Tag Archive for: health

RFK Jr. Wants Fluoride Out Of Water — And It’s Not Nearly As Crazy As His Detractors Claim

The day before the election, Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar joined countless other liberals in mocking Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the latter’s suggestion that America reduce its high levels of fluoride.

“I was a little shocked that one of their closing arguments for Donald Trump was take the fluoride out of water,” Klobuchar told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Nov. 4. “I guess they’re ending with more cavities.”

Skepticism of fluoridated water had been lumped in by the liberal establishment with a host of other heterodox views, often dubbed “conspiracy theories,” held by Kennedy and his allies.

Kennedy has harshly criticized fluoride, calling it a neurotoxin and an industrial byproduct. He’s claimed the mineral can cause arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease.

He has pledged that the Trump White House will recommend to communities that they remove it from their drinking supplies immediately after Trump takes office. Trump appeared to co-sign the proposal, saying it “sounds alright to me.”

CNN’s Abby Phillip invited Harvard-trained epidemiologist Dr. Syra Madad onto her show the same day to deride Kennedy’s fluoride criticisms: “I do think there are some rocks to be thrown, frankly, at RFK Jr.”

Madad called Kennedy “dangerous” and said his views on fluoride were “against science.”

“It is safe. It’s not toxic,” Madad told the panel.

“When you look at adding in additional amounts of fluoride, even then, the studies have not proven any significant health adverse effects,” she continued.

But numerous other health officials and toxicologists believe Madad is wrong.

“I think that there is sufficient data now, largely from the epidemiological literature in multiple populations, done by different investigators, that early life exposure to fluoride is associated with an increased risk of IQ loss,” Dr. Linda Birnbaum, a board-certified toxicologist and former director of the National Toxicology Program (NTP), told the Daily Caller.

Birnbaum headed the NTP, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), from 2009 to 2019. She is now an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina’s Gillings School of Public Health, in addition to still contributing research to HHS.

During her tenure, the NTP conducted a systematic review of the published scientific literature on the association between fluoride exposure and neurodevelopment. It found that exposure to higher levels of fluoride — levels it categorized as 1.5 milligrams per liter of water or higher — are associated with lower IQ in children.

The National Toxicology Program (NTP) has declared, “… the data support a consistent inverse association between fluoride exposure and children’s IQ.”

In the meta-analysis by NTP, 52 of 55 studies revealed a decrease in children’s IQ with an increase in fluoride. Internal…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) February 7, 2024

The review said there was insufficient evidence to reach a conclusion about the effects of exposure at 0.7 milligrams per liter, which is the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) current recommended level for U.S. community water supplies.

However, Dr. Birnbaum told the Caller, the NTP is running a comprehensive meta-analysis of the data that will likely show the linked drop in IQ rate is occurring at rates well below the 1.5 milligrams per liter number.

In fact, while Dr. Birnbaum maintained she hasn’t yet seen the newest version of the meta-analysis, older versions she did see show “that it’s quite clear that there may be really no safe level of fluoride just like there’s no safe level for lead,” she said.

Nearly all of the studies the NTP reviewed concluded the mineral was neurotoxic, Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, told the Daily Caller.

The 1.5 number, which the NTP concluded with “moderate confidence” leads to lowered IQ in children, is in line with the World Health Organization, whose current guidelines suggest maintaining levels below that concentration will prevent dental fluorosis, a yellowing or visible calcification of the teeth caused by excessive fluoride exposure.

Cooper argued that the NTP’s report was partially political.

“If you were actually doing a real systematic dose response analysis of a Health Hazard Assessment, do you think you would just magically land on 1.5, which happens to be the World Health Organization’s number?” he asked. “It would be like point 82763, you know, I mean, it wouldn’t be 1.0, what happened? [The report] just coincided miraculously with the World Health Organization? That’s where politics was kind of embedded into this document.”

Cooper, who has spent over 14 years ringing alarm bells about fluoride, says his organization has repeatedly requested supporting studies from the CDC and the American Dental Association (ADA) that prove fluoride is safe but “after 80 years they had nothing.”

“They couldn’t confirm. They have no studies showing that low levels is safe for the developing brain. So here they are exposing 200 million Americans, 2 million pregnant women, 300,000 exclusively bottle-fed infants right at this very second to fluoridation in the drinking water. We have 64 studies showing that that’s harmful, that poses an extreme risk. They have zero studies confirming safety. And yet they want you to ask me what more evidence do I need to find.”

The CDC lauds fluoride as a landmark innovation in preventing tooth decay and caries, otherwise known as cavities. The agency calls community water fluoridation one of the “top ten public health achievements of the twentieth century.”

Thanks to water fluoridation in the U.S., the CDC claims “dental caries declined precipitously during the second half of the 20th century.”

But that precipitous drop has occurred in both fluoridated countries and non-fluoridated alike. Countries with no community water fluoridation like Iceland, Italy and Japan, have all seen even steeper drops in cavities, according to data from the WHO.

“Although the prevalence of caries varies between countries, levels everywhere have fallen greatly in the past three decades, and national rates of caries are now universally low. This trend has occurred regardless of the concentration of fluoride in water or the use of fluoridated salt, and it probably reflects use of fluoridated toothpastes and other factors, including perhaps aspects of nutrition,” KK Cheng, a professor of public health and the Director of the University of Birmingham’s Institute of Applied Health Research, wrote in the British Medical Journal.

WHO data shows decay rates have dropped at the same rate in non-fluoridated countries: https://t.co/Tg8pLmkoR0 pic.twitter.com/jjFr8yxC2w

— Fluoride Action Network (@FluorideAction) March 18, 2016

Some western communities did remove fluoride from their water and actually saw their cavity rates decrease. Buffalo, New York, a city which removed fluoride in 2012, saw their rates of cavities for people between the ages of 12-65 drop, according to data from the National Institutes of Health.

Nine years after removing the mineral from their water supply, however, Buffalo began fluoridating again in September after families sued the city in a class action lawsuit, alleging their children had to receive more dental care as a result of the fluoride halt.

Despite the many studies and experts expressing concern over the mineral, CNN and Dr. Madad continued to push both its safety and efficacy in reducing cavities.

“Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral, it’s not a man-made mineral,” Madad told CNN.

Fluoride is a naturally occurring mineral. It is an ionized form of the element fluorine. Yet Kennedy Jr. called it “industrial waste” in a Nov. 2 tweet.

On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S​. water systems to remove fluoride from public water. Fluoride is an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss, neurodevelopmental disorders, and thyroid disease. President…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) November 2, 2024

Fluoride does occur in nature, and in fact many of the studies evaluated in the NTP report were from international communities in China and India who do not fluoridate their public water supply, but simply have high natural levels of the mineral in their groundwater.

But the specific type of fluoride that’s added to American public water supplies is often a chemical byproduct from the fertilizer industry, Cooper explained.

Phosphate fertilizer giants, like The Mosaic Company, produce the precursor to fluoride as a byproduct of their fertilizer production process and then sell it off to dental supply companies and municipalities for their water supply, Cooper told the Caller.

Cooper says the byproduct is known within the industry as “scrubber liquor,” because it’s literally scrubbed from the side of smokestacks.

The chemical companies make a nice profit from this side business, Cooper told the Caller, however he added that if it were banned in public water supplies, it likely wouldn’t hurt their bottom line.

“It wouldn’t be a big deal for them if it went away economically, because they could just replace it with other markets, including in Africa and China, where they’re seeing an increase in fluoride toothpaste. They actually still use the same product, but it’s refined to pharmaceutical grade,” Cooper said.

While many public health agencies still sing the praises of fluoride’s anti-cavity benefits, some dentists say it’s not as effective in treating cavities as the CDC and others profess.

Dr. Staci Whitman, a Portland-based dentist, said she used to be militantly pro-fluoride until she started looking into it.

“I never questioned what my professors in dental school told me. I never questioned the data that was presented to me. I absolutely thought anyone that spoke out against it was lulu tin foil hat brigade, just a total kook,” she told the Caller.

Staci actively participated in pro-fluoride campaigns, handing out pamphlets detailing the benefits of the mineral and attending lectures and debates on the topic. It was at one of these debates where Dr. Whitman had an epiphany.

“I realized that these people representing antifluoride, if you will, they were very articulate, very professional, had a ton of science and data that I had never seen, never had even heard, never even knew there was potentially an issue with water fluoridation. It wasn’t even on my radar.”

Then, Dr. Whitman began to read. “I don’t know if I can support this anymore,” she realized. “And that was when I thought water fluoridation maybe worked, and now we know it really doesn’t. We know that fluoridated countries have the same decay rate as non-fluoridated countries.”

The vast majority of European countries do not fluoridate their water.

“Most of those countries have banned the practice because they view it as a medical experiment. It’s the only chemical we add to the water supply that’s not intended to treat the water. It’s intended to treat the consumer,” Cooper said.

Florida once again leading the way w/wise public health recs from @FLSurgeonGen

Almost all of Europe (gray👇) decided decades ago against fluoridating water; benefits unclear w/access to topical fluoride

2024 Cochrane review agrees

W/unclear benefits, why take risks of harms? https://t.co/cGDL9FZaSY pic.twitter.com/vCfSTsK9RN

— Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD (@TracyBethHoeg) November 23, 2024

Dr. Whitman said she went along with fluoridation because everybody else did.

“I literally was just making it up. I was just seeing what my professor said, which I would say, ‘Oh, look at you. No cavities. You must have grown up in a fluoridated community.’ I was just saying it because everyone else did. It was observational. That’s not science.”

Dr. Whitman pointed to the latest findings on community water fluoridation from the Cochrane Report, a systematic review of research in health care and health policy which she calls “the gold standard.”

Cochrane reviewed 21 studies of community water fluoridation and found the practice “may slightly increase the number of children who have no tooth decay in either their baby teeth or permanent teeth.”

However, “these results also included the possibility of little or no difference in tooth decay,” the report added.

Cavities are the largest chronic disease globally, affecting both fluoridated and non-fluoridated communities alike, Dr. Whitman explained. Fluoride, she told the Caller, is not the problem. Rather, it’s the food we eat.

“No one gets cavities because of lack of fluoride,” she said.

“Ancestrally, we didn’t have fluoride in our lives. Look at the skulls from 10 or 12,000 years ago. The teeth are pristine. So what changed it was our diet. It was an agricultural revolution and the industrialized revolution we started adding sugar and flour into everything. So fluoride is just a cop out for our issue with our food system and big food and the big sugar industry.”

Dr. Whitman explained she’s not necessarily anti-topical fluoride, and pointed to the widespread availability of fluoridated toothpaste as further evidence for the unnecessary nature of water fluoridation. But she also recommended hydroxyapatite, a calcium and phosphorus based teeth cleaner that is used in Italy, Japan and other western European countries, as a fluoride alternative.

Our teeth, Dr. Whitman explained, are comprised of hydroxyapatite, not fluoride. The use of the alternative can prevent the development of dental fluorosis, which affects 40 percent of teenagers in America today, according to the CDC.

It can also prevent the much more serious skeletal fluorosis, which can severely distort a person’s bones. While communities across the United States add fluoride to their water supplies, governments in India and China and other communities with high natural levels of fluoride have spent millions of dollars on research and removal efforts, Cooper told the Caller.

“The government and many nonprofits have been working for decades to solve that problem. It’s just, it’s just really difficult, and it’s difficult to filter out, and that’s why we get to this point here in the United States where … we voluntarily add it, we self-inflict this harm,” he said.

Both Cooper and Dr. Whitman pointed to the embedded nature of the mineral in standard dental practices as a barrier to change the public perception on its potential harms.

“I don’t think there’s a nefarious action. I think most dentists just don’t know the issue very well,” Cooper said. “When I talk to them at city halls and I talk to them at legislative hearings, the average dentist has been working with topical fluoride their whole life in their dental office. They learned one day in dental school, they heard about the benefits of water fluoridation as settled science, and they believe it, and they care about children.”

Still, he said, the American Dental Association, who publicly endorse water fluoridation, are too deep in defending the practice to change course.

“At this point, it’s a lie that’s too big to fail,” he said. “If they now admit that they were not only wrong, but that many millions of children were harmed by this, there would be a grand loss of trust in the American Dental Association. And unfortunately along the way, as the dental lobby is really wealthy and powerful, they co-opted government in support of this.”

Both experts argued the burden of proof should be on the pro-fluoride side, especially considering the high stakes surrounding neurodevelopment.

“I am trained as a dentist to fix teeth, but I can’t fix a brain,” Dr. Staci said. “We only have one shot at developing a child’s brain.”

Cooper concurred.

“The cavity can easily be filled, but damage to the brain is permanent and has lifelong consequences. There are no second chances with brain development, and we have a large volume of government-funded research that now shows that fluoride at the levels experienced in Florida communities is neurotoxic. That’s the scientific consensus. There is no contradictory science. And we have government-funded research showing that for decades, and they knew it, we have been overexposing infants to water fluoridation,” he concluded.

The American Dental Association, in fact, receives millions of dollars from corporations that produce fluoride products, an ADA memo requested by Republican Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley in 2010 revealed.

“These dental product companies were giving different grants … but they were also giving millions of dollars to pay for the ADA’s endorsement of their products,” Cooper said. “You see that ADA seal of approval? Well, the one rule the ADA has to get that seal of approval is your product must contain fluoride. So even if you make a really great Xylitol toothpaste, they’re not going to put their stamp of approval unless you also add fluoride.”

Cooper lauded the Trump administration and Kennedy Jr. for taking action and drawing publicity to the issue.

“What the Trump administration is doing, what RFK is doing is on water fluoridation, is common sense that elected officials ought to be doing at every level,” he said.

Now, some public health officials are following Trump and Kennedy’s lead.

Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s Surgeon General, officially recommended against community water fluoridation last month, citing “the neuropsychiatric risk associated with fluoride exposure.”

His recommendation follows a landmark September decision from United States District Judge Edward Chen in Northern California forcing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to more strictly regulate the levels of fluoride in water under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

“The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ,” Chen, an Obama appointee, wrote in his decision.

Still, some communities, like Buffalo, New York, are doubling down. Nine years after removing the mineral from their water supply, Buffalo began fluoridating again in September.

Others still express doubt that the studies showing high levels of fluoride linked to neurotoxicity are in any way relevant to the levels at which American water is fluoridated.

“Fluoride can certainly be toxic,” Dr. Ryan Marino, a board-certified toxicologist and professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, told the Caller.

“Acute fluoride toxicity is one of the worst poisonings I can think of. However, the levels of fluoride used for dental health benefits in American drinking water are significantly below the levels that could even start to cause harmful effects and toxicity, and the levels we use have never been shown to cause harmful effects or toxicity,” Dr. Marino concluded.

But given the recent California ruling and Kennedy Jr.’s anti-fluoride campaign, Cooper is hopeful the tide is turning.

“There’s decades of science that we’ve been doing our best to get out there, but it’s been stifled by mainstream media and the ADA,” Cooper said. “Finally, now they can’t keep the lid on it anymore, and it’s just like they don’t know what to do. They’re in a panic.”

The Daily Caller contacted the CDC, the ADA, the NTP, HHS and Dr. Syra Madad for comment but did not hear back by publication.

AUTHOR

Robert McGreevy

Reporter.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Former FDA Official Cozied Up To Activists Months Before Joining Them, Emails Show

A former senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official hobnobbed with employees from an anti-tobacco nonprofit just months before coming on as the group’s CEO, emails show.

Kathy Crosby, who played a leading role in shaping public health policy while serving as the director of Health Communication and Education at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, became the president and CEO of the Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco and anti-nicotine activist organization, in August 2023.

Prior to her exit from the FDA, emails obtained by the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and exclusively shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation show Crosby hobnobbing with Truth Initiative employees and even corresponding with the group’s then CEO about setting up a meeting. 

“The emails the Daily Caller showed us raise some serious red flags,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the nonpartisan watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, told the DCNF.

“A federal employee is prohibited from accepting gifts, including comped tickets to conferences and galas, that are offered to her because of her status as a federal employee,” Chamberlain said. “That Ms. Crosby appears to have solicited the invitation to the gala she attended compounds the problematic nature of this episode. That she may have leveraged the event as an opportunity to seek outside employment is icing on the cake.”

Federal employees are barred both from soliciting gifts “to be given because of the employee’s official position” as well as from accepting those gifts. Additionally, they are prohibited from using their office for “private gain.” FDA employees are also barred from “seeking or negotiating for employment, that conflict with official Government duties and responsibilities.”

In April 2022, the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids (CTFK) offered Crosby free tickets to its 2022 gala. Crosby was busy that year, so she declined the tickets but asked CTFK to “keep [her] in mind for next year’s event.”

Roughly a year later, Crosby responded to the same email thread and asked the CTFK if it would be “extending an invitation to any FDA colleagues to attend” the 2023 gala. Hours later, the organization offered Crosby complimentary tickets, which she then accepted, saying that she “should definitely be able to join” them this year.

Emails show that Crosby indeed attended the May 18, 2023, CTFK gala and networked with employees of the Truth Initiative while there.

Shortly after attending CTFK’s gala, Crosby emailed then-Truth Initiative president and CEO Robin Koval on May 22 to schedule a meeting so the two could “catch-up.” In the email, she also mentioned that she had already met with Howard Koh, a member of the organization’s board of directors, and other staff at the gala. Koval and Crosby ultimately agreed to meet on May 24, 2023.

“There’s a reason taxpayers are troubled by incestuous relationships between government agencies and activist groups and public health agencies are proving to be no exception,” Functional Government Initiative spokesperson Peter McGinnis said.

“These activist groups have business before the agencies—we know, for example, that [Trust Initiative] lobbies the FDA to increase fines on tobacco product manufacturers and sellers, while also spending millions to advocate for new product bans,” McGinnis continued. “It’s a coup for [Trust Initiative] to land a CEO who knows her way around the FDA, and it’s a lucrative jump for Ms. Crosby.”

On Aug. 15, 2023, Truth Initiative’s board announced its appointment of Crosby as the group’s president and CEO. Following the announcement, and while Crosby was still at the FDA, multiple Truth Initiative employees reached out via email to congratulate her.

“I just wanted to reach out and send a note to say congratulations,” one email from the group’s vice president of communications, Sarah Shank, reads. “It’s always a pleasure working with you and your team at FDA and I’m beyond thrilled to work with you in this new capacity here at Truth Initiative.”

“So excited for this next chapter with our organization,” Tina Morgan, the organization’s vice president of sponsorships, said.

Truth Initiative and Crosby didn’t respond to requests for comment.

“During Kathy Crosby’s 12 years as the Director for CTP’s Office of Health Communication and Education, she frequently communicated via email, phone calls, and in-person meetings with a wide range of stakeholders, including those from national public health organizations, industry, media, and state/local organizations,” an FDA spokesperson told the DCNF.

Crosby “immediately” notified the FDA that she was looking for a job outside the government and “recused herself from any official actions that would financially impact her future employer,” the spokesperson said, adding that Crosby’s attendance at the gala was also “reviewed and approved by FDA ethics officials” prior to the event.

In 2022, the Truth Initiative was hard at work attempting to influence policy through the FDA and other federal agencies.

According to the nonprofit’s 2022 annual report, they submitted 14 comments to federal agencies, provided “policy analyses and research” to inform FDA policymaking, urged the FDA to act against popular synthetic nicotine products, like ZYN, and recruited youth activists to submit comments to the FDA regarding its proposed rule to remove flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes from the market.

During her time at the FDA, Crosby was involved in crafting health warnings for cigarette packages and advertisements, formulating marketing restrictions for new tobacco products and shaping national policy broadly, according to her Truth Initiative biography.

Crosby spearheaded “public education and regulatory communication programs” which aided the federal government in successfully implementing the Tobacco Control Act, which regulates how tobacco products can be marketed.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SCHMAD

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Activist Group’s Leader Declines To Participate In House Hearing On Her Org’s Alleged Influence Over Biden Admin

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Why Young Men and Women in America ‘Have Every Reason To Be Outraged!’

“For the first time in our nation’s history, a 30 year old isn’t doing as well their parents were at 30. They see exceptional wealth across my generation… and we’re running it up on their credit card.” — Scott Galloway


We have been warning for over a decade that there is a war being waged in America against our youth. From kindergarten, to trade school, to college, to university our children are not being taught the skills to make them healthy, happy and prosperous.

Add to this the growth of bigger and bigger government from the city to the county to some states and to Washington, D.C. politicians have put up more and more roadblocks that have kept our youth from being prosperous. From getting a job, to purchasing an automobile to buying an home, government has piled on more and more regulations, higher taxes, added mandates that keep our young from achieving what their parents did.

Scott Galloway, bestselling author, NYU professor, and co-host of the Pivot podcast, has published a new book titled The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security

The Algebra of Wealth is a must-have guide to optimizing our youth’s lives for wealth and success. Click here to read the introduction to the book.

Watch Scott on MSNBC explain why our youth are suffering.

Today’s workers have more opportunities and mobility than any generation before. They also face unprecedented challenges, including inflation, labor and housing shortages, and climate volatility. Even the notion of retirement is undergoing a profound rethink, as our life spans extend and our relationship with work evolves. In this environment, the tried-and-true financial advice our parents followed no longer applies. It’s time for a new playbook.

In The Algebra of Wealth, Galloway lays bare the rules of financial success in today’s economy. In his characteristic unvarnished, no-BS style, he explains what you need to know in order to better your chances for economic security no matter what. You’ll learn:

  • How to find and follow your talent, not your passion, when making career decisions.
  • How to ride and optimize big economic waves (hard truth: market dynamics always trump individual achievement).
  • What small steps you can take that pay big returns later, including diversification and tax planning.
  • How stoicism can help you minimize spending and develop better financial habits.

Bursting with practical, game-changing advice from one of the world’s most popular business school professors, The Algebra of Wealth is the practical guidebook you need to win today’s wealth game.

WATCH: The Algebra of Wealth | The Prof G Show

ABOUT SCOTT GALLOWAY

Scott Galloway is a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business. A serial entrepreneur, he has founded nine firms, including L2, Red Envelope, and Section4. He’s the author of many best-selling books, including, The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning, and most recently, The Algebra of Wealth: A Simple Formula for Financial Security.

Watch this extensive interview with Scott Galloway with Ryan Hawk host of the The Learning Leader Show.

©2024. All rights reserved.

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Active and Engaged: Keeping Senior Citizens in Full Vigor

As we grow older, we might experience physical and mental conditions that may cause limitations in our activities. It becomes challenging to maintain physical and psychological strength because that is the nature of aging.

In this modern era, people tend to be less active because of all of the conveniences available to us. Social activity is also important in our older age, but most of the time we find that we just want to stay at home without realizing it. How can we remain active as we age?

As we love the older members of the society, we must always try to find out best possible ways to take care of them. But sometimes, we may not have the chance to help them ourselves. That’s why assisted living in Houston is one of the best ways to address this as they provide the services to take care of our aging loved ones.

The aim of this community is to provide support for the improvement of both physical and mental condition. a

In this post, we are going to look at some activities for the elder members of society that can help them to stay fit and active. Let’s begin!

Importance of physical activity to stay fit

We have the wrong assumption that physical exercise is just for young people. Having a fitness goal is important for aging people, too. Physical activity helps to in making sure that we live a healthy life.

When we get older, some physical problem can arise such as arthritis, fragile bones, stiff muscles, etc. Also, the coordination and balance may decrease. Fortunately, numerous physical exercises can help to prevent these problems.

Even light exercise can contribute to improving our health conditions. Let’s see how physical activity may help to fight aging problems.

Improve strength and liveliness

As we grow older, we become weak and less active. Strength exercises can improve our physical strength as well as liveliness. Strength exercises can prevent mobility problems.

Strength exercises are activities that make our muscles work harder than during normal conditions. It helps to make our muscles strong, and strong muscles support our bones and joints. It also aids in improving our stability and prevent joint problems to some extent.

Promotes Healing

Experts state that wounds take a longer time to heal, even small wounds when we become old. That might be a serious problem because as long as the wounds remain, the chances of infection can increase. But if we exercise properly, the healing power can be 25% faster than people who don’t exercise.

Prevents diseases

With age, many unwanted conditions come such as stroke, diabetes, stiff muscles, colon cancer, fragile bones, etc. Exercise can delay the onset of these diseases as well as prevent it. As per the National Institute of Aging, exercise can reduce overall hospitalization and death rates.

Improves the immune system

Physical activity is the most effective therapy to improve our immunity.  It is also scientifically proven. Regular exercise promotes circulation and keeps our body and mind relaxed. There is no need to do hard exercises, you can take a walk for 35-40 minutes, or you can join a yoga class, and it will effectively boost your immunity.

Improves digestive health

The digestive system includes the stomach, entrails, and the intestines. It breaks down the food we eat into nutrients. Wrong diet and bad lifestyle are sometimes the causes of problems in the digestive system. It reduces the energy that we need to operate our body.

Anyone can face digestion problems at any age. But seniors face it the most. Exercise can help to improve our digestion system and allow our body to absorb nutrients efficiently. Physical activity improves blood flow throughout the body.

Improves lung function

Breathing exercise can improve the lung function. As per the National Institute of Health, controlled breathing is more beneficial for older people. When we grow older, we don’t take the time to breathe deeply, that can cause us to feel uncomfortable and prevents us in leading a healthy life. Exercises is great for our lungs as we get to breathe in deeply and take in more oxygen.

Importance of mental activity for older people

Like physical activity, mental activity is important for aging people. With age, some mental changes occur like loss of neurons, deposits accumulating within brain cells, slower messaging between neurons, etc. Our brain becomes smaller with time, but it still can function effectively just like that of a younger person’s. You can do following things for mental activity:

  • Reading books, magazine and anything you love.
  • Play games like cards, chess, scrabble, etc.
  • Give more time for social activity.
  • Join clubs that you are interested in.
  • Do gardening to feel refreshed.
  • Practice using memory by playing puzzle games.
  • Join meditation classes.
  • Try to keep yourself busy. Discover new hobbies.
  • These are some task you can do to keep your brain working properly.

There are some benefits of mental activity during our older age. Here are some of them.

Improves cognitive skills

At an older age, we feel lonely, isolated, and bored because there is nothing much to do. Nothing can be better than reading books to prevent this scenario from happening. Books are great to pass our leisure time and acquire new knowledge. Reading helps us to improve our cognitive skills as well.

Improves memory

Senior people can play cards, chess, checkers, and many other games to improve mental clarity. It helps the seniors to make them more social, give them plenty of chances to meet new people to play with and helps in the interaction.

Increases creativity

Senior citizens can be assets instead of being a burden to the society if they use their experience and expertise in different creative works. The creativity of a person flourishes only when he or she is active mentally.

Eliminates anxiety

Anxiety in older age can be a dangerous thing. Many diseases can come out of stress because of anxiety. If we are active mentally, it will reduce our stress and will help us from being anxious.

Improves self-confidence

Being mentally active enhances self-confidence. We can use our leisure time in doing mental exercises. Knowing new things can make us feel that we are still actively learning and that we can keep up with the younger generation. Doing this will help us to have an increased sense of self-confidence.

Boosts brain power

Aging people have a lot of time to boost their brain power. Many activities can keep us mentally active. We can spend our time reading or even surfing the web and learning about new things. It is useful in many ways. It will allow us to spend our time more productively and so many things can be learned along the way.

Takeaway

Seniors can do so much with their time. Keeping them fit both mentally and physically, we can get the assurance that they will be living quality lives. We have so much to learn from them as well. If we can take the time to connect with them, they can teach us so much as they have the life experience and expertise as well. It’s our duty to keep them fit to build a better future together.

 

Multi-drug resistant strands of Tuberculosis in Muslim refugee population

It’s getting worse.  First we were told only refugees with latent TB are permitted entry into the US, then Michael Patrick Leahy writing at Breitbart reported that, no, active TB is coming in as well.  Now, we learn that even a more serious problem could be developing in your towns with multi-drug resistant TB in a few refugees and other immigrants.

We checked our archives and sure enough we reported on several cases of TB in a frightened Sheyboygen, Wisconsin in 2013, here.

Sheboygan nurses

In 2013, in Sheyboygan Wisconsin, nurses are being instructed in how to take care of themselves when caring for refugees infected with TB.

Pay attention to the fact that you (local and state taxpayers) are footing the bill for all of the meds! Isn’t diversity worth it though!

Hot off the presses at Breitbart:

Two refugees and a foreign student on a visa brought multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis (TB) to Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2009 and 2011, according to a 2014 article in an epidemiology publication written with the cooperation of the doctors who treated them.

The introduction of MDR TB to the United States represents a serious public health threat, since its successful treatment is uncertain and very expensive. Active TB can usually be treated successfully in six to nine months at a cost of $17,000 per patient, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), but MDR TB treatment costs more than $150,000 per patient and can take between 20 and 26 months.

[….]

Twenty cases of MDR TB, all foreign-born, were diagnosed in Wisconsin over the eight year period between 2005 and 2012, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Twelve of these cases were from the Hmong people in Laos (though Case 2 in the 2014 article was categorized as “drug resistant,” not formally MDR-TB, it was probably included among these 12, as well as Case 2’s “close household contact”), four were from India (including Case 3 from the 2014 article), one was from Burma (including Case 1 from the 2014 article), and one each were from China, Ethiopia, and Nepal.

State and local taxpayers in Wisconsin paid for the treatment of these twenty foreign-born cases of MDR TB. At a cost of $150,000 per patient, the total cost was an estimated $3 million.

Leahy has much more, I’ve only snipped a bit of the detailed report.

Let me ask all of you who plan to volunteer to help the new refugees as they arrive in Asheville, NC, Rutland, VT, Reno, NV, Charleston, WV, Ithaca, NY, Fayetteville, AR, Missoula, Montana and Radford, Virginia, do you know how to protect yourselves? And, how good is your local health department? Is it ready for this?

See our health issues category with 306 previous posts cataloged there.

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Well, Back to Smoking: FDA Bans 99 Percent of E-Cigarettes by Guy Bentley

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published long-awaited rules Thursday that could ban 99 percent of e-cigarette products and wreck industry innovation for years to come.

Passed in 2009, the Tobacco Control Act says all e-cigarette products released after February 15, 2007, (predicate date) will have to go through the Pre-Market Tobacco Applications process (PMTA). FDA officials claim they cannot change the predicate date.

The PMTA is ruinously expensive and can cost millions of dollars per product and by the FDA’s own admission will take more than 1,700 hours for an applicant to complete.

Since almost all vapor products on the market were released after February 2007, hardly any will avoid a PMTA and almost no businesses, with the exception of big tobacco companies, will be able to bear the regulatory burden.

“The agency’s economic analysis of the rule predicts that the cost of such approvals will be so high that approximately 99 percent of products on the market will not even be put through the application process,” says the American Vaping Association (AVA).

The rules usher in a new era of federal regulation, with sales of vapor products to those under the age of 18 banned nationwide. Most states had already passed laws banning e-cigarette sales to minors.

“This final rule is a foundational step that enables the FDA to regulate products young people were using at alarming rates, like e-cigarettes, cigars and hookah tobacco, that had gone largely unregulated,” Mitch Zeller, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said in a press release. The FDA will now set industry standards for manufacturing and labeling. The rules will take effect in 90 days.

But there is still hope for the industry yet after a House Appropriations committee passed an amendment April 19, which would alter the predicate date. The amendment is not yet law and will have to pass through the House of Representatives.

If the amendment fails however and the FDA regulations stand, the industry will have two years to comply with the PMTA.

“Despite an overabundance of distorted and misleading information propagated by some in the public health community, the science is clear – responsibly manufactured vapor products are not only a safer alternative to traditional combustible products, but also provide smokers with a viable path to reducing their tobacco consumption and quitting altogether,” said Tony Abboud, the Vapor Technology Association’s National Legislative Director.

“Today’s action by the FDA will do nothing to improve our nations’ public health objectives. To the contrary, today’s action will yank responsibly manufactured vapor products from the hands of adult smokers and replace them with the tobacco cigarettes they had been trying to give up.”

The VTA argue the FDA’s rules will kill almost a decade of innovation in the e-cigarette space and put thousands of small and mid-size businesses out of businesses to the benefit of major tobacco companies.

“If, in the name of public health, federal regulations inhibit much-needed innovation in the e-cigarette market, public health would actually suffer, as fewer adult smokers would be likely to switch from smoking,” said the National Center for Public Policy Research’s director of Risk Analysis, Jeff Stier.

“One only needs to look at the rapid innovation coming from the vaping industry to see how devastating this rule will be,” Jared Meyer, Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an emailed statement.

“While large tobacco companies will likely be able to absorb these costs, countless small manufacturers will be put out of business – leading to a less dynamic market. Without continued innovation, it will be harder from cigarette smokers to kick their deadly habit by taking up a much less harmful form of nicotine consumption,” Meyer added.

According to Wells Fargo, e-cigarette sales amounted to $3.5 billion in 2015. The case for wide-spread e-cigarette use was given a boost April 27 after the Royal College of Physicians published a 200-page report supporting the products as a smoking cessation method.

Reprinted with permission  from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Guy BentleyGuy Bentley

Guy Bentley is a reporter for the Daily Caller.

The Average American Today Is Richer than John D. Rockefeller by Donald J. Boudreaux

This Atlantic story reveals how Americans lived 100 years ago. By the standards of a middle-class American today, that lifestyle was poor, inconvenient, dreary, and dangerous. (Only a few years later — in 1924 — the 16-year-old son of a sitting US president would die of an infected blister that the boy got on his toe while playing tennis on the White House grounds.)

So here’s a question that I’ve asked in one form or another on earlier occasions, but that is so probing that I ask it again: What is the minimum amount of money that you would demand in exchange for your going back to live even as John D. Rockefeller lived in 1916?

21.7 million 2016 dollars (which are about one million 1916 dollars)? Would that do it? What about a billion 2016 — or 1916 — dollars? Would this sizable sum of dollars be enough to enable you to purchase a quantity of high-quality 1916 goods and services that would at least make you indifferent between living in 1916 America and living (on your current income) in 2016 America?

Think about it. Hard. Carefully.

If you were a 1916 American billionaire you could, of course, afford prime real-estate. You could afford a home on 5th Avenue or one overlooking the Pacific Ocean or one on your own tropical island somewhere (or all three). But when you traveled from your Manhattan digs to your west-coast palace, it would take a few days, and if you made that trip during the summer months, you’d likely not have air-conditioning in your private railroad car.

And while you might have air-conditioning in your New York home, many of the friends’ homes that you visit — as well as restaurants and business offices that you frequent — were not air-conditioned. In the winter, many were also poorly heated by today’s standards.

To travel to Europe took you several days. To get to foreign lands beyond Europe took you even longer.

Might you want to deliver a package or letter overnight from New York City to someone in Los Angeles? Sorry. Impossible.

You could neither listen to radio (the first commercial radio broadcast occurred in 1920) nor watch television. You could, however, afford the state-of-the-art phonograph of the era. (It wasn’t stereo, though. And — I feel certain — even today’s vinylphiles would prefer listening to music played off of a modern compact disc to listening to music played off of a 1916 phonograph record.) Obviously, you could not download music.

There really wasn’t very much in the way of movies for you to watch, even though you could afford to build your own home movie theater.

Your telephone was attached to a wall. You could not use it to Skype.

Your luxury limo was far more likely to break down while you were being chauffeured about town than is your car today to break down while you are driving yourself to your yoga class. While broken down and waiting patiently in the back seat for your chauffeur to finish fixing your limo, you could not telephone anyone to inform that person that you’ll be late for your meeting.

Even when in residence at your Manhattan home, if you had a hankering for some Thai red curry or Vindaloo chicken or Vietnamese Pho or a falafel, you were out of luck: even in the unlikely event that you even knew of such exquisite dishes, your chef likely had no idea how to prepare them, and New York’s restaurant scene had yet to feature such exotic fare. And while you might have had the money in 1916 to afford to supply yourself with a daily bowlful of blueberries at your New York home in January, even for mighty-rich you the expense was likely not worthwhile.

Your wi-fi connection was painfully slow — oh, wait, right: it didn’t exist. No matter, because you had neither computer nor access to the Internet. (My gosh, there weren’t even any blogs for you to read!)

Even the best medical care back then was horrid by today’s standards: it was much more painful and much less effective. (Remember young Coolidge.) Antibiotics weren’t available. Erectile dysfunction? Bipolar disorder? Live with ailments such as these. That was your only option.

You (if you are a woman) or (if you are a man) your wife and, in either case, your daughter and your sister had a much higher chance of dying as a result of giving birth than is the case today. The child herself or himself was much less likely to survive infancy than is the typical American newborn today.

Dental care wasn’t any better. Your money didn’t buy you a toothbrush with vibrating bristles. (You could, however, afford the very finest dentures.)

Despite your vanity, you couldn’t have purchased contact lenses, reliable hair restoration, or modern, safe breast augmentation. And forget about liposuction to vacuum away the results of your having dined on far too many cream-sauce-covered terrapin.

Birth control was primitive: it was less reliable and far more disruptive of pleasure than are any of the many inexpensive and widely available birth-control methods of today.

Of course, you adore precious-weacious little Rover, but your riches probably could not buy for Rover veterinary care of the sort that is routine in every burgh throughout the land today.

You were completely cut off from the cultural richness that globalization has spawned over the past century. There was no American-inspired, British-generated rock’n’roll played on electric guitars. And no reggae. Jazz was still a toddler, with only few recordings of it.

You could afford to buy the finest Swiss watches and clocks, but even they couldn’t keep time as accurately as does a cheap Timex today (not to mention the accuracy of the time kept by your smartphone).

Honestly, I wouldn’t be remotely tempted to quit the 2016 me so that I could be a one-billion-dollar-richer me in 1916. This fact means that, by 1916 standards, I am today more than a billionaire. It means, at least given my preferences, I am today materially richer than was John D. Rockefeller in 1916. And if, as I think is true, my preferences here are not unusual, then nearly every middle-class American today is richer than was America’s richest man a mere 100 years ago.

This post first appeared at Cafe Hayek.

Donald J. BoudreauxDonald J. Boudreaux

Donald Boudreaux is asenior fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, a Mercatus Center Board Member, a professor of economics and former economics-department chair at George Mason University and, a former FEE president.

Utah Legislature’s Unanimous Committee Resolution Declares Pornography a Public Health Crisis

GREAT FALLS, VA–  On Friday February 5th, the Utah State Legislature’s resolution on the  public health crisis of pornography  passed unanimously through committee.

“Enough Is Enough® applauds the leadership of the Utah State Legislature’s committee resolution declaring the public health crisis caused by pornography. This unanimous landmark decision shows the courage and conviction of a legislative body to deal with unpopular and often misunderstood  social justice issues such as pornography.

Unfortunately, deviant and extreme Internet pornography has become increasingly more mainstream due to few barriers of entry since 1994 when EIE launched the national movement for prevention solutions to protect children from prosecutable content online.

Since that time, numerous  peer-reviewed research studies continue to reveal that Internet pornography use is a  fueling factor in  the sexual exploitation of children, violence against women, sex trafficking, sexual  and erectile dysfunction and  physiological and chemical changes in the brain. A shared responsibility between the public, Corporate America and government is necessary to curb the continuous flood of Internet pornography in our nation. Now that science backs up the reality of Internet pornography’s harm to children, adults and cultures, we are hopeful that other states will address this serious issue very soon.”

For more information on the issue, please see “The Internet Pornography Pandemic: The Largest Unregulated Social Experiment in Human History” by Donna Rice Hughes. 

enough is enough logoAbout Enough Is Enough®

Enough Is Enough® (EIE) is a 501(c) 3 national, non-partisan non-profit with a mission to make the Internet safer for children and families by advancing solutions that promote equality, fairness and respect for human dignity with shared responsibility between the public, technology and the law. www.enough.org; www.internetsafety101.org;www.friendlywifi.org

EDITORS NOTE: The features image is courtesy of Reuters.

Zika Virus Shows It’s Time to Bring Back DDT by Diana Furchtgott-Roth

The Zika virus is spreading by mosquitoes northward through Latin America, possibly correlated with birth defects such as microcephaly in infants. Stories and photos of their abnormally small skulls are making headlines. The World Health Organization reports that four million people could be infected by the end of 2016.

On Monday, the WHO is meeting to decide how to address the crisis. The international body should recommend that the ban on DDT should be reversed, in order to kill the mosquitoes that carry Zika and malaria, a protistan parasite that has no cure.

Zika is in the news, but it is dwarfed by malaria. About 300 million to 600 million people suffer each year from malaria, and it kills about 1 million annually, 90 percent in sub-Saharan Africa. We have the means to reduce Zika and malaria — and we are not using it.

Under the Global Malaria Eradication Program, which started in 1955, DDT was used to kill the mosquitoes that carried the parasite, and malaria was practically eliminated. Some countries such as Sri Lanka, which started using DDT in the late 1940s, saw profound improvements. Reported cases fell from nearly 3 million a year to just 17 cases in 1963. In Venezuela, cases fell from over 8 million in 1943 to 800 in 1958. India saw a dramatic drop from 75 million cases a year to 75,000 in 1961.

This changed with the publication of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, Silent Spring, which claimed that DDT was hazardous. After lengthy hearings between August 1971 and March 1972, Judge Edmund Sweeney, the EPA hearing examiner, decided that there was insufficient evidence to ban DDT and that its benefits outweighed any adverse effects. Yet, two months afterwards, then-EPA Administrator William D. Ruckelshaus overruled him and banned DDT, effective December 31, 1972.

Other countries followed, and DDT was banned in 2001 for agriculture by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. This was a big win for the mosquitoes, but a big loss for people who lived in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

Carson claimed that DDT, because it is fat soluble, accumulated in the fatty tissues of animals and humans as the compound moved through the food chain, causing cancer and other genetic damage. Carson’s concerns and the EPA action halted the program in its tracks, and malaria deaths started to rise again, reaching 600,000 in 1970, 900,000 in 1990 and over 1,000,000 in 1997 — back to pre-DDT levels.

Some continue to say that DDT is harmful, but others say that DDT was banned in vain. There remains no compelling evidence that the chemical has produced any ill public health effects. According to an article in the British medical journal the Lancet by Professor A.G. Smith of Leicester University,

The early toxicological information on DDT was reassuring; it seemed that acute risks to health were small. If the huge amounts of DDT used are taken into account, the safety record for human beings is extremely good. In the 1940s many people were deliberately exposed to high concentrations of DDT thorough dusting programmes or impregnation of clothes, without any apparent ill effect… In summary, DDT can cause toxicological effects but the effects on human beings at likely exposure are very slight.

Even though nothing is as cheap and effective as DDT, it is not a cure-all for malaria. But a study by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences concluded that spraying huts in Africa with DDT reduces the number of mosquitoes by 97 percent compared with huts sprayed with an alternative pesticide. Those mosquitoes that do enter the huts are less likely to bite.

By forbidding DDT and relying on more expensive, less effective methods of prevention, we are causing immense hardship. Small environmental losses are inferior to saving thousands of human lives and potentially increasing economic growth in developing nations.

We do not yet have data on the economic effects of the Zika virus, but we know that countries with a high incidence of malaria can suffer a 1.3 percent annual loss of economic growth. According to a Harvard/WHO study, sub-Saharan Africa’s GDP could be $100 billion greater if malaria had been eliminated 35 years ago.

Rachel Carson died in 1964, but the legacy of Silent Spring and its recommended ban on DDT live with us today. Millions are suffering from malaria and countless others are contracting the Zika virus as a result of the DDT ban. They were never given the choice of living with DDT or dying without it. The World Health Organization should recognize that DDT has benefits, and encourage its use in combating today’s diseases.

This article first appeared at E21, a project of the Manhattan Institute.

Diana Furchtgott-RothDiana Furchtgott-Roth

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist of the U.S. Department of Labor, is director of Economics21 and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

No, the Rest of the World Doesn’t Use ‘Single Payer’ by Eli Lehrer

There’s plenty of reason for free marketers to be skeptical of proposals, like the ones emanating from Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and hinted at by Republican Donald Trump, that would create a single-payer healthcare coverage system in the United States.

But, if only because these proposals have resonance with the public, they’re certainly worth debating. A rational debate depends on getting the facts straight and there’s one fact that both left and right often get wrong: “single payer” healthcare of the sort Bernie Sanders proposes isn’t universal in the developed world and the US system isn’t particularly free-market by the standards of peer nations.

Although definitions vary slightly, a single payer healthcare system is one where a single entity — a government-run insurance plan — pays all bills for a variety of medical care, and private payment for these same services is more-or-less banned.

Among the G-7 countries, only one nation, Canada, actually maintains such a system. One other, Italy, has a pretty similar system but allows much more private payment, and, because of the low standards of public hospitals, nearly everyone who can afford private insurance carries it.

Japan maintains a government-run healthcare plan, but it has so many gaps that most families find a need to carry private insurance to cover things like cancer-treatment related costs the public system excludes.

Germany, like the United States, has an employer-state hybrid system with heavy regulation of insurance companies.

France has a “dominant payer” system, where one quasi-governmental entity (CNAMTS) pays many bills, but about 90 percent of the population maintains private coverage as well, and most people pay something out of pocket each year.

The United Kingdom, finally, directly administers almost all medical personnel and facilities through a single governmental entity in each of the home countries. This is a “single provider” system.

Except in the United Kingdom, furthermore, there are significant numbers of people in all of these countries who report problems paying for needed medical care. This percentage is higher in the United States and Germany, intermediate in France, and lower in Canada. The UK only achieves its apparently enviable results because of long waiting lists for many procedures and health care rationing systems that are pretty close to the fictional “death panels” some conservatives claimed were part of Obamacare.

The American system as it exists isn’t unusually free market either. The German, French, and Japanese systems — where consumers much more frequently shop around for insurance plans they like rather than having the government or an employer chose — offer more consumer choices than most Americans enjoy. Even though taxpayers pick up a very large portion of the bills, the French practice of publically providing the prices of medical procedures makes that system feel a lot more like a free market than anything most Americans see day-to-day.

There are lots of valid criticisms of the United States’ healthcare system. The difficulty the poor or uninsured sometimes have in getting needed medical care is one of them. Some problems of the US health care system stem from lifestyle and cultural factors that organization and payment mechanisms can’t impact. But the lack of a single-payer system in the United States isn’t unusual in the slightest nor is the system we have particularly free-market.

Any debate should start by acknowledging both of those facts.

Eli LehrerEli Lehrer

Eli Lehrer is president and co-founder of the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank.

The new Sex Ed: Contributing to the Deliquency of a Minor

“We’ve come a long way, baby!” Education matters little if children learn in the classroom to engage in multiple partner, “normal” as well as more “deviant” forms of sex. A massive number will be and are permanently damaged, drinking, drugging, depressed and suicidal.

So moving deviance right along, June 26, 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas the U.S. Supremes proved this besotted disconnect with reality, history, literature, religion, by legalizing same-sex sodomy. Within three short years sodomy has emerged as a schoolhouse athletic “hazing” ritual boys sodomizing boys—but with adult coach oversight.

We really must turn off the pornography in the locker room—indeed everywhere.

ATHLETIC SODOMY SEX ED

According to press reports, Maine Township High School District 207 Cook County, Illinois was involved in the 2008 sodomy of a boy by his baseball teammates as their coach observed—the same coach oversaw a 2012 varsity soccer team sodomize other boysallegedly called,hazing. One Maine local claimed, sexual abuse has been occurring as part of rituals at the school for as long as six years.” And just where could these high school lads and their coach(s)? learn that sodomy was average ho ho macho behavior?

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor”: “Any action by an adult that allows or encourages illegal behavior by a person under the age of 18, or that places children in situations that expose them to illegal behavior.

And in Washington State on June 14, 2012, during a sex education class,” the Onalaska Elementary School principal proffered graphic descriptions of oral and anal sex. The “11-year-old students were being given a lesson on HIV-AIDS” part of the “state-adopted curriculum, facts with “no demonstrations.” “The district leader told Seattle’s Q-13 Fox News. “It’s pretty difficult to talk about STDs or sexually transmitted diseases without explaining what that is, or how it’s transmitted.” Right. Hence kiddie sodomy ed everywhere.

THE GOOD ‘OL DAYS MARRIAGE ED

In the old days (pre-Kinsey’s “sexual revolution”) most current forms of “sex education” were criminal, as “contributing to the delinquency of a minor. That is, talking about sex in front of a minor (someone, commonly under age 18) or, gracious, showing immature souls images of sex or sexy images! Who but a sex deviant would do that? Precisely.

Encouraging any kind of sex activity (lone or with others), well, that was inexcusable, immoral, egregious, shameful and yes, criminal. For, who didn’t understand that children’s brains, minds, and memories should be devoted to education, Shakespeare, mathematics, Latin, our Constitution, the Federalist Papers, learning the heritage of our pastif they would grow and govern our future wisely. Everyone recognized sex as confusing and arousing even to adults. Historically and coss-culturally, sex diverted somber thinking.

Post WWII, commonly in hygiene classes, schoolchildren learned the marital bed was where marriage was consummated, and, in single sex classes, students studied the biology of conception and for girls, the menstrual cycle. Seniors learned that a marriage license required that the boy and girl pass the state tests for the two known venereal diseases (syphilis and gonorrhea). And, oh yes, this instruction was largely normal for public school youths of all races and religions. Abortion (illegal and abhorrent) was rare enough to disdain comment, hence condoms, similarly beyond the pale, were not needed. Sodomy might appear in someone’s religious studies referencing Sodom and Gomorrah.

AND NOW, PLASTIC WRAP OR TIN FOIL SEX ED

Now, good reader, I’ll tell you a true story about children and sex and the predatory malice of what passes today for “sex education.”

It was circa 1991 and I had just finished my Education conference lecture when a youngster, about 14-years-of age, approached me with anxiety written all over her sweet face.

“Dr. Reisman,” she whispered, “could I speak to you for a moment?”

“Of course, dear” I replied, wondering exactly how I would handle the child’s question.

Moving me slightly to one side, so no one else could hear, the girl, let’s call her “Sandy,” said, “Dr. Reisman, I have a question about what you were discussing.” (I quickly thought back to my presentation and was quite sure I hadn’t said anything too advanced or graphic for anyone. I saw she was catching her breath.)

“Our teacher told us that we can use Saran Wrap in case we don’t have a condom,” she said and stopped.

“Well, sweetie, I didn’t say anything in my lecture today about condoms, but I certainly do not want you or any other unmarried youngster having sex, and that would eliminate the need for a condom,” I replied, as gently as I could.

“Well, yes, I know,” said Sandy. “But you see, I’m not asking for myself” she added quickly, “I’m asking for my friend.”

“Honey,” I murmured, “I think you misunderstood your teacher. She couldn’t have said to use Saran Wrap if you don’t have a condom. That is insane, you must have misunderstood.”

“No, I didn’t” Sandy insisted. “But that isn’t my friends question,” she said quickly. “I mean, if we don’t have Saran Wrap, can we use tin foil instead?”

Tin foil! Poor, mislead child.

I cannot recall the lecture I gave poor Sandy, one of millions of young victims of early pre sodomy ed. However, I thought, how clear is it that children should never hear psychotic, deviant sex tales wrapped in the mantle of bogus “education?They haven’t the experience, the maturity, the frontal cognition, to understand the powerful significance of sex. They can only “learn” it as the teacher tells it just as they’d learn grammar, math or geography—bad sex information is processed instantly of course and it is imprinted in the young, undeveloped brain, forever.

I was sure Sandy misunderstood the foolish and toxic teacher. After all the noise about using condoms properly as “protection,” who would recommend Saran Wrap?

Returning home I found out who—sex educators. Sitting on my desk was a 1991 New York Centers for Disease Control brochure: “THE TEENAGERS BILL OF RIGHTS “I have the right to decide

whether to have sex and who to have it with.” This illegal and immoral claim was graced by graphic directions for the poor children who received its medically fraudulent, infection and pregnancy/abortion productive brochure. Pardon my explicit language below, but this was 1991 and middle school children are exposed to worse today:

“Use a latex condom for…oral sex (penis into the mouth) and anal sex (penis into the butt).” Sandy was correct, except there was no product name, just plastic wrap. The sex brochure pictorially demonstrated: “Use a dental dam… an unrolled condom cut down one side or plastic wrap for oral sex…[I have sanitized here re:] her fluids in your mouth.” This was produced and distributed by The Division of AIDS Services, under the auspices of the N.Y. City Department of Health. How many abortions, venereal diseases, attempted suicides, or suicides, etc., and general tragedies this little leaflet produced among the children who believed it is not data released by the CDC or the Department of Health.

DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE?

Does this brochure and the hundreds similar, constitute a case for “Depraved Indifference”? This legal violation requires that “the defendant’s conduct must be ‘so wanton, so deficient in a moral sense of concern, so lacking in regard for the life or lives of others, and so blameworthy as to warrant the same criminal liability as that which the law imposes upon a person who intentionally causes a crime. Depraved indifference focuses on the risk created by the defendant’s conduct, not the injuries actually resulting.”

The Maine West High School habit of sodomizing young baseball and soccer players constitutes Depraved Indifference, as well as criminal child sexual abuse and a broad spectrum of similar crimes, What punishment will be meted out to the adults involved and what repairs for these emotionally, physically and “orientationally” violated boys?

THE ANSWERS?! MORE PEDO-GROOMING SEX ED AND CRIMINALIZATION OF REPARATIVE THERAPY FOR “ORIENTATIONALLY” DAMAGED CHILDREN

This brings us to a November 30 article in WorldNetDaily by my friend and colleague, Liberty university attorney Matt Barber who writes:

In recent months, “progressive” lawmakers, activist attorneys and militant homosexual pressure groups have launched a fierce campaign to ban therapeutic help for child victims of monsters like homosexual pedophile Jerry Sandusky. California has already passed such a law (SB 1172). On Friday, Liberty Counsel founder and chairman Mat Staver challenged this twisted ban in federal court, seeking a preliminary injunction to halt the law from taking effect on Jan. 1.

I view SB 1172 as a pederast-protection policy. This is designed to prohibit the young victims of same-sex sodomy, traumatized and often thereby homosexualized, from receiving the same therapy available to any female victim of heterosexual rape.

The Reisman-Johnson 1995 study of the leading mainstream homosexual periodical, The Advocate found their upscale reader respondents self-report (August 23, 1994) as 21% claiming they were “sexually abused by an adult, by age 15” (p. 20). These findings are confirmed, reports Barber, by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) research that “gay” men are “at least three times more likely to report CSA (childhood sexual abuse),” while The Archives of Sexual Behavior determined in a 2001 study that nearly half of all “gay”-identified men were molested by a homosexual pedophile: “46 percent of homosexual men and 22 percent of homosexual women reported having been molested by a person of the same gender” versus 7 percent of heterosexual men and 1 percent of heterosexual women reporting having been molested by a person of the same gender.”

Barber concludes, “The connection between homosexual abuse and “gay identity” is undeniable.” Legalizing same-sex sodomy clearly, and logically, will have intensified such pederast abuse leading to a backlash by pederast groups to forbid reparative therapy.

Moreover, denial is the road most taken by academicians. Rodney Erickson, Ph.D., the new president of Penn State, delivered welcoming remarks to attendees at the very first Penn State Child Sexual Abuse Conference Oct. 29-30. Erickson assumed the presidency Nov. 9, 2011, after the disgraced Graham Spanier was forced to resign as president following exposure of his foreknowledge of Coach Jerry Sandusky’s infamous pederastic rapes of young boys.

The October conference speakers ignored the infamous child sex abuse Penn State network.I never heard the names of former “Coach Sandusky” or “President Spanier” mentioned by a single carefully vetted Penn State child sex abuse speaker. Nor was there a mention of The Second Mile, the nonprofit charity founded by Sandusky & Co. –for local underprivileged and at-risk youth. The speeches are on the Internet, so if someone noted these names or events when I sneezed, kindly email those citations to me.

Before leaving pedophile and pederast perversions I want to mention what I call the state mandated pedo-grooming programs euphemistically and deliberately mistitled “sex education,” There is indeed a federal, FBI supported Anti-Grooming law that, objectively, criminalizes most of the “comprehensive sex ed” described earlier. Child molesters:

  • Lower the sexual inhibitions of children.
  • Demonstrate, teach or instruct on how to masturbate, oral sex and/or engage in sexual intercourse.
  • Desensitize children to sex. Offenders often show child pornography to their intended victims.
  • Offenders commonly use pornographic images of other children to arouse victims.

Says Barber, “Graphic sexual images and explicit “values neutral” talk of sex and sexuality are rampant throughout classrooms across America, effectively desensitizing children and numbing their natural inhibitions. These inhibitions help protect children from potential predators.

The normalization of pederasty, the “need” to lower the age of consent and eliminate “stigma” against molesters is on the fast track to success. Remember, you read it here.

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Marijuana use up 12% nationwide during first year of legalization in Colorado, Washington

The 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, released yesterday, shows regular marijuana use among Americans ages 12 and older jumped 12 percent nationwide during the first year legalization was implemented in Colorado and Washington. Regular use increased among all ages: click here or on image above to see increases among ages 12-17, ages 18-25, and ages 26 & older.

Better-Landscape-Photo-1024x576

REPORT: Child Obesity Caused by Single Parent Households

In 2010 Michele Obama made it her mission to address the “child obesity epidemic”. The goal of Mrs. Obama is to reduce child obesity from the current 20% of all children to 5% by 2030. WebMD reports, “To accomplish this, the plan makes 70 recommendations for early childhood, for parents and caregivers, for school meals and nutrition education, for access to healthy food, and for increasing physical activity.”

According to WebMD, “Obesity is an excess proportion of total body fat. A person is considered obese when his or her weight is 20% or more above normal weight. The most common measure of obesity is the body mass index or BMI.”

“U.S. kids haven’t always been obese. Only one in 20 children ages 2 to 19 was obese in the 1970s. But around 1980 child obesity began to rocket to today’s stratospheric level: Nearly one in three kids is overweight or obese, and nearly one in five is frankly obese,” notes WebMD.

What is the cause of this stratospheric increase in child obesity? ANSWER: Single parent households.

In July 2010 the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) reported, “Prevalence of childhood obesity and its complications have increased world-wide. Parental status may be associated with children’s health outcomes including their eating habits, body weight and blood cholesterol.” [My emphasis]

The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) for the years 1988–1994 provided a unique opportunity for matching parents to children enabling analyses of joint demographics, racial differences and health indicators. Specifically, the NHANES III data, 1988–1994, of 219 households with single-parents and 780 dual-parent households were analyzed as predictors for primary outcome variables of children’s Body Mass Index (BMI), dietary nutrient intakes and blood cholesterol.

The NHANES survey found:

  • Children of single-parent households were significantly more overweight than children of dual-parent households.
  • Total calorie and saturated fatty acid intakes were higher among children of single-parent households than dual-parent households.
  • On average, Black children were more overweight than children of other races.

The study results implied a strong relationship between single-parent status and excess weight in children. The NHANES survey states, “Parental involvement in the development of school- and community-based obesity prevention programs are suggested for effective health initiatives. Economic constraints and cultural preferences may be communicated directly by family involvement in these much needed public health programs.”

Mark Mather from the Population Reference Bureau reports, “In the United States, the number of children in single-mother families has risen dramatically over the past four decades, causing considerable concern among policymakers and the public. Researchers have identified the rise in single-parent families (especially mother-child families) as a major factor driving the long-term increase in child poverty in the United States.” To read the full report click here.

Data from the Sarasota County School Board shows that since President Obama took office the number of children who are classified as obese is Sarasota public schools has risen as the children progress from Grade 1 – to Grade 3 – to Grade 6. The cohort obesity numbers go down at Grade 9. For example, 15.7% of students in Grade 1 in the 2008/2009 school year were obese. In 2011/2012 school year 18.8% of students in Grade 3 were obese. An increase of 3.1% of students in grade during school year 2008/2009 18.8% were obese. In Grade 6 that cohort increased to 20.1%. The Grade 6 cohort in 2008/2009 data was 21.5% and in 2011/12 dropped to 17.6%.

Public schools do not keep data on obese children who live in single parent households. 

Many are questioning whether the First Lady is addressing the root cause of child obesity – single parent households. Some see this health initiative as expanding government control of parents and children. Setting caloric standards is the first step in setting eating limits. Limits lead to control of food sources, leading to the redistribution of calories. Should not we be focused on the rising number of single parent households?

Perhaps it would be better for the First Lady to focus on increasing the number of traditional two parent families? After all, she has a traditional family and her husband and children all have normal weights according to the BMI calculator.

JUST FOR FUN:

As an aside, Watchdog Wire looked at some well known public figures and calculated their BMI scores.

Using the BMI calculator we determined that New York Jets quarterback Tim Tebow, who is 6′ 3″ tall and weights 236 pounds, is overweight. If Tebow gains 5 pounds he will be categorized as “Obese Class 1”. In fact the entire New York Jets offensive and defensive lines are obese.

Muscle Chemistry lists the height and weight of actors. Those in Hollywood who are overweight according to the BMI calculator include: Whoppi Goldberg, Al Pacino, Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt and George Clooney. Sylvester Stallone is rated as Obese Class 1.