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Health Costs - What Can Be Done?
  • More and more people are without reasonable health care due to the rising costs of medicine, care costs, and health insurance.  Even with health insurance you an go broke.  My daughter recently said that in the event of a major operation, health insurance will make the difference between being merely destitute and being homeless.  This is crazy.  Personally, I pay well over $12,000 a year for health insurance that will only cover the worst situations.  Deductables and co-pays are so high that we get little financial benefit from check-ups, simple health problems, etc.

    My wife and I have given this some serious thought and discussion here at Phase 3 Farm.  We have come to a few conclusions:

    1.  Health care costs will continue to rise - eventually we will not be able to afford it.
    2.  Even with insurance, certain procedures (heart bypass, cancer therapy, etc.) would bankrupt us.
    3.  Health care is no longer focused on making people well - it's largely profit motivated now.

    Given these conclusions, there are some things we can do about it:

    1.  Improve our diet - we grow much of our own vegetables now and will expand into meat production later.
    2.  Lose weight - between us, we've lost over 30 lbs.
    3.  Exercise more - we added work out programs over and above farm labor.
    4.  Accept that life is finite and extreme measures to prolong it is ultimately harmful.
    5.  Investigate alternative medicine and community-oriented health care.

    These things are a work in progress.  I'm interested in what other people think on this matter and what might be done about it.

    - Mark
     
  • 32 Comments sorted by
  • There is a huge, monumental 'agency problem' in the US healthcare system. Basically, stakeholders want people to be unhealthy because more money can be extracted down the chain, from insurance premiums that are justifiably high because everyone is unhealthy already, to prescriptions and homecare. A large healthcare expenditure (because either people are too sick or the system is inefficient) on the books adds to GDP, which creates conditions for incompatible incentives.

    I like your suggestions. There are many ideas for fixing healthcare, though large structural changes are difficult with shrinking budgets and lack of political capital to enact change.
     
  • Well I live in Canada, and I can tell you our system is no panacea either although I think it is much better.  The US has a real opportunity to improve on our system when you overhaul your own and I really hope you will.

    The thing about medical technology is that it is usually at the forefront of technology, so I doubt we will be able to compete with open source ecology all that well in some ways.  Certainly I can see the cost of most care going way down - with precision machining we can make really a lot of good stuff, and it will cost a lot less.

    And as open source really spreads to the rest of society there will be stem cell treatments and what have you to go along with it.  There is not fundamentally anything that we cannot open source because we have the entire pool of humanity's talent to draw on.   And hardware is the large majority of the cost of health care these days.

    But we can't change the cost of skilled labor that much I think.   And it will take a long time before we have this technology open sourced, and open source does in some ways seem to trail behind in technological development.  So we will probably have to trade with the closed source economy for the foreseeable future. 

    This is one of the reasons I think it is so important to ensure that stuff developed is applicable to the open market, not just to within the envisioned 200 person community.  Like the biomass burner.  It should be make so you CAN use it to power a typical suburban home if you want to, that means low smoke emission, not going to catch fire for sure, and should be fuel efficient enough that you can fuel it with purchased pellets etc.  Production should also be scalable - depending on free labor works to get things started may be okay, but we need to decide on ways to quantify labor costs etc.  and volunteers like the ones who just build lifetracks are donating that equivalent per hour to this effort.

    If we do this then these communities will be a real economic engine - not some hippy commune where people cannot go back to the rest of the world because they don't have any money.  People should remain reasonably wealthy even as measured by conventional methods.
     
  • Body by Science - a book about general health fitness which appears to have a lot of research put into it. The videos on youtube give a good overview: "youtube.com/watch?v=y-ufSYBcZa0"

    http://www.earthclinic.com/ - a good resource for researching natural
    remedies. Since in many cases controlled studies have not been conducted
    for most things the reviews on the site give a small scale sample of
    the effectiveness of treatments.
     
  • Earth Clinic was an interesting site.  If you come across others, please add them to the wiki page "Local Medicine".

    - Mark
     
  • The more weird stuff they put in food the more heart disease and cancer.  At the same time people are getting less healthy, medical costs go up because of a cultural shift to make as much money as possible.  They can make enough money to pay all the doctors and pay for equipment if they charge $800 for an MRI but instead they charge $5000 because all of the executives have to afford lifestyles of the rich.  Also look at a drug progesterone that was available for $10 until a drug company got a monopoly, they raised the price to $1500 because they can.  During all the talk of healthcare reform this point was never brought up by republicans or democrats, so actual reform is hopeless.

    The other problem is you are only allowed to access healthcare thru a doctor who is brainwashed by drug companies.  You are not even allowed to order blood tests on yourself.


     
  • > The more weird stuff they put in food the more heart disease and cancer.
     At the same time people are getting less healthy, medical costs go up
    because of a cultural shift to make as much money as possible.

    So my original question:  what can be done about it?  I ask that on a personal, family, and small community basis.  We can work towards a living a more healthy lifestyle - which is what I explained about my own situation.  On a community level, the problem becomes more challenging because of laws that have essentially created a monopoly for doctors and now for health insurance companies (who really run things these days).  Even doctors are no longer getting rich - they are merely employees of the hospital, clinic, etc.

    As I see it, there are some avenues that can be explored:

    1.  Alternative medicine - holistic, herbal, chiropractic, etc.
    2.  Home remedies
    3.  Free clinics
    4.  Health care professionals willing to bend the rules

    I am personally exploring all of these options.  The home remedies one is interesting.  There is quite a bit of information on the internet on how to make your own drugs, and I am referring to drugs designed to treat illness.  Things like digitalis, diuretics, emetics, etc.  Some of these come from old pharmacy recipes from a time when all drugs were compounded locally.  The trick (of course) is reconciling ancient medical data with modern knowledge.  Using Sugar of Lead to treat various illnesses is not longer recommended, etc.  It does mean becoming knowledgeable in chemistry, diagnostics, and the like.  For common ailments, this can be effective.  More serious illness, perhaps less so.  OTOH, give the choice between financial ruin and alternative medicine - what real choice is there?

    - Mark

     
  • @mjn, I would be careful with foxglove.
     
  • @ARGHaynes
    Yes, I quite agree.  Perhaps it bears stating clearly that amateur production of medical drugs should not be conducted with out a clear understanding of the processes, diagnosis, and treatments.  It can be seriously dangerous.  If possible, consult a medical professional before starting any course of treatment with home remedies.

    I am not a doctor nor to I claim to have any substantial knowledge of treating illnesses.  On the other hand, the medical industry is driving me towards experimenting with home remedies some of which I KNOW are dangerous.  I do have an old copy of the Physician's Desk Reference (PDR) that does give me information on some of these drugs.  It also includes data on side-effects, contra-indications, and the like.

    Some web sites are starting to appear which added anecdotal evidence for drug and remedy efficacy, but these are non-scientific and fraught with subjective evidence and support.  I might suggested the development of an open source, publicly available expert system for diagnosis and treatment, but the liability issues alone make it completely infeasible.  Only one person has to die based on taking advice from such a system to put every contributor into DEEP, DEEP trouble.  As it is, I worry about OSE liability due to the lack of safety considerations in the GVCS tools.

    - Mark

     
  • I also lack professional training, though I have studied non-traditional edible and poisonous plants, so I am wary of using anything that will kill me as a medicine.  I have personally concluded that a very diverse diet that is light in grains and meats is pretty solid.

    I have always believed in the saying that "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."  My present "prevention" is eating well, exercising and, perhaps most importantly, being young.
     
  • Well, I'm right there with you eating well and exercising.  Being young is escaping my grasp, however.  Sigh.

    - Mark
     
  • Lookup Aubrey degray.  Being and staying young is not nearly as far out of our grasp as we think. 

    If you want to cure heart disease, cancer, diabetes, arthritis and what costs society >90% of what we spend on health care all in one go, cure aging.

    Bizarrely, some people - indeed most people- don't understand this, and many even *object* to the idea of curing this devastating thing.
     
  • Cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and most (but not all) of the symptoms of aging (frailty, loss of bone mass and muscle mass, macular degeneration, cognitive decline etc.) are preventable using the knowledge we already have.

    Prevention is a lot cheaper than cure. Life weights. Run. Take supplements judiciously. Eat loads of vegetables. Eat mushrooms. Laugh. Meditate. Learn. Not only does it make you feel terrific, you save yourself tens of thousands in healthcare.
     
  • I just had a conversation with a friend where I explained to him that shoes are the cause of a variety of problems (seen most profoundly with women and high heels) because they force the foot/gait into something different than bodily design.  To that effect, I think it is a globalized truth that being aware of the function of the body and being true to it will prolong health.  For example, the human body seems to be designed for a very diverse and plant rich diet, so pursuing that type of diet will probably be a good idea.
     
  • Oh, sweet. :) I'm all about herbalism, and I've been troubled by the medical establishment for a while. There are two main avenues to affordable healthcare, as I see it: local plant medicine, and local general practice diagnostics with specialists in major cities. Over 95% of the pharma industry compounds are plant derivatives. There's no need to guess, if you simply look at what they were extracting, from which plant. Use solubility separation, distillation, and the like, to extract the compound you want. (The extraction of essential oils and mineral salts into alcoholic solvent was the ancient practice of spagyrics, a branch of alchemy.) Medicinal plants are also some of the highest value outputs you can get. Invest equivalent energy and materials making an iPhone as you do in a crop of medicinal herbs, and the herbs will sell for more. That means, a seed is better at producing value than our best modern factories. Providing medicines for an OSE-style 200-person village would only require a tiny plot of herbs, and not a whole lot of work in extractions, once the capital was set-up. (Local glass-blowers make alchemy labs cheap!) The difference is, while herbalism can prevent exposure and worsening conditions, once something gets bad, herbs won't cut it. We do need some bone-setting, and periodically, a little surgery.

    As a whole, we've become so obsessed with 'life-changing procedures' that it seemed like a good thing when we came up with face-transplants. But, honestly, that stuff is expensive. How many malaria victims could have been treated, with the cash from one face transplant? There's a strict avoidance in the AMA-run medical world of anything close to medical accounting. It's simple to ask: for each way that we could spend this $1, how much benefit, statistically, would be provided? Cost-effectiveness isn't even considered, so it's no wonder that medical costs rise and health deteriorates. The solution is obvious - we have to track the improvement to quality of life, for each medical action, and assign treatment based on rate of return. (Return is in 'Happiness-Years' per dollar; not that you set a dollar value to a year of healthy happiness! Instead, this gives you a common unit, "Hap.Yr./Dollar" that you can use to compare treatments. This isn't a "price on human life" - it's just a way to accurately allocate resources between life-saving methods. That means more lives saved.)

    Consider how things go at the doctor's office: you sign in, answer the receptionist's questions, which they record, and then wait. You're taken to a room, where a nurse asks the same questions, then you wait. A doctor arrives, asks the same questions, then swabs your tongue and packages it for the lab technician to test, later. You leave, and return in a few days, repeat the process, and find that their solution is to offer you an expensive pill filled with a compound found in an abundant weed. We pay these people for their skills, but they aren't being utilized effectively. A doctor who specializes in a diagnostic field (parasite pathology?) could be contacted, and a special visit held after they'd reviewed your file (only answer once, online). If you don't need a specialist, or emergency life-saving (that'd be the surgery/ER guys... we still need them) then just call up your local herbalist/nurse. They do basic diagnostics - common colds & ailments, pediatric and geriatric regulars, and routing to specialists. Local training seminars let you get certification in a year or two, without memorizing all the names of the bones in your hand, or pulling 16 hour shifts as an intern. Too bad the AMA and Surgeon General would never let it happen... it'd mean the death of their industry. If the music execs could have gotten Napster, before it formed, they would have. AMA has a lock on medicine, here in the states, and they kow-tow to pharma and insurance. It creates a lot of pressure for an underground, which might not be bad, because a distributed underground could break pharma patents, without risk of litigation. (It looks really bad, when a pharmaceutical company sues a midwife for extracting their "patent" from the plants she grew.)
     
  • We have a local resource that my wife and I are taking advantage of.  The Farmer's Museum is a recreation New York village of the mid-1800's.  Situated in Cooperstown, NY (widely known for a different museum - somethings sports related, I think), the Farmer's Museum is about a 2.5 hour drive from where we live.  We were so thrilled with it when we first visited early this year that we signed up as full members.

    Like many re-creation villages, this has a blacksmith shop, animals, homes you can poke around in, etc.  However, it also has a period apothecary run by a guy with a PhD in Historical Pharmacy.  He is not only knowledgeable in herbalism, but demonstrates the processes.  We are attending a workshop on medicinal plants next week.  When we were there the first time, he recommended a book called "The 1850 Cyclopedia of 6000 Practical Receipts".  We looked for this and unfortunately didn't find it on Google Books..  It contains recipes for commonly used drugs many still in use today.  Most of these recipes are done with commonly available chemicals and plant material.  It could be a gold mine for our purposes.

    As I mentioned in other posts above, the challenge to us is to sort out the snake-oil from proven drug therapies.  Pharmacists in the 1800's routinely made compounds from lead, cadmium, etc. that did far more harm that good.  Some of this will be obvious to us, but many (most?) will not be.  It requires us to become more knowledgeable in medicine, especially concerning common ailments like colds, flu, minor infections, and the like.  This includes making diagnoses as well as treatment (and possible side effects).

    It is time for a revolution, though perhaps a very quiet one.  We can take responsibility for our health into our own hands and live better lives.

    - Mark

     
  • @mjn Yeah, the old books on pharmacology are pretty sweet. The distinction I was making was between plant extractions, and their peculiar 'mineral medicine' - calomel, and the like, were mineral and metal compounds, and metal oxides are notoriously sickening. As long as you're careful about plant solvents and distillation temperatures, plants are actually very safe, and definitely not snake oil. :)
     
  • @mjn Mark you and your wife are definitely on the right track here.  In particular, if you do find a source for that book, please share it with us.  Herbalism is a direct way to earn income while heading into a free lifestyle.  I wish I knew more about it.

    I would be very interested in talking more about marketable substances derived from plants that could be home grown.  I may not know much about the plants but I am surely capable of designing and building some sort of apparatus to do the extractions efficiently.  Additionally, there must be groups somewhere doing this already.

    So many interests......only one life...:)

    The Dawg
     
  • @dawg
    There is certainly a lot of interest in herbalism.  Web sites abound, as do books.  You could, perhaps, turn it into a home-business, but more than just growing and extracting herbals, you need to market them.  That might be the bigger challenge.

    Our view is a bit different.  If you go back to ye olde tymes, there was a still-house in most large manor homes.  The still house (often a room in the basement) was were herbs and other medicines were processed.  This is a bit closer to what we have in mind - a return to the notion that you just keep certain things on hand for emergencies and sickness.  Naturally, shelf-life varies quite a bit, so some things need to be harvested and stored annually.  Some skills need to be learned and practiced - the spagyric techniques than Anthony mentioned is among them.  I've done some of this already and plan to do more.

    - Mark

     
  • Diet, diet, diet. The Standard American Diet is responsible for the vast majority of our health problems. I think the "paleo" food movement has a lot to offer to the world. The institutionalized misunderstanding of dietary fat and the stranglehold that the BigFarm lobby has over the discussion is not helping the situation.
     
  • @Sweeney
    Yes, diet is a big problem in the U.S. (not so much elsewhere).  Fortunately, there is something you can do about it - personally.  Start shopping for fresh foods and prepare them yourself.  Ideally, find a farmer's market in your community.  Get to know them.  Join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture - they supply "food shares" once a week).  Cooking your own food does several things:

    1.  You tend to make what you like, so you enjoy food more.
    2.  You get to control the portion sizes.
    3.  You get to control what goes into it:  less butter, salt, etc.
    4.  It tends to avoid artificial preservatives, etc.

    As you start to eat better, you'll lose some weight.  To lose more - add exercise.  Some CSA's have a work-share program which mean that you can work on their farm and get a reduced rate on fresh food.  Besides healthy exercise, it gets you out into the air and meet new people.

    - Mark

    PS.  You can also make yourself nice, wholesome, nutritious lunches to eat in that dull, drab, grey cubicle in that large, monolithic office building.  :)

     
  • @Mark


    No doubt. I was lucky to have been introduced to evolutionary nutrition a couple of years ago. Unfortunately being locked in the office all day makes it hard to stave off the side effects of living a sedentary lifestyle. I was an athlete in high school and college. I had worked hard manual labor up until entering the Corporate world. It has been a real shock to see what the office worker lifestyle can do to one's health in such short time. I've adjusted a few habits to make things more tolerable including diet and sleep.


     


    Good call on the work-share program. That is something I could see myself enjoying.


     

     
  • Regarding earlier remarks concerning old pharmaceutical books, I have come across Principles of Pharmacy as a free Google book. It's a bit better than earlier books (this from 1915 or so), but is largely focused on the method to produce various drug forms.  Some description of medical properties (ie, treatments) are included.  This is a very, long detailed book on the production of drugs in a small lab.  There is an interesting description of various sugars on pg. 628.  Also a discussion of Digitalis (per references above) on pg. 643.  As with all old medical books, I urge great caution in using any of this information for treatment of medical conditions.  You should consult a medical professional before making or using any medical substances for treatment.

    - Mark

     
  • Alternative remedies and the like only go so far, honestly, and they won't deal with stuff like getting injured.  I am sure the GVCS guys are making the machines as safe as possible, but still ... when you are dealing with that much power, something can go wrong, or a natural disaster could strike, then what?  Good diet and exercise is important, but would have absolutely no effect on this.  Natural remedies won't help when you need surgery.

    The out of control corporate greed in health care isn't just making health care unaffordable, its costing lives.  The Harvard School of Medicine conducted a medical research study a few years ago (I think it was in 2008, I can't remember exactly) to figure out what the effects are of American citizens lacking adequate health coverage, and their conclusion was appalling:  45,000 American citizens die every single year from medically preventable causes because they lack access to regular medical care.  That is to say, they die because of conditions which had become untreatable by the time they were forced to seek treatment (if they lived to actually try to seek treatment at all) but statistically would not have died if they had regular access to medical care (regular visits to a doctor).

    The results of this study were posted to Congress, and clearly was promptly ignored by enough of them to continue obstructing universal health care.  Canadian citizens don't die because they can't afford to see a doctor regularly, nor British, Swedish nor Japanese citizens, nor citizens of any industrialized nation except the United States.

    How many trillions of dollars have we spent on the "war on terror" for -- tragic as it truly was -- the 3,000 lives lost on 9/11?  That was one event.  There's a 9/11 death toll 15 times every year (that's more than one every month!) due, essentially, to political neglect.

    45,000 deaths per year closely rivals traffic fatalities (also appalling, I believe somewhere around 48,000 deaths per year).  Traffic fatalities, too, could be reduced a bit through investment in the U.S.' infrastructure, though not to the degree the deaths from lacking health coverage could be alleviated.

    In 2007, 37 HMO CEOs received $90 million apiece in compensation.  Its easy to fill slightly flustered at ridiculous CEO compensation but move on, but think on that.  $90 million apiece.  That's a lot, it may fluster you, but when you really think on it, you realize ... that's $90 million paid by people needing health care, not getting health care.

    For every dollar paid to Medicare or Medicaid, 97 cents goes to actual health care (hospitalizations, doctor visits, medicines, etc.)  For every dollar paid to an HMO, on average, only 70 cents goes to actual health care; the rest is eaten by such overhead as obscenely high HMO executive compensation.  Profit and wealth in HMOs is inefficiency in terms of dollars going into health care to actual health care produced.

    Health is important.  Certainly, living a disciplined lifestyle with good diet and exercise can reduce your risk, but cannot eliminate health risks nor the importance of regular medical checkups and care (nor can alternative medicines).

    Unfortunately, health care is one critical aspect of life I have no idea how Open Source Ecology could deal with in nations, like the United States, that lack adequate health care systems.  I really can't see how anyone could accept the Harvard School of Medicine's research study as being valid and continue to maintain that the U.S.' for-profit health care system works for America ... the only thing it works for is HMO CEO pay, and while I'm all for letting people who earn wealth keep it, I draw the line when that comes with a large death toll.

    There's no getting around it, I'm afraid.  Anyone who thinks the lives of 45,000 American citizens are more important than maximizing the personal fortunes of 37 HMO executives should unite and fight for universal health care.  No one should die because they can't afford to their doctor, and it is a shame that it is allowed to happen in the supposed greatest nation on Earth.
     
  • Thought I'd provide a link to the harvard info for reference ... http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/

    The study was published in 2009, not 2008 like I had thought.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    September 2011
    >  Alternative remedies and the like only go so far, honestly, and they won't deal with stuff like getting injured.

    What you say is true, Howard.  Herbs are not going to help me if I have appendicitis. However, health care issues are on a scale that start with simple cuts and bruises and climb on up to Cancer.  So if you can't afford health insurance, if the hospital charges a weeks pay just to see you in the ER, if doctor won't see you because you do not have insurance - what do you do?

    My wife and I are fortunately enough to bring in enough income to buy health insurance, but let me put that into perspective.  I am self-employed, which means I have to buy such insurance myself (not through an employer).  It costs me about 10% of net salary.  Is it worth it?  So far, we think so, but will it be worth it when the cost climbs to 15% or 20%?  Likely, it will.  What happen if one or both of us lose our job and our income takes a nose-dive?  Do you have health insurance, Andrew (I read your intro post)?

    If health care become unaffordable, the only think left is alternative approaches to medicine and taking care of ourselves.  I agree that health care in the US is largely aimed at making profits for the companies involved and not on keeping Americans healthy, fit, and alive.  I don't believe I can change that.  I think that the healthcare industry is a train wreck waiting to happen and it will happen someday.  Meanwhile, there is not much I can do to change it.  I would like to take SOME action, however, but what can I do?  I can improve my own health by losing weight.  I can improve my first aid skills.  I can learn to recognize the signs of illness and treat them appropriately.  I can learn what alternative techniques work and apply them - as best I can.  I also accept the fact that I may be faced with the choice of living but being bankrupted or dying.  It's a tragedy that modern medicine can do so much, but is out of the reach of the majority due to cost.  I'm not quite in that category yet, but I think I will be before too long.  When that day comes, I want to have as much control and options as possible.

    How do you, personally, handle this problem?

    - Mark

     
  • Unfortunately, I don't.  I have a growing list of chronic conditions that are completely untreated:  Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, migraine, psoriasis and an increasingly frustrating case of tinnitus.  I have been out of work for almost 3 years now, and even when I was working, the only 3 employers who offered health insurance each laid me off 2 weeks before that insurance was set to start (gee, just a coincidence, they don't really plan it like that...)
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    September 2011
    There are herbal treatments for psoriasis.  St. Johns Wort is sometimes used to treat depression.  Is it better than nothing?

    - Mark
     
  • I have tried St. John's Wort, but unfortunately it didn't seem to have much effect for the period I tried it.  I learned through the research program that it can take awhile for an antidepressant to have an effect ... in my case, in fact, it took about 6 months for a noticeable effect to show up (once I was out of the double-blind study, for the last phase of the study we knew we were getting the real stuff and it was just to measure effects and side effects) whereas most participants had measurable effects in 2-3 months.  I had only tried St. John's Wort for a month or so before giving up (it was years prior to when I was in the research program).  Unfortunately, I've been completely without income now for almost 3 years and can only get what I can get on food stamps, and I am limited there to stores within driving range.  The nearest sizeable city that I know of that has a natural foods store is a good 50 miles away, which is more gas than I can spare. :/  I don't even know if those herbal remedies are obtainable on food stamps, but I know basic over-the-counter medicine, like aspirin, is not.  I can buy stuff that's bad for me, like salty snacks or energy drinks, but not cough drops nor aspirin.
     
  • Vote Up0Vote Down
    mjnmjn
     
    September 2011
    You indicate in your intro that you live in Washington, near Puget Sound.  The Northwest has a strong Native American community.  Why not explore their medicine traditions?  Learn what grows locally - much information is available on the internet to hep identify plants.  Some may have properties that might help you.

    I would also say that herbalism is different than the "quick fix" of western medicine.  It is more holistic and works to make the body overall more healthy than providing a specific remedy to a specific malady.  It might take a prolonged period of treatment to notice effects, but if you are making the medicines yourself from local ingredients it could be free or very inexpensive.

    - Mark
     
  • You said that you lost some weight back when and this is great keeping weight off is a biggy. When it comes to keeping healthy and trying to avoid poisions you must not only consider the food that you eat but also the chemicals that you put onto your skin. Have you heard of xeno-oestrogens? Theres lots of them around especially in houshold products. They have oestrogen like properties and can help you to put on weight especially for women. Your wife may have hear of these.

    Now clearners you use every so oftern are probably too much trouble to be worth avoiding or finding an alternative, however stuff you use all of the time life soap powder for your laundry can be easliy replaced. Use Boraz and Baking Soda mixed in 1:1 ratio

    Also use coconut oil for moisturiser as opposed to cheap brand moisturiser as this contains all sorts of stuff. You can also cook in the stuff and is better for you than vegatable oil which degrades on heating.

    Also avoid deoderants which contain aluminium like rollons. The aluminium penetrates the skin and accumulates in the liver and brain so my research says.

    I try to follow the Paleolithic diet and love it I feel very fresh on it. see rob wolf paleo solution. I've just launch another health topic albeit more specific, please check it out
     
  • I didn't take time to read the other responses but here my thoughts. "let food be thy medicine." http://www.youtube.com/user/FoodnSport/videos?flow=grid&view=0

     

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