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Please know that I share many articles on health and well being. Not all may express my personal point of view. I personally do believe that every soul is brought into this world with a divine purpose by the Creator. I am believe every soul is borne into existence at the second of conception and I could not choose to have a pregnancy terminated.
I am also a nurse, and the right to any woman having the right to make choices about her own body and to do so in a medical facility where she will be cared for and receive health care under the proper conditions is vital.
I dread the thought of back alley butcher shops that kill and maime our young women and although for myself I have made the choice to bring my children into this world, I would not go back to the time where these butcher services were promininet.
Everyone must choose for their own life what is right and best and true.
(9/18/2006)
Native Americans Vital Part of VoteYesForLife.com Campaign Rapid City open house event emceed by Lakota Chief-in-Waiting Lyman RedCloud Sr. RAPID CITY, South Dakota--The VoteYesForLife.com campaign hosted a press conference and open house and emergency contraception availability. Deb Hoy from Democrats for Life emceed the event. Lyman RedCloud, Sr., the Pine Ridge Reservation Chief-in-Waiting, opened with a Lakota prayer. Linda Gutherie, a former Pine Ridge Reservation lay advocate, told attendees that any Native American who lives traditionally embraces the gift of life. She pointed out that the Lakota language has never included a word for abortion. She urged Native Americans to support Referred Law 6, saying, "Men, women, fathers, mothers, you can show your gratitude for life, by voting for life!" Stacey Wollman, director of the Rapid City CareNet Pregnancy Resource Center, explained Native American outreach plans. Wollman and others will tour South Dakota reservations in the Fleet for Little Feet. The luxury tour bus, donated by a businessman conceived through rape, will offer free services to women. Free pregnancy tests, education, ultrasounds and post-abortion counseling will be offered. "These programs will give the women on the reservation help, services and convenience they have never had before," Wollman said. Dr. Dan Franz, a Rapid City family practitioner, clarified that emergency contraception is widely available in South Dakota. He checked with the local hospitals, and under current protocols, EC can be offered to women. Likewise, the FDA is making the pills available over the counter, without a prescription. Dr. Franz said, “Sex crime victims require more thanmedication. It requires a holistic spectrum of care to bring these women back to full health," he said.
VoteYesForLife.com campaigns on behalf of Referred Law 6. The campaign organized in 2006 to support HB 1215, the Women’s Health and Human Life Protection Act.
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Thursday, September 21, 2006
Native Women and Health
Monday, September 18, 2006
My journey to the Native American festival
There is a wonderful new Native artist and I will enclose his link below. His work is exceptional and he is a man of few spoken words but his hands have the healers touch and ways.
My little Italian Greyhound Reddy backed up next to him and just relaxed like I have never seen. The artist put aside his wares and began a massage like I have never seen done and was able to even rub and massage Reddy's feet.
There is a big noticable difference watching someone "pet" the dog and watching this man's hands. And, if you knew Reddy, he hates his paws touched. (((He thinks you will clip his nails and he hates that.)))
This artist is Dine' from the Navajo Nation and each piece of his work tells a story, of which I was able to obtain several new pieces that he is doing not yet on his site. Please visit his site when you get the chance.
Changing habits may offer hope of living longer
Changing habits may offer hope of living longer
published September 15, 2006 12:15 am
North Carolina fared poorly in a new longevity study released Monday, ranking 40th among the 50 states. Out of 2,072 counties studied, three from North Carolina ranked among the 50 where lifespans are the shortest. Edgecombe ranked 50th from the bottom, Robeson ranked 29th and Martin ranked 25th. With the exception of South Dakota, where people in six counties have the shortest life expectancy in the United States, the counties that claimed most of the spots in the bottom 50 belonged to Southern states. Seven counties in Colorado were among those with the highest average life expectancy 81.3 years. By comparison, people living in the six South Dakota counties on the bottom have an average life expectancy of 66.6 years. Comparing states, Hawaiians live longest, an average of 80 years. People living in Mississippi have the shortest life expectancy at 73.6 years. For North Carolinians, it’s 75.8 years. As the study’s chief author, Dr. Christopher Murray, of the Harvard School of Public Health, noted, those are significant differences if you’re talking about your parent or your spouse. It can mean the difference between being around for the significant events in a grandchild’s life or having time to enjoy life after retirement.
That makes it critical that every effort be made to understand why people in North Carolina don’t live as long as people in 39 other states.
The Harvard researchers who conducted the study analyzed mortality figures provided by two federal agencies, covering the years 1982 to 2001, for county, gender, race and income. The data came from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dramatic disparities
The study found some truly dramatic disparities in longevity — more than 30 years. Longest-lived are Asian American women living in Bergen County, N.J. They have an average life expectancy of 91 years. On the other end of the scale, Native American men living in South Dakota have an average life expectancy of 58 years.
Murray said he was surprised to find that lack of health insurance explained only a small portion of the gaps.
Differences in alcohol and tobacco use, blood pressure, cholesterol and obesity seemed to drive the death rates, he said.
It will be important to pinpoint geographically defined factors, such as shared ancestry, dietary customs, local industry and propensity toward physical activity that influence those health risks, he said.
“Something very geographic is going on,” but typical analytic methods miss that part of the story because researchers tend to look at race, income and education, but rarely at place,” he said.
“Some really interesting patterns aren’t related to those usual factors.
“Perhaps it is shared ancestry or the way people make a living. The tricky part is figuring it out. It is not simply income and race.”
Other studies
In the meantime, other Harvard studies provide clues about some of the factors that contribute to longevity. In one study, jointly conducted by Harvard and the University of Athens Medical School in Athens, Greece, and released in 2003, researchers found that those who strongly adhered to a Mediterranean diet had improved longevity compared to study participants who did not follow that diet as closely. The traditional Mediterranean diet consists of an abundance of vegetables, legumes, fruits, nuts and cereals and regular use of olive oil, moderate amounts of fish and dairy products (mostly yogurt or cheese), small amounts of red meat and moderate consumption of alcohol, usually in the form of wine consumed at meals.
Another study, released in 2004, found that both weight and exercise are strong and independent predictors of premature death in women. The word “independent’’ is important here. The study found that a high level of physical activity did not eliminate the risk of premature death associated with obesity and that being lean did not counteract the risk of premature death associated with inactivity. (Those participants who exercised more than 3.5 hours per week were considered physically active.) Compared to physically active, lean women, inactive and obese women had nearly a two and half-fold increase in their risk of premature death.
Changing lifestyles
In other words, whatever other factors may be in play – genetics, environmental risks, etc. — exercise and healthy eating habits contribute to living longer than a person otherwise might. That’s reassuring because those are factors we can control.
But, more than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, which suggests that there are factors in our environment that undermine the goal of eating well and exercising.
We all know what they are — high stress jobs, too much television, an infrastructure that encourages driving everywhere instead of walking or bicycling, fast food.
It may be that further studies will prove otherwise, but the evidence so far suggests that if we’d change our lifestyles, we’d add years to our lives.
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060915/OPINION01/60914015/1194
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Thought for the day
"All the stones that are around here, each one has a language of its own. Even the earth has a song." ---- Wallace Black Elk, LAKOTA
To believe that every tree, plant and insect can talk takes an open mind. Go by yourself into nature and sit quietly. Then pick up a rock and listen to your thoughts. After a while, put that rock down and pick up another rock. Your thoughts will change. These are the voices and wisdom of the Stone People. Each one has different wisdom and they are willing to share their wisdom with you. Many of the Stone People are very old and very wise.