many reasons for this, up to and including a lot of disinformation about what constitutes a "free market" health care system). But the way to approach such things is not heuristically, but rationally, as one would approach any other economic issue.

You write "see where i am going with this? It's not so easy to answer and impose your model of the "free market" at the same time."

Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. The purpose of the healthcare system is to provide the most advanced medical service and care possible in the most efficient and affordable way possible. Only a free competitive market can do this with the necessary economic calculations in place to support its progress. No matter how you slice it, a socialized approach to healthcare invariably distorts the market (with its IP fees, undue regulations, and a lack of any accurate metrics on both the supply-side and on the demand-side which helps to determine availability, efficacy, and cost).

"you cannot have "for-profit" and "health-care" work in conjunction with any REAL health care."

Sorry, but this is just absurd. What else can I say?

"but if we use your "free market" model against a more "socialized model".which model would better serve the public?"

The free market model.

"if we take your "free market" model,which would be under the auspices of capitalism."

Redundant: "free market under the auspices of free market."

"disease is where the money is at,THAT is where the profit lies,not in preventive medicine."

Only Krugman-style Keynesians would say that illness is more profitable than health (or war more profitable than peace, or that alien invasions and broken windows are good for the economy). They, like you, aren't taking into account the One Lesson in Economics: look at how it affects every group, not just one group; look at the long term effects, not just short term ones. You're just seeing that, in the short-run, health will be less profitable for medical practitioners (or some pharmaceuticals) that are currently working in the treatment of illness. But look at every group outside that small group and at the long run and you can see that health is more profitable than illness overall. The market that profits more from illness will have to adapt, in ways that only the market knows for sure.

Do you realize that the money you put into socialized medicine (Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is money you deplete from prevention entrepreneurship?

(As an aside, I wonder, why do so many people assume that the socialized central planners have some kind of special knowledge or wisdom that entrepreneurs do not? And why is there the belief that unlike entrepreneurs, socialist central planners are not selfishly motivated but always act in the interest of the "common good?" Could this be part of the propagandized and indoctrinated fear that's implicit in living in a socialized environment? Why do serfs (and I'm sure that, at some level, people know that's what they are) love the socialist central planners more than they love themselves? Complex questions about self-esteem and captive minds.)

If fewer people get sick, the market will then demand more practitioners to move from treating illness into other areas like prevention, being a prevention doctor or whatever. You're actually making the argument for free market here, not against it. Socialized bureaucratically dictated medicine will not adapt to the changing needs as efficiently or rapidly as a free market can and would. If more people are getting sick, then we'll need more doctors to treat them. If fewer people are getting sick because preventive medicine takes off, then we'll have more of that type of service. If a socialized healthcare is mandated, then we will invariably have a glut of allopathic doctors, with little need for their services (and we then have the kinds of problems we see amongst doctors who are coerced -- by the threat of losing their license -- to take medicaid and then lie on their reports in order to recoup their costs, e.g., see the article linked here.)

Meanwhile, there has been and will remain huge profits to be made in prevention, as the vitamin, supplements, alternative medicine, naturopathy, exercise and many other industries attest to. What are you talking about, that there's no profit in preventing illness? (In a manner of speaking, that's actually my bread and butter!) If you have a way to prevent illness, you will have more than enough people buying from you, people who don't want to get sick. (And other services for the people who do.) Open a gym. Become a naturopath. Teach stress management, meditation, yoga, zumba, whatever! And there are always those who need treatment, who are sick, and the free market will then have an accurate measure of how to allocate the right resources and number of such practitioners. This is something that the central planners (under socialized services) simply cannot possibly do (except, of course, for the omniscient ones that socialists insist exist).

You wrote "cancer,anxiety,obesity,drug addiction.
all are huge profit generators and all could be dealt with so much more productively and successfully with preventive care,diet and exercise and early diagnosis."

But they won't as long as you have centrally planned (socialized) medicine. The free market forces practitioners to respond to the market's demands. Socialized medicine does not. Entrepreneurs will (as they already have) exploit openings for profit in prevention (without the advantage of regulations which distort the markets) and take the business away from treatment doctors. If anything, doctors prevent preventative medicine from getting more widespread by using government regulations to limit what the preventive practitioners do. In fact, preventive medicine is so profitable that it has many in the medical profession lobbying to curtail it. They are losing much business to alternative/preventive practitioners. They lobby to, for example, prevent herb providers from stating the medical/preventive benefits of their herbs. They even prevent strawberry farmers to tout the health benefits of strawberries! It is the state that is slowing down preventive medicine, not the free market! In Puerto Rico, for example, once the Medical Association lost a bit to prohibit naturopathy, they effectively outlawed acupuncture by successfully getting a law passed that requires all acupuncturists to be medical doctors. Insanity.

If you think there is no profit in preventative care or exercise, think GNC and Richard Simmons, and Pilates, and bodywork, and my own practice of psychotherapy. Many of the successful corporations (I'm thinking of Google and Pixar and SalesForce and Oracle, etc.) see the profit and value in preventative care, which is why they have these "stay healthy" programs for their employees. There's more money in health than illness. No doubt.

Or how about the health food/nutrition business? Or organic farming, or whole foods! The free market could maybe call for fewer oncologists and for more Whole Foods or even better natural food stores. Of course, we don't know the specifics, but that's actually the point. Only the free market knows (and the omniscient socialist central planners) what needs to happen and how.

Imagination! We need to get people to use it more.

You wrote: "but when we consider that the 4th and 5th largest lobbyists are the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry is it any wonder that america has the most fucked up,backwards health care system on the planet."

You're actually making my point here. In a free market, pharmaceutical companies cannot monopolize what "drugs" people can or cannot take, sell or not sell, and cannot prevent natural alternatives from being promoted. Only with state intervention (by way of IP regulations, and so forth) can they do so.

Free market is not corporatism. Free market is not crony capitalism. (More disinformation that needs to be lifted.)

So you're not countering my free market position, you're countering the crony capitalist position. This is a straw man argument, even if in this case you might not have understood my position in the first place. You, like so many others, equate "capitalism" with cronyism or corporatism. Many cannot conceive of a free market that is free from regulation. So folks then argue against their own interests, either for or against "fascist" vs. "socialist" medicine. The free market is, in fact, outside these two positions.

You wrote: "IF we made medicare available to ALL american citizens we would see a shift from latter stage care to a more aggressive preventive care and early diagnosis. the savings in money (and lives) would be staggering."

I won't go into medicare right now (It is a disaster, and so is the current non-free-market insurance industry. See the article linked in my comment above.)

You wrote "this would create a huge paradigm shift here in america and we would see results almost instantly but more so in the coming decades."

I don't want to be a naysayer but, socialism is nothing new. It has been tried (and failed) many times before. The USSR had socialized medicine. So does Cuba (but then you may believe the Michael Moore fairytale about medicine in Cuba). It's probably better to go see in person how Cubans live and how they have no access to the places that Moore visited.

You wrote: "i feel very strongly that health should be a communal effort.a civilized society should take care of each other."

Really, then why try to force me (or anyone) into your idea of "good" medicine? The free market is a communal effort. In fact, it is nothing else (and nothing else is as communal as the free market). Central planning, socialized, top-down decision-making, is not. Never has been. Never will be.

Voluntary interactions is "taking care of each other." Coercion is not. Socialism is coercion. It cannot "work" any other way. A free market is voluntary cooperation.

Economic calculation is necessary to avoid chaos, whatever the purpose of a service. This is economic law. Unless the purpose is to create chaos, you need real prices and efficiency that only the free market can provide.

I hope this helps to clarify (and not confuse) what I wrote on @eric3579's profile.

Of course, you are right that there are other components to health, however, I think the majority of our health is accomplished by what we do to our insides with a minority of the benefit coming through exercise.

I find it compelling that the heart patients too sick for bypass surgery are sent to Joel Fuhrman for fasting followed by a plant-based diet in order to get them safely back to health. In your own back yard, Joe Cross came out with "Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead." and was healed to health through a plant-based diet. The evidence for health through proper nutrition is now overwhelming. From Dr. John McDougal's, "The McDougal Plan," through Dr. Neil Barnard's, "Reversing Diabetes," we are seeing that the western diet is the main reason for the burden on our healthcare system.

My own story is this: Several years ago my blood pressure was 210/120. I was on 4 medications and had edema in my legs and was, at 54 years old, feeling that I was on my way out. The doctors were so concerned that they continued to recommend additional drugs and tests to see what was going on. At that point I went to an old friend named Richard. He is a nutritionist and he and his 10 children have NEVER been to a doctor. (He claims it is because he didn't poison his family with sugar and white flour among other processed foods). Through natural foods and supplements, he healed me. Last year I completed two rounds of P90X. That was the benefit of the internal healing. I was able to do that.

All that being said, a plant-based diet doesn't necessarily mean no meat. But if people choose to do a no meat diet, I suggest strongly that they plan on figuring out their protein requirements and making sure that they can eat a broad enough range of fruits, vegetables and legumes in order that they don't run a protein deficit. That is different, in my way of thinking, from a protein deficiency. It is possible to get all of some of the amino acids needed and lack some of the others. Trust me, that results in some weird side effects.

I believe the huge problem with discussing this issue with people is that it seems everyone has something to protect. So I normally don't talk about it unless someone comes to me who wants to get well. Even then, I am just a resource and offer no medical advice personally. I do, however, have a story to share with regards to improper nutrition.

I will add this beautiful tidbit : Linus Pauling's protocol for reversing heart disease is, in my mind, a remarkable piece of work. One doctor, when asked what he thought about it, said that he wasn't too sure it would work, but then again he hadn't won two Nobel Prizes either.

I am appalled at some of the responses to this here on the Sift: "she should just take it and shut up", "yeah what's wrong telling someone they're fat" and @scannex's craptacular line of argumentation. This discussion took such a bizarro turn that even bobknight33 has more sense in his comment than a good half of the commenters!

There are several important issues at stake here:

1) Unethical behaviour should be called out, as done here, not silenced/ignored, no matter how "petty" it may seem. Silence (often enforced by shaming and/or interiorised guilt) is one of the main contributors to a culture of abuse of privilege, of bullying, humiliating, harassing, etc etc. I just wish stuff like this (the video) happened more often on TV and in the media in general. The more this kind of behaviour (be it sexist, ableist, bigoted, etc.) is called out as socially unacceptable, the less it will spread over the next generations.

2) Privilege: this guy thinks it is his place to tell a perfect stranger that she's too fat for TV, as if his small-minded opinion was worth anything. Even if it hadn't been so disgustingly condescending, he should know (lets hope that's now the case) that it's not his place to make those remarks. Even if he's a doctor, nutritionist, you name it. He's not her doctor, nor friend, and you have to be pretty fucking stupid to think you're illuminating someone on their hitherto unnoticed BMI, and even more fucking stupid to defend that as "doing her a favour".

3) Obesity is not like smoking. Yes, they are both health problems, but unlike smoking, being obese is not a behaviour. It can be caused/aggravated by certain behaviour, among many other factors. But while a behaviour can be inhibited while in front of others (e.g. not smoking in front of kids/a camera), you cannot "stop being obese". This brings out another distinction, namely that, while seeing people smoke can entice impressionable minds to do the same, seeing someone who is fat will not make one want to be fat as well. Seeing an overweight person on TV having a job or living a normal life might, on the other hand, give hope to people who are mocked and discriminated against for their weight issues, something which does not undermine in the slightest the struggle against obesity.

I could go on, but I've ranted enough as is. Suffice it to say that I fully *support what this woman and her colleagues have taken the courage to do, and hope it is a situation we will see more of in future. We can't (and shouldn't) outlaw douchebaggery, but we sure as hell can make it socially stigmatising, and we damn well should. (and unlike obesity for some, douchebaggery and hateful/hurtful ignorance is something anyone can be cured of)

/rant

>> ^CaptainPlanet:

um, he didn;t say anything wrong. what he said, he said politely. i guess obese has become a 'mean' word? well she's obese, and people should keep calling her obese until she breaks her denial and decides its a problem worth fixing


This.

The email was carefully constructed to avoid insult. He never called her fat. She was the one to bring that up. He implied she was obese. Is suddenly it wrong to classify someone under a medical term when it's true?

For all we know, the guy was a doctor, nutritionist, personal trainer, nurse, or some other healthcare professional. Does that change the tone of the whole discussion? If it does for you, then there is a double standard at work here.

I think she has some brass balls to spin this around and bring kids into the discussion which makes this a "feel sorry for me" rant. She clearly took his email personally and offensively but didn't stop to think if it was meant to be.

The only way she is truly a "victim" is if she has a medical condition that prevents her from losing weight. She never mentions that, so I assume she's simply not working hard enough on losing the weight and isn't viewing it as an issue for her health.

Stop acting like a victim, lady. I'm feel terrible that you might've been tormented as a child and the wounds keep opening, but you're an adult now and can do something about it in a more productive way than this.

I'm on a weight-loss journey at the moment - here's my take...

I'm following in the footsteps of my sister who's super slim now and very healthy. She's virtually a vegetarian and regularly sees a nutritionist and gets her blood tested (due to a medical problem she's hopefully overcoming).

She eats every three hours and is militant about avoiding sugar. It's the big problem in most people's diets. The mileage from exercise seems to vary for many but she takes regular brisk walks whenever she can and is also now biking.

She gives me good tips all the time, like avoiding the low-fat options. Those will almost always contain a bunch of unhealthy additives and you're better off with the full-fat version.

Finally my standing desk bits just arrived from IKEA. Not looking forward to putting it together...

http://howto.videosift.com/talk/Standing-desks-may-improving-your-Sifting-and-your-health

i agree with everything you just said, but i think you might be over estimating how much of it is science.
it's a great deal business. at least in the US. where medicine is mostly for profit. for huge huge profits.
medical RESEARCH is in fact, science. and i have faith in it. the dispensing of medicine is however, a business.

i'm saying this as someone who has degrees in health science fields. spent 8 years as a health care professional. spent 1/3 of that time doing administrative work. and now owns a business as a CAM practitioner.... which btw, is also a good bit business.

i'd also like to stick up for alternative medicine here.
a good deal of it is bullshit. any results are simply the placebo effect. but i don't think we should discount the placebo effect. it's an amazing mechanism. if you feel less depressed because someone hit you with a tuning fork and you didn't have to take any pills or go to a counselor, then okay. that's awesome. i still think you probably need counseling, but whatever. i also think you should take a good hard look at your diet and how much exercise you're doing. but how much does it cost in the US to go to a counselor, go to a doctor, get your anti-depressants and have a nutritionist and a phsyical trainer help you learn how to excercise and eat right? it's probably cheaper to pay someone $80 to hit you with that tuning fork and convince yourself it's going to work.

I make a decent living practicing complementary health care. but i don't tell anyone they need to be hit with a tuning fork or have someone throw energy beams out of their hands at them. i tell people they need to stretch, and i teach them how. i tell people they need to sleep properly, and i help them do it. i tell people they need to find an effective way to deal with stress, and i give them that. i tell people they need to find a form of exercise that's right for their bodies and lifestyles, and i help them find it. a lot of people just need someone to trust and someone to talk to. and that's why they call me a "therapist". i never tell people to go against their doctor's orders. i never tell anyone to stop taking their medicine or not to be vaccinated. and that's why what i do is COMPLEMENTARY.

we're too quick to dismiss a different approach when it comes to health care.
the same people are also very quick to be able to recognize the problems with our for profit health care systems when it comes to political discussions. the profit motive hasn't just tainted medicine in terms of disparity. it's tainted it in terms of effectiveness. this is where a holistic approach is good. it's not effect to only treat the symptom. if someone is overweight, has high blood pressure, their stress is out of control and they have diabetes. prescribing them pills, while necessary in the short term, is not at all where the "care" should end. i know doctors will also tell their patients to eat right and exercise but they do not teach them how to do it. because for profit health care doesn't think that is profitable. a for profit system does not want you healthy.

soooo... the market has opened up. if the way we practice medicine and viewed health in this country was working, people wouldn't pay to get hit with tuning forks. oh and half of this is a problem with our education system.
>> ^dag:

^Yes, how dare anyone question the all-knowing oracles of medical knowledge.
I think the reason that many geeky type people always toe the main-stream medical line is because they conflate medicine with science (which we all love). Yes, it's almost the same, but if I had to draw it as a venn diagram, there would be a crescent of over-hang. Medicine to me is 80% science and then the rest is filled in with dogma, patriarchy and business ($$).
That crescent of non-science is the part that makes me squirm. I don't think it's that wrong to question medical programs like vaccinations- with the idea that it may be being pushed non-scientifically by the medical industrial complex. (big pharma).
Bill Maher is not a kook.

The rich should be glad they live on Earth with it's oxygen and water instead of Mars, because they are rich enough that investing in a trip there might be what's needed to keep their taxes low.

It must be pretty comforting being filthy rich and knowing that you could say "Fuck the world" one day and live like a king for the rest of your life (which is probably going to be longer than most due to that healthcare you can afford, and the nutritionist, and trainer, and having summer and winter homes, and a driver, and and and and..... and then on top of it all knowing that your kids, their kids, and their kids kids can probably do nothing and live off of your estate. And they'd even be considered poor, because they aren't working to earn...yet have so much more than those who have to go out and break their backs everyday.

If the rich want the poor to give up more to taxes, perhaps they should pay their employees better.

>> ^MaxWilder:

>> ^gwiz665:
Jebus christ. I mean, seriously, they should have layed off the big macs back in school. America, you need to run your ass around the block a few times.

As someone who is currently (perennially) trying to lose weight, I wish it was something as simple as running around the block a few times. I trained for a marathon two years ago and simply stopped losing weight during the process. I remained 30 lbs above my goal weight, and ran (and finished) the marathon like that. For people who are not naturally lean, it is the difficult (near impossible) combination of proper exercise with proper diet that causes them to often simply give up. It also an unhappy truth that the cheapest food is the least healthy, so poor people are much more likely to be malnourished into obesity.
As to the video, in this particular case, laughing is totally appropriate. But when it's a fat person by themselves, I am usually just saddened. And I always remember that phrase, "Are you riding a scooter because you're fat, or fat because you are riding a scooter?"


As polarizing as Nutrition Science is, (Whatever the fuck that means), there are three keys to losing weight. Diet, Weightlifting (or whatever muscle working exercise you do), and Cardio.

I'm not a PHD in whatever Nutritionists get PHDs in. But I do know that the best way to burn fat, over time, is getting you're Basal Rate Metabolism up. The best way to do that is to eat less more often.

The next best thing is to work the large muscle groups on your body. You don't have to be a body builder, but you want those muscles to work.

The last important thing on the fat burning trifecta is cardio. 20 minutes a day, or 30 minutes a day depending on what kind of cardio you do. I skip a day because of high impact running, and lifting.

The last thing you should always remember? You won't lose 20 pounds in a period of 2 weeks. You probably won't lose 5 pounds in a week. I went from about 270 to 255 in a year; with just cardio (boxing and running). I went from 255 to 243 in 3 months with diet, weight lifting, and cardio.

The trick is to cut all the excess fat. Then when it starts to get hard to lose weight you know you're actually making progress.

The reason you didn't lose weight when training for a marathon is because you were training for a marathon, not to lose weight. What I mean to say is that, most likely, you're body was storing up energy for the marathon.

In short three things: Diet, (Not going on a diet, but how and what you eat), Muscle Exercise, and Cardio.

... and I always thought that thirst is the only indicator you need. It still astonishes me that some people actually require other people to tell them how much to drink (or eat). Then again, dietitians and nutritionists need an income as well, don't they ...