This Sucks

I'm only posting this because I thought that my title was a funny, albeit obvious, one.

Breast-feeding rates are at their highest in the last 20 years. That's good news for babies. But not for daddies : ( ...kidding of course! I'm just full of them today.

"Experts attributed the rise to education campaigns that emphasize that breast milk is better than formula at protecting babies against disease and childhood obesity. A changing culture that accommodates nursing mothers may also be a factor."


Here's an Associated Press article about it.

NYT Health

There's a great article in today's New York Times on the wide range of health benefits you get from regular exercise -

You Name It, and Exercise Helps It

The article points out how great it makes you feel to exercise, and I suspect that people who do not, think that exercising is really unpleasant. I always say that the hardest part about going to the gym is the trip over there. The actual working out is enjoyable. Afterward, you feel like a million bucks.

Besides the misconception that working out is unenjoyable (yes, that's a word), many people say they don't have time. Well, if you watch 3 hours of television a night, then you're lying.

Health = Wealth

"It's the health-care version of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer."

Holding My Breath

Though HR 5719 will likely pass the Senate.

I like to consider myself an independent/libertarian, but I get so pissed off at Democrats that I am clearly a Republican. To add insult to injury, my congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R], has voted in favor of HR 5719, sponsored by the traitorous Charles "Charlie" Rangel [D]. See, he calls himself "Charlie" so he seems more folksy. It's like he's just one of your buddies, you know? He's not some b.s. artist who lives in a mansion in DC, or anything.

I hope she appreciates my voting for her in the last election. It won't happen again. If you'd like to see how your congressperson voted, check out GovTrack.

Stop HR 5719!

Check out this website. If you have any interest in keeping Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) around, you should call your congressperson and urge him or her to vote against HR 5719, which passed the House Ways and Means Committee last week and is going to a full House vote tomorrow. Basically, a company called Evolution Benefits lobbied to have a provision sneaked into the bill that would require substantiation of claims (proof that HSA dollars are spent on authorized products and services) at the risk of being fined by the tax man. It will cost HSA administrators tons of money and ruin HSAs.

The reason that Evolution Benefits did so is that they have a patented system that rejects unauthorized purchases for Flexible Spending Accounts (far inferior cousins of HSAs) and they have argued that HSA owners are making lots of unauthorized purchases with their cards which don't require substantiation. Account holders already must hold onto receipts in case they are audited and already must file with the IRS to show where their HSA dollars are being spent.

So, it comes as no surprise that some greedy businessmen are trying to get the government to shove more regulation down our throats so they can make a buck. Please call your congressperson and ask him or her to vote no on 5719! If you don't know who your congressperson is, shame on you, first of all, but you may find out at http://whoismyrepresentative.com/. Isn't the internet great? Also, feel free to call Evolution Benefits at 860-678-3400/5560 and tell them to go to hell.

I've also just learned that the White House might actually veto something if this passes the House. You may call the White House Comment Line at 202-456-1111 and ask that President Bush support the health of HSAs and does indeed veto it, should it pass.

What a great country.

Vroom Vroom, Beep Beep

This article was just posted on AOL, but the information is rather dated, it seems. Since engines and motor oil are better made than they were in the past, it turns out you don't need to change it every 3,000 miles, as was long the case. Now, every 7,500 miles will suffice. According to AOL Autos contributor, Tom Torbjornsen -

"Ford Motor Company has followed GM into the extended oil change interval march. Four months ago (March of this year) Ford announced that they are revising engine oil change intervals to every 7500 miles. The reason? Quoting the article from the Associated Press dated March 22nd, 2007:

'Not only are modern oils better, modern engines are also better. You don't have carburetors metering poorly on winter mornings, tolerances are a lot tighter, and operating temperatures are typically a little hotter, helping to cook off the junk that accumulates in the oil. Ford contends that its customers prefer a set amount of miles between changes. The automaker also cites the environmental benefits that come from less waste oil, monetary savings, as well as extensive tests as positive aspects of the new recommendation.'"

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

This comes from an article that my brother sent me over a year ago, and that I've just read. He sends me a lot of emails. I've mentioned this before.

Richard Carlson, who has a website called Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, makes an excellent point about happiness. He uses the following metaphor -

"Here's a good way to look at it. Suppose you live in Miami and you wanted to take a road trip to New York. So you get in the car and head West. The question is, where would you end up? The answer, of course, is that you could end up in many locations depending on how far you drove, but by no means would you end up in New York! You're going the wrong way!"

So, if you are surrounded by things (and thoughts) that make you unhappy, then you probably aren't going to be happy. I guess if you started out by driving west and then hit the Pacific, you could turn around and eventually make it to New York, but it would take a lot longer than first identifying the direction in which you should head and then going there.

This post is kind of cheesy. Sorry. To make up for it, I will say that the aforementioned website reminds me of those Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey that they used to have on SNL. What ever happened to those? Here are some of my favorites -

"You know one thing that will really make a woman mad? Just run up and kick her in the butt. (P.S. This also works with men.)"

"How come the dove gets to be the peace symbol? How about the pillow? It has more feathers than the dove, and it doesn't have that dangerous beak."

"I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it."

Almost forgot my all-time fave-

"Whether they ever find life there or not, I think Jupiter should be considered an enemy planet."

MQOTD

"The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease."

-Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Has anyone else ever heard his middle name? Weird. I'll have to look that up now.
He seems to have been pretty ahead of his time on this point. I don't know if he really did anything about it, but I suppose he wasn't a physician so it wasn't really up to him.

On a somewhat unrelated note, there's a statue of Edison in downtown Brockton, MA where it looks like he's giving you the finger. It's pretty hilarious.

The Most Important Meal of the Day (Revisited)

More news on the health benefits (and healthy correlation) of eating breakfast. The New York Times recently published an article about the fact that people who eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight. I think this is due to the fact that those are often people who lead more disciplined lives, getting up earlier and making better food choices and finding time for daily exercise. I have pointed out before that sumo wrestlers eat only two meals a day, and many nutritionists recommend that you eat many, smaller meals throughout the day.

I'd also like to point a site that has some great, quick pointers. Men's Health has a video segment called MH Minute.

More Belly News

The word "belly" is funny, isn't it? Well, bellies are no laughing matter, and research continues to support the fact that it's unhealthy to sport one, even if they make you look jolly.

There is research from Kaiser Permanente that suggests a link between bellies during a person's middle age and a later Alzheimer's risk. There has already been a link established between belly size and increased coronary heart disease risk.

Drudge linked to the Associated Press article on My Way News.

MQOTD

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing."

-Helen Keller

Tax Time!

If you're using TurboTax to file your taxes this year, be aware that it has become a little more difficult to deduct Health Savings Account contributions from your gross income on Form 1040.

This comes from Inside Consumer-Directed Care, via AIS Health.com -

"Searching TurboTax’s help files, consultant and former White House health policy advisor Roy Ramthun found the answer — HSAs are addressed under 'misc. income' rather than 'misc. deductions.' 'I’m not sure why TurboTax would put it this way,' says Ramthun, of Silver Spring, Md.-based HSA Consulting Services. 'I would think it would be more obvious that it is ‘misc. deductions.'"

Worst...Food...Ever

If you eat healthy most of the time, then you are allowed to go out and have an awful(ly delicious) meal once in a while at a place like Chili's or The Cheesecake Factory. But don't do it often if you want to be thin and healthy. The meals at such restaurants have high fat and calorie content, as well as unhealthy levels of sodium. That's why the food tastes so good.

So, Men's Health has a new list of specific foods to avoid at popular American eateries. It's called The 20 Worst Foods in America. It helps to keep in mind, before ordering the Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing, that they contain 2,900 calories and 182 grams of fat. Ha ha! 182 grams of fat??? Do you realize how much that is? A Whopper with Cheese has 64 grams, so the Aussie Cheese Fries have practically three times that amount. And 2,900 calories is way more than a whole day's worth of calories that you should consume. How about this for a thought? You'd have to run a marathon to burn off that number.

Now, the best part about this list is that Men's Health mentions a healthier alternative. It's part of their "Eat This, Not This" series.

I Hope This Doesn't Affect Their Delicious Cream Pies...

From today's Boston Globe -

Boston Trans Fat Ban Receives Final Approval

Ah, Push It

It's nice to see that this is the most popular article on the New York Times' website.

"Based on national averages, a 40-year-old woman should be able to do 16 push-ups and a man the same age should be able to do 27. By the age of 60, those numbers drop to 17 for men and 6 for women. Those numbers are just slightly less than what is required of Army soldiers who are subjected to regular push-up tests."

I Think This Is Campaign Issue #2 (After Iraq)

From Fortune Magazine -

Why McCain Has the Best Health-care Plan

"Here's where [McCain's plan] gets interesting. Employers would no longer be able to buy more health care with $9,000 of their employees' money than the workers could buy on their own. The raison d'être for corporate health benefits would vanish. Employers have another compelling reason to pass the ball to the employee: While wages are rising around 3% ayear, their health-care costs are growing at three times that rate. 'I predict that most companies would stop paying for health care in three to four years,' says Robert Laszewski, a consultant who works with corporate benefits managers. Hence, an employer that pays $9,000 for your benefits would simply pack an extra $9,000 a year into your paycheck. (Why? Because in a competitive labor market, companies would have to hand over that cash to employees or risk losing them.) So you'd have $6,000 after tax, plus the $5,000 family credit, to buy insurance. That's $11,000 in new cash that employees can set aside for health care."

"The [Democrat] standard benefits package isn't just a bad idea because it will substantially raise the cost to taxpayers. It will also make it virtually impossible for Americans to buy insurance tailored to their needs. Suppose you're one of those 25-year-olds. You probably don't want to spring for a full-blown plan that covers old-age diseases like Alzheimer's and would rather save some money and go with a low-premium, high-deductible plan. But the Democrat approach requires that any competing plans be "actuarily equivalent" (Clinton's term) to the federal employee plan - which translates as a generous minimum standard for health insurance. 'With that mandate, you rule out high-deductible plans,' says Gruber. 'It would make it very difficult to design one that would qualify.'"

"The Democrat proposals have some additional drawbacks. First, the Dems want to heavily regulate the insurance industry by limiting everything from profits to marketing expenses. If the earning power of insurers is determined by federal regulators, their pricing will be too, and thus they will evolve into the equivalent of public utilities. Would you rather have medical prices set by fiat or by nationwide market competition?"

"Second, the Democrat plan exacerbates the fundamental problem in the American health-care system, which is that no one has any incentive to care about price. (How much is that MRI center charging for your ankle scan? Who cares? Just hand over the $50 co-pay and never you mind.) Creating a huge new medical superstructure would shift far more spending to third-party providers, chiefly the federal government, giving consumers even less incentive to concern themselves with the price of an MRI - or any other service, from an elective wart-removal procedure to a life-saving heart bypass. 'The Clinton and Obama plans would enormously increase total health-care spending, but disguise the extra costs by shifting them to taxpayers,' says John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a research firm that does statistical modeling for health-care plans."

Live to Be 100

Sounds good to me.

Fat on the Inside

I've been thinking a lot about this since attending a talk on childhood obesity at the South Beach Wine & Food Festival. Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist and professor at Harvard Medical School, as well as the author of "Ending the Food Fight: Guide Your Child to a Healthy Weight in a Fast Food/Fake Food World", discussed the fact that doctors and scientists are now finding fat around internal organs, like the liver, and that this will be a serious health problem in the near future. It was the first I'd heard of it, but it wouldn't have been if I'd read an article that my brother sent me back in May (he sends me a lot of articles).

Futurist Ray Kurzweil publishes a newsletter that has all kinds of cutting edge information, and in his May 14th issue, he includes an article called "Thin People Can Be Fat on the Inside". This basically says it all -

"According to the data, people who maintain their weight through diet rather than exercise are likely to have major deposits of internal fat, even if they are otherwise slim. “The whole concept of being fat needs to be redefined,” said Bell, whose research is funded by Britain’s Medical Research Council."

I watched an episode of Penn & Teller's show on Showtime recently; one in which they sought to disprove the obesity epidemic. The argument they proposed did not convince me, and one of the main reasons for that was a physical fitness test they conducted in which the control was a very obviously out of shape guy, but one who happened to be thin(ish). He didn't win a single event. Wow, Penn, you're some sort of scientist. The obvious fact is that the guy didn't exercise, so someone who had a little more heft to him, but who was in better physical shape, beat him in various foot races and other events.

The point is that you need a proper diet and regular exercise to be healthy. We'll just keep beating that drum.

HSAs

Sharon Alt, whose radio show I listen to from time to time, has written a good article on the evolution of consumer directed health plans and health/medical savings accounts. They've been around for about 4 years, and legislation has been enacted to better them several times. They seem to be just about there.

The main issues are to get the premiums down even more to justify the high deductibles, while considering the likelihood of consumers to get better deals when shopping for care, and allowing coverage for medication to treat chronic diseases (classifying it as "preventive"). The main objection I hear about these plans is from people who have expensive medication that would eat up the deductible (and therefore, the HSA money) and likely make the plan more expensive for the insured.

Same Old Story

"Health Data Shows Most Employees Are Overweight"

Most people are overweight or obese, so it stands to reason that most of the ones who are employed are also overweight or obese. The headline should really read "Data Show", but that seems to be something of a grammatical anachronism these days. Oh well.

From an article about a Kronos Optimal Health study in Employee Benefit News -

"The findings show 77% of men and 65% of women aged 40 and older are overweight or obese. Among those younger than 40, almost 68% of men and 52% of women are overweight or obese. The high number of obese employees means many employees are living with elevated health risks like heart attack, stroke and diabetes. "

So, keep in mind as you age that most people gain a couple of pounds per year, and 40 years into your adult life, you're likely 50 or more pounds overweight.

Does the name "Kronos" make anyone else think of Kang and Kodos from the Simpsons?