Over 75% of the people who contacted me in 2011 were searching for the random, unique and saving therapies.  Their first question was:  ‘I read about this therapy and I wanted to know if you would do it for me?’.  The search for the last straw, the last life line and the last hope to save them.

While there are thousands of alternative medicine therapies, end stage disease is a frightening place to be with no direction.  Since the blossoming of the internet, almost anyone can post information and take absolutely everything out of context.

If you find your self looking at an end stage of any disease, take heart.  There are others out there to help you, however, you must define what help really looks like to you.  Help in days to live or help in holding you here because of your fear are quite common.

This year of 2012 will be very busy with beginnings and endings.  It is the time to step up and ask for help if you need it.  Take a close look at what you are asking for help.  It may be headaches, but perhaps the quality of your blood vessels may be a second issue, and the real issue – stress or body misalignment.  But then again, it can be none of these. It may be cancer, but your real question is ‘how do I live with the pain’.

How do you look at ‘Out of the Box healthcare’ support?  You ask.  You put everything in front of you that you learn.  Then and only then, you choose.  And it is important to remember, you may choose and it does not work, so you can choose again.  Ah, the fun of not having to be right all the time.

So, as the new year approaches, a suggestion might be:  to think about my health in a different way, what I can do, what I don’t want to do and how can I still blossom this year of 2012.

Supporters and ideas are all around us.  Step up and take a challenge.  Challenge yourself to try something different.  Challenge yourself to do what you already know.  It is the year.

The end of life, the middle of challenges and the beginning of prevention:  all are welcome!  Please ask for help.  You just never know what could be possible.

So who are these people and why are they doing this?  These people are your next door neighbors, yourself, or your friends.  In some groups of women, it is kept private what you stockpile.  In some communities, it is never spoken about outside of the home.  Seems more like a secret society to me?  to you??

Many people have lost jobs and savings in the past few years and money now is very scarce.  To be able to go and get something for almost nothing is very empowering.  It is almost like a drug, the feeling of many carts from the store following you to your car, oops, truck!

Since we live in the South, this practice is less frequent.  Heat and bugs are something that can kill a warehouse of food in a matter of 24 hours.  What a heartbreak that would be.

However, in the North and mid West, this type of shopping is common.  People keep this practice to themselves in fear if an event occurred and food was scarce, they could be raided.

Keeping food and other items in fear of some event may have you guarding your home.  What happened to the many people who stockpile and found themselves with damaged stock after the recent rain events on the east coast?  Are you having to throw out thousands of dollars of ‘stuff’?  Would you replace your stock again?  Or are you the lucky one in the area and can eat off your stock while others are at food giveaways?

Tell us, share your story of stockpiling.  We want to know if you were affected by the recent storms and how you are dealing with the aftermath.  Either sign in here and comment or go to the main website for this blog:  www.outoftheboxhealthcare.com and click the contact us page.  Here, tell us what your thoughts are.  Hope to hear from you soon.  Be safe.

Parents, these are your children, their life was entrusted to you.  You are responsible for their healthy upbringing.  Pay attention.  Are you seeing what is happening?

Marketing!!  Pervasive marketing to have you feel like you cannot get vegetables into their diet so the companies that offer processed foods think they can do it better.  Did you bite?

Kids will acquire a taste for what ever they like and it will now be boxes and cans?

Parents, please take a lesson here, you can do it better.  You can feed your children what they should be eating rather than giving that responsibility off to someone else.

I would not like to see the world in ten years when kids go to the grocery store and shopping only put cans and boxes in their carts.

This is a 360 degree turn the wrong way.  Everyone should be eating fresh food and the companies are saying no, eat mine.  Freeze dried cauliflower is not better for you than fresh.

Are you following this?  Do not follow the manufacturers latest train of tagging a socially correct word to market themselves in their slumping production.  Stand up for independent farms, clean food, healthy food and taking care of your kids.

So what are you going to put into their lunch box, now freeze-dried vegetables??  Where is the nutritious value in that?  Perhaps the demand should be ‘show me’ the availability of vitamins in real food vs. freeze-dried or canned.  Ask, stand up, and see what you really get for an answer.

Healthy kids eat healthy foods, period.

Suggestions included:

preservative free turkey:  turkey is number one in food borne illness.  I would avoid it unless it is winter and the sandwich is being kept in a very cold area.

yogurt:  yes there is helpful bacteria here to support the immune system and there is calcium, but there also is a high risk of ‘going bad’ in warm weather in as little as one hour.

peanut butter:  be sure the child is not in a class with others kids who have this allergy.  Bringing the item even into the class or lunch room may be dangerous.

milk product drink:  this is rarely safe.  Water brought from home is also not safe if exposed to excessive heat prior to drinking.  Watch where you store the water and refrigerate it prior to putting into the lunch.

washed vegetables and fruits:  if this is a closed lunch box without air exchange, the moisture from these items will affect all the other products in the lunch.  Soggy chips and bread are usually pitched at lunch.  Think before you send broccoli raw, in most kids it produces intestinal gas.  School is hard enough without flatulence ridicule.

So what DO you put in there, here is a list of ingredients, make your own ideas:

fruit, organic, if not, peel and cube.

hummus with chips

almond butter, or other nut butters

cheese and crackers

soups in thermos

salsa with chips

healthy fiber/nut/fruit bars

If the child has a morning snack time, then yogurt, homemade pizza bites and small turkey wrap would be ok if you do not live in a warm or hot area of the country.  Wait til winter, if there ever is one.  It is so hot, today is 114 degrees feels like, ugh!!

Have any other ideas, comment here, positive ideas please.

Have a great year.

Well, yes, payment, that is one issue.  Medicaid does not pay for this test if there is not a pre-existing symptom or disease that requires it to be run.  It is not done routinely with any healthcare policies, however, it may, may, be covered by some insurance policies.  It is not listed as a preventative blood test, similar to how you may think of as mammogram or colonoscopy.  Further, if you do not have insurance, it may be harder to have the test run.  The physician does not necessarily want to run optional tests that may provide a random diagnosis.  This may prove to have increased expenses and a wild goose chase with limited resources.  Why?

Standard of care:  it is listed as a requirement to be run in very few diseases.  Most important to remember:  when a doctor orders a test, he cannot just it randomly because you asked.  He must have a medical reason to order it, as noted by the insurance codes used for your visit.  Further more, if he/she runs this test, they must know how to treat the disease, or don’t run the test.  You are then referred out to another specialist to have their input and they can run the test.

Remember:  if you test, you must treat and diagnose.  That is a golden physician rule.

So, what do you do as a patient?  Discuss the test, discuss your symptoms, and then discuss with your physician what his plan is.  Trust what is being recommended if you are working with a dr. you trust.  Have heart (!) your dr is not trying to steer you off course, he has his outcomes of disease to think about.  He wants all his patients well.

This topic has taken squabbles to a new height.  Defensive parents and media opportunists have skewed their take on this topic.  I even just yesterday, saw an article about school lunches and the picture of chocolate milk, cherry pie and iceberg lettuce reeled my head around.  I could not even identify the turd in the middle of the picture!  Then I noticed the picture caption:  ‘purchase image’.  Are you kidding me?  This type of irresponsible reporting is dangerous and fueling issues that are not necessary.

In this listing, our discussion is about reality and not pointing fingers.  There is to be no bickering or shaming here.  Please read and comment if helpful.

Why start talking about school lunch safety now, after all those decades, what has changed?

Kids are getting dropped off at school when the parent may leave for work and the child has a portable lunch in the back pac.  It may be almost an hour until the child is let into the school and in some locations in the country, it is hot outside, period.

Many schools do not have a temperature controlled atmosphere at 75 degrees all day.  Bagged lunches in a hot school are a bacterial breeding ground.  Many schools are turning up the a/c and hotter rooms and opened windows are not temperature controlled.

In the all out quest to return to a cleaner diet, parents are purchasing foods that are significantly reduced in preservatives.  That  is a fabulous idea, but there was a place for the extensive and increased use of preservatives in the generations prior to the last few years.  While we are not saying to go back to preservatives, know what they do and what happens when items are not including them.  The ‘shelf life’ or time out of  ‘optimal conditions’ must be noted and adhered to at all costs.  Food borne bacteria can be deadly.

School lunches produced in the cafeteria are generally not a great thing for some parents (note this discussion later) and it should be noted.

Freezer pacs are an option, however, did you ever see what the kids do with those in a lunch room?  They get food all over them, some get ‘tossed out’ and others may get contaminated with other peoples food touching them.  This is an issue for allergic or clean diet children as cross contamination is a real problem.  Also, food touching the pacs and returned home are already breeding food bacteria, regardless if food is in there, it may just be wrappers or a smear of food.

Ok, so what DO you do?  This is what I did with my four children.  We lived in the North, cold temperatures and the deep South, penetrating heat.  I also have food finikey kids, one with allergies to certain foods, and one with life threatening asthma.  So, did I go through this also, you betcha.  Did I have a lot of misfires, yep.  Did I beat myself up if the kids got sick, yep.  Did I learn, yep.  Here is what I did:

First pick out one or two items that are temperature stable.  This can be a bar, note, no chocolate, it melts and makes things soggy.  This can be a snack product, find a healthy alternative you can feel ok about.

Next, pic a small fruit or vegetable that is raw.  Warning, if you child has loose teeth, do not send hard items or it will hit the trash.  Wash, cut, prepare the item, and then sprinkle lightly  with a vitamin C powder. Do not send bananas, they get black, stink up other food, and do not respond to the vitamin C powder to keep them safe.

Then, pick a main item.  If your child is a grazer, just put few small items.  If your child does not feel good, send soup in thermos.  If your child is a social butterfly, put a few small items and be sure they fit the class the child is in.  If you send something socially not acceptable and your child is vying for a friend at lunch, the food will be pitched so you do not know or the food will not be touched.

Main items should be something fresh.  Leftovers might sound ok to you, but left overs should always be reheated to above 170 degrees for safety.  Where are they going to do that?  Even items that were fresh yesterday, are now a day later and bacteria does start once it is served and stored.  Did you ever notice when you cut up lettuce the day before and put it in a container in the fridge, the ends start to turn brown?  That needs to be trashed.

This is the best comment I could give you to make the year healthy and safe, while protecting your sanity:  stop stressing and let the child pick what they will eat.  Your child will come home starving and that is fabulous!!  They are now on your turf and you can feed them what you want safely.

My daughter was in the caesar salad crazy for two years.  She would not eat grease, preservatives, and all the other things I suggested.  However, the minute she hit the door, she had a mixing bowl of salad with chicken and still had room for supper around 6.

Peer pressure is real for your children in school, since when does peer pressure with you and your girl friends or other parents take such a toll on you?  Aren’t you a teacher telling them how to deal with this?  Show them how you handle the situation.

To happy eating…………..

BUT:  how do you provide them with a sandwich that is under so much scrutinty from wellness warriors to healthcare providers.  With an increase in obesity, allergies, preservatives and diabetes, it may be a shakey choice of ingrediants.

Last week, I had received an email from health gurus with the sandwich for their children.  Here is the receipe:  homemade dark brown bread, almond butter, homemade jam with fruit and agave nectar, and powder vitamins sprinkled on top.  Whooaa!!  Fabulous if you were brought up on that, but a real headache if that is where you are trying to get with kids.

Since my kids are adults now, I let this email ride until I noticed on local tv in the morning news another pb&j sandwich the chef was promoting.  Ready to hear this?  You better hold on and no, I am not making this up.  Here it is:  two slices of white bread (better bread is the Texas toast kind so it will hold together), spread peanut butter on both slices of the bread, add jelly to each slice on top of the peanut butter, then add one sliced banana, then add one smashed banana.  Wait, I am not done!!  You then FRY the sandwich on both sides.  Ok, you tell me what you think.

Can you tell the states from which the two sandwiches originated?  It is not hard, just read them again and there are clues.  Let us know what you think………

Copyright 2010 Out of the Box Healthcare

Looking at the recent lunch prepared for the young children on the reality show Food Revolution, let’s see how to make improvements.

Questions to ask:

1.  do children this age need all that food set in front of them?  Perhaps that is why so much hits the trash?  Their stomach is the size of their fist and the food on their tray is the size of how many grown men’s fists??  Too much food.

How many calories were on that tray??  A full apple? A large burrito?  There were requirements for the types of food to ‘hit the tray’, but did anyone ask about the calories, the massive amounts of food that is given for each category?

2.  the items chosen were too large for the kids small hands and mouth.  Did you see them try to manage the burrito?  Did you see the whole apple?

The hands are small, but did anyone remember about the teeth of these children?  From the age of five to thirteen, teeth are coming and going.  Baby teeth and permanent teeth eruption throughout the entire mouth is a constant struggle for a child to find a place of peace to eat food that is hard or crisp.  Their gums hurt, they have pain and swelling from six to eight months prior to the baby tooth wanting to become loose and falling out to one year for the permanent tooth to fully erupt.  There are twenty baby teeth and 32 permanent teeth, therefore, there is always something moving around in their mouth.

The burrito is considered a full serving for an adult who is on a diet in most health conscious arenas.  This is an indication that the burrito is high in calories and perhaps for a child, it may be too much for them.

3.  how much time is there for lunch and how fast do they have to eat all that food?  At that age it is a social time first and eating is a secondary activity.

Small hand food like appetizers would have them clearing their plates.  They think small and like to graze.  Two of this, three of that and it is all gone.  That is how many mothers have raised their children, ‘just one bite of this and then you can have that, two more bites of that’.  They know the drill, you forgot the drill, Jamie.  Ask the companies who make cutters for fruits and other foods for donations.  An apple that is considered a fruit that has to ‘hit the tray’, can be sectioned and sprinkled with Vitamin C to retain the color and they can take slices.  Now they can chew it.  No matter how many teeth they have swinging in the breeze.

4.  Jamie had trouble with the women in the kitchen complaining about getting the food out with limited kitchen help.  Yep, opening cans, boxes, bags of prepared food is much easier and quicker for the women, got it.  Easier on the thought process too.

The children are getting help and eating better at school, but when they come home from school, the parents have been to the fast food places and continue with their old habits.  Enlist the parents to help in the kitchens.  Have them help.  In return for the help, you can feed three parents per day for lunch.  Believe me, it won’t kill the school system, if you are throwing away the food, you can find the ways to give out less in portions, have the right items there and feed three mothers a day.  It will make a change in the parents as they see what is really important.  The parents will take that message back to their homes and friends.  If the kitchen cop does not want the help, guess she needs the day off.

These are just a few ideas to help schools make changes in their food programs.  Parent involvement is essential if the children are to succeed in making life long changes.  There are requirements of providing certain types of food for the young children, such as healthier items, rather than the junk food for the high school, why??  Perhaps the school system has just skewed its version of what it will allow to fulfill those requirements.  Why?? We feed our babies fortified formula, perfect jarred baby food or home cooked items, then the kids start to demand what they will eat and we begin to ‘let’ them?  Who is in control?  Why?  Then as we age, we may become ill and decide that we have to change something in our life.  Our diet, oh no.  Drugs, surgery, drastic medical treatments, and other diseases leave us screaming for the medical community to save us, fix us and rescue us from the damaged body now in distress.  Think back, way back, did you, as a participant in your own health of your body, take care of yourself, give yourself all the nutrition and good things you should have, did you keep yourself from harm, did you protect yourself from danger, did you keep things away from you that may harm you??  Think, think way back, think to yesterday, think to last year, think, so, who was in control??  Who was stamping their foot and demanding?  Who was filling that fridge?  Who was giving the dollar at the checkout counter?  Who was driving the car at the take out counter?  Who was sitting in the back seat?  Think……

Thoughts or comments…………

The area is well known for its abundant and diverse food choices, it’s laid back attitude and lifestyle and its cultural influences. Right, let’s translate that: lots of food, cooked the way they want, doing what they want, when they want, and how they want, and old habits do not get changed. Try changing that attitude!!

I recently had a chance to notice: if given the choice of a piece of an apple or a potato chip, which would they choose, the chip. If you told them they were going to die if they did not start to eat healthy, they stated, oh well, they would still eat the chip. They have made it this far in life and they have lived far enough in life and they are getting old already anyway. So, when it is time, they are ready. Can you guess the age of the participant??

Why are we beating our head against the wall trying to help others take care of themselves if they have absolutely no desire to care at all about their own health? It is not at all in their realm of understanding. They do not have any interest in it, they will not participate, they will not change, they will resist at all movement and they are firm in their path in life. Why? Because it may not be for us to change them, but for us to recognize that we cannot change everyone, we can only change those that come to us and ask us to help them change. Those that do not wish to open the door and stand with their backside to it, we may not be able to help.

I have to be missing something, I keep on thinking.  There are people picketing for healthcare changes and demanding that we become insured.  But where are the rules that state people need to care for themselves?  Where are the rules they even need to if they do not want to?  Where are the rules they even have to be found to need to be cared or counted for their healthcare needs?  If they are just meandering through life, don’t care to need to be seen by a physician until they drop down and can’t get up and someone takes them into a facility, and now they need care, what next?  Do you demand they accept that care?  Or even still, can they demand you give them that care?

Is there a way to change our views of healthcare to see what is really going on with all people?  or are there various levels of care that are presenting right now and we will see where we fit in over the next several years. Where does self-care, wellness, prevention, care refusal, chronic denial habitual diseases, and addictions fit into these patterns of treatment?

Leave yourself open for the people who are looking for real help. There are many. Help them in steps. Ask them to share what they learn with others. This will help the message grow and you will reach more people than you can imagine.

Copyright 2010 Out of the Box Healthcare

Do you find yourself preaching to the choir or feel like you are hitting a wall?

Maybe you both need a change of venue?   Thoughts?

Trying to change the behavior of the children and insisting the parents ‘follow along’ is crazy. That is like sending the Biggest Loser people home for a week and telling them they cannot cook or fend for themselves. They are at the mercy of others.  What support did you offer the kids at home??

People are raised differently in other countries and develop core values. I was raised in the Northeast in the 50-60′s in a farming community. We did not have fast food, we had farmer’s markets for all our produce, dairies for all our milk, butter and ice cream, butcher for all our meats and bakery for all our breads. That was just the way it was and it still remains a large part of life there today. My four children were raised eating food for the most part the way I was raised. As we moved around the country, we changed our eating habits for the areas we lived in. There are other areas of the country who eat seafood and they choose to fry it and grow tobacco and sugar cane. That is their choice. We do know that is a huge mistake for us and have taken steps to go back to how we used to eat.

Remember a long, long time ago, as the new show now “Who am I” shows us, people flocked to the West coast for ‘something better’.  They were the people who had grand ideas, the cream of the crop, the survival of the fittest, the intuitives, the seekers, dreamers and just people who really wanted a better life. Well California has done it’s job.  It now holds those people in it’s hands, (with a little over flow for the hold outs that just had to go back to Chicago and New York for the seasons). What California forgets, it should be sharing with others its abundance.  What the economic decline is showing us more than ever is that it is not a ladder to climb, it should be a horizontal ladder to move about.  Share your knowledge with all.  If California can grow food, share knowledge with others how to grow. Remember, in that show, ALL the celebrities have gone back to the east and south, period, to find their descendants.  We are all a part of this picture.

Jamie has a great heart but his values are his and his beliefs are his. You cannot change habits and beliefs in 24 hours by demands, deprivation and degradation. But you can look around and see what you can do with what they have around them and develop a plan around that. You can change lifestyle by experience, compassion, time, one thing at a time, step design, and encouragement. I saw the children who did not know the names of the vegetables when the camera was on, well I am sorry to say, but I too know tons of adults who do not know the names of many of those vegetables also.  There are states, not just cities, that cannot answer those questions which you or I might like to ask them.  Ah, interesting??

There are many ways to make changes in a school system or your own kitchen that will be life long and fun.

Ryan, Jamie, want some help?? You know where to find me. I am up for the challenge, are you?? I don’t do fast fixes, I do life changes.  And as far as your budget?  my goodness, I am surprised at you, ask your mother, she should have seen that coming, ………

If anyone else needs help, positive comments only………..