Author: Serkadis

The news of the day again seems to focus on Senate Democrat’s public option as well as the politics, strong-arming and vote-counting that it has caused.

End Of COBRA Subsidy Rattles Newly Unemployed
Laura C. Trueman has spent much of her career promoting affordable health care. Now, she wishes she could find some herself. Laid off from her marketing job at a managed-care company late last year, Trueman was able to keep her health insurance thanks to a provision in the federal stimulus bill that gave furloughed workers the right to purchase their old employer-based coverage at a 65% discount. The subsidies, which last up to nine months, were designed to give workers like Trueman time to get back on their feet (Kaiser Health News).

In Health Debate, Both Sides Vie For Seniors’ Support
Nearly all seniors already have health insurance through the Medicare program, but they are among the most sought-after groups in the political struggle to pass or kill a health overhaul bill (NPR).

Centrists Unsure About Reid’s Public Option
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid’s risky decision to bring to the chamber’s floor a health-care bill containing a government insurance plan was met with skepticism by moderate Democrats, who said they still do not know whether they could support a public option on a final vote (The Washington Post).

Democrats Struggle To Find Unity On Health Plan
Democrats are still struggling to find a strategy that will let them push a health care overhaul through the Senate and fulfill President Barack Obama’s goal of signing a bill this year (The Associated Press).

Democrats Divided Over Reid Proposal For Public Option
Senate Democrats voiced deep disagreements on Tuesday over the idea of a government-run health insurance plan, suggesting that the decision by the majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, to include a public plan in major health care legislation had failed, at least initially, to unite his caucus (The New York Times).

Reid Hopes To Sway Enough Senators On ‘Public Option’
Faced with opposition from Sens. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) over inclusion of a government-run insurance program in the Senate healthcare bill, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has intensified negotiations with a handful of Democrats whose support is crucial to passing the legislation (Los Angeles Times).

Reid Doesn’t Have Health Votes – Yet
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is short of enough votes to pass a Senate healthcare bill with a government-run health insurance option with only Democratic support (The Hill).

Public Option, Private Strong-Arming By Reid
– A day after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would put a public option into the health care bill he sends to the floor, it was clear he had not yet found consensus on the legislation’s most divisive issue (The Boston Globe).

Defections Have Some Democrats Casting About For Plan B
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s appeals for party unity landed with a thud Tuesday with the very group he needs for his public-option push to pay off: centrists who hold the key to health reform (Politico).

Public Likes Public Option For Healthcare. Joe Lieberman Doesn’t.
The public generally supports the public option. This may be one big reason that Senate majority leader Harry Reid surprised many in Washington by including a proposal for government-run insurance – also known as the “public option” – in the Senate’s version of healthcare reform legislation (The Christian Science Monitor).

The Lineup: Reid’s Toughest Votes
Just after he announced Monday that the Senate Democrats’ health care bill would include a public option with an opt-out provision, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called Sen. Olympia Snowe to say he hoped she’d get behind the plan. Good luck with that. Asked Tuesday what Reid would have to change in his bill to get her vote, Snowe said: “the whole thing” (Politico).

House Dems Seek To Grab Momentum Created By Senate Public Option
House Democratic leaders on Tuesday sought to capture some of the momentum created by the inclusion of a public health insurance option by locking down as many members as possible on which public option they could support in the House healthcare bill (The Hill).

The Influence Game: Doctors’ Lobby In Tricky Spot
Does the AMA matter in the health care debate? Congress is beginning to have its doubts, despite the medical association’s deep pockets and platoons of lobbyist (The Associated Press).

Delicate Dance For 2 Lobbyists On Health Bill
One is a smooth-talking former congressman from Louisiana — “the Swamp Fox,” constituents called him — who relishes his image as a rascal, a charmer and a Cajun raconteur. The other is a fireman’s daughter from working-class Rhode Island, strait-laced and studious, who mastered the arcane world of health policy as an analyst for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. (The New York Times).

Proposed Long-Term Insurance Program Raises Questions
As congressional leaders haggle over the shape of a proposed government-run “public option” in health-care reform legislation, a quiet revolt is brewing against a different public insurance program — a plan to create government insurance for long-term care (The Washington Post).

Health Care Pools: Let Youth Jump, Or Push Them?
The rules for how health insurers use age to set premium rates vary widely from state to state. Some states require insurers to charge all residents — young and old — the same price (NPR).

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Don’t be surprised if Google’s sites and services become inaccessible to people within China.  The search giant has gotten in trouble with a newspaper called the People’s Daily, and said publication just happens to be the official newspaper of the Communist Party of China.

Not too long ago, the People’s Daily ran articles that were critical of the Google Books scanning project.  They touched on some of the same issues other people have raised, alleging copyright infringement and the like.  The trouble was that Google then stopped allowing searchers to access a portion of the newspaper’s website.

According to Liang Chen, searchers could just see a warning that stated, "This website may have malicious software, which might damage your computer."

The People’s Daily did not take kindly to this.  Chen continued, "[T]he channel posted a news story at the top of its Web page Monday, quoting a person in charge of the channel as saying that ‘Google has maliciously blocked the channel in retaliation.’"  A special, separate page was created, too.

Now, access has been restored, and Google’s chalked the malicious software warning up to an automated mistake on the part of StopBadware.org.  Still, this episode could hurt Google’s reputation in China, and it’s not at all unimaginable that the government would take action and do a little (more) censorship of its own.

Related Articles:

> French Case Over Google Books Begins

> Kai-Fu Lee Talks About Quitting Google

> Top Google China Exec To Leave

With the new effort by newspaper folks who are unable to come up with a business model to blame news aggregators with big time executives from media companies insisting that aggregators “steal” from them by sending them traffic, it’s time to brush away that myth. Take, for example, the excellent tech/social media blog ReadWriteWeb, who recently had an article about Eric Schmidt’s predictions for what the web will look like in five years. Soon afterwards, the Huffington Post “aggregated” that story and posted the opening on its own site with a link to the full article. For over a year now, we’ve been hearing mainstream publications complain about this sort of thing by the HuffPo, with the NYTimes digital boss Martin Nisenholtz complaining about this activity just last week.

But, of course, all this sort of activity does is bring in tons of traffic. The Huffington Post gets an awful lot of traffic and a link from the site drives traffic. Marshall Kirkpatrick, from RWW, noted that the single HuffPo link drove 10,000 page views in just four hours, and basically begged HuffPo to “steal” more content like that. Indeed, it’s still really difficult to understand why mainstream publications are so up in arms over other sites helping to promote their articles and send them traffic — even to the point of looking to pass laws to stop such activity.

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Imagined some sort of alternative way on how Solid Snake’s final days went? If you can’t picture it quite all too clearly, not to worry. TheFineBros o…

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Back in July, we commented on the Significant Objects project where 100 authors are writing up 100 stories involving 100 various trinkets — and then selling those stories along with the associated items on eBay for a tidy profit. (The project originally struck me as an experiment to see if the one red paperclip stunt could be mass produced in some way as a sustainable publishing business.) Now, just a few months later, Slate has teamed up with the Significant Objects folks with a contest for Slate readers to submit their own 500-word stories about a cheap tchotchke — a BBQ sauce jar bought at a thrift store for $0.75. The contest attracted over 600 stories to be judged by Slate and the Significant Objects founders, and the winner gets the honor of being picked as well as the proceeds from its eBay auction — which has a current bid (and profit) of about $20.

This contest is brilliant in that it not only highlights the concept that every product is a bundle of scarce and infinite goods, but it also demonstrates that content can be used to engage with an audience as a form of entertaining advertising. For the price of a bauble and some editorial judging, Slate connected with its fans and gathered a bit of demographic information on its readers who sent in a story (submissions had to be accompanied by an email address and location). Imagine if Slate had instead put a banner ad on its website with a form to fill out for personal information, the response rate for that would likely be much much lower. But with this contest, the cost of the BBQ jar was negligible, and Slate editors spent their time reading stories and got a peek into the creative minds of its readership. Okay, the drawback is that the submission judging process is actually not a trivial task, especially when there are more than a handful of entries (and more than a couple judges). Even Google hasn’t exactly figured out how to judge its own Project 10¹⁰⁰ contest. However, the search giant opened up the judging to let anyone vote on winners to help narrow down the selection. (And there are other examples of crowdsourced judging processes like Threadless’s tshirt designs.) So I envision the next generation of advertising contests reaching out to audiences, calling upon more volunteers, and trying more and more creative campaigns to produce scarce goods out of thin air.

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(NaturalNews) Swine flu infections have peaked out in the USA, even before drug companies could get their vaccines injected into everyone. According to CDC findings announced recently in Atlanta, one in five U.S. children have already experienced the flu this month, and most of those were likely H1N1 swine flu cases, the CDC says.

This comes from a survey of over 10,000 U.S. households conducted by the CDC.

Meanwhile, flu vaccine shipments are way behind schedule. There have been supply problems from the start, and as of right now, relatively few Americans have yet been injected with the swine flu vaccine. (Many have stood in line for hours trying to be injected, but were told to go home with the vaccine ran out.)

Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were H1N1 swine flu infections. (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/) This is a very strong indication that swine flu infections have peaked during October, 2009.

Further supporting that notion, researchers from Purdue University just published a paper in the October 15 issue of Eurosurveillance (a science journal about communicable disease) in which researchers stated that the H1N1 swine flu epidemic would peak during “week 42” (the end of October). Week 42 just passed. It’s over.

The AJC is also reporting this week that swine flu is “retreating” in Georgia, where hospital visits from the flu are markedly down (http://www.ajc.com/health/swine-flu-levels-off-174477.html) and fewer illnesses are being reported in schools, too.

Even the WHO is reporting a downward trend in many areas, saying, “In tropical areas of the world, rates of illness are generally declining, with a few exceptions. …In tropical Asia, of the countries that are reporting this week, all report decreases in respiratory disease activity.” (http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_10_23/en/index.html)

Meanwhile, even as the swine flu infection peaks out, the shortage of swine flu vaccines means few people have yet been vaccinated. The shortage is causing “chaos” in clinics across the country, news reports say, and flu vaccination events have been cancelled due to the non-arrival of expected vaccines.

And what, exactly, is causing this shortage of vaccines? According to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, they’re being caused by “production failures” at the drug manufacturing facilities.

Too little, too late
Is she serious? People are lining up to be injected with chemicals made by companies that are suffering “production failures?” If these companies can’t meet the production targets they already promised, how can we expect them to meet the safety targets they promised?

The bigger point, though, is that by the time vaccines are available for everyone, most people will have already been exposed to the H1N1 virus and therefore won’t even need a vaccine. There’s also evidence that previous exposure to seasonal flu may confer some natural immunity to H1N1, meaning that vaccines may be redundant from the start (http://www.naturalnews.com/027337_H1N1_viruses_natural_immunity.html).

Delivering vaccines to the public after the pandemic peaks and wanes is sort of like putting on your seatbelt after a head-on collision. (This metaphor assumes, just for the moment, that swine flu vaccines actually work. Even though they don’t.)

Through the coming holiday season, we’ll all get to watch the CDC, the FDA and drug companies desperately try to push vaccines onto people, most of whom are already immune to H1N1 because they were exposed during the peak of the pandemic. This will be quite entertaining to observe because you’ll get to watch health authorities in action, attempting to fabricate an emergency when the pandemic threat has already faded. To maximize vaccinations (and therefore Big Pharma revenues), they’ll need to keep pushing the pandemic fears through the winter months while hoping that no one notices the H1N1 pandemic has evaporated.

Predictably, the big push at that point will be based on the following logic: “Even if you were already exposed to H1N1, getting a vaccine shot can’t hurt. Might as well get one!”

The CDC, which once promised 150 million vaccines by mid-October has pushed its prediction to year’s end. Unless some new H1N1 mutation is released into the population by some bioterrorist group, it’s fairly obvious that the swine flu will have fizzled out by the time Christmas rolls around.

How to dispose of a hundred million doses of a useless vaccine…
So what will all these clinics do with all the millions of doses of vaccines that nobody really needs at that point? It might seem prudent to dump them down the river, except for the fact that their chemical additives and preservatives make many vaccines qualify as “hazardous waste” according to EPA regulations. It’s illegal to toss them into rivers or even dump them down the drain… it’s perfectly legal, though, to inject them into the body of a six-year-old.

Why don’t they just save the vaccines for next year? They’ll be useless, of course, but no more useless than they already are this year. Just save up all the vials and unleash another swine flu scare next fall to get rid of the inventory! (Don’t laugh. These people might actually take the idea seriously…)

You gotta love the pharmaceutical industry. After forty years of research into cancer (and tens of billions of dollars spent on it), they have yet to find a cure for any cancer at all. And with the swine flu fiasco, they almost managed to come up with a vaccine, but the human immune system — combined with a nation full of sneezers and spreaders — beat them to it.

It must really be depressing to wake up one day as a pharmaceutical company executive and realize you’re irrelevant… and that your “lifesaving” products are obsolete before they even hit the streets. Of course, the ridiculously high pay might make up for some of that, and if you get really depressed, you can always take your own company’s pills if you’re willing to brave the suicide risk. But in the end, the simple fact is that human beings would be better off of the drug companies didn’t exist.

The fact that H1N1 swine flu has already peaked out before the bulk of the vaccine shipments have even arrived proves, once again, how utterly pathetic and medically useless flu vaccines are in the first place. There is nothing a flu vaccine can do that simple vitamin D can’t do better, and the sad truth is that the entire flu vaccine industry is built on medical quackery and marketing propaganda.

Sources for this story include:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9BG9NOG0&show_article=1

The CDC weekly flu update
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/

Washington Times
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/20/study-swine-flu-vaccine-too-late-to-help-most/

The Examiner
http://www.examiner.com/x-27581-H1N1-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m10d22-H1N1-vaccine-shortage-as-flu-cases-are-rapidly-increasing

US News
http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2009/10/22/production-problems-plague-delivery-of-swine-flu.html

CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/23/h1n1.vaccines/

(NaturalNews) The yellowish orange Indian spice turmeric, used to flavor curries, contains a remarkable phytochemical known as curcumin — and this natural substance is the target of feverish research across a spectrum of medical disciplines. The reason? Curcumin has shown remarkable promise in helping the human body in a wide variety of ways. For example, as NaturalNews has previously reported, it may prevent Alzheimer’s Disease (http://www.naturalnews.com/026861_curcumin_vitamin_D3_disease.html) and type 2 diabetes (http://www.naturalnews.com/024644.html) as well as fight breast and colorectal malignancies (http://www.naturalnews.com/020527_cancer_curcumin_brst_cancer.html). Now research just released at the 2009 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) annual meeting in San Diego shows curcumin may block nicotine-induced head and neck cancers, even in people who smoke.

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the majority of head and neck cancers start in cells that line the mucosal surfaces such as the mouth, nose, and throat. Normal mucosal cells viewed through a microscope look like scales (squamous), so head and neck cancers of this type are labeled head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC). However, some head and neck cancers begin in other types of cells; adenocarcinomas, for example, originate in glandular cells. In all, the NCI web site states, head and neck cancers account for three to five percent of cancers in the US, with about 40,000 new cases diagnosed each year. The vast majority, approximately 85 percent of these cancers, are linked to tobacco use.

In a study presented at the AAO-HNSF meeting, researchers pointed out that HNSCC is a serious problem, taking the lives of about 13,000 Americans annually. What’s more, even if the cancers are successfully treated initially, they often recur because many people continue to smoke. While nicotine itself has not been shown to directly cause cancer, the scientists noted it can trigger the process that turns normal cells into cancerous ones. So the researchers looked for a safe food compound that could be used as a bioactive agent to both prevent cancer and to also block the harmful effects of nicotine.

They investigated the effects of curcumin on malignant growths by using a variety of head and neck cancer cell lines. The HNSCC cells were pre-treated with curcumin in the laboratory and then exposed to nicotine. The results showed the curcumin stopped nicotine from activating cancer-causing cells.

Additional curcumin research is also in the news. Scientists from the Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biologicas in Mexico City published a review in the journal Liver International recently pointing out that along with documented anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-fungal, anti-bacterial and anti-cancer properties, curcumin also appears to have the ability to heal liver injuries. And researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta just reported in the journal Breast Cancer that curcumin “could provide a novel, non-toxic therapy, which could lead to improved survival for patients with triple negative breast cancer.” Currently, this type of breast cancer is only treated by traditional western medicine with cytotoxic chemotherapy — and when this treatment fails, as it often does, no other mainstream therapy is available.

For more information:
http://www.nutrientreference.com/curcumin.html
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/head-and-neck/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19811613?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

(NaturalNews) In the wide world of supplements, vitamin D is the superstar. For the last few years, this humble nutrient has been featured prominently in allopathic and alternative circles alike. It has basked in the rays of media publicity, and has survived an onslaught of scientific scrutiny. And while such widespread publicity is often good cause for skepticism in the realm of health and medicine, vitamin D appears to be the real deal. Whether we`re talking about heart disease, cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or Alzheimer`s disease, the “sunshine vitamin” delivers benefits unseen before our time (1).

Given the remarkably powerful benefits of vitamin D, many find themselves wondering how to actually go about obtaining it. We know that vitamin D is good for us, but how much do we need, and where do we get it? Most people know that sunlight is somehow involved in vitamin D production, but is sunlight alone sufficient to produce the incredible results demonstrated by recent vitamin D research? What about supplements? There are so many different preparations – with doses ranging from 400 IU to 50,000 IU – that it can get a little confusing. Are such supplements necessary, and if so, how much should we be taking?

Everyone is Different

One might suppose that this question is as easily answered as saying, “Everyone needs to spend 15 minutes in the sun every day.” Or, “Everyone needs to take x amount of vitamin D per day.” But it`s not like that. Not at all. There are a multitude of variables unique to you that determine how much vitamin D is required on a daily basis (2). And because there are so many individual variables, it really is impossible to recommend a single amount for everyone. Fortunately, however, there are many circumstantial clues to look for that will suggest whether you need to be paying better attention to your vitamin D status. Furthermore, personally optimizing your vitamin D level is fairly easy and inexpensive.

Are you at risk for vitamin D deficiency?

-How much sun exposure do you get every day?
-Where do you live? Above or below the 35 N latitude line? (3)
-What is your age? Over 40?
-Is your skin light, dark, very dark?
-Are you overweight?
-Do you have a chronic illness?

How do each of these factors affect vitamin D status?

Sun Exposure: Catching some rays each day is definitely desirable, and healthy young people can usually get the vitamin D they need from around 10 to 30 minutes of sun exposure per day – depending on their location and the time of year. Most adults in today`s modern world, however, do not even attempt to get this much sun exposure – much less achieve it. But even if they did, would it matter, or are there other variables standing in the way?

Location: Vitamin D is produced in the skin from a cholesterol derivative when we are exposed to UVB radiation from the sun. However, because of the axial tilt of the earth, the further north one lives, the less the sun`s UVB rays will be able to activate vitamin D in the skin. So sun exposure does not necessarily equal optimal vitamin D status if you`re living in the wrong location. Living down south is better, of course (south of the 35 N latitude line seems to be the best), but there is still more to consider.

Age: Say you do live close to the equator, or are significantly below the 35 N latitude line. That`s a good thing, and it probably helps. If you`re around 35-40 years old or above, however, you`re likely losing the ability to activate sufficient levels of vitamin D in your skin, even in the unlikely event that you`re getting adequate UVB sun exposure (4).

Dark Skin: What if you have dark skin? If you have a lot of pigment in your skin, this is going to shield you from the UVB radiation you need, and you`re probably deficient in vitamin D.

Weight: Vitamin D requirements are also relative to body weight. If you`re overweight, your body requires more vitamin D than if you are not overweight. If you get a lot of sun, but are on the heavy side, you`re probably still not getting enough vitamin D.

Chronic Illness: Chronically ill? Have cancer? The body demands more vitamin D when you`re sick, and is probably using it up faster than you can get it from the sun.

When one considers that many Americans are victims of not just one but many of the above drawbacks, it becomes readily obvious as to why there is such a widespread vitamin D deficiency epidemic. Not getting enough sun is bad enough, but lack of sun exposure combined with being middle-aged, overweight, and chronically ill is an absolute disaster – and it is the devastating situation that many (most?) Americans find themselves in today.

Is Sun Exposure Really Not Enough?

Yes, sun exposure is a good thing, but too often, it`s simply not sufficient to achieve the kind of levels necessary for disease prevention and treatment. This applies even in places like Hawaii, where individuals get plenty of sun exposure, and the latitude is around 21 (5, 6). The role of sunlight should not be downplayed too much, however. If you`re healthy, young, and live in a subtropical region, then you might have sufficient vitamin D levels. In fact, some young people in the subtropics who get sun exposure all day long have levels between 80-100 ng/ml. This is incredible, and it means that sun exposure really does work provided the conditions are right.*

The point being made in this article is simply that not everyone is young, not everyone is healthy, not everyone lives in Houston, and not everyone gets enough sun exposure every day. It is those people who need to supplement with vitamin D. This also happens to be most people.

Blood Testing is Crucial

How do you know if you`re getting enough vitamin D, and how much is enough? The only way to know is by testing your blood. Fortunately, testing vitamin D, as far as blood testing goes, is pretty cheap. You can set this up with your doctor, order tests online and get blood drawn at a local lab, or order a vitamin D home test kit, whereby you simply order the test, prick your finger, send in the blood, and wait for the results to come back to you.

Here are some basic guidelines:

-Make sure you are getting the right test. You must test for 25(OH)D, not 1,25(OH)D. They look similar, but 1,25(OH)D is a measure of kidney function, and is not the test you want for measuring vitamin D levels.

-Ideally, your blood level should be around 60-80 ng/ml, as this allows the body to have some vitamin D in reserve, and it duplicates the higher levels found in young, healthy individuals who spend a decent amount of time in a sun-rich environment.

-Begin taking vitamin D at least eight weeks prior to being tested. This will help you customize your dose once you receive your test results. To determine a basic, starting dose, it has been suggested, as per Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (7), that you take 1,000 IU per 25 pounds of body weight. A person who weighs 150 pounds, for instance, would take 6,000 IU per day as a starting dose (150/25 = 6. 1,000 x 6 = 6,000). Do this for at least eight weeks, and then test. Perhaps this dose will put you in the ideal range, but there`s no guarantee since we are all so different, and have unique vitamin D receptor genotypes. The idea is to hopefully get somewhere in the ballpark with this method and then tweak your daily dose once the test results come back. If your results are still suboptimal, Dr. Cannell has estimated that each 1,000 IU increase in supplemental vitamin D will generally produce a 10 ng/ml increase in the vitamin D blood level (8). For example, if you have been taking 5,000 IU per day for 8+ weeks, and your results come back at 40 ng/ml, you would want to increase your dose to at least 7,000 IU (2,000 IU = ~20 ng/ml rise in blood level) to achieve a minimum of 60 ng/ml. Again, keep in mind that this is necessarily generalized, and additional blood testing every several months is recommended to further customize the dose appropriate to you.

What Kind of Supplements Should I Use?

In order to achieve consistent and predictable results, it is important to use the proper carrier form of vitamin D supplements. The absolute best form is an oil-based vitamin D preparation. Dry preparations, like tablets and capsules, should be avoided. Vitamin D is fat soluble, and needs to be taken with fat in order to be properly absorbed – hence the oil-based recommendation.

Oil-based versus dry preparations aside, there are two common types of vitamin D: Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) and Vitamin D2 (ergocalciferol). You will need to avoid supplementing with vitamin D2 (9), which is a synthetic product made by exposing certain plants to ultraviolet radiation. D2 is not what the human body naturally uses, and compared to D3 it falls far short in terms of efficacy (of course, D2 happens to be what many vitamin D prescriptions are made of). D3 is what your body uses and prefers. No prescription necessary.

You can buy D3 in oil-based softgels, or, if you don`t like taking pills or have trouble doing so, you can get it in liquid drops.**

Summary

Vitamin D status is important year around, but whenever fall and winter are upon us, the importance of evaluating this vital nutrient is even more urgent. In summary, here are the steps you should take if you are wanting to optimize your vitamin D level:

1) Start taking oil-based vitamin D3 according to your body weight, as explained above.

2) After at least 8 weeks, have your blood tested by a good lab. There are home finger-prick test kits that are also very good.

3) Remembering that the goal should be blood levels of 60-80 ng/ml of 25(OH)D, adjust your vitamin D3 dose to achieve this level. Each 1,000 IU increase will generally lead to a 10 ng/ml increase in blood levels.

4) Recheck blood levels every several months to make sure you are still in the optimal range and taking the proper dose.

*It is beyond ironic that for quite some time now, everyone has been encouraged by the “authorities” to avoid the sun in order to keep from getting cancer, yet it is that very sun exposure that would help in avoiding cancer in the first place! “Avoid midday sun, or you`ll get melanoma!” we`re told. But melanoma is mostly triggered by UVA rays from the sun – not UVB. When is cancer-causing UVA exposure the lowest? Right around midday. When is UVB exposure the highest? Also right around midday. A high UVB:UVA ratio (high UVB and low UVA) is the best for creating vitamin D in the body, and this occurs when the sun is highest in the sky – exactly the time (ironically) that is often suggested to be avoided.

**Supplementation is not recommended for everyone. Certain conditions, such as sarcoidosis and some lymphomas, can produce excessive amounts of vitamin D, and in these instances, one should move forward cautiously under the supervision of a healthcare professional.

References

(1) (PDF) http://www.grassrootshealth.net/media/download/disease_incidence_prev_chart_101608.pdf

(2) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19302999

(3) http://www.satsig.net/maps/lat-long-finder.htm

(4) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2997282

(5) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17426097

(6) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16602611

(7) http://www.vitamindcouncil.org

(8) http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/newsletter/2008-may.shtml

(9) http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/84/4/694


About the author
David Rostollan is a graduate of Clayton College of Natural Health and works as a private natural health and wellness consultant. His primary interests and areas of focus include heart disease prevention, chronic illness support, and diet and lifestyle coaching. He can be reached through www.reforminghealth.com

One of the most spectacular booths at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo (which ended Sunday) was the one of the Yoichiro Kawaguchi lab at the University of Tokyo. Their so-called “world’s first spherical bumpy display” can be touched by viewers to feel the surface moving and morphing.

The lab says their display is perfect to present “embodied” 3D CG, but it’s actually a piece of art itself. And the thing is pretty large, too.

Just have a look at those videos I took at the expo.

Video 1:

Video 2:

 Last month, we caught word about From Software’s 3D Dot Game Heroes slated for a November release in Japan. Those of you who liked the quirky, a…

 Electronic Arts and Double Fine Productions Inc. has announced that the first downloadable content for the heavy metal inspired third person act…

Taking wi-fi hotspots to the extreme, GM has announced that certain models of their vehicles will feature Autonet, a mobile wi-fi solution built into your car and designed to provide you internet access no matter where you are. It’s only going in certain models, but you can probably get one for that old Monte Carlo if you really want to.

Installation will set you back $500, and will be installed in your new GMC, Chevy, Buick, or Cadillac, setting you back about $29 for 1 GB of service. Go over 1 GB of transfers, and you’re cut off, unless you pay for the 5 GB version. Range is limited to about 150 feet from your vehicle, which would be fine for camping, but you wouldn’t want to use it for torrenting or anything. Or you could just get a Mifi.

[via Autoblog]

Ethorad was the first of a few to write in pointing to an article over at the BBC, highlighting how old songs are finding new life and new sales after showing up in a commercial — or being used on TV during a popular event. In other words, getting your music more widely heard leads to more ways to make money. That, of course, should be obvious. And yet, why is it that so many in the industry are trying to make it so much harder to get music heard by putting up tollbooths at every stop? You have the RIAA/Soundexchange working overtime to put an additional tax on radio play and you have ASCAP/BMI trying to get fees for everything, from the 30 second previews online to ringtones. Of course, the more you put a toll on such things, the less the songs are used, the less they’re promoted and the less opportunity there is to increase sales. It’s really amazing sometimes that these big organizations don’t seem to comprehend the basic idea of a “promotion” and how that helps sales.

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Keep in mind, 100,000 approved apps doesn’t mean 100,000 GOOD apps, but according to the App Shopper, a major milestone has been hit. There are a few technicalities though.

The rules for how health insurers use age to set premium rates vary widely from state to state. Some states require insurers to charge all residents — young and old — the same price.

But in many states, anything goes. Insurers can charge older people five, six or even 10 times more for health insurance than younger adults.

In trying to draft new national standards, the key congressional committees agree that older people should pay more. But they differ widely on just how much more.

The Pool-Party Analogy

So, imagine you’re at a pool party. It’s a mix of people in the neighborhood: some older folks, some middle-aged, new parents with screaming babies, new college grads. They’re all standing around in their bathing suits — itsy-bitsy and the not-so-itsy-bitsy.

For health insurance to work best, all of those people need to get in the pool.

Of course, the older folks jump in first. They’ve got more health problems and really need the insurance. Then, the middle-aged people and parents with young kids jump in. But the younger ones? The ones who are rocking the itsy-bitsy bikinis and board shorts? How do you get them to jump in, especially when the water looks really cold?

That is exactly the problem Congress is trying to figure out.

“There’s no magic involved in how you set premiums,” says Larry Levitt, vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is a program of the foundation.)

He says the 20-somethings need to be in the pool because they help balance out the cost of insuring older people who use more medical care.

“You’re still going to have to raise enough money for premiums to pay for the health care services that people use,” he says.

The Debate Over Premiums

And just how do you raise premiums? Should younger people pay less while older people pay more? Or should we share the costs, since we’ll all be old some day?

The bill passed by the Senate Finance Committee would allow insurers to charge older adults four times the amount it charges younger people.

The House bill and the Senate health committee bill make a different choice: They would limit what insurers can charge older adults to two times the amount.

The insurance industry strongly prefers the higher 4-to-1 multiple.

Alissa Fox, senior vice president of the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, says the fear is that if you make insurance too expensive for younger adults, they won’t buy it.

“It’s very important to have significant discounts for younger people so they purchase insurance,” Fox says.

What About The 55- to 64-Year-Olds?

But the insurance industry is leaving out a critical element, says Linda Blumberg, a researcher at the Urban Institute. She says the current health overhaul bills all provide subsidies for lower income Americans, and “the young adults tend to be lower income, so they really are buffered a great deal from the full impact.”

Blumberg is worried more about middle-income older Americans — those between 55 and 64 years old. Discounts for younger people mean “surcharges” for older ones — and those older adults are less likely to qualify for a government subsidy.

“More than half of individuals in that 55- to 64-year-old age group with incomes between 400 and 500 percent of the federal poverty level would have household health care financing burdens of 20 percent,” she says.

What Blumberg’s saying is that my mom — before she retired — would have ended up spending 20 percent of her income to buy health insurance. And because she earned too much to qualify for a government subsidy, she would be — as she says — “up a creek.”

Fox says to handle that problem, Congress should give special subsidies to older, middle-income people. But Congress is already apoplectic about the cost of overhauling the health care system, and according to several sources, has little appetite for giving subsidies to people who seem to make a pretty good living — around $54,000 a year.

Individualism Vs. Social Solidarity

There are other ways of getting young people in the pool. You can push them by making the penalties for going uninsured more expensive than a basic plan. The current bills do include penalties, but many economists and the insurance industry claim they’re not high enough to be effective.

You can also require employers to provide health insurance, since the majority of uninsured young people are working. The bills differ on how strongly they do this.

However Congress decides the issue, they could look to other countries that have both universal health care and a private insurance industry. None of them, including Germany and the Netherlands, use age or any other personal characteristic to set premiums.

In the end, this seemingly technical choice of where to set age rates may come down to America’s unique belief in individualism versus the principal of social solidarity.

 

Related KHN stories:

Health Insurance: How Much More Should Older People Pay?

People Who Choose Not To Have Health Insurance

Laura C. Trueman has spent much of her career promoting affordable health care.  Now, she wishes she could find some herself. 

Laid off from her marketing job at a managed-care company late last year, Trueman was able to keep her health insurance thanks to a provision in the federal stimulus bill that gave furloughed workers the right to purchase their old employer-based coverage at a 65% discount.  The subsidies, which last up to nine months, were designed to give workers like Trueman time to get back on their feet.

Today, with the job market weak, Trueman is still without a job, and her family is bracing for an uncertain future. With the subsidies, she and her husband, a self-employed attorney were paying a manageable $460 a month for their health insurance; starting Dec. 1, the cost jumps to $1,313.   They can ill afford the increase.  They’re already having trouble making their mortgage payment, and fear they might lose their Northern Virginia home.

“It has really made a huge difference for us,” she says of the insurance assistance, adding that the higher payment “would be a real stretch.” 

Since 1985, a law known as COBRA has given laid off-workers the right to hold onto their employer-based health insurance for up to 18 months so long as they continue to pay the premiums, including payments that their employers used to make on their behalf.

In the past very few people could afford this option, but the government subsidies have changed that, and now enrollments appear to be growing sharply. Hewitt Associates, a Lincolnshire, Ill., consulting firm, recently estimated that the rate at which workers were opting for coverage under COBRA had doubled compared with pre-subsidy levels.

Although federal officials do not have figures on the number of people participating in the program, millions have been eligible. The law covers anyone laid off between Sept. 1 of last year and Dec. 31 of this year.

But with the first discounts having gone into effect March 1, many people are about to see the benefit expire, including many who remain unemployed. The Obama administration and some members of Congress are talking about  whether to extend the subsidy.  Some lawmakers aren’t enthused because of budget concerns, but backers say the subsidy is a crucial lifeline for people still hunting for jobs.

Just this week, Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Penn., introduced legislation that would extend from 9 to 15 months the total allowable time an unemployed worker and her family could receive the subsidized COBRA assistance. The legislation would also extend the subsidies to people laid off through June 30, 2010, widening the window of eligibility by six months. A third provision would give an extra six months of undiscounted COBRA coverage to people who were laid off early in 2008 before the subsidy law took effect.

“Federal subsidies for COBRA premiums are making insurance more affordable for millions of unemployed individuals and their families,” says Rep. Nita Lowey, a New York Democrat. “This is not the time for those who have lost their jobs to have to worry about an impending drastic increase in their health insurance costs. Congress should extend these subsidies so the number of uninsured does not grow even further.”

For now, the aid is helping a broad cross section of people with widely varying health and financial situations — from newly minted MBAs to older workers forced out of their jobs after exhausting their disability leave, among other reasons.

A Twitter account that tracks news and personal experiences with the subsidy has garnered scores of followers. 

Out-of-work professionals are blogging about the issue for the Wall Street Journal. 

“I can only be grateful that I am safeguarded by COBRA,” writes a furloughed operations manager at Bank of America, “and hope that I am employed and eligible for medical insurance through my new employer before my COBRA term ends.”

Close to home

My own family got seven months of discounted coverage out of the program after I lost my job as a newspaper reporter last year. The savings: a cool $6,000.  While I am still looking for permanent work, my wife was recently able to find a job with benefits.  (The discounts end when you become eligible for other insurance, either directly or through your spouse.)

People in the same boat seem to be everywhere. The firm my former company hired to administer the discount program was so flooded with work that it ended up hiring temporary workers – including one that I spoke with who had herself been recently laid off and was looking to take advantage of the subsidy.

But in many cases, the subsidies are, at best, only temporarily easing the stresses facing employees who have been laid off.

A joint study by the American Cancer Society and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that many chronically ill people could not even afford the subsidized premiums. (KHN is a program of the foundation.) Once the full COBRA premiums are reinstated, the study found, many cancer patients face becoming uninsured or forgoing needed treatments.

Indeed, people who become eligible for COBRA are generally older and sicker than the rest of the work force, and have fewer insurance options when they lose their jobs.

You can try to purchase insurance on your own, although that is generally more expensive than an employer-sponsored plan and often comes with limits on basic coverage such as maternity care or prescription drugs.   Some – but not all — states provide a backstop in the form of “high-risk pools” that offer insurance to people who can’t get coverage elsewhere because of their medical history. 

Dale Gardner, who lost his job at a high-technology firm in Virginia last November, says the subsidies have been welcome. 

At the same time, he says that he has been able to replace much of his lost income as a consultant, and that he would not mind paying full freight so long as he can keep his coverage under COBRA.  What worries him the most, he says, is that he won’t be able to find a job with benefits before his right to coverage under an even un-subsidized COBRA expires in 2010.

“Because of our health history,” he says, “coverage for my wife and I is going to be difficult to find at any price.” He says his wife has arthritis and one of his sons has asthma.

“I count myself as fortunate,” he adds. “I have been able to maintain coverage despite the fact that my family has health problems. (But) there are a lot of people who cannot even get that who have worse health problems.”

Some experts say those problems point up the need for broader-based reform of the health-care system.  The subsidies have been “a valuable first step” helping people in need keep their insurance, says Karyn Schwartz, a health-policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation.  “Providing security for all of those who need health insurance will require more comprehensive reform,” Schwartz adds.

Trueman, 51, was laid off in December 2008, after working a year at a unit of UnitedHealth Group that provides managed care for Medicaid enrollees in 20 states.  Before that, she was the executive director of the Coalition for Affordable Health Coverage, a Washington-based industry advocacy group. 

With her background in health policy, she figured getting a new job would be “relatively quick and painless.” But that has not been the case. “I have had a lot of interviews,” she says, “but just clinching the right one has not happened.”

Down the road, she worries most about a son in college who has a chronic health condition that requires medication. That could make it hard for the whole family to find insurance in the private market. Another problem is that her home state of Virginia is one that does not have a public program for “high-risk” individuals. 

Seeking to exhaust all options, she has lately been reading up on how some drug companies give discounts to the poor or uninsured, to see if her son might qualify.

Come December, when the COBRA discounts expire, “I don’t really know what we will do,” Trueman says. “I hope we have a job by then that has health insurance.”

A helmet-mounted radar unit seems redundant with the kind of crazy surveillance and intel they already have available or in the pipes, but hey, whatever helps our boys. While satellite and air-based imaging are invaluable to the modern field commander, an individual infantryman has little feedback in an more local tactical situation. So why not have an imaging system for individuals?

The Helmet Mounted Radar System (HMRS) is “a miniature, low power, near 360-degree field of view Moving Target Indicator (MTI) radar sensor that will alert the soldier to the whereabouts of a target out to at least 25 meters.” 25m isn’t very far, but providing even a hint of a nearby enemy could be the difference between life and death. The only trouble, it seems to me, is that the modern soldier is going to be so weighed down with all the gadgets and armor made to save his life that he won’t be able to maneuver.

Not to mention, this may lead to extremely scary moments like that part in Alien where the guy is in the tunnels and IT’S RIGHT BEHIND YOU AAAAAARGH

[via Gizmodo]