Stroke Prevention Quotes

As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.

Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion: wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more...

Wasted strokes, like missed deadlines, are preventable and costly.

A seemingly simple task like taking a bath or wearing a condom feels like multitasking to someone who suffers from hemiplegia or has only one hand.

During deep NREM sleep specifically, the brain communicates a calming signal to the fight-or-flight sympathetic branch of the body’s nervous system, and does so for long durations of the night. As a result, deep sleep prevents an escalation of this physiological stress that is synonymous with increased blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, and stroke.

It is a well-known established fact throughout the many-dimensional worlds of the multiverse that most really great discoveries are owed to one brief moment of inspiration. There's a lot of spadework first, of course, but what clinches the whole thing is the sight of, say, a falling apple or a boiling kettle or the water slipping over the edge of the bath. Something goes click inside the observer's head and then everything falls into place. The shape of DNA, it is popularly said, owes its discovery to the chance sight of a spiral staircase when the scientist‘s mind was just at the right receptive temperature. Had he used the elevator, the whole science of genetics might have been a good deal different. This is thought of as somehow wonderful. It isn't. It is tragic. Little particles of inspiration sleet through the universe all the time traveling through the densest matter in the same way that a neutrino passes through a candyfloss haystack, and most of them miss. Even worse, most of the ones that hit the exact cerebral target, hit the wrong one. For example, the weird dream about a lead doughnut on a mile-high gantry, which in the right mind would have been the catalyst for the invention of repressed-gravitational electricity generation (a cheap and inexhaustible and totally non-polluting form of power which the world in question had been seeking for centuries, and for the lack of which it was plunged into a terrible and pointless war) was in fact had by a small and bewildered duck. By another stroke of bad luck, the sight of a herd of wild horses galloping through a field of wild hyacinths would have led a struggling composer to write the famous Flying God Suite, bringing succor and balm to the souls of millions, had he not been at home in bed with shingles. The inspiration thereby fell to a nearby frog, who was not in much of a position to make a startling contributing to the field of tone poetry. Many civilizations have recognized this shocking waste and tried various methods to prevent it, most of them involving enjoyable but illegal attempts to tune the mind into the right wavelength by the use of exotic herbage or yeast products. It never works properly.

After I’d told her – the mall, the taxi, Cross stroking my hair – she said, ‘Did he kiss you?’ ‘John and Martin totally would have seen that,’ I said, and as I felt myself implying the circumstances had prevented our kissing, I thought maybe this was why you told stories to other people – for how their possibilities enlarged in the retelling.

While the pathology of stroke and Alzheimer’s are different, one key factor unites them: Mounting evidence suggests that a healthy diet may help prevent them both.

But” is a three-letter stroke of genius. It keeps things in perspective. It prevents me from turning too rigid and self-righteous. It reminds me that hardly anything in life is black or white.

There’s a direct correlation between high homocysteine levels and an increased risk of heart disease and stroke.

It was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Bilbo’s experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most—which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it. Actually I may say he put on his ring early in the business, and vanished from sight, if not from all danger. A magic ring of that sort is not a complete protection in a goblin charge, nor does it stop flying arrows and wild spears; but it does help in getting out of the way, and it prevents your head from being specially chosen for a sweeping stroke by a goblin swordsman.

I have come to see that the benefits produced by eating a plant-based diet are far more diverse and impressive than any drug or surgery used in medical practice. Heart diseases, cancers, diabetes, stroke and hypertension, arthritis, cataracts, Alzheimer’s disease, impotence and all sorts of other chronic diseases can be largely prevented. These diseases, which generally occur with aging and tissue degeneration, kill the majority of us before our time.

A recent study of 150,000 Americans was able to examine the issue more thoroughly. Higher stroke rates were found among individuals sleeping six hours or less, or nine hours or more. Those at lowest risk got around seven or eight hours of sleep a night.

His mouth stroked over her face, his breath rushing across her skin in hot drifts that made her quiver. “Evie…during the past few days I’ve had nothing to do but lie in this bed and think about things that I’ve spent my entire life trying to avoid. I once told you that I wasn’t meant for a wife and family. That I wouldn’t have any interest in a child, if you…” He hesitated for a long moment. “But…the truth is…I want you to have my baby. I didn’t know how much, until I thought that I would never have the opportunity. I thought—” He broke off, a self-mocking smile touching his lips. “Damn it. I don’t know how to be a husband, or a father. But since your standards in both areas seem to be relatively low, I may have half a chance at pleasing you.” He grinned at her mock frown, then sobered. “There are many ways I can prevent you from conceiving. But if or when you ever decide that you’re ready, I want you to tell me—” Evie stopped him with her mouth. In the blazing minutes that followed, no further words were possible.

I believe this movement will prevail. I don’t mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else. Quite the opposite. I don’t tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean that the thinking that informs the movement’s goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!” In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives. My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us. If that is difficult to believe, take a winter off and calculate what it requires to create a single springtime. It’s not too late for the world’s largest institutions and corporations to join in saving the planet, but cooperation must be on the planet’s terms. The “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. All people and institutions including commerce, governments, schools, churches and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on the first principles if justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the system from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money and sense to optimize out social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. “We” means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown and copper movement. What is more harmful resides within is, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame, deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, as history of violence and greed. There is not question that the environmental movement is most critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But is actually the other way around; the only way we are going to put out this fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus. Armed with that growing realization, we can address all that is harmful externally. What will guide us is a living intelligence that creates miracles every second, carried forth by a movement with no name.

Butter was demonized and replaced with margarine, one of the most supremely stupid nutritional swap-outs in recent memory. Only much later did we discover that the supposedly healthier margarine was laden with trans fats, a really bad kind of fat created by using a kind of turkey baster to inject hydrogen atoms into a liquid (unsaturated) fat, making it more solid and giving it a longer shelf life. (Any time you read “partially hydrogenated oil” or “hydrogenated oil” in a list of ingredients, that means the food in question contains trans fats.) Unlike saturated fats from whole foods such as butter, trans fats (at least the manmade kind) actually do increase the risk for heart disease and strokes!

Commend me to them, And tell them that, to ease them of their griefs, Their fears of hostile strokes, their aches, losses, Their pangs of love, with other incident throes That nature's fragile vessel doth sustain In life's uncertain voyage, I will some kindness do them: I'll teach them to prevent wild Alcibiades' wrath. First Senator I like this well; he will return again. TIMON I have a tree, which grows here in my close, That mine own use invites me to cut down, And shortly must I fell it: tell my friends, Tell Athens, in the sequence of degree From high to low throughout, that whoso please To stop affliction, let him take his haste, Come hither, ere my tree hath felt the axe, And hang himself. I pray you, do my greeting.

EKGs frequently have normal or inconclusive findings in heart attack patients, particularly in women, so you should insist on having your levels of cardiac enzymes measured, using a blood test called high-sensitivity troponin, which checks for elevated levels of proteins that are released when muscle cells in the heart are damaged, as occurs during a heart attack.22

HOPE FOR THE FUTURE TYPE 2 DIABETES is currently the leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, amputations, heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. But it doesn’t have to be our future. The pages of The Obesity Code and The Diabetes Code contain the knowledge to reverse type 2 diabetes. This is not the end, but only the beginning. A new hope arises. A new dawn breaks.

Please,” he says. That one word is enough to get me off my bed. I’m standing in the center of our room now, hands on the waistband of my boxers. I yank and let them drop to the floor. And now he’s staring at my cock, stroking his. “What do you want?” I ask. And I need him to be specific. This is a very dangerous game we’re playing. It will probably end in disaster. But if there’s any way I can prevent that, I will.

Taking the ring from her, Sebastian slid it onto his own hand. His hands were so much larger that the circlet would only fit the tip of his smallest finger. Grasping her chin in an intractable hold, he glared into her eyes. “I’ll take your bet,” he said grimly. “I’m going to win it. And in three months, I’m going to put this back on your finger, and take you to bed, and do things to you that are outlawed in the civilized world.” Evie’s resolve did not shield her from the heart-thumping alarm that any rational woman would feel upon hearing such an ominous statement. Nor did it prevent her knees from turning to jelly as he jerked her against his body and fitted his mouth to hers. Her hands, suspended in mid-air, went to his head in a trembling butterfly descent. The texture of his hair, the locks so cool and thick on the surface, so warm and damp at the roots, was too alluring to resist. She slid her fingers into the gleaming golden layers and pulled him even closer, helplessly reveling in the urgent pressure of his mouth. Their tongues mated, slid, stroked, and with each slippery-sweet caress inside the joined cavern of their mouths, she felt a hot coiling deep in her belly… no, deeper than that… in the tightening, liquefying core where she had once taken his invading flesh. It shocked her to realize how much she wanted him there again. She whimpered as he pulled away from her, while frustration washed over them both. “You didn’t say that I couldn’t kiss you,” Sebastian said, his eyes bright with devil-fire. “I’m going to kiss you as long and as often as I like, and you’re not to utter a word of protest. That’s the concession you’ll give in return for my celibacy. Damn you.” Giving her no time either to agree or to object, he released her and strode to the door. “And now, if you’ll excuse me… I’m going to go kill Joss Bullard.

He said: “You are my son.” And I began to sob. Perhaps this is the worst any closet does to us – it prevents us from hearing the words “I love you.” These were words my parents said to me, and I trusted the love, but not the “you.” The real me was hidden, so the “you” they loved was some other, better son. But when my father claimed me – This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine – I began to suspect that no matter what I was, he would be next to me, the silent economist stroking my hair.

A systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at all the best randomized clinical trials evaluating the effects of omega-3 fats on life span, cardiac death, sudden death, heart attack, and stroke. These included studies not only on fish oil supplements but also studies on the effects of advising people to eat more oily fish. What did they find? Overall, the researchers found no protective benefit for overall mortality, heart disease mortality, sudden cardiac death, heart attack, or stroke.12

So should patients born under Libra and Gemini be deprived of treatment? You would say no, of course, and that would make you wiser than many in the medical profession: the CCSG trial found that aspirin was effective at preventing stroke and death in men, but not in women;30 as a result, women were undertreated for a decade, until further trials and overviews showed a benefit. That is just one of many subgroup analyses that have misled us in medicine, often incorrectly identifying subgroups of people who wouldn’t benefit from a treatment that was usually effective. So, for example, we thought the hormone-blocking drug tamoxifen was no good for treating breast cancer in women if they were younger than fifty (we were wrong). We thought clotbusting drugs were ineffective, or even harmful, when treating heart attacks in people who’d already had a heart attack (we were wrong). We thought drugs called ‘ACE inhibitors’ stopped reducing the death rate in heart failure patients if they were also on aspirin (we were wrong). Unusually, none of these findings was driven by financial avarice: they were driven by ambition, perhaps; excitement at new findings, certainly; ignorance of the risks of subgroup analysis; and, of course, chance.

The researchers tried a clever tactic to overcome this problem. They created a number of recipes for common foods including muffins and pasta in which they could disguise placebo ingredients like bran and molasses to match the texture and color of the flax-laden foods. This way, they could randomize people into two groups and secretly introduce tablespoons of daily ground flaxseeds into the diets of half the participants to see if it made any difference. After six months, those who ate the placebo foods started out hypertensive and stayed hypertensive, despite the fact that many of them were on a variety of blood pressure pills. On average, they started the study at 155/81 and ended it at 158/81. What about the hypertensives who were unknowingly eating flaxseeds every day? Their blood pressure dropped from 158/82 down to 143/75. A seven-point drop in diastolic blood pressure may not sound like a lot, but that would be expected to result in 46 percent fewer strokes and 29 percent less heart disease over time.125 How does that result compare with taking drugs? The flaxseeds managed to drop subjects’ systolic and diastolic blood pressure by up to fifteen and seven points, respectively. Compare that result to the effect of powerful antihypertensive drugs, such as calcium-channel blockers (for example, Norvasc, Cardizem, Procardia), which have been found to reduce blood pressure by only eight and three points, respectively, or to ACE inhibitors (such as Vasotec, Lotensin, Zestril, Altace), which drop patients’ blood pressure by only five and two points, respectively.126 Ground flaxseeds may work two to three times better than these medicines, and they have only good side effects. In addition to their anticancer properties, flaxseeds have been demonstrated in clinical studies to help control cholesterol, triglyceride, and blood sugar levels; reduce inflammation, and successfully treat constipation.127 Hibiscus Tea for Hypertension Hibiscus tea, derived from the flower of the same name, is also known as roselle, sorrel, jamaica, or sour tea. With

This tragic sequence helps explain the fearful loss of cognition in coronary artery bypass patients.3 But neuroradiologists also report that using magnetic resonance imaging, they can detect little white spots in the brains of Americans starting at about age fifty. These spots represent small, asymptomatic strokes (see Figures 18 and 19 in insert). The brain has so much reserve capacity that at first these tiny strokes cause no trouble. But, if they continue, they begin to cause memory loss and, ultimately, crippling dementia. In fact, one recently reported study found that the presence of these “silent brain infarcts” more than doubles the risk of dementia.4 We now believe, in fact, that at least half of all senile mental impairment is caused by vascular injury to the brain.

Because you deserve a duke, damn it!” A troubled expression furrowed his brow. “You deserve a man who can give you the moon. I can’t. I can give you a decent home in a decent part of town with decent people, but you…” His voice grew choked. “You’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. It destroys me to think of what you’ll have to give up to be with me.” “I told you before-I don’t care!” she said hotly. “Why can’t you believe me?” He hesitated a long moment. “The truth?” “Always.” “Because I can’t imagine why you’d want me when you have men of rank and riches at your fingertips.” She gave a rueful laugh. “You grossly exaggerate my charms, but I can’t complain. It’s one of many things I adore about you-that you see a better version of me than I ever could.” Remembering the wonderful words he’d said last night when she’d been so self-conscious, she left the bed to walk up to him. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?” His wary gaze locked with hers. “Proper Pinter. Proud Pinter.” “Yes, but that’s just who you show to the world to protect yourself.” She reached up to stroke his cheek, reveling in the ragged breath that escaped him. “When you let down your guard, however, I see Jackson-who ferrets out the truth, no matter how hard. Who risks his own life to protect the weak. Who’d sacrifice anything to prevent me from having to sacrifice everything.” Catching her hand, he halted its path. “You see a saint,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not a saint; I’m a man with needs and desires and a great many rough edges.” “I like your rough edges,” she said with a soft smile. “If I’d really wanted a man of rank and riches, I probably would have married long ago. I always told myself I couldn’t marry because no one wanted me, but the truth was, I didn’t want any of them.” She fingered a lock of hair. “Apparently I was waiting for you, rough edges and all.” His eyes turned hot with wanting. Drawing her hand to his lips, he kissed the palm so tenderly that her heart leapt into her throat. When he lifted his head, he said, “Then marry me, rough edges and all.” She swallowed. “That’s what you say now, when we’re alone and you’re caught up in-“ He covered her mouth with his, kissing her so fervently that she turned into a puddle of mush. Blast him-he always did that, too, when they were alone; it was when they were with others that he reconsidered their being together forever. And he still had said nothing of live. “That’s enough of that,” she warned, drawing back from him. “Until you make a proper proposal, before my family, you’re not sharing my bed.” “Sweeting-“ “Don’t you ‘sweeting’ me, Jackson Pinter.” She edged away from him. “I want Proper Pinter back now.” A mocking smile crossed his lips. “Sorry, love. I threw him out when I saw how he was mucking up my private life.” Love? No, she wouldn’t let that soften her. Not until she was sure he wouldn’t turn cold later. “You told Oliver you’d behave like a gentleman.” “To hell with your brother.” He stalked her with clear intent. Even as she darted behind a chair to avoid him, excitement tore through her. “Aren’t you still worried Gran will cut me off, and you’ll be saddled with a spoiled wife and not enough money to please her?” “To hell with your grandmother, too. For that matter, to hell with the money.” He tossed the chair aside as if it were so much kindling; it clattered across the floor. “It’s you I want.

Where is all that marvelous respect a man as powerful as myself deserves?” His thumb stroked across her full lower lip, a sensuous caress. Raven closed her eyes against the inevitable. She wanted to cry. Her feelings for him were so strong, her throat was aching and burning. Mikhail brushed her eyes with his lips, tasted a tear, sought refuge in the sweetness of her mouth. “Why would you cry for me, Raven?” he murmured against her throat. “Is it that you still want to run from me? Am I really so terrible? I would never allow any living creature, man or beast, to harm you, not if it was in my power to prevent it. I thought our hearts and minds were in the same place. Am I wrong? Is it that you no longer want me?” His words tore at her heart. “It isn’t that, Mikhail, never that, I’m just so confused at all of this,” she said quickly, afraid she had hurt him. She caressed his face with her fingertips, reverence in her touch. “You are the most fascinating man I’ve ever known. I feel as if I belong here with you, as though I know you completely. It’s impossible in the short time we’ve been together. I know if I could put some distance between us, I could think more clearly. Everything happened so fast. It’s as though I’m obsessed with you. I don’t want to make a mistake that will cause both of us pain.” His hand framed her cheek. “It would cause me great pain if you were to desert me, to leave me alone again after I have found you.” “I just want some time, Mikhail, to think things through. It’s frightening, the way I am about you. I think about you every minute. I want to touch you, just to know I can, to feel you beneath my fingers. It’s as if you crawled into my head and my heart, even my body, and I can’t get you out.” She made it a confession, her head bent, ashamed. Mikhail took her hand, tugged at her to get her walking with him. “This is the way of my people, the way we feel about a mate. It is not always comfortable, is it? We are passionate by nature, highly sexual, and very possessive. The things that you are feeling, I feel too.

It is important for Americans to recognize that, despite all of the fancy gimmicks and perceived power of modern medicine, the largest explosion of preventable, chronic diseases ever in the history of mankind has occurred as a direct result of modern medicine and scientific reductionism. Modern medicine is not an antidote for the incredible harms caused by the modern food industry, but it is an effective distraction.

Cardiovascular disease affects women as well as men. Women actually outnumber men in the prevalence of cases of cardiovascular disease and in related deaths, with about 53 percent of the deaths from cardiovascular disease occurring in women. Although studies repeatedly show that women are much more anxious about developing breast cancer than cardiovascular disease, one of every 2.4 deaths in women is caused by cardiovascular disease, compared to one in thirty from breast cancer.

the number-one warning sign of IR: a waist measurement greater than 40 inches for a man and 35 inches for a woman.

CALCIUM-SCORE SCREENING HEART SCAN This is a test used to detect calcium deposits found in atherosclerotic plaque in the coronary arteries. Computerized tomography methods, such as this one, are the most effective way to detect early coronary calcification from atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), before symptoms develop. The amount of coronary calcium has been recognized as a powerful independent predictor of future heart problems and is useful in making lifestyle changes and guiding preventive care to reduce their risk. The doctor uses the calcium-score screening heart scan to evaluate risk for future coronary artery disease. If calcium is present, the computer will create a calcium "score" that estimates the extent of coronary artery disease based on the number and density of calcified coronary plaques in the coronary arteries. Absence of calcium is considered a "negative" exam. However, there are certain forms of coronary disease, such as "soft plaque" atherosclerosis, that escape detection during this CT scan. It is important to remember that a negative test suggests a low risk, but does not exclude the possibility of a future cardiac event, such as a heart attack. The calcium-score screening heart scan takes only a few minutes to perform and does not need injection of intravenous iodine.

GLOBAL RISK SCORE (GRS) An answer based test score that looks at a person’s risk factors. The GRS weighs risk factors in importance and then gives a percentage risk of the patient developing heart disease or having a heart attack within the next 10 years. Goal values Less than 10% = low risk 10% to 20% = intermediate risk Greater than 20% = high risk GRS information is important to develop a plan to improve your cardiovascular health. Call the Preventive Cardiology and Rehabilitation Program at 216-444-9353 or toll-free 800-2232273, ext. 49353 to be evaluated and get started … Monday thru Friday, Eastern Standard Time.

HS-CRP, combined with a Global Risk Evaluation (GRE) can provide an overall view of cardiovascular risk. This information is important to develop a plan to improve your cardiovascular health. Call the Preventive Cardiology and Rehabilitation Program at 216-444-9353 or toll-free 800-2232273, ext. 49353 to be evaluated and get started … Monday thru Friday, Eastern Standard Time.

People who once ate vegetarian diets but then started to eat meat at least once a week experienced a 146 percent increase in odds of heart disease, a 152 percent increase in stroke, a 166 percent increase in diabetes, and a 231 percent increase in odds for weight gain.

The poor health outcomes of the world’s wealthiest nation are often presented as a mystery, yet their root causes are hiding in plain sight: these disparities are driven by inequality and discrimination, which lead to poor health in people of color in the United States, particularly African Americans. The health outcomes of Black Americans are by several measures on par with people living in far poorer nations. At every stage of life, Blacks have poorer health outcomes than whites and, in most cases, than other ethnic groups. Black babies are more than twice as likely as white babies to die at birth or in the first year of life—a racial gap that adds up to thousands of lost lives every year. Blacks in every age-group under sixty-five have significantly higher death rates than whites. Black life expectancy at birth is several years lower than that of whites. African Americans have elevated death rates from conditions such as diabetes, stroke, and heart disease that among whites are found more commonly at older ages. In a phrase, African Americans “live sicker and die quicker,” which, if you estimate years of life lost because of deaths that could’ve been prevented, adds up to tens of thousands of lost years.

Since that Cochrane Collaboration analysis, the results of the largest, most expensive diet trial ever done have been published. That trial tested the benefits and risks of eating less fat and less saturated fat for women, who were rarely included in any of the earlier trials. This was the Women’s Health Initiative that I mentioned back in chapter two. Forty-nine thousand middle-aged women were enrolled in the diet study, and twenty thousand of them were chosen at random to eat low-fat, low-saturated-fat diets, with less meat, more vegetables, more fresh fruits, and more whole grains. (This trial was funded not because the authorities were willing to doubt publicly that eating less fat would prevent heart disease but because previous trials had not included women, and the authorities were being pressured to take women’s health as seriously as they did men’s.) After six years on the diet, these women had cut both their total fat consumption and their saturated-fat consumption by a quarter, lowering their total cholesterol and their LDL cholesterol below (albeit only very slightly below) that of the other twenty-nine thousand women, who were eating whatever they wanted and yet their low-fat diet, as the final reports stated, had no beneficial effect on heart disease, stroke, breast cancer, colon cancer, or, for that matter, fat accumulation. Eating less total fat and saturated fat, and replacing the fatty foods with fruits and vegetables and whole grains, had no observable beneficial effect at all.

First, I am thrilled that paramedics are finally getting the respect they deserve for being the professionals they can be. The scope of practice is expanding, and patient care modalities are improving, seemingly by the minute. Patient outcomes are also improving as a result, and EMS is passing through puberty and forging into adulthood. On the other hand, autonomy in the hands of the “lesser-motivated,” can be a very dangerous thing. You know as well as I do that there are still plenty of providers who operate from a subjective, complacent, and downright lazy place. Combined with the ever-expanding autonomy, that provider just became more dangerous than he or she ever has been – to the patients and to you. Autonomy in patient care places more pressure for excellence on the provider charged with delivering it, and also on the partner and crew members on scene. Since the base hospital is not involved like it once was, they are likewise less responsible for the errors and omissions of the medics on the scene. Now more than ever, crew members are being held to answer for the mistakes and follies of their coworkers; now more than ever, EMS providers are working without a net. What’s next? I predict (and hope) emergency medical Darwinism is going to force some painful and necessary changes. First, increasing autonomy is going to result in the better and best providing superior patient care. More personal ownership of the results is going to manifest in outcomes such as increased cardiac arrest survival rates, faster and more complete stroke recovery, and significantly better outcomes for STEMI patients, all leading to the brass ring: EMS as a profession, not just a job. On the flip side of that coin, you will see consequences for the not-so-good and completely awful providers. There will be higher instances of licensure action, internal discipline, and wash-out. Unfortunately, all those things will stem from generally preventable negative patient outcomes. The danger for the better provider will be in the penumbra; the murky, gray area of time when providers are self-categorizing. Specifically, the better provider who is aware of the dangerously poor provider but does nothing to fix or flush him or her, is almost certain to be caught up in a bad situation caused by sloppy, complacent, or ultimately negligent patient care that should have been corrected or stopped. The answer is as simple as it is difficult. If you are reading this, it is more likely because you are one of the better, more committed, more professional providers. This transition is up to you. You must dig deep and find the strength necessary to face the issue and force the change; you have to demand more from yourself and from those around you. You must have the willingness to help those providers who want it – and respond to those who need it, but don’t want it – with tough love by showing them the door. In the end, EMS will only ever be as good as you make it. If you lay silent through its evolution, you forfeit the right to complain when it crumbles around you.

The heart is essentially a muscular pump connected to an elaborate network of branching tubes. Although there are several kinds of cardiovascular disease, almost all arise from something going wrong in either the tubes or the pump. Most problems start with the tubes, primarily the arteries that carry blood from the heart to every nook and cranny of the body. Like the pipes in a building, arteries are vulnerable to getting clogged with unwanted deposits. This hardening of the arteries, termed atherosclerosis, starts with the buildup of plaque—a gloppy mixture of fat, cholesterol, and calcium—within the walls of arteries. Plaques, however, don’t simply accumulate in arteries like crud settling in a pipe. Instead, they are dynamic, changing, growing, shifting, and sometimes breaking. They develop when white blood cells in arteries trigger inflammation by reacting to damage usually caused by a combination of high blood pressure and so-called bad cholesterol that irritates the walls of the artery. In an effort to repair the damage, white blood cells produce a foamy mixture that incorporates cholesterol and other stuff and then hardens. As plaque accumulates, arteries stiffen and narrow, sometimes preventing enough blood from flowing to the tissues and organs that need it and further driving up blood pressure. One potentially lethal scenario is when plaques block an artery completely or detach and obstruct a smaller artery elsewhere. When this happens, tissues are starved of blood (also called ischemia) and die. Plaques can also cause the artery wall to dilate, weaken, and bulge (an aneurysm) or to tear apart (a rupture), which can lead to massive bleeding (a hemorrhage). Blocked and ruptured arteries create trouble anywhere in the body, but the most vulnerable locations are the narrow coronary arteries that supply the heart muscle itself. Heart attacks, caused by blocked coronary arteries, may damage the heart’s muscle, leading to less effective pumping of blood or triggering an electrical disturbance that can stop the heart altogether. Other highly vulnerable arteries are in the brain, which cause strokes when blocked by blood clots or when they rupture and bleed. To this list of more susceptible locations we should also add the retinas, kidneys, stomach, and intestines. The most extreme consequence of coronary artery disease is a heart attack, which, if one survives, leaves behind a weakened heart unable to pump blood as effectively as before, leading to heart failure.

Patients are taught that there is no correct way to bend or lift, one doesn't need to avoid soft chairs or mattresses, corsets and collars are unnecessary, and in general the great number of admonitions and prohibitions that have become part of back pain folklore are simply without foundation, because TMS is a harmless condition, and there is nothing structurally wrong with the back. Running is not bad for the spine; weak abdominal muscles do not cause back pain; strong back muscles do not prevent back pain; it is perfectly all right to arch the back, swim the crawl or breast stroke; man was meant to walk upright (Homo sapiens and his ancestors have been doing so for somewhere between 3 and 4 million years); a short leg does not cause back pain. One could go on and on. (page 110)

Scientists have long observed that virtually all plants are highly sensitive to touch of any kind, and will change their growth accordingly. They even have a word for this phenomenon: thigmomorphogenesis. Darwin described touch sensitivity in plants in the late 1800s, but the phenomenon has been known to farmers for much longer. In traditional agricultural practices from many regions, whipping, prodding, or otherwise flagellating certain crop plants was thought to induce heartier growth, or help prevent a plague of pests. In the 1970s and ’80s, a plant physiologist in Ohio more or less confirmed this folk knowledge by stroking the stems of plants in a greenhouse each day. Mordecai Jaffe, or “Mark” to most people, found that repeatedly pestering plants made them tougher. He began his investigation by fastidiously stroking several varieties of rather ordinary plants: barley, cucumber, common bean, castor bean, and English mandrake. If he stroked a plant once, it wouldn’t change. But if he stroked them over and over, for about ten seconds once or twice a day, they would change quite a lot. The response was fast: within three minutes of his beginning to rub its stem, the plant would slow or even cease elongating, which it was otherwise doing all the time. When Jaffe stopped stroking the plant, it would begin to elongate rapidly, even faster than its normal growth rate, as if making up for lost time. In Cherokee wax bean plants, the stroked stems would grow girthier, and harden. It becomes impossible not to make jokes about this, but it was also serious business: Jaffe coined the word “thigmomorphogenesis,” and a whole new field of plant touch studies was born.

Diabetes – the physical costs Hypertension: 70% of diabetics also require medication for blood pressure. Cholesterol: 65% of diabetics require medication to reduce their cholesterol. Heart attacks: Diabetics, even when on full medication, are twice as likely to be hospitalised, crippled or die from a heart attack. Strokes: Diabetics are 1.5 times more likely to suffer a debilitating stroke. Blindness and Eye Problems: Diabetes is the number one cause of preventable blindness in the developed world. Impotence: Diabetes is also the number one cause of impotence. Dementia: Having diabetes doubles your risk of dementia. Kidney disease: Diabetes is the cause of kidney failure in half of all new cases; most people on dialysis are diabetics. Amputations: There are over 7000 diabetes-related amputations done every year in the UK and over 73,000 in the US.

attack, and stroke among 17,800 patients randomly assigned to receive either Rosuvastatin or placebo for over four years. Source: P. M. Ridker, “Rosuvastatin to Prevent Vascular Events in Men and Women with Elevated C-Reactive Protein,” New England Journal of Medicine 359 (2008): 2195–207.

In a remarkable study published recently, hundreds of children were followed for a period of twenty-four years, from junior high school to adulthood. Researchers found that low fiber intake early on was associated with stiffening of the arteries leading up to the brain—a key risk factor for stroke.

What else did her mother tell you?” Ethan asked, looking for any advantage in his task of winning her over. “That she’d call us later and give us pointers on wooing her daughter. Apparently, Naomi has something of a stubborn nature.” A snort escaped him. “I hadn’t noticed.” Javier paced the living room as Ethan stroked Naomi’s silky hair, unable to resist running his fingers through the long brown strands. “What are you thinking?” “That fate is laughing at me.” A chuckle made Ethan’s chest vibrate, causing Naomi’s head to jiggle. He cradled her head in his big palm to prevent her from falling before replying. “She’s certainly not what either of us expected, that’s for sure.” Javier shot him a dark look. “No shit, Sherlock. I mean don’t get me wrong, short and curvy works fine for me, but I always expected, if ever fate was cruel enough to curse me, she’d at least give me a woman who likes me.” “I’m sure she will in time. We took her by surprise, not to mention she’s in pain. Besides, I kind of like that she’s feisty. She’ll need it to keep up with us.” Round eyes and an open mouth met his answer. “You, my friend, are insane. One ball too many to the head I think. I mean, not only does she not want you, shouldn’t you be more pissed that it looks like she’s meant for both of us?” Ethan shrugged. “I’ll admit, I never expected to share, but if fate says that’s my lot, then at least it chose someone I could tolerate. And beat in a wrestling match if I need to. Besides, I’ll only have to share if you bother to stick around to mark her.” “Oh, I’m staying, so you can forget about keeping her for yourself,” Javier replied shooting him a dark look. “What happened to I’m not meant for monogamy?” Ethan pitched his voice mockingly. A sigh emerged from Javier’s mouth before he slumped in the chair across from him. “I haven’t thought that far ahead. It’s hard to think at all with my damned cat yammering for me to bite her. Mayhap if you were to claim her first, the need for me to do so would vanish?” The optimism in his friend’s voice made him laugh again. “Sorry, no such luck I’m afraid. From everything I’ve ever heard, once you find the one, you’re done for. The need to mark her, claim her, just gets stronger and stronger.” Already the urge to take her rode Ethan hard. It didn’t help that he held her cuddled on his lap, her sweet fragrance tickling his nose while her lush body pressed against his turgid cock.

In addition to its well-known effects on bowel health, high fiber intake appears to reduce the risk of cancers of the colon5 and breast,6 diabetes,7 heart disease,8 obesity,9 and premature death in general.10 A number of studies now show that high fiber intake may also help ward off stroke.11 Unfortunately, less than 3 percent of Americans meet the minimum daily recommendation for fiber.12 This means about 97 percent of Americans eat fiber-deficient diets.

One of the diseases antioxidant-rich foods may help prevent is stroke. Swedish researchers followed more than thirty thousand older women over a period of a dozen years and found that those who ate the most antioxidant-rich foods had the lowest stroke risk.42 Similar findings were reported in a younger cohort of men and women in Italy.43 As with lung disease,44 antioxidant supplements don’t appear to help.45 Mother Nature’s powers cannot be stuffed into a pill.

glutamate and calcium are not inherently toxic, only becoming so when there is excessive activation leading to excitatotoxicity.   This ability of magnesium to prevent excitatotoxicity is not just limited to gradual long term problems either.  Magnesium is believed to reduce the brain damage sustained during a stroke by reducing the massive amount of excitatotoxicity

Kennedy’s order gave the Treasury the power “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury”. This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly 4.3 billion dollars in U.S. notes with the inscription of “United States Note” instead of the usual “Federal Reserve Note” into circulation.[83] With the stroke of a pen, Kennedy was on his way to putting the Federal Reserve Bank out of business. If enough of these silver certificates were to come into circulation they would have eliminated the demand for Federal Reserve notes. This is because the silver certificates are backed by silver and the Federal Reserve notes are not backed by anything. Executive Order 11110 could have prevented the national debt from reaching its current level, because it would have given the government the ability to repay its debt without going to the Federal Reserve and being charged interest in order to create the new money. Executive Order 11110 gave the U.S. the ability to create its own money backed by silver.[84] With this decision the printing of the bank notes fell into the hands of the state again. Kennedy Five Dollar Notes

AMPUTATION  (AMPUTA'TION)   n.s.[amputatio, Lat.] The operation of cutting off a limb, or other part of the body, with an instrument of steel. The usual method of performing it, in the instance of a leg, is as follows. The proper part for the operation being four or five inches below the knee, the skin and flesh are first to be drawn very tight upwards, and secured from returning by a ligature two or three fingers broad: above this liagure another loose one is passed, for the gripe; which being twisted by means of a stick, may be straitened to any degree at pleasure. Then the patient being conveniently situated, and the operator placed to the inside of the limb, which is to be held by one assistant above, and another below the part designed for the operation, and the gripe sufficiently twisted, to prevent too large an hæmorrhage, the flesh is, with a stroke or two, to be separated from the bone with

Abstract: We have found that when patients with cancer are pushed off a high cliff this reduces mortality from cancer deaths by 100%. This represents an unprecedented reduction in cancer mortality, and we suggest this technique might be used to reduce cancer deaths around the world. I would follow this with my seminal study on ‘Removing the human brain to prevent strokes.

Part of the brain’s job in managing our dreams is to keep us safe, so during REM sleep, the brain shuts off neurons in our spinal cord (National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, n.d.). This renders us unable to move our muscles, which prevents us from acting out our dreams. In effect, the brain “switches off” our behavior. Some people report experiences of coming out of a dream and for a few seconds feeling “paralyzed.” That’s known as sleep paralysis, and is the brain’s way of protecting us from harming ourselves or others while we dream.

Febrile patients with head trauma, subarachnoid hemorrhage, or stroke should receive antipyretics to prevent temperature-related increases in cerebral oxygen utilization.

Lily smiled and stroked the aquiline jut of his arrogant nose. "I have married a monster. I suppose hard work is one way of preventing all the children we are likely to have if left to idleness." "Or of supporting them when they inevitably arrive. We will have to beware of planting seeds under the new moon in the future, or we will have a lively crop spilling out the walls." Cade swung from the bed and splashed in the pan that had replaced the porcelain washbowl. Amused, Lily levered herself up from the bed. "Is that how you succeeded in getting me pregnant with just one try? You planted me under a new moon?" Cade dried his face in a linen towel and came up grinning. He watched admiringly as the golden sun played across his wife's proud figure and danced through the silken strands of hair tumbling down her back. "Plowed and seeded, querida." He stopped smiling and reached to pull a stray strand of her hair over her shoulder. "Do you still regret it?" Lily tilted her head and studied his face. "I don't think I ever regretted it. I want this child, Cade. Does that seem strange?" "No." Because he wanted it too, but it was a concept Cade couldn't explain. He didn't want just any child, but he wanted this one—carried by a woman alien to anything he had ever known in his past but similar to him in so many ways. He kissed her then, not the usual kiss of lust that they shared, but a gentle kiss of understanding—and something else, but neither of them was ready to recognize it. Lily

If you’re on a statin drug like Lipitor to lower your cholesterol, you may know there’s controversy surrounding these meds. Here’s clarity: Lowering cholesterol does not, it turns out, prevent heart attacks and strokes. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. The big deal about this is that millions of people are on statins unnecessarily, and statins cause diabetes, liver damage, nervous system problems, muscle weakness, and more. Talk to your doctor about possibly getting off statins.

Pomegranates inhibit breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, and leukemia, and prevent vascular changes that promote tumor growth in lab animals.55 2. Pomegranates inhibit angiotensin-converting enzymes and naturally lower blood pressure. (Angiotensin, as you may recall, is a hormone that promotes angiogenesis.)56 3. The potent antioxidative compounds in pomegranates reverse atherosclerosis and reduce excessive blood clotting and platelet clumping, factors that can lead to heart attacks and strokes.57 4. Pomegranates have estrogen-like compounds that stimulate serotonin and estrogen receptors, improving symptoms of depression and helping build bone mass in lab animals.58 5. Pomegranates reduce tissue damage in those with kidney problems, reduce the incidence of infections, and prevent serious infections.59 6. Lastly but impressively, pomegranates improve heart health. Heart patients with severe carotid artery blockages were given a daily dose of less than an ounce of pomegranate juice for a year. Not only did their blood pressure decrease by over 20 percent, but there was a 30 percent reduction in atherosclerotic plaque.60

There’s beauty to the storm, isn’t there? Something wild and uninhibited.” “You mean dangerous,” I say. “Or is it only perceived that way? Storms renew ecosystems, enrich the soil, and help prevent fires. The calamity of a storm heals.” She leans against me, pushing herself into my bulge. “Imagine being that way: wild and unafraid, if only while the rain falls.” “A stroke of lightning,” I murmur, my hands moving around her body. “A flash, and then it’s gone.” “But what a flash it could be.” Her voice is low, hungry.

HDL is often referred to as “good” because it helps remove cholesterol from the blood vessels and carries it back to the liver for processing and elimination from the body. This process of reverse cholesterol transport can help prevent the buildup of plaque in the arteries and reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke. Therefore, high levels of HDL in the bloodstream are considered beneficial for cardiovascular health. Meanwhile, LDL (low-density lipoprotein) is often referred to as “bad” cholesterol because it can deposit cholesterol in the walls of the arteries, leading to the formation of plaque. This process, known as atherosclerosis, can narrow the arteries and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

The coast of Austria-Hungary yielded what people called cappuzzo, a leafy cabbage. It was a two-thousand-year-old grandparent of modern broccoli and cauliflower, that was neither charismatic nor particularly delicious. But something about it called to Fairchild. The people of Austria-Hungary ate it with enthusiasm, and not because it was good, but because it was there. While the villagers called it cappuzzo, the rest of the world would call it kale. And among its greatest attributes would be how simple it is to grow, sprouting in just its second season of life, and with such dense and bulky leaves that in the biggest challenge of farming it seemed to be how to make it stop growing. "The ease with which it is grown and its apparent favor among the common people this plant is worthy a trial in the Southern States," Fairchild jotted. It was prophetic, perhaps, considering his suggestion became reality. Kale's first stint of popularity came around the turn of the century, thanks to its horticultural hack: it drew salt into its body, preventing the mineralization of soil. Its next break came from its ornamental elegance---bunches of white, purple, or pink leaves that would enliven a drab garden. And then for decades, kale kept a low profile, its biggest consumers restaurants and caterers who used the cheap, bushy leaves to decorate their salad bars. Kale's final stroke of luck came sometime in the 1990s when chemists discovered it had more iron than beef, and more calcium, iron, and vitamin K than almost anything else that sprouts from soil. That was enough for it to enter the big leagues of nutrition, which invited public relations campaigns, celebrity endorsements, and morning-show cooking segments. American chefs experimented with the leaves in stews and soups, and when baked, as a substitute for potato chips. Eventually, medical researchers began to use it to counter words like "obesity," "diabetes," and "cancer." One imagines kale, a lifetime spent unnoticed, waking up one day to find itself captain of the football team.

The Buddha told his disciples the following fable: “Once upon a time, a clever king invited several people blind from birth to visit the palace. He brought out an elephant and asked them to touch it and then describe what the elephant was like. The blind man who rubbed its legs said that the elephant was like the pillars of a house. The man who stroked its tail said the elephant was like a feather duster. The person who touched its ears said it was like a winnowing basket, and the man who touched its stomach said it was like a round barrel. The person who rubbed its head said the elephant was like a large earthenware jar, and the person who touched its tusk said the elephant was like a stick. When they sat down to discuss what the elephant was like, no one could agree with anyone else, and a very heated argument arose. “Bhikkhus, what you see and hear comprises only a small part of reality. If you take it to be the whole of reality, you will end up having a distorted picture. A person on the path must keep a humble, open heart, acknowledging that his understanding is incomplete. We should devote constant effort to study more deeply in order to make progress on the path. A follower of the Way must remain open-minded, understanding that attachment to present views as if they were absolute truth will only prevent us from realizing the truth. Humility and open-mindedness are the two conditions necessary for making progress on the path.

She’d seen his mother. Buddy set Dil on his mother’s bed, which she hadn’t used since he’d slipped a plastic bag over her head while she was watching an old Sean Connery movie twenty months before. She had only been living with him for six weeks then, but it had been six weeks too long. When he’d agreed to care for her, he’d had no idea what he was taking on. He’d figured a bit more cooking, cleaning, ironing, that kind of stuff. The reality was she pissed her bed every night, which meant he had to wash her linens and shower her each morning. Then he’d get home from work only to find she’d pissed herself again, often shitting herself too. Another shower, more laundry. Come dinner he didn’t get a break because the stroke, which had paralyzed much of her body, prevented her from feeding herself. So he’d have to pound her dinner into mush and spoon it into her mouth. In the evening she might signal she needed to use the bathroom instead of letting loose in her diaper. Nevertheless, getting her undressed, on the toilet, cleaning her up—fuck, it was easier to let her soil herself and hose her down in the shower. Needless to say, caring for her simply became too much. But killing her wasn’t the answer. Buddy knew that right after she took her last, agonized breath. Flooded with guilt at what he’d done, he began talking to her, apologizing to her, changing her, bathing her, all the old routines. When her stench became overpowering, he removed her lungs, stomach, liver, intestines, heart, and brain, and treated her body with salt for forty days until no moisture remained. Then he filled the cavities with sawdust from a local

A meta-analysis of over six hundred thousand adults found that overwork is associated with increased risk for heart attacks and strokes.

disease76 375,000 2. Lung diseases (lung cancer,77 COPD, and asthma78) 296,000 3. You’ll be surprised! (see chapter 15) 225,000 4. Brain diseases (stroke79 and Alzheimer’s80) 214,000 5. Digestive cancers (colorectal, pancreatic, and esophageal)81 106,000 6. Infections (respiratory and blood)82 95,000 7. Diabetes83 76,000 8. High blood pressure84 65,000 9. Liver disease (cirrhosis and cancer)85 60,000 10. Blood cancers (leukemia, lymphoma, and myeloma)86 56,000 11. Kidney disease87 47,000 12. Breast cancer88 41,000 13. Suicide89 41,000 14. Prostate cancer90 28,000 15. Parkinson’s disease91 25,000

Benny Cooperman detective novels. After suffering a stroke, Engel developed alexia sine agraphia in 2000, a condition that prevented him from reading without great effort. This, however, did not inhibit his ability to write, and he later penned a memoir about the experience and his recovery called The Man Who Forgot How to Read. Engel is a founder of Crime Writers of Canada

CV inflammation and soft plaque formation are strongly correlated to heart attack and stroke.

Vitamin C: Dr. Ignarro’s Cardiovascular RDA 500 mg of vitamin C supplement daily

Vitamin E: Dr. Ignarro’s Cardiovascular RDA 200 IU of vitamin E supplement daily

Folic Acid (Vitamin B9):Dr. Ignarro’s Cardiovascular RDA 400 to 800 meg of folic acid supplement daily

Alpha Lipoic Acid (ALA): Dr. Ignarro’s Cardiovascular RDA 10 mg of alpha lipoic acid supplement daily

arginine 4–6 g (4000–6000 mg) per day L-citruliine 200–1000 mg per day Vitamin C 500 mg per day Vitamin E (alpha-tocopherol) 200 IU per day Folic acid (Vitamin B9) 400–800 meg per day Alpha lipoic acid 10 mg per day These supplements can be taken with or without food.

This powdered supplement, called Nite-works, is the only product I am aware of on the market with the proper amounts of L-arginine and L-citrulline, thereby enabling the full synergistic effects of the Say Yes to NO program.

I have found that by including the synergistic partner L-citrulline, your ability to boost NO production is greatly enhanced over the effects of L-arginine alone.

My research shows that L-arginine in doses smaller than 4 to 6 grams produces almost zero increase in NO, so it is in essence an “all or nothing” proposition—you must receive the full dose of L-arginine.

It is the synergy between the L-arginine (in a large enough dose), the L-citrulline, and the key antioxidants that creates dramatic increases in your body’s nitric oxide production.

L-ARGININE SUPPLEMENT DOSAGE Option 1: Once a day, before bedtime: 4–6 grams a day (4–6 1000 mg L-arginine tablets) Option 2: Twice a day, in the morning and before bedtime: 2–3 grams in the morning (2–3 1000 mg L-arginine tablets) 2–3 grams before bedtime (2–3

It is best to take L-arginine just before retiring for the night. Our vascular endothelial

1000 mg L-arginine tablets)

The nutrients I recommend in NO More Heart Disease, including L-arginine, L-citrulline, and a host of heart-healthy foods, are naturally occurring and generally non-toxic at even very high levels.

We are rebelling against the problems of modern medicine and I am pleased to be a leader in this revolution. We rebel against the many diseases of the body and mind caused by our diet; we can prevent or reverse these diseases if we understand that our foods and beverages are major causes of the diseases that leave us so debilitated.

Yet it had not always been like this, the ancient whale remembered. Once, he had a golden master who had wooed him with flute song. Then his master had used a conch shell to bray his commands to the whale over long distances. As their communication grew so did their understanding and love of each other. Although the young whale had then been almost twelve metres long, his golden master had begun to swim with him in the sea. Then, one day, his master impetuously mounted him and became the whale rider. In ecstasy the young male had sped out to deep water and, not hearing the cries of fear from his master, had suddenly sounded in a steep accelerated dive, his tail stroking the sky. In that first sounding he had almost killed the one other creature he loved. Reminiscing like this the ancient bull whale began to cry his grief in sound ribbons of overwhelming sorrow. Nothing that the elderly females could do would stop his sadness. When the younger males reported a man-sighting on the horizon it took all their strength of reasoning to prevent their leader from arrowing out towards the source of danger. Indeed, only after great coaxing were they able to persuade him to lead them to the underwater sanctuary. Even so, they knew with a sense of inevitability that the old one had already begun to sound to the source of his sadness and into the disturbing dreams of his youth.

minimize stroke risk by eating a minimum of 25 grams a day of soluble fiber (fiber that dissolves in water, typically found in beans, oats, nuts, and berries) and 47 daily grams of insoluble fiber (fiber that does not dissolve in water, found primarily in whole grains, such as brown rice and whole wheat).

thousand older women over a period of a dozen years and found that those who ate the most antioxidant-rich foods had the lowest stroke risk.42 Similar findings were reported in a younger cohort of men and women in Italy.43 As with lung disease,44 antioxidant supplements don’t appear to help.45 Mother Nature’s powers cannot be stuffed into a pill. Knowing this, scientists set out to find the most

Jack pulls out the chair next to Lillian and as he sits, she feels his foot settle beside her own, a light but insistent pressure brushing against her heel. Joan teases him briefly on his newfound status as village heartthrob and engages him in a conversation about his art, but as soon as her attention is diverted by the arrival of others from the village, Jack slides his own hand beneath the table and strokes the soft part of Lillian's wrist where it rises out of her glove. "You look beautiful," he murmurs. She jumps at his touch, the words of the fortune-teller echoing in her mind. Someone is watching. "Don't," she says. "Not here." He has an intense way of looking at her, the undercurrent of a smile hidden in his dark grey eyes, the slightly predatory way his gaze sweeps over her that brings a flush to her skin as she remembers the intimate things he did to her the night before; her hands gripping the bedhead, the way she had bitten down on there back of her hand to prevent herself from crying out. It's agony not to be able to touch him. To hell with virtue and propriety; all she wants to do is seize his hand and drag him away from prying eyes and idle gossip and those pretty girls, back to Cloudesley, back to the privacy of her bedroom.

People who feel safe and meaningfully connected with others have little reason to squander their lives doing drugs or staring numbly at television; they don’t feel compelled to stuff themselves with carbohydrates or assault their fellow human beings. However, if nothing they do seems to make a difference, they feel trapped and become susceptible to the lure of pills, gang leaders, extremist religions, or violent political movements—anybody and anything that promises relief. As the ACE study has shown, child abuse and neglect is the single most preventable cause of mental illness, the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse, and a significant contributor to leading causes of death such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, stroke, and suicide.

talk a lot about a ketogenic diet in this book because of the miraculous health benefits it provides. This is a diet that helps shift your body’s metabolic engine from burning carbohydrates to burning fats. Interestingly, the cells of your body have the metabolic flexibility to adapt from using glucose for fuel to using ketones, which are a byproduct of breaking down fats. We will talk about this more in the cancer section of this book, but cancer cells do not have this metabolic flexibility to use fat as energy. They require glucose to thrive, which makes a ketogenic diet so effective for treating and preventing cancer.   A ketogenic diet calls for minimizing carbohydrates and replacing them with healthy fats and moderate amounts of high-quality protein. A ketogenic diet requires that roughly 50 to 70 percent of your food intake come from healthy fats, such as avocado, coconut oil, grass-fed butter, organic pasture raised eggs, and raw nuts. This diet will also help optimize your weight and prevent virtually all chronic degenerative diseases. Because you are minimizing carbs and replacing them with healthy fats, your body will shift from burning carbs as your primary fuel to burning fat.   Dr. Peter Attia, a Stanford University trained physician specializing in metabolic science, applied the ketogenic diet to his lifestyle to see what would happen. He essentially used himself as a lab rat and received incredible results. Although he was an active and fit guy, he always had a tendency toward metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions – increased blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess body fat around the waist, and abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels – that occur together, increasing your risk of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. He decided to experiment with the ketogenic diet and see if it could improve his overall health status.

Multiculturalism is like having legs that want to walk in opposite directions, or having one hand that wants to slap your face and another that wants to stroke your face, or having two warring hemispheres of the brain, with completely different aims. It cannot work. A single monoculturalism is just as disastrous. It prevents change. What is required is a diverse monoculture ... a single system that can express itself in myriad different ways. Multiculturalism means trying to sustain different, competing systems and pretending they belong to the same system and are all working for the common good. They don’t and they aren’t. This is the central lie of multiculturalism, and liberalism in general.

Even vegetarians can suffer high rates of chronic disease, though, if they eat a lot of processed foods. Take India, for example. This country’s rates of diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and stroke have increased far faster than might have been expected given its relatively small increase in per capita meat consumption. This has been blamed on the decreasing “whole plant food content of their diet,” including a shift from brown rice to white and the substitution of other refined carbohydrates, packaged snacks, and fast-food products for India’s traditional staples of lentils, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.40

To isolate the effects of different dietary components, researchers can follow the diets and diseases of large groups of defined individuals over time. Take meat, for example. To see what effect an increase in meat consumption might have on disease rates, researchers studied lapsed vegetarians. People who once ate vegetarian diets but then started to eat meat at least once a week experienced a 146 percent increase in odds of heart disease, a 152 percent increase in stroke, a 166 percent increase in diabetes, and a 231 percent increase in odds for weight gain. During the twelve years after the transition from vegetarian to omnivore, meat-eating was associated with a 3.6 year decrease in life expectancy

Where is all that marvelous respect a man as powerful as myself deserves?” His thumb stroked across her full lower lip, a sensuous caress. Raven closed her eyes against the inevitable. She wanted to cry. Her feelings for him were so strong, her throat was aching and burning. Mikhail brushed her eyes with his lips, tasted a tear, sought refuge in the sweetness of her mouth. “Why would you cry for me, Raven?” he murmured against her throat. “Is it that you still want to run from me? Am I really so terrible? I would never allow any living creature, man or beast, to harm you, not if it was in my power to prevent it. I thought our hearts and minds were in the same place. Am I wrong? Is it that you no longer want me?

He was taking her breath away with his absent, leisurely exploration of her body. It was more than physical; she felt him inside her, admiring her, even as he wanted to force her compliance to his will. She felt him in her body, stroking her mind, caressing her heart. She sensed his feelings for her growing and growing until they consumed him. Mikhail sighed softly. “I am never going to get anywhere with you, am I? You have a way of disarming me. I am the leader of my people, Raven. I cannot have this. I have no choice but to resort to orders. I cannot have defiance from my own woman.” Her eyebrows flew up. “Orders?” she echoed. “You think you’ll give me orders?” “Absolutely. It is the only recourse open to me that prevents me from being a laughingstock among my people. Unless, of course, you have a better idea.” There was laughter in the depths of his eyes. “How do I divorce you?” “I am sorry, little one,” he answered blandly. “I do not understand this word. In my language, please.” “You know very well you speak English just as well as you speak your language,” she said. “How does one lifemate split from the other? Separate. Break apart. No longer together.” The glint of humor in the depths of his eyes deepened to total amusement. “There is no such thing, and if there was, Raven”--he bent very close, his breath fanning her cheek--“I would never allow you to go.” Raven looked innocent and wide-eyed. The hand on her breast, his thumb stroking her nipple, was making it hard to breathe. “I was only trying to help you. Royalty has so few options these days. You have to worry about what the public thinks. You can rely on me, Mikhail, to help you ponder such issues.” He laughed softly, tauntingly male. “I guess I must be thankful to have such a clever lifemate.

When you design a health-insurance reimbursement system that financially rewards doctors for providing patients with more care (as opposed to better care), that’s exactly what doctors value and do. And when third-party insurers pay for patient care regardless of the outcomes, patients also assume that more care is better, even when research and data demonstrate that’s not the case. And when we pay physicians more to take care of heart attacks or strokes than to prevent them in the first place, they value emergency intervention dramatically more than disease prevention.

deaths is by counteracting a tumor’s attempts to pry open the lymphatic bars on its cage and spread throughout the body.60 So should everyone take a “baby”-strength aspirin a day? (Note that aspirin should never actually be given to infants or children.)61 No. The problem is that aspirin can cause side effects. The same blood-thinning benefit that can prevent a heart attack can also cause a hemorrhagic stroke, in which you bleed into your brain. Aspirin can also damage the lining of the digestive tract. For those who’ve already had a heart attack and continue

What do you think of Raven?” “I thought we had to be quiet.” Shea was looking in every direction for bats. “The bats know we are here, Shea, but there is no need to fear them. I will keep them away from you.” He spoke calmly as if it was an everyday occurrence to control the movements of bats. His fingers curled around the nape of her neck as much in reassurance as to prevent her from fleeing. His thumb caressed her satin skin, found her pounding pulse, and stroked gently, soothingly. “Raven seems very nice, even if she’s married to another wild man like you.” She probably has lousy taste, just like me. She tacked the thought on deliberately. “What does that mean?” He tried to sound indignant, to keep her talking, to help her sustain her sense of humor. Jacques appreciated her courage and her unfailing determination to keep up her end, no matter how difficult it was on her. “It means she can’t have much sense. That man is dangerous, Jacques, even if he is your brother. And the healer is positively scary.” “Did you think so?” “Didn’t you? He smiled and talked so gently and calmly, but did you ever look into his eyes? It’s evident he feels no emotion whatsoever.

Mechanism of Statin Drug Benefit Chapter Summary and Key Points. ·       I support the idea of statin use for high risk people, but at non-cholesterol lowering doses (low dose). · Any cardiovascular risk benefit from statins has no relationship to cholesterol reduction. ·       In addition to blockading cholesterol production, dolichols, CoQ10, selenoproteins and Rho are equally diminished by the effect of statins. · Like aspirin, statins reduce the production of the blood clotting agent thromboxane. ·       Blood levels of hs-CRP (high sensitivity C-reactive protein) — an inflammatory marker — are also reduced by statins. ·       Aspirin has shown benefit in both primary and secondary prevention of heart attacks and strokes. · Ora Shovman concluded that inflammation was the cause of atherosclerosis. · Statins show cardiovascular benefits for their anti-inflammatory effect. · Even at a very low dose of a statin, inflammation is suppressed substantially. ·       Studies are needed to see whether statin sensitive people can tolerate low dose statins without the often debilitating side effects from higher doses.

Saturated Fat Saturated fats tend to harden at room temperature; lard is an easily recognizable example. The body processes saturated fats differently from monounsaturates and polyunsatu-rates. Excess intake of saturated fats creates an elevated level of LDL (“bad”) cholesterol. By now you are familiar with the threat to cardiovascular health posed by high LDL cholesterol. It can contribute to the accumulation of fatty deposits and plaque on the arterial walls, which leads to damage to the endothelium, impairing your body’s ability to make NO.

Increased blood pressure puts a strain on the heart and can damage the sensitive blood vessels in your eyes and kidneys, cause bleeding in the brain, and even lead certain arteries to balloon and rupture. The fact that hypertension can damage so many organ systems and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke, two of our leading killers, explains why it is the number-one killer risk factor worldwide.

your body performs best when you feed it the nutrients it requires through the synergistic combination of supplements and the food you choose to eat.

The bottom line is that insulin use creates a vicious cycle that cuts years off a person’s life. Insulin both blocks cholesterol removal and delivers cholesterol to cells in the blood vessel walls, increasing the risk for heart attacks and strokes. Almost 80 percent of all deaths among diabetics are due to hardening of the arteries, particularly coronary artery disease. Many diabetics turn to their physician for guidance, but oftentimes the well-meaning doctor only worsens the problem by prescribing more insulin. The extra insulin does not just cause heart disease, weight gain, and the eventual worsening of the diabetes; as with type 1 diabetes, insulin can increase the risk of cancer as well. Type 2 diabetic patients exposed to insulin or sulfonylureas, which push the pancreas to produce more insulin, have significantly increased incidence of cancer at multiple sites.8

The bottom line is that insulin use creates a vicious cycle that cuts years off a person’s life. Insulin both blocks cholesterol removal and delivers cholesterol to cells in the blood vessel walls, increasing the risk for heart attacks and strokes. Almost 80 percent of all deaths among diabetics are due to hardening of the arteries, particularly coronary artery disease. Many diabetics turn to their physician for guidance, but oftentimes the well-meaning doctor only worsens the problem by prescribing more insulin. The extra insulin does not just cause heart disease, weight gain, and the eventual worsening of the diabetes; as with type 1 diabetes, insulin can increase the risk of cancer as well. Type 2 diabetic patients exposed to insulin or sulfonylureas, which push the pancreas to produce more insulin, have significantly increased incidence of cancer at multiple sites.

Your digestive system breaks down the carbohydrates you eat into a simple sugar called glucose, which is the primary fuel powering all the cells in your body. To get from the bloodstream into your cells, glucose requires insulin. Think of insulin as the key that unlocks the doors to your cells to allow glucose to enter. Every time you eat a meal, insulin is released by your pancreas to help shuttle the glucose into your cells. Without insulin, your cells can’t accept glucose, and, as a result, the glucose builds up in your blood. Over time, this extra sugar can damage the blood vessels throughout the body. That’s why diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart attacks, and stroke. High blood sugar can also damage your nerves, creating a condition known as neuropathy that can cause numbness, tingling, and pain. Because of the damage to their blood vessels and nerves, diabetics may also suffer from poor circulation and lack of feeling in the legs and feet, which can lead to poorly healing injuries that can, in turn, end as amputations.