Category Archives: Current News

Topics on Mind Health, lifestyle, everyday dilemmas

Lifestyle

“Diabetes is a disease of nutritional ignorance”

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“Diabetes is a disease of nutritional ignorance”. That’s the first thing  I heard this morning when I turned on the TV.  Joel Fuhrman, M.D. seemed to be calling out my relatives with that line. Hearing it said that way, I thought, maybe they would listen.

For years now, I’ve been banging the same drum about how many of the problems clients present with: diabetes, bipolar disorder, MS, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, low blood sugar, stroke, arthritis and even Parkinson’s – these problems are caused primarily by what we eat.

We are poisoning ourselves, voluntarily, because it tastes good. We are committing mass suicide while making food manufacturers wealthy and making our families miserable. But Dr. Furhman was so convincing this morning that I couldn’t help sharing his message with you and here’s a story he told:

He had a patient whose 80+ year old mother was diabetic, had a stroke and was suffering in the hospital.  He had gotten her daughter to change her diet and lose, I think he said, 100 lbs. Even though the mother had watched her daughter’s gradual success, she felt that she couldn’t do it. So she had continued eating the bread, cereal, potatoes, fried foods and all the other addictive foods that we’re told we can’t walk away from. Now, finally, there she was incapacitated, stuck in her bed and just waiting to die – from her decision. How many of us have relatives like that? So what happened with her?…………

Lo and behold, she wasn’t ready to die. She adopted a new way of eating – went back to the real old way – you know, real food – fresh veggies, nicely seasoned, peas, beans & greens with a little meat and fish, sugar no more than once a week AND SHE LOST THE WEIGHT,  IS NO LONGER DIABETIC, IS NO LONGER SICK, IS OUT AND ABOUT AND ENJOYING HER 80+ YEARS!!!! What about the people you love? What about you?

Mind Health, Racism/Diversity

A message for incarcerated brothers

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While the movie Mandela was very moving and informative, its depiction of prison life and its impact on Mandela seemed painted with a broad brush. One knew that Mandela must have had a special weapon to protect himself and maintain his focus on his mission. That special weapon was very likely his mind. The coincidental help that accelerated him to the highest position in South African government may have been born of the prayers of many but his concentration on his intentions may have prepared him for ascending to his destiny.

Hill Harper, of CSI: NYC and Covert Affairs, has written a book to aid in the continuing development of mind power even in confinement. Hopefully, what is missed in everyday interaction with family and life on the outside, can be compensated by strengthening inner life and inner power. The tools created from that can allow for catching up much lost time.

Kids, Lifestyle, Mind Health

Sweet drinks linked to depression

Sweet but sad and mostly corn syrup.
Sweet but sad and mostly corn syrup.

 

A Harvard University School of Public Health team linked sugar sweetened drinks to risks of chronic diseases (Brownell, KD et al. 2009) while articifially sweetened drinks are associated with an increase in weight gain (Yang, Q, 2010). Researchers noted that cutting down on these drinks that contain artificial sweeteners would naturally lower the risk of depression.

Researchers have more recently found that both naturally sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks ranked high in the diet of those who were diagnosed with depression.

Specifically, the risk of depression was greatest in those who drank diet iced tea, diet soda and diet fruit punch. Those who drank four cans of fruit punch per day were 38 percent more likely to develop depression. People who drank more than four cans of soda per day were 30 percent more likely to develop depression than those who did not drink any of these kinds of drinks.

Study authors noted that those who drank four cups of coffee per day were about 10 percent less likely to develop depression. (Chen, H, Guo, X, Park, Y, Freedman, ND and Shinha, R.) There have been other studies that question the dietary effects of caffeine and tannic acid in coffee for certain people such as in pregnant women, young children, people with insomnia, those with kidney and liver disease.

Lifestyle, Mind Health

DC residents discuss blacks going to therapy

Jinneh Dyson’s initial skepticism about treating her debilitating depression changed after counseling. Her treatment was thought to be so transformative that it is the impetus for her current work: She now splits her time working for the National Alliance on Mental Illness and as a life coach and motivational speaker on mental health.  (By Tara Bahrampour for The Washington Post, 7/9/13.)

When Jinneh Dyson was 17 and a doctor prescribed medication to treat depression that had plagued her since the death of her mother three years earlier, her friends and family persuaded her not to take it.“They said: ‘That’s going to make you crazy. You’ve just got to pray and have faith,’ ” recalled Dyson, who is African American and the daughter of a Baptist minister. “They said, ‘That’s the way of the white man, poisoning.
Four years later, Dyson was a student at the University of Texas at Austin and still battling debilitating depression. A friend, who was biracial, urged her to seek counseling.“I said, ‘Girl, we don’t do that . . . that’s your white side,’ ” said Dyson, now 31. But she eventually agreed to meet with the university’s only black counselor. Her treatment was so transformative that she now splits her time working as a senior manager at the National Alliance on Mental Illness in Arlington and as a life coach and motivational speaker on mental health and other issues in Houston.Many people, regardless of race, have a hard time talking about mental illness.But for many African Americans, the topic has carried particularly negative connotations — to the point where it’s easier to talk about drug or alcohol addiction than depression or anxiety. In 2008, whites received mental health treatment or counseling at nearly twice the rate of blacks, and whites received prescription medication for mental health-related issues at more than twice the rate of blacks, according to the 2010 National Healthcare Disparities Report.But African Americans’ acceptance of therapy has been rising in the past decade, providers say, particularly among the young and those with more education and in those urban areas with large black populations.There have been no large-scale studies about the recent shift, but providers interviewed said they have seen it in their work and in their communities.“I’ve seen an increasing number of African Americans who feel increasingly less stigmatized about coming in and seeking therapy and who also recognize the healing power of therapy,” said Jeffrey Gardere, a psychologist in private practice and assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine in New York City, adding that in the past 10 years he has seen a 20 to 25 percent rise in African Americans seeking therapy.

“The attitudes have changed,” said Lisa Whitten, an associate professor of psychology at SUNY College at Old Westbury in New York, noting that more black students are studying psychology and “taking that message home . . . that this is something a broad range of people do and it doesn’t mean you’re disintegrating.”

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Kids, Racism/Diversity

Justice – Hill Harper on Epidemic Incarceration of Young Black Men

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The son of a psychiatrist father and anesthesiologist mother, Hill Harper is not just an actor (CSI: NY  and Covert Affairs) but also an author of a number of books meant to encourage young black men  and women. His latest, Letters to An Incarcerated Brother,  tends a growing cancer of racism in America – the epidemic incarceration  of our young men.

A graduate of Harvard Law School, Hill points out that one in six black men is incarcerated now. He expects that one in six number to increase to one in three. That fact along with the letters he received from so many inmates caused him to listen, learn and then aid the young men who have been locked up so young, long before they have had any chance to  discover their real worth and power.