Health/Medical

A small land situated between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Ocean, Iceland minds her own business and minds it very well.

Now that Bernie Sanders is out of a presidential candidate job, some Danes want him to migrate to Denmark. The “Politiken” daily newspaper published a chronicle by Peter Ahrenfeldt Schroeder and Jakob Esmann, on April 28, 2016, heralding a new association, “Sanders for Prime Minister”.

UPDATED: 11 July — The white working class in the US has been decimated through an epidemic of ‘premature deaths’ – a bland term to cover-up the drop in life expectancy in this historically important demographic. There have been quiet studies and reports peripherally describing this trend – but their conclusions have not yet entered the national consciousness for reasons we will try to explore in this essay.

California’s “Adult Use of Marijuana Act” (AUMA) is a voter initiative characterized as legalizing marijuana use. But critics warn that it will actually make access more difficult and expensive, squeeze home growers and small farmers out of the market, heighten criminal sanctions for violations, and open the door to patented, genetically modified (GMO) versions that must be purchased year after year.

Neoliberalism’s mantra of “privatizing everything in sight” and elimination, or cutbacks of governmental programs, a.k.a, austerity, especially public healthcare, is a death warrant for millions, maybe more than millions!
Sure-fire, whenever private interests take control, or cut funding for public welfare programs, similar to what Democratic and Republican neoliberal advocates have consistently advocated ever since the 1980s, all hell breaks lose.

The war on cannabis that began in the 1930s seems to be coming to an end. Research shows that this natural plant, rather than posing a deadly danger to health, has a wide range of therapeutic benefits. But skeptics question the sudden push for legalization, which is largely funded by wealthy investors linked to Big Ag and Big Pharma.

Nino Ricci’s latest novel, Sleep, inspired by his own sleep disorder, is really more a fun text book on the latest brain research and the blind use of powerful drugs to alter — and possibly restructure (who knows?) — the brain. It’s like a ‘don’t smoke’ ad that’s actually informative and hilarious, with a classic ‘death of a salesman’ plot moving it along.

For 32 years I have called Venezuela home. Its mountains have given me beauty, its barrios have given me music, its struggles have given me purpose, and its people have given me love.
Its Bolivarian Revolution gave me hope. How could I not feel hope when most of my neighbors, ages 2 to 70, were studying, right in our little potato-growing town in the mountains of western Venezuela. How could I not be hopeful when 18 neighbor families received new homes to replace their unhealthy, crowded living spaces?

As suggested by Jane Mayer in Dark Money, never have two members of one American family spent so much time and money to control our democracy, and in their effort, foster economic damage for most Americans. The guilty parties: Charles and David Koch. It is also likely that self-delusion and insularity from the less-fortunate have rendered both impervious to any recognition that their course is detrimental to the well-being of a great majority of Americans.

I can’t take a budget that eliminates marketing, outreach and in-person assistors seriously.
— Teresa Mosqueda, member of the Washington State Health Benefit Exchange board.
You can’t afford to get sick, and you can’t depend on the present health care system to keep you well. It’s up to you to protect and maintain your body’s innate capacity for health and healing by making the right choices in how you live.
— Dr. Andrew Weil, an American physician, author, spokesperson, and sort of guru for holistic health and integrative medicine.