On a limb with Claudia

Did you know that weight lifting can reduce your chance of getting diabetes? It turns out that muscle mass interacts on the insulin pathway in some intricate way. By engaging and strengthening your muscles, you actually reduce your chance of getting diabetes.

This probably sounds like incredible new information. Actually, scientists have known that weight lifting reduces diabetes for over 20 years. They proved it again with inner city Hispanic kids in Los Angeles.

Why isn’t this common knowledge? It’s the same old same old. You can’t sell a pill called: “weight lifting”. Our medical establishment is based around peddling the drugs not encouraging health through simple measures.

If you want to reduce your risk of diabetes, get moving. Our favorite weight lifting site is Free Trainers.com. You’ll find easy to use weight lifting plans with video instructions on how to do them. Check it out.

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In case you haven’t seen this game, check out the Halloween Hangman. It’s sure to fill your time with loads of mindless joy. The truly scary thing about this game is that someone played it long enough to get over 30,000 points.

I am wondering if it might have been my bored friend Moobs….

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Today, according to my new Dr. Suess calendar, is Lorax day.? What is a Lorax?? The Lorax was the guy who was willing to speak for the trees, the birds and animals.? He was willing to risk speaking the truth to the greedy entitled person who took all the resources for himself.? And when all the resources were gone, the Lorax pulled himself up by his pants and disappeared through a hole in the smog leaving only the word “unless”.

“Now that you’re here,
the word of the Lorax seems perfectly clear,
UNLESS someone like you
cares a whole awful lot,
nothing is going to get better.
It’s not.”

The question is: how do we care a whole awful lot?? Do we want things to get better?? What’s better?

It seems to me, we start out as Lorax’s and end up eventually looking for when we are going to get our share of the resources. I have no idea how to get past my own exhausted cynicism to return to a time when I “cared a whole awful lot”.

What about you?

In the meantime, check out this interactive game. You catch the Truffula seeds, and then plant the trees.

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Robert Bazell, NBC Chief science and health correspondent, released a commentary about Alternative medicine this morning. His premise is that the NIH spent millions of dollars testing Alternative Medicine and most of it doesn’t work. Yet, the lack of medical research does not deter people from taking these medications. Read: people are stupid; scientists are smart.

It’s curious to me, however. My experience of people is that they are not, in fact, stupid and use things because they work for them.

The problem with medical research is that it’s geared to fast acting drugs which by pass the bodies own capacity to heal itself. Further, the person who reaches for a alternative medicine, is more likely to embrace an alternative lifestyle – exercise, diet modification, and health.

Medical doctors now embrace lifestyle changes after decades of ridiculing Dr. Dean Ornish and others who promoted the benefits of diet and exercise. If it works, it’s now mainstream science. If it doesn’t work immediately, it’s snake oil.

The question that Mr. Brazell fails to ask in his commentary, is “if these products don’t work, why do people think that they do?” Maybe the NIH should study that and we might all learn to engage our own amazing capacity to heal. But that would put the NIH out of business… and of course Mr. Brazell.

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Everyone knows that I don’t like war. It’s not a big secret. I don’t like it, never have. It was a bone of contention between my father and I for most of his life. I don’t like war… any war… all the wars currently going on in the world… and I don’t think that’s going to change about me.

My country is at war in another country. I don’t know if it’s right or wrong – I could probably argue both sides. You’ll be surprised to find out that I don’t like it much. I don’t like that my country is at war.

As a child, I could look away. As an adult, I must look with open eyes at the good, the bad and the ugly of it all. I have been reading soldier’s blogs – the good, the bad and the ugly. (There’s a great list on the One Veteran’s Voice blog)

Slate put together a “sandbox” for soldiers. This allows a soldier to post a blog without risking his or her life or position. Whatever you think about this particular war, it’s worth taking the time to look boldly into the face of your countrymen and find their humanity. This was my favorie: The Search.

I encourage you today to take a look at these blogs if only to see your own humanity reflected back.

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Read the news and it feels like the entire planet is falling apart. If you are having one of those Mondays, take a moment to visit this site : Beautiful Planet and get a beautiful and refreshing look at terra firma.

There’s no place like home.

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Last weekend, I went to hang out and help my friend Steve at Cider Days in Lakewood. Steve is the owner of Ela Family Farms, a family owned organic apple farm on the Western Slope. While I was working on Saturday, I bashed my thumb between a box of apples and the big rig refrigerated truck.

The question is: Should I tell Steve? or keep my injury to myself?

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Here’s a free lesson in public relations. If you screw up:

1. Say your sorry and look like you really mean it.

2. Take responsibility. No “booze made me do it” or “I was so in love I jumped on the couches” or “the pressures of being famous destroyed our relationship”. Just say, “you know, I blew it. I don’t have any idea why I (fill in the blank). I am sorry.” Everyone understands messing up – we all do it all the time.
3. Then SHUT UP! Anything else you have to say will only make it worse. Someone asks you a question about the incident, you smile and nodd, look remorseful but don’t, just don’t open your mouth.
Mel Gibson could use this advice.

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A number of years ago, I took the bodhisattva vow. I would try to ease the suffering of all sentient beings. I was only 30 at the time and starting my psychotherapy practice. It seemed straight forward – ease suffering thought loving kindness. I founded my business and the Open Grove out of those principles.

I quickly found my dilemna. I didn’t want to ease the suffering of certain beings. The black widow spider that looked like it was going to sting me. The person who hurt my dog. The guy who mows his lawn and doesn’t pick up the cuttings so they float all over my sidewalk. And what about pedophiles?

Working in the Open Grove, I learned some ways to cheat the need to “ease sufffering of all sentient beings”. Edward Espe Brown told me that Suzuki Roshi encouraged you to say, “May you be Buddha” to everything you killed. So I say that now when I kill a black widow spider and feel no guilt. Sharon Salzberg told me that the point was to be aware of the suffering you cause. Sylvia Boorstein told me that causing suffering was a part of our essential nature. Tara Brach encouraged me to accept my capacity for causing suffering so that I might then do some good. Mark Epstein just laughed and said, “Ya, that is a problem.”
But what about pedophiles? I knew a few growing up. Of course I did. I found them to be desperate people driven by a compulsion that they could barely control. This compulsion drove almost every action in a way that the clean, clear word “addiction” can’t quite define.

Does that justify the gut wrenching damage they cause? The multigenerational damage as one damaged shamed person acts out their pain on another passing and magnifying the damage? Is it possible to wish lovingkindness to the person who causes this damage?

It’s time to start this discussion. Check out this Time Magazine article. I don’t have any answers here. What do you think?

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“I was the only one who could see her for the freak she actually was.”

That’s pretty close to what Georgia mom, Laura Mallory (Georgia mom seeks to ban Harry Potter) had to say at the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Georgia last Tuesday.? She is concerned that the books are “an “evil” attempt to indoctrinate children in the Wicca religion”.

Unless I missed something, there is nothing “evil” about Wicca.? Further, there is little in the Harry Potter books that has to do with Wicca.

So what could we possibly be talking about Aunt Petuna, sorry, Laura Mallory?? Jealous because you aren’t magical maybe?? Concerned that your god and religion don’t make any sense to your children so won’t be passed on?

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