Dear Readers,

Some of you have been receiving my ShaysWays e-mails, and again, I want to thank everyone who has responded so postively to my posts! I've created Shaysways to put more of a personal touch to the health issues that confront and involve all of us, and feel moved to be a touchstone for the great resources I am using to create a vibrant life. You can know that everything I recommend, I use and can verify quality and effectiveness.

Recently, I've conferred with Mariana Bozesan and have subscribed to her "Diet for a New Life" program. This is really a great value. For just $19.95/month, you get access to teleseminars, the impressive teleseminar library of experts, such as Deepak Chopra, John Gray (Mars/Venus), David Wolfe (raw fooder), and many others. You become a member of the "Wisdom Circle," entitling you to a free download of Mariana's awesome book, Diet for a New Life, online coaching, e-zine, and forum. The program is not just about losing weight, but about a holistic approach to diet in general. I'm hoping you'll join me!

On another topic, a good friend forwarded me some great information about Monosodium Glutamate (MSG), and its pervasive use in practically all prepared foods and restaurants. Although glutamates (the overall classification of substances within which MSG belongs) are present naturally in many foods (notably tomatoes, parmesan cheese, other dairy products, peas, corn and potatoes), it is the secondary effect of artificially adding this flavor-enhancing material to commercially pedalled foods in order to stimulate the consumer to eat more that is the bottom line issue.

Doping food with MSG directly influences behaviors in consumers and is a direct cause of obesity--eating too much! It is a health hazard from that viewpoint, and in my opinion should be addressed not necessarily as a specific, direct poison itself, but more as a behavior modification tool that adversely affects public health. MSG should be banned on that basis: ARTICLE.

Next month, we be featuring an interview and great information from Dr. Udo Erasmus, Ph.D., around his breakthrough book, Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill. So stay tuned for that!

In vibrant health,

Shay Arave
President
Pure Energy Rx  

 

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Featured Article

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Our resident Life Coach and Synergy Specialist, Charly Emery, in her series, "Manifest What You Dream of Today," dives into positive vs. negative attitudes we may have that cloud our ability to be realistic. She notes, "Although we network to find the resources necessary to facilitate getting what we want, it is ultimately our perspective that often serves as the true key to either unlocking our greatest potential for desired change or keeping our inner resources and creativity inaccessible behind a locked door, because the greatest resources we have are within us. Networking is terrific when you are identifying those you can collaborate with to enhance your success. Conversely, it yielded very different results when my standpoint encouraged me to engage in the process to find those who would validate me or give me permission and access to attaining my goals. Positive thinking is invaluable, except when you use it to reinforce a restrictive outlook..." >>> MORE

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  Just say no...to video...
Childhood exposure to TV and video games should be viewed as a major public health issue and, like cigarettes, these media should come with a health warning. So argue researchers writing in a special issue of the journal Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
Research shows that exposure can increase obesity, tobacco and alcohol use, risky sexual behaviours, violence and social isolation, say Dimitri Christakis and Frederick Zimmerman, from the University of Washington in Seattle, in a controversial editorial. The data linking violent media to aggression, for instance, are ³just as strong² as those linking smoking and lung cancer, says Christakis. U.S. children over eight years old spend more time watching TV and playing videos than any other activity except sleeping. More than a third of those under six have TVs in their bedrooms. And things are only set to get worse, as every child with a cellphone will soon to be toting a TV in his pocket, says Christakis.
Fifteen separate papers and three editorials examine the growing problems associated with excessive media exposure and media violence. Among the findings:

• Toddlers who watch more than two hours of television a day are more likely to be overweight at ages 3 and 4-and-a-half.
• Each additional hour of TV watched each day by kids resulted in an extra 167 calories consumed, often from sugary drinks, fast foods and candy featured in adverts.
• Among teenagers whose parents discouraged sex, watching two or more hours of TV per day made it significantly more likely the teen would have sex within the year.
• Playing a violent rather than a benign video game makes children more accepting of using drugs or alcohol, and having sex without a condom, because, the researchers suggest, it increases general disregard for the safety of yourself and others.

Bruce Bartholow, who studied effects of media violence at the University of Missouri in Columbia, and was not a contributor, agrees that it may be time to take a public health approach. "The media industry consistently denies that their products have any negative consequences for users, even though scientific evidence has demonstrated this link for decades."
Studies on adults have also shown behavioural risks associated with violent media. For example, a study which randomly assigned men aged 18 to 21 to play either Grand Theft Auto III, a very violent video game, or The Simpsons: Hit and Run, found that young men from violent communities who had played GTA III were significantly more likely to assume they were going to be accused of cheating in a test scenario.
"What this suggests is that if you're exposed to media violence, you might just jump to the conclusion that they're out to get you," says Sonya Brady, at the University of California at San Francisco. >>> FULL ARTICLE  

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Fight childhood obesity--send them to bed...
Hitting the hay may be just as good as hitting the gym in the fight against childhood obesity, a new study suggests. The risk of becoming overweight is 3.5 times higher in children who get less sleep than in those who sleep a lot, according to the research.
"It's ironic that part of the solution to obesity might lie in sleep, the most sedentary of all human activities," according to Angelo Tremblay, one of three co-authors of the study, which is published in the March issue of the International Journal of Obesity.
Researchers from the Universite Laval's Faculty of Medicine measured the weight, height, and waist size of 422 children aged 5 to 10. After taking body mass index readings, they found that those children who slept less than 10 hours a night were 3.5 times more at risk of being overweight than those who slept for more than 12 hours. "No other factor analyzed in the study--parental obesity, parents' level of education, family income, time spent in front of the TV or computer, regular physical activity--had as much of an impact on obesity than time spent sleeping," according to the report.
The researchers speculate that hormones produced during sleep, or those produced when the children are deprived of it, are responsible for the differences in weight, Mr. Tremblay said. "Lack of sleep lowers the level of leptin, a hormone that stimulates metabolism and decreases hunger. In addition, short nights of sleep boost the concentration of ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger," Mr. Tremblay said in a statement. He speculates that the relationship between a general loss of sleep and increased rates of obesity in society have broader implications than in just young children.
Between 1960 and 2000, the prevalence of obesity doubled in the population while the average night of sleep lost one to two hours. During the same period, the percentage of young adults who slept less than seven hours went from 16 per cent to 37 per cent, according to the report. "In light of this study's results, my best prescription against obesity in children would be to encourage them to move more and to make sure they get enough sleep," Mr. Tremblay said.

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More legislation for the food lobby...
By Al Meyerhoff and Carl Pope
The House of Representatives this month passed the National Uniformity for Foods Act, a measure that would kill or cancel significant parts of 200 food-safety laws in 50 states. This ill-advised bill, supported by millions of food-industry dollars, passed without a single hearing. Now it's in the hands of the Senate. If it passes there, among its many victims would be California's requirement that foods containing harmful chemicals display a warning for consumers.
Those warnings are mandated by Proposition 65, enacted, as one court described it, to be "a legislative battering ram" by an overwhelming majority of voters in 1986. In passing the measure, Californians wanted to encourage manufacturers to remove dangerous substances from their products before they reached supermarket shelves. Proposition 65's requirement that companies either warn consumers or remove harmful chemicals works, and it remains a vital protection.
Consider the controversy over mercury in tuna, swordfish and other types of seafood. The Food and Drug Administration recently announced that seafood contaminated by mercury--a heavy metal found in our oceans mainly as the result of burning coal--can be so hazardous that women "who are pregnant or may become pregnant" should avoid consumption. Mercury was present in fish at levels sometimes far exceeding the FDA's "action level."
So what "action" did the FDA take? Instead of seizing mercury-laden fish, as federal laws allow, it issued a press release; the seafood remained on supermarket shelves. Despite the FDA's inaction, Proposition 65 mandated that consumer warnings be placed on contaminated seafood sold in California. That encouraged the creation of the nation's first line of low-mercury fish under the "Safe Harbor" brand. Now it is your choice.
The clear lesson is that states often do more to protect consumers than do federal regulators. So why is Congress even considering passing a bill denying California and other states the right to protect citizens? Follow the money. All told, food companies have forked over $5.2 million to the bill's 226 co-sponsors. The Californian members of Congress co-sponsoring the bill in the House received about $670,000 from food interests for this election cycle alone, and more than $1 million for 2004, according to public filings with the Federal Elections Commission. Some of the top money-getters are Reps. Richard Pombo (R-Tracy), $250,208); Devin Nunes (R-Visalia), $558,152); and Dennis Cardoza (D-Atwater) $239,152).
Some people argue that the avalanche of warnings numb the public to real environmental hazards. Perhaps. But the "right to know" provisions in Proposition 65 and other laws give consumers real choices. If one brand of lettuce in the supermarket says it contains perchlorate, rocket fuel and developmental toxins and another does not, the market will work. And exposure to that chemical will be reduced, not just at the dinner table but also "upstream," for chemical workers in the plants and farm workers in the fields.
This is not the first attempt to preempt Proposition 65 with a federal law. It has survived for 20 years principally because of the leadership of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, present and past attorneys general and the state's governors of both parties. But the voice of one governor is conspicuously missing. In February, Waxman, together with Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs), wrote to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him to oppose the "National Uniformity" bill. Thus far, the response from the governor's office has been silence. As the debate over food safety moves to the U.S. Senate, it's time for the governor to make sure this threat to California's sovereignty is terminated. >>>> FULL ARTICLE

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Where are the boy babies?...
Something very strange is happening in a small but highly polluted Canadian community. Young boys are becoming hard to find on the Chippewa Indian reservation in the gritty town of Sarnia, in Ontario's "Chemical Valley." It boasts four children's softball teams, but three of them are made up entirely of girls. Research shows that the number of boys being born to the community has been dropping precipitously for the past 13 years, while the proportion of baby girls has risen. Now there are twice as many female births as male ones, though nature normally keeps the sexes in balance.
Scientists increasingly believe that pollution is to blame and that what has happened here -- and among some other highly contaminated groups of people in other countries--may solve an enduring mystery of "missing boys" in maternity units throughout the industrialised world. The Chippewa Indians of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation Community have long lived in the area, on the southern tip of Lake Huron, not far from Detroit. Their right to the land was confirmed in 1827, but much of it was taken over by industry in the 1960s. Now their woods and homes are entirely surrounded by one of the world's most extensive petrochemical complexes, producing 40 per cent of Canada's entire output of plastics, synthetic rubber and other chemical compounds. The air stinks, and the ground is contaminated with high levels of dangerous pollutants.
Only 35 per cent of babies now are boys, and there is no sign of the decline levelling off. The study could not prove a cause, but pointed the finger at "multiple chemical exposures over the years." Other, non-native communities downwind of the complex also have less dramatic reductions in male births, while those upwind do not. And many studies have shown sex changes in fish and wildlife in the lake nearby.
The findings tally with other research around the world. People exposed to high levels of dioxin in the 1976 accident in Seveso, Italy, also have twice as many girl as boy children. The same is true for Russian men exposed to pesticides containing the chemical. And Brazilian scientists have reported that the proportion of boy babies fell in the most polluted parts of the city of Sao Paulo.
Professor Shanna Swan of the University of Rochester, NY, believes that changing sex ratios may often provide an indication of dangerous pollution, and that low levels of exposure to such ubiquitous chemicals as dioxins and PCBs may explain the decline in boys in industrialised countries. >>>> FULL ARTICLE

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The Meatrix 2 has Launched!!!

It's been two years since Free Range produced the runaway hit and winner of the Webby award, "The Meatrix." Now, the action packed sequel is here! Follow Moopheus, Leo and Chickity as they dive deeper down the rabbit hole of the Meatrix to uncover the the truth about factory farming.

Suggested: First watch The Meatrix I
Then watch Part Two right afterwards!
The Meatrix II: Revolting.

THEN, take action! Learn all about what really happens on those factory farms, the treatment and health of the animals, and the recycling that takes place...