Real spookiness this Halloween

All-hallows' eve. Brahhhaahhaa.

In a way, Halloween owes its existence to the Celts, ancient people who lived in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, over 2000 years ago. The Celts celebrated their new year on November 1st, as it marked the end of summer, the harvest, and the beginning of the long, dark, winter. Their religious beliefs were rooted in pagan traditions: they believed that on the night before their new year, the bounds between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred and the ghosts of their dead could roam the earth. These ghoulish visitors misbehaved, making livestock go off feed, damaging crops, or getting into other mischief related to the natural world. To divert and deter the ghouls from pursuing their misdeeds, the Celts’ priests built bonfires, in which the people, garbed in costumes of animal heads and skins, burned crops and animals in sacrifice.

By the 800s, Christianity had spread throughout the traditionally Celtic lands and Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. (Boniface (and other popes) established a number of holidays to coincide with the traditional pagan ritual days as a way of replacing the pagan events with church-sanctioned holidays.) The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it became All-hallows Eve, eventually giving way to Halloween.

Halloween has of course become a time of dressing in costumes, trick-or-treating, and over-indulging in candy. I remember fondly from my childhood coming home with pillowcases stuffed with candy, some change, and a few disappointing but healthy contributions (apples and oranges).

So, this brings me to todays thoughts: Last week I tripped across a map on CNN. It was part of a CNN Special Report by Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the obesity epidemic. And it was truly scary. I urge you to look at it here. It starts with a map in 1985, and you can advance the map to 1991, 1995, 1997, 2001, 2004, and 2006. Each map graphically depicts our growing waistlines, by color-coding states according to the percentage of adults who are deemed obese (30 pounds overweight for a 5’4” individual). In 1985, only eight states (the chunkiest of all) had 10-14% of their adult populations meeting the definition of obese. Just six years later, four states were in the 20-24% range, and 35 states were in the 10-14% range. Jump to 2004 and the six skinniest states had 15-19% of their populations in the obese category, and the nine fattest states had over 25% of their population qualifying as obese. By 2006, only one state (my own home, Colorado) was still in the 15-19% category, and 32 states were over the 25% level.

Part of our ever bulging bodies need to be credited to lifestyle choices, for sure. We eat more, and do less physically than ever before. But scientists have also found that the chemicals we are exposed to may be influencing our weight gain! Bisphenol A (the plasticizer found in polycarbonate containers and as a liner for food cans, and which is produced at over 7-billion pounds per year) has been shown to alter gene function in lab animals in such a way that exposed off-spring get fatter than their non-exposed relatives. Scientists think some other endocrine disrupting chemicals may also act similarly. And these are very low-dose exposures to a chemical that the Center’s for Disease Control found in most individuals they have tested for it.

Food for thought

I recently finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver is well known for her award-winning novels (such as The Poisonwood Bible, Prodigal Summer, and Pigs in Heaven) and they are marvelous, though I appreciated this book even more. The narrative follows Kingsolver and her family (husband, Steven Hopp and daughters Camille and Lily) through a year of eating almost exclusively the food they grow themselves, or purchase from local farmers near their Virginia farm. In it, she says, "I understand that most U.S. citizens don't have room in their lives to grow food, or even see it growing. But I have trouble accepting the next step in our journey toward obligate symbiosis with the packaged meal and takeout. Cooking is a dying art in our culture. Why is a good question..."

She goes on to say, "I belong to the generation of women who took as our youthful rallying cry: Allow us a good education so we won't have to slave in the kitchen. We recoiled from the proposition that keeping a husband presentable and fed should be our highest intellectual aspiration... Somehow, though, history came around and bit us in the backside: now most women have jobs and still find themselves largely in charge of the housework. Cooking at the end of a long day is a burden we could live without.

"It's a reasonable position. But it got twisted into a pathological food culture. When my generation of women walked away from the kitchen we were escorted down that path by a profiteering industry... but a devil of a bargain it has turned out to be in terms of daily life. We gave up the aroma of warm bread rising, the measured pace of nurturing routines, the creative task of molding our families' tastes and zest for life. I consider it the hoodwink of my generation."

Industrial food is a big part of our health problems. Because of the industrialization of our dinner, we are eating worse than ever before, in spite of the sheer abundance in the big box stores where we shop. So, Kingsolver writes with passion of the celebratory nature of good, wholesome, real food, cooked from scratch. As she pointed out in an interview I did with her for an upcoming article, "We have to eat. It is the one consumer choice we make three times a day, and there are so many different problems that have the same answer: we are worried about food contamination, with one scare after another making headlines, we are worried about our use of fossil fuels and climate change, we are worried about our vanishing farm cultures, and we are also worried about our health and the obesity crisis. All these problems are associated with eating processed foods, and all of these problems have one solution: get food from closer to home, and get back into cooking from scratch."

So, with this in mind, let me talk about cookbooks. I have dozens, but really there are just four cookbooks that I reach for with regularity. They cover the world of cooking and food choices (literally):

The Joy of Cooking, which I wrote about recently, is an absolute, must have cookbook. If you only own one cookbook, it is the one you should have!

Last night I made Potato Corn Chowder with some of our Yukon Gold potatoes (soup is a great use for the tiny potatoes I get from my garden). I used the recipe from Fresh Choices, an unusual cookbook in that it really drills down into information about the food choices we make, and how they affect our health. In nine chapters, it serves up great recipes plus a wealth of excellent facts, figures, and news on food (organic, local, grassfed, and beyond) and how our choices affect our health and the earth.

Colorado Cacheis another cookbook I reach for frequently. With over 400 pages, it always has a recipe that works for me. If you like Mexican food, there is a chapter dedicated to it, and the "potpourri" chapter covers things like homemade mustards, jellies and jams, and liquers and cocktails.

And for the last of my regular cookbooks: Author Sheila Lukins is an inveterate traveler who spent two years on a food journey around the world. Part travelogue, part cookbook, and rounded out with menu suggestions, her All Around The World Cookbook is the book to pickup when you feel like experimenting with different spices, or combinations of ingredients. For example, for chicken soup, Lukins gives a table that shows combinations of ingredients that make chicken soup what it is in 22 different countries, ranging from Argentina to Turkey.

      

Thoughts on balance reporting--part 2

After yesterday's post on balance in reporting, Roger W added a comment, saying:

With regards to Ms. Whelan, you might take the time to interview her. She's actually a rational person who has a personal goal of going after those who demonize chemistry.

One of her early targets was alar, and the evidence of alar in apples pretty much wiped out that year's crop. Whelan was one of those who challenged the manner in which the government evaluated the impact of alar and its use of rats as stand-ins for people.

Her emphasis is that you need to prove that there is a problem, or a reasonable possibility that there is a problem, rather than assuming that all chemicals are bad.

I appreciate Roger’s comment, and wanted to follow up on it here. I am actually familiar with Ms. Whelan’s name, and I think Roger’s assessment is fair to some extent. I think she does believe in her stands, and isn’t strictly taking stands for pay, but there is no doubt she is paid handsomely for taking those stands by corporations that tend to place their bottom-line interests' above all other considerations. And though I think her stands may have been somewhat rational when she began taking them decades ago (she started ACSH in 1978) they are far from rational when the body of evidence is piling up that indeed most of these chemicals are dangerous. Our traditional approach has been, chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. Today I think we need to move toward the precautionary principal, which says in a nutshell, they are dangerous until proven innocent.

But, Roger, since you bring up Alar, let me talk about that: Not long after my husband, Ken Woodard. and I moved to a farm in Minnesota, Alar dominated coffee-klatch discussions among farmers: It was 1989 and CBS’s 60 Minutes had just aired a piece about the chemical and its potential ill effects on children.

For background: Alar is the trade name for daminozide, a chemical that was used on fruit as a growth regulator and ripening aid. It allowed farmers to control the timing of harvest for their fruit crops, and though it could be applied to many crops, it was used most frequently by the apple industry after its introduction to the marketplace in 1968. Studies in the 1970s linked a breakdown product of it, ”unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine,” or UDMH, to cancer. By 1985, the Environmental Protection Agency added both daminozide and UDMH to its list of probable carcinogens, but they allowed it to remain on the market.

Baby food manufacturers, including Gerber and Heinz, reported detectible levels of UDMH in apple sauce and apple juice, and in 1986, after the American Academy of Pediatrics called for a ban of the chemical, some major baby food manufacturers quit purchasing apples from producers who were using Alar. Yet still, the chemical remained on the market. That spurred the Natural Resources Defense Council to investigate Alar. In February, 1989, they released a report, Intolerable Risk: Pesticides in Our Children’s Food, that showed up to 30% of apples purchased at a grocery store still had traces of the chemical. Intolerable Risk provided the foundation for the 60 Minutes report.

One night shortly after the 60 Minutes piece aired we went to our neighbor’s for coffee. Willie was in his 60s at the time—a traditional Midwestern farmer living on the farm his grandfather homesteaded a hundred years earlier. Willie knew Ken and I were farming organically, so the Alar piece became a point of discussion. Willie pointed to an apple in a bowl of fruit on the table, and said the little bit of chemical on that apple isn’t a problem. There's not enough pesticide on it to make you sick.

I tended to agree. I didn't eat and farm organically because I thought the traces of pesticides found in foods were a big health problem, but because I didn’t want to handle pesticides, and because I did think it would make a difference to the environment and thus to society at large. I believed that organic production helped maintain biodiversity, and that maintaining good habitat for all God’s creatures—great and small—was a key to our own species long-term survival. I also believed that the profligate use of pesticides and herbicides became an endless and spiraling cycle that sickened and bankrupted family farmers, poisoned streams and wildlife, and didn’t actually resolve weed and pest problems.

Now remember, Ms. Whelan, whose organization had a $25,000 grant in 1989 from Alar-manufacturer Uniroyal, is credited with leading the charge against the “Alar scare”. In fact most people who watch the balancers credit Alar as lifting ACSH and Ms. Whelan to new heights, and really giving her a platform as a balancer.

Several years ago, when I became interested in the interface of environment and health, I sat down to coffee with Suzanne Wuerthele, a career toxicologist with EPA Region 8 in Denver. Our conversation drifted to Alar, and Wuerthele said, “ They still lie about it; they say it was an ‘Alar scare’ as if it was artificial. But guess what—it wasn’t. Alar is a carcinogenic chemical.”

Yet as recently as 2004 (not long before my conversation with Wuerthele), ACSH was still painting Alar-as-victim in their “Review of the Greatest Unfounded Health Scares of Recent Times.” (See it here.)

Intolerable Risk (available here) found:

“Between 5,500 and 6,200 of the current population of American preschoolers may eventually get cancer solely as a result of their exposure before six years of age to eight pesticides or metabolites commonly found in fruits and vegetables. These estimates are based on scientifically conservative risk assessment procedures. They indicate that more than 50% of a person's lifetime cancer risk from exposure to carcinogenic pesticides is typically incurred in the first six years of life.”

If that seems inconceivable, consider that preschoolers consume far higher quantities of fruit per body weight (all that apple sauce and apple juice for example) than adults. Would you want your kids, or grandkids, eating those chemicals if NRDC's 'conservative estimate' is right?

In the news: Thoughts on 'balanced' reporting

Last night I cruised to CNN online to check out the status of the fires in southern California (my thoughts go out to the people living through this catastrophic event). I noticed a "Quick Vote" questionnaire asking, "Do man-made chemicals in plastics or textiles pose a threat to your health?" I couldn't resist answering, and when I did I was pleased by the results CNN showed: 84% of the 70,000+ respondents had said yes! Awareness is growing, and with awareness comes the ability to do something about problems.

CNN had included this poll on their website because they had run an article, entitled Tests reveal high chemical levels in kids' bodies See it here.

The article quotes Elizabeth Whelan, the President of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) to provide "balance". Whelan and other ACSH staffers and board members are regular balancers on news channels. In the article, Whelan says, 'My concern about this trend about measuring chemicals in the blood is it's leading people to believe that the mere ability to detect chemicals is the same as proving a hazard, that if you have this chemical, you are at risk of a disease, and that is false.' It goes on to say, "Whelan contends that trace levels of industrial chemicals in our bodies do not necessarily pose health risks."

Whelan may be right that a trace found in the body isn't proof that you are at risk of a disease from these exposures. But here's my thought on the subject: Elizabeth, you can have all the traces of industrial chemicals you want in your body, but I don't want them in my body. Whether there is absolute proof of peril or not, the overwhelming body of evidence points to the fact that these chemicals are impacting us in bad ways!

So, when it comes to "balanced" reporting, remember the old adage, "follow the money." ACSH is a nonprofit that bills itself as a consumer education consortium concerned with issues related to food, nutrition, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle, the environment and health. That sounds good. But their funding comes from a veritable who's who of corporations, from ALCOA, Allied Signals, American Cyanamid and the American Meat Institute to Union Carbide, Uniroyal, and USX.

SourceWatch, an online service dedicated "to documenting the PR and propaganda activities of public relations firms and public relations professionals engaged in managing and manipulating public perception, opinion and policy," is a good place to learn about the balancers. They say, "To its credit, [ACSH] has taken a strong public position against the dangers of tobacco, one of the leading preventable causes of death in today's society. However, it takes a generally apologetic stance regarding virtually every other health and environmental hazard produced by modern industry."

I guess 84% of the people who answered the question think like me: Better safe than sorry!

California leads the way

Last week Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that makes California the first state in the country to ban the use of phthalates from children’s products. This is really great news: California has enough market share to make manufacturers stand up and take notice, and on the heals of their decision, other states are also considering such bans. Lawmakers in Texas, Illinois, Florida, Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington, Maine, Connecticut and New York are expected to introduce similar legislation in the coming months, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, has indicated she will introduce similar legislation in Congress.

Phthalates are a class of chemicals used in plastics, including children's toys and baby bottles, and they are endocrine disruptors. Low doses have been tied to numerous health problems, from baldness to obesity, and birth defects to infertility. Because phtalates are ubiquitous (they are in cosmetics, air fresheners, home furnishings, medical devices, food containers, and many other common products) they have been found in most people tested for body burden (or the accumulation of chemicals in our bodies). To learn more about phthalates, visit the Coming Clean website.

You are what you eat

If health is like a three-legged stool, with environmental exposures, lifestyle, and genes representing the legs, than food is the seat, overlapping all three legs. So, food seems like an important topic to cover here. Ken and I prioritize the food choices we make in this order:

Our first choice is to grow a fair amount ourselves, organically. Due to where-and-how we live, this isn’t as abundant a portion of our food supply as it once was: when we farmed we grew about 85% of what we consumed! But we still manage to grow several bushels of potatoes and all the garlic we consume (which is saying something since I love cooking with garlic). During the summer the garden supplies us with a wide mixture of goodies and we even grow greens and herbs in the house to help us through the long winter months. Last year we added a banana tree to our indoor plants, and though it won't produce fruit for at least five years, I'm hopeful it will someday. In the meantime, it's a cool looking plant! Our own little flock of laying hens supplies most of our eggs.

Our second choice is purchase from local growers. We can buy local grassfed meat from several nearby ranchers. We try to hit farmer’s markets or farm stands when the hitting is good, and give preference to farmers who are seriously employing sustainable practices. With seasonal purchases, we often buy a larger quantity and store it or use it in recipes that can be frozen for later use (think tomato season=spaghetti sauce or salsa). This week, for example, Ken brought home a bushel of Golden Delicious apples from Cañon City.

When we need items that aren’t available by method one or two, our third choice is to shop at the small natural food store in a town about 30 miles away when we go there for errands, or if I am in the city, I hit Whole Foods or Wild Oats on my way home. I stock up on canned goods, some produce during periods when its low or unavailable, dry goods, coffee and tea, and the like.

Once in a while I go to a major grocery store, like City Market or Safeway, but its actually kind of rare. When I do, I still give preference to organic and natural products.

I can just about hear some people saying, ah, you are a yuppie. I can't afford to eat that way. To which I say, poppy cock! We are not rich. We drive old vehicles, we don't take expensive trips, and we live very frugally in most ways. But, food is just too important to our health, and our pleasure of life, to eat badly. Everyone can grow some food, even if it's in pots on a deck or in a window, and the food you grow yourself is wonderful and very economical. Buying directly from area farmers and ranchers is often far less expensive than the grocery store. For example, the bushel of apples cost just $15.00, and will last for a long time.

Buying real food, and doing some food prep, even at Whole-Foods prices, is less expensive than eating out or buying highly processed foods. However to make eating organically and naturally economical does require a return to the kitchen, but food prep doesn't have to be hard, or take a huge amount of time. I don't have a large, fancy kitchen with all kinds of gadgets; hell, I don't even have a dishwasher. Yet I cook dinner from scratch almost every night of the week. I'm big for searching out easy recipes that taste good and don't take too much time, nor too much cleanup!

So here's a recipe that I found in the latest issue of The Joy of Cooking cookbook (if you can only afford one cookbook, then Joy is what you want!) that epitomizes my cooking attitude, and was decadently delicious: Baked apples with sausage.

Wash the apples and cut the top half-inch off so the top is flat. Core the apples, then scoop out some additional pulp so the apple is about 1/2 inch thick all the way around. Chop the pulp fine, place in bowl, and mix the pulp well with some sausage. Sprinkle brown sugar or drizzle maple syrup into the apples and over the apples, then stuff with the sausage/pulp mix. Bake 45 to 50 minutes at 350 degrees.

I used five apples and two large links of hot Italian sausage, stripped from the casing. You can use just about any kind of sausage. It was perfect for two of us, beyond delicious, and the prep time was only about 15 minutes. How can you possibly beat that?

Get the lead out—of lipstick

Last week the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics published A Poison Kiss: The problem of lead in lipstick. According to the report, the average woman eats four pounds of lipstick in her life, and some of that lipstick may be very high in lead. For example, LʹOreal's "Colour Riche True Red", which tested the highest of the 33 lipsticks that the campaign sent to an independent testing lab, had 0.65 parts per million of lead in it. At the other end of the spectrum, 13 of the tested lipsticks had no detectable lead in them.

Most people assume that the FDA, EPA, or some other alphabet soup agency, regulates and tests cosmetics, but that assumption is plain wrong. FDA has authority over some coloring agents used in cosmetics, but beyond that, they have very limited authority over the cosmetics' industry. They have never set a limit for lead in lipstick or other cosmetics, yet numerous studies point out that there is no safe level of lead.

The report's findings include:

Lead is a proven neurotoxin that can cause learning, language and behavioral problems such as lowered IQ, reduced school performance and increased aggression.

Pregnant women and young children are particularly vulnerable to
lead exposure because lead easily crosses the placenta and may enter the fetal brain, where it interferes with normal development.

Lead has also been linked to miscarriage, reduced fertility in both men and women, hormonal changes, menstrual irregularities and delays in the onset of puberty.

Lead builds up in the body over time and lead‐containing lipstick applied several times a day, every day, combined with lead in water and other sources, could add up to significant exposure levels.

A 2004 survey of cosmetics use by 5,856 U.S. girls aged 7 to 19 found that 63 percent of the girls aged 10 and younger reported using lipstick.

Check out the report, and let the manufacturers of cosmetics you use know that you don't want toxins in your beauty products!

For your Christmas list

Plenty of what I write about is bad news and downbeat types of stuff, but here's something upbeat. I absolutely love, Organic Body Care Recipies, a new book by licensed holistic esthetician and certified aromatherapist, Stephanie Tourles. Everybody should put this book on their wish list for Christmas, a birthday, or just an I-want-to-treat-myself-to-something-nice day!

Tourles has several older books on the subject, which I have used in the past, but I really love this brand-new book, because it's so comprehensive: it features 175 recipes for totally natural lotions and potions that help you care for skin, body, and hair, as well as improve your mood, provide comfort when you are sick, or repel pesky bugs. The first third of the book provides important background on A Natural Approach To Beautiful Skin, Hair and Nails; The Natural Apothecary; and Tools of the Trade for the Kitchen Cosmetologist. The next two thirds is recipe central, and the back of the book includes helpful appendices that point the reader to resources and additional reading.

When you make your own skin-care products you are assured that there aren't hidden, nasty chemicals, such as parabens and phthalates. And the cost is significantly lower than for store bought concoctions (investing in some of the essential oils is pricey at first, but they will last a long time, and they are typically used by the drop).

So far, I've tried Salt of the Earth Body Scrub, Tangerine Toner, and the Balancing Scrub and Skin Lightner. They're quite wonderful, and I can't wait to try more recipes. The book has cool ideas sprinkled throughout for creating gifts from your homemade goodies, something I plan to do this year at the holidays!

[Note: To make it easier for you to check back on this and previous reviews, I've added a Reviews page to the Toxic Burden website. I've also updated the Tips page. And, I welcome comments, questions, and discussions. Just click the "comments" link at the bottom of the post to get involved!]

Insurance woes

Last week after I posted about Kris Carr's book, Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips, in which I said, "There are downright practical tips (learn what your insurance coverage includes before beginning treatment...," a reader emailed and asked, "What do people without health insurance (and there are millions of us) do when they get cancer? Do they just have to shrug and say, "Well, it was a good life even if it ended a bit earlier than I expected," or is there some agency out there that loans hundreds of thousands of dollars to people with marginal income and spotty credit?"

Like the reader (and 46.6-million other Americans in 2005 according to the Census Bureau), I am without health insurance, and have been since the mid-1990s. At that time, Ken and I were farming in Minnesota. We had been carrying the insurance ourselves for several years, but every six months the bill would come, and it would have jumped by leaps and bounds from the previous six months. We would increase the deductible by leaps and bounds to exert some control over the run-away cost of our insurance, only to have the next bill come and be higher still. When the bill hit $600 a month for the two of us, with a $10,000 deductible for each of us and 20% cost share on the covered costs (prescriptions, for example, weren't covered) we finally decided we couldn't do it anymore.

We had lenghthy discussions before we let it go: obviously, this kind of coverage was definitely limited to catastrophic problems, cancer being the most likely. We decided that if we did get cancer, or any other major health problem, we didn't necessarily want to go through a some of the things that modern medicine puts you through. At the same time, this policy wouldn't cover any type of alternative practitioners, people we were starting to feel might be more appealing to us for some types of problems (we both swear by our chiropractor). We also decided that we would prefer to spend our money on eating very well and avoiding toxins, because by that point we were already starting to think those things were more closely linked to health than we had previously believed.

I don't regret our decision, even though it's probable that one day each of us will be diagnosed with something terrible. At that point, I don't expect to live quite as long as someone who has the full-meal deal. But really, who does, anymore, and even if they do, a 2005 study by some Harvard medical school researchers showed that over half of personal bankruptcies are illness-related, but most of those filing bankruptcy for illness had health insurance! Particularly interesting findings of their study:

"Three-fourths (75.7 percent) of these debtors were insured at the onset of the bankrupting illness. Three-fifths (60.1 percent) initially had private coverage, but one-third of them lost coverage during the course of their illness [canceled by the insurance company when they cost too much]. Of debtors, 5.7 percent had Medicare, 8.4 percent Medicaid, and 1.6 percent veterans/military coverage. Those covered under government programs were less likely than others to have experienced coverage interruptions."

What to do when you are sick and uninsured

Kris Carr's suggestion in her book is to immediately talk to the social service worker at the hospital. These employees are usually familiar with what support is available in your state from federal and state sources (such as medicaid).

The Foundation for Health Care Coverage has an excellent website (or 800 number at 800.234.1317) with information to assist uninsured people find out what kind of assistance is out there and how to go about obtaining it.

Something I have done in the ensuing years when I have had to use medical doctors (such as when I crushed my hand building a fence, or had a ruptured cyst) is tell the doctor as soon as they walk in the room, "I am uninsured. I'll pay your bill, but since I'm cash and carry can you work with me to keep it controlled--for example, can we order tests one or two at a time, and really use a process of elimination?" Doctors have been great when I say this right up front. The orthopedic doc for my hand, for instance, always charged me for "minimal visits" even when he was with me a long time. When the cast finally came off, he showed me all the exercises to do and made a number a suggestions, rather than send me off to physical therapy.

Particularly if you have kids, do consider getting a basic term life insurance policy. (Don't get suckered by cash-value life insurance or any of the other fancy policies.) It may seem morbid, but this investment will help protect your family against bankruptcy when you die (whatever the cause), and it isn't as outrageously expensive as health insurance. For a young adult, the cost should be less than a couple hundred dollars per year.

And, finally, follow the advice that Kris Carr's physician gave her (because her cancer is so rare, there was no good treatment regime): "Focus on building your immune system through diet and lifestyle."

Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips by Kris Carr

I attended the Mountains and Plains Booksellers' Association fall meeting last weekend in Denver (ostensibly to sign copies of my Pocketful of Poultry book and to meet with my editor from Storey Publishing), but while there, I had to take advantage of the situation! I spent a few hours cruising the trade show floor, looking at this season's new releases from dozens of publishers. For a book junkie, what could be more fun? I found a number of books there that looked appropriate for book reviews here, and will cover them over the coming weeks...

The first one: Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips. This part-memoir/part-prescriptive book, is by Kris Carr, an actress and photographer diagnosed at 31 with epithelioid hemangioendothelioma, a cancer of the blood vessels in the liver and lungs. It has a foreword by Sheryl Crow. Carr also did a movie by the same name, which aired in August on the TLC channel.

I haven't seen the movie, but I will say, this book is absolutely exceptional. Funny, scary, heart-breaking, and inspiring, all rolled into one, the book offers not only Carr's tips, but also those of dozens of other young women who have heard the words, you have cancer. There are downright practical tips (learn what your insurance coverage includes before beginning treatment, or drink plenty of clean water and eat organic) and whimsical ones, too (have a shaving party and don a pink wig when it's time to let your hair go). Though the focus is on young adults with cancer (including a chapter on dating, sex, marriage, and babies), this book can easily cross generations, empowering women who hear the big-C diagnosis to live fully and purposefully. For this, Carr deserves a Pulitzer, a National Book Award, and an Oscar.

Chronic health problems

A new report, issued this week by the Milken Institute finds that "More than half of Americans suffer from one or more chronic diseases."

The report goes on to say,

Each year millions of people are diagnosed with chronic disease, and millions more die from their condition.

The most common chronic diseases are costing the economy more than $1 trillion annually — and that figure threatens to reach $6 trillion by the middle of the century.

Much of this cost is avoidable.

[The] failure to contain the containable is undermining prospects for extending health insurance coverage and for coping with the medical costs of an aging population.

While treatment outcomes and mortality have been improving, the rates of chronic disease are steadily increasing and, if left to grow unchecked, threaten to cancel out these gains.

All told, our analysis implies that modest reductions in avoidable factors—unhealthy behavior, environmental risks, and the failure to make modest gains in early detection and innovative treatment—will lead to 40 million fewer cases of illness and a gain of over $1 trillion annually in labor supply and efficiency by 2023.

The report looked specifically at the economic impacts of just the seven most common chronic illnesses: cancer, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart disease, pulmonary conditions, and mental disorders. It is thought provoking, because, as its authors say, much of the cost is avoidable: cleaning up the environment and reducing toxins is good for our health, and ultimately, good for the economy.