Category: Health Care

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Stir-fries always require a certain amount of time for ingredient prep, as there are aromatics to mince, seasonings to measure, vegetables to chop. But all the time is on the front end – the actual cooking is done in under 20 minutes, usually well under. All of the dishes I made this week made great leftovers; I enjoyed them for dinner one day, lunch the next.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

I was all set to focus on recipes from Russia and Eastern Europe this week, and I did come up with some fabulous pirozhki, the classic Russian little oval pies. But as so often happens when I am exploring recipes and experimenting in my kitchen, I could not get away from the Mediterranean, where cabbage is also widely appreciated. So this week you will taste a delicious soup that is seasoned with Parmesan rinds, Italian bruschetta topped with pan-cooked cabbage, as well as a spicy Tunisian chakchoukah, a vegetable stew that is traditionally mainly peppers and tomatoes, but in this version features cabbage, peppers and tomatoes, with eggs poached right in the stew.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

A vegetable gratin is a casserole that is baked in the oven in a heavy baking dish until the top and sides are browned, or gratinéed. Roasting vegetables for a gratin adds another level of caramelized flavor to the dish. Roasted winter squash is particularly sweet. Roasting cauliflower coaxes flavor out of this somewhat bland vegetable: the small flowers brown and crisp, and I was hard pressed to save enough for my gratin, so tempting a snack were they. I begin just about any eggplant dish I make by roasting the eggplant, as this method of cooking requires much less oil than frying.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Orange is the color of the week in my kitchen, as it has been since the fall and will be throughout the winter at my farmers’ market. I’m making oven fries with sweet potatoes, roasting and simmering carrots and winter squash with seasonings I haven’t used before with these vegetables and finding new ways to enjoy grated carrot salads, which have always been a weakness of mine. Sometimes markets can look bleak in winter, but there’s nothing drab about carrots, sweet potatoes and winter squash; I’m finding that there is a lot I can do with these nutrient-dense vegetables. [..]

There is a lot that researchers are still uncovering about the compounds in orange vegetables. We do know that the pigments reflect the presence of beta-carotene, and not surprisingly, all three of these vegetables are excellent sources of vitamin A. They are very good to excellent sources of vitamins C and K, as well as very good sources of potassium and manganese. We know they are excellent sources of other phytonutrients that show some antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, like lutein, zeaxanthin and lycopene. And those are just the ones we are familiar with; there are plenty that are still under study in these delicious vegetables.

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Last week, in the course of cleaning out my office and downsizing my cookbook library, I came across an interesting book called “Tonics” by Robert A. Barnett. The book is a collection of recipes, not just for liquid tonics, but for all sorts of dishes made with foods and herbs thought to improve well being.

It was a rare cold day in Los Angeles and I was inspired by the book to make some tonics of my own: hot infusions made with ingredients I had on hand in my pantry and produce basket. I brewed and tasted, and thought of the founders of Celestial Seasonings tea company, who in the late 1960s and early ’70s had come up with such household favorites as Red Zinger and Sleepytime Tea doing just what I was doing.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Veering from the usual tradition of recipes that are from the health pages of the New York Times and due to the frigid temperatures, I decided to pull some comfort food recipes from my personal files that will serve to warm the body and soul even if you aren’t braving the elements. The recipes are also large enough for leftovers for week night meals. Served with a salad and your favorite beverage, they make a great warming meal. Bon appétit

Many of us had ham for New Year’s Day and are wondering what to do with that ham bone and the left over ham. So if you can’t face another ham sandwich here are a few recipes for soups and a casserole.

One soup recipe that uses a ham bone has been served in the US Senate for over 100 years. The current version does not include potatoes but I like tradition in this case. I also would add a cheese clothe sachet of bay leaf, parsley, peppercorn and thyme for flavor. I also use chicken broth in place of the water. You can play with your own seasoning to taste.

There are numerous versions of this recipe, this one uses ham hocks but the left over ham bone can be substituted.

My daughter says to increase the sauce by half for a creamier dish.

Les Halles is long gone but the traditional French Onion Soup that was served there lives on but it’s hard to find a proper soupe á l’oignon. My favorite recipe is from Bernard Clayton, Jr.’s The Complete Book of Soups and Stews with some variations. It is from a restaurant near the Halles Metro station. M. Calyton’s version uses a hearty homemade beef stock which is time consuming to make. I found that either Swanson’s or College Inn Beef Broth produces a good result, just reduce the salt. The low sodium broth didn’t produce the hearty broth that’s needed to compliment the flavor of the caramelized onions and the cheese.

French onion soup in France is served as the traditional French farmer’s breakfast or the end of the day repast for the late night café and theater crowd. It was made famous in the great open market of Les Halles in Paris where hungry truckers converged from all over France with their fresh produce.

Remember stay warm, if you have to go out: dress in layers, keeping hands and head covered, a scarf to cover you mouth and nose. Try to limit your time outdoors and be aware of the symptoms of frostbite and hypothermia

As a wind instrumentalist, I’ve yet to encounter an instructor who doesn’t stress the importance of proper posture. From duration to phrasing to tone, nearly every aspect of playing a wind instrument depends on how straight your spine is. Improper posture means that your body is out of alignment with its own structure, preventing your lungs from expanding to their fullest potential.

With this background information, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest to learn that a person’s posture is critical to their physical, mental, and even social health. Healthy posture allows your spine to do what it was designed to do- provide strength and stability to your skeletal structure. When we slouch or stoop regularly, our muscles are put in the position of working overtime to keep us balanced.

Whether we are sitting, standing, sleeping, or walking, the curvature of our backbone has a strong effect on how these activities serve us. In an age where computers are necessary to a majority of the workforce and “computer slouch” is a subsequent epidemic, paying attention to our posture requires daily vigilance.

The body’s skeletal system can become accustomed to being misaligned, leading to conditions such as arthritis, constipation, poor circulation, persistent aches and stress. Feelings of fatigue are all-too-common today, which can be linked to people’s inefficient muscle use due to poor posture. Your posture can convey a great deal about you to other people as well.

The old adage of communication being heavily influenced by body language rings truest through the way you carry yourself. There is a reason weak, sniveling characters are referred to as “spineless”.  Evolutionarily-imbedded assumptions are formed by others when we trudge through our daily lives in a slump, and studies have shown slouching deepens depression.

Fortunately like any habit, poor posture can be remedied by mindful practice. Fixing our posture is the quickest and cheapest (read: free) way to improve our physique from the inside out. Here is a list of techniques from the American Chiropractic Association to correct your posture and to cure the dreaded computer slouch:

• When sitting, be sure that your back is straight and your shoulders are pulled back, with your butt touching the back of your chair. Distribute your weight evenly on both hips and keep your feet flat to the floor.

• When sleeping, try placing a pillow between your legs if you tend to sleep on your side. If you sleep on your back, place a pillow underneath your knees. And if you’re the type that enjoys sleeping on your stomach, do what you can to change your sleeping habits as this is an unnatural curvature for your spine.

• When standing, keep your shoulders back and your head level, not forward or back. Your earlobes should be in line with your shoulders.

• When working, make your work come to you! Do not lean in or strain yourself to read your papers/computer screen/etc., but try sitting closer or bringing it near to your face. If you do heavy lifting on the job, it’s all in the legs. Avoid bending forward with your knees straight and absolutely no jerking movements.

Outside of everyday habits, there are good practices to improve posture as well. Tai-Qi Walking is a very useful method of improving balance and posture at the same time. The Wall Test is a good way to measure your posture and keep it correct throughout your day. And as for that computer slouch, try these stretches out regularly.

Ironically, good posture practices will actually feel foreign and uncomfortable at first- keep at it! In the words of social psychologist Amy Cuddy, “Fake it ’til you become it”.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

In a NYT‘s op-ed in New Year’s Day, Michael Moore called the ACA awful

I believe Obamacare’s rocky start – clueless planning, a lousy website, insurance companies raising rates, and the president’s telling people they could keep their coverage when, in fact, not all could – is a result of one fatal flaw: The Affordable Care Act is a pro-insurance-industry plan implemented by a president who knew in his heart that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all model was the true way to go. When right-wing critics “expose” the fact that President Obama endorsed a single-payer system before 2004, they’re actually telling the truth.

What we now call Obamacare was conceived at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and birthed in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney, then the governor. The president took Romneycare, a program designed to keep the private insurance industry intact, and just improved some of its provisions. In effect, the president was simply trying to put lipstick on the dog in the carrier on top of Mitt Romney’s car. And we knew it.

Emergency Room visits have increased for those with insurance rather than decrease. This is probably due to the problem of finding a physician who will accept the patient’s insurance plan. What was needed was a mandate that physicians and hospitals accept all insurance plans.

Access to Health Care May Increase ER Visits, Study Suggests

   Supporters of President Obama’s health care law had predicted that expanding insurance coverage for the poor would reduce costly emergency room visits as people sought care from primary care doctors. But a rigorous new study conducted in Oregon has flipped that assumption on its head, finding that the newly insured actually went to the emergency room more often.

   The study, published in the journal Science, compared thousands of low-income people in the Portland area who were randomly selected in a 2008 lottery to get Medicaid coverage with people who entered the lottery but remained uninsured. Those who gained coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room than their uninsured counterparts. The pattern was so strong that it held true across most demographic groups, times of day, and types of visits, including for conditions that were treatable in primary care settings.

   The finding casts doubt on the hope that expanded insurance coverage will help rein in rising emergency room costs just as more than two million people are gaining coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

   Instead, the study suggests that the surge in the numbers of insured people may put even greater pressure on emergency rooms and increase costs. Nearly 30 million uninsured Americans could gain coverage under the law, about half of them through Medicaid. The first policies took effect on Wednesday.

This will only push up the costs of health care and increase the costs for consumers and tax payers.

This video explains in less than 8 minutes why healthcare in this country is so expensive and still sucks.

Published on Aug 20, 2013

In which John discusses the complicated reasons why the United States spends so much more on health care than any other country in the world, and along the way reveals some surprising information, including that Americans spend more of their tax dollars on public health care than people in Canada, the UK, or Australia. Who’s at fault? Insurance companies? Drug companies? Malpractice lawyers? Hospitals? Or is it more complicated than a simple blame game? (Hint: It’s that one.)

For a much more thorough examination of health care expenses in America, I recommend this series at The Incidental Economist: http://theincidentaleconomist….

The Commonwealth Fund’s Study of Health Care Prices in the US: http://www.commonwealthfund.or…

Some of the stats in this video also come from this New York Times story: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06…

This is the first part in what will be a periodic series on health care costs and reforms leading up to the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in 2014.

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

I always stuff an orange or a tangerine into the toe of my son’s Christmas stocking. He is more interested in the chocolate in his stocking and I usually end up eating his orange, but I’ll never forego this European tradition that dates from a time when citrus was a rare treat. We in the United States take our oranges and grapefruit for granted year round, but citrus really does have a season – winter – and it is welcome at this time of year, when we need all the vitamin C we can get.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

I have never been a gravy fan, but I am a fan of what I call “Mushroom Ragoût Gravy,” which is not a gravy at all but a mushroom ragoût, or stew. I always make too much. I double the recipe if we are going to be a dozen people, which we usually are during holiday gatherings, even though I know that nobody will have enough room on their plates for more than a spoonful. [..]

The recipe makes quite a lot of ragoût, but you won’t mind having it around. It keeps for three or four days in the refrigerator and freezes well, and the leftovers can be used to make omelets, strudels and more.

Martha Rose Shulman

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

President Barack Obama has been quite miserly with his power to pardon and commute sentences. Since taking office, the president has only pardoned 39 people and commuted only one sentence, the fewest of any president in history. His recent “binge” commuting the sentences of eight federal prisoners who were convicted of crack cocaine offenses was was the first time retroactive relief was provided to a group of inmates who would most likely have received significantly shorter terms if they had been sentenced under current drug laws, sentencing rules and charging policies. All eight had already served 15 years and six had been sentenced to life. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much for the thousands of other prisoners sentenced under the draconian laws that preceded  Fair Sentencing Act of 2010. Prison overcrowding in the country costs tax payers billions each year and most of the inmates are minorities and non-violent drug offenders.

The other prison population that could use a little mercy is the aged who, for the most part, no longer a danger to society. According a report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, in just the past three years, the number of inmates over the age of 65 has grown by almost a third, while the population under 30 fell by 12 percent and are two to three times more expensive to keep in prison than their younger counterparts. Perhaps, as the report suggests, it is time for a compassionate release program for sick and infirm inmates.

Even amidst a modest reduction in the U.S. prison population, the number of aging men and women expected to die behind bars has skyrocketed in a system ill prepared to handle them and still oriented toward mass incarceration. We speak about the problems facing aging prisoners with Mujahid Farid, who was released from a New York state prison in 2011 after serving 33 years. He is now lead organizer with RAPP, which stands for “Release Aging People in Prison.” Their slogan is “If the risk is low, let them go.” His campaign work is part of Soros Justice Fellowship and is housed at the Correctional Association of New York. We are also joined by Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York, which monitors conditions in state prisons. “The parole board routinely denies people based on the nature of the offense, the one thing that no one can change, just like we can’t change our height or our eye color,” Elijah notes. “We need to look at that and say, if someone presents a low risk to recidivate, then we should be releasing them from prison. We’re wasting precious taxpayer dollars incarcerating people, and it’s much more expensive to incarcerate people who are older.”

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

I was planning to devote this week’s Recipes for Health to walnuts, as the California walnut harvest took place just a few weeks ago and the walnuts I am buying in my farmers’ market couldn’t be fresher (well, they could be a little fresher – slightly moist, the way fresh, undried walnuts are sold in French produce markets. But the California growers dry their nuts before sending them to market, as the spoilage risk for moist fresh walnuts is high.) I began working on recipes, and once I had written out and begun testing I realized that each dish was a winter greens recipe that included walnuts. The two foods go wonderfully together.

Martha Rose Shulman