salmon.jpgIn a recent article in the NYT, Op-Ed Contributor Taras Grescoe states “Whether it’s wild or farmed, I’m swearing off salmon.” He goes on to explain that the state of salmon in the pacific is in dire straights. Most runs south of Alaska as collapsing and even in the home of “Wild Alaskan Salmon” along the banks of this large most northern state are almost extinct due to overfishing, negative effects of fish farms and the destruction of salmon breeding grounds. So much so that the Chinook salmon fishing season never opened this year in Oregon and further south in California pushing salmon to a scarce and very expensive offering to put on your dinner table.

This staple that I grew up on as a little girl in the pacific northwest may be gone by the what many researches say as soon as 2011. So I ask myself….what am I going to eat? For years salmon has been touted as a solid source of healthful proteins but now it’s labeled as the next worst thing to smoking, unsustainable and toxic.

Michael Pollen in his book Omnivores Dilemma searches for the best way to eat. He looks at mass produced morsels full of factory farmed goodness, the very sheik organically grown jet setting likes of mangoes on the shelves of gourmet grocers in the northern hemisphere in the middle of winter and finally gets down and dirty gathering and hunting his own food. Barbara Kingsolver takes a year away from non fiction to cultivate her very own home grown delights with her family finding that local seasonal organics are a true pleasure to prepare and to eat in her latest book Animal, Vegatable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Both authors are in search of answering this great question….. again….. what am I to eat that is healthful for me an the environment?

For now it’s no salmon:( But what’s next?

*this post is cross posted

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Imagine just ten years ago it was common place to walk into your family doctor and be greeted by your first name. Today the closest thing that comes to that is the welcome message on WebMD- “welcome user…………… here is today’s health tip for you…….” While being able to search around for what just might be the cause of your symptoms in the symptoms checker seems helpful, the key word here is might, does the average person with no medical training have any idea what their symptoms migh be? As great as instant access to technology based medical information is, I find it hard to feel comforted when I am sitting at home, deciding if it is worth a trip to the doctor knowing that I truly have two choices: self diagnosis (OK for minor ailments but obviously not my first choice when I am incapacitated) or……go sit for hours to see a doctor for all of about 10 minutes for them to no nothing about me or my past and then prescribe for me the pharmaceutical flavor of the day based on which marketer had the best campaign.

Why is this? Sure with the use of instant universal access to medical information in most developed parts of the world the great delima of whether or not to go to the doctor can conveniently at times be evaluated by checking symptoms online, the is something calming about the idea of a trained caring medical professional that is a real human. However, how Ben Brewer puts it in the an article for the WSJ Health Blog “in an era when medical students are flocking to specialties with high pay and predictable hours, country doc, the family doctors are becoming an endangered species.”

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Which brings me to ponder a HUGE question…… How does one handle a situation in which the symptoms finder just isn’t good enough, I’m feeling down right yucky and my chances of getting into a family doctor are about as slim as seeing a Bengal tiger?

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When it comes to what to eat it always amazes me how many choices we have. But what makes me worry is when I’m standing in the store looking at all the options and I see items that contradict themselves. Like “healthy style” jelly beans or low carb bread….what since when is bread not suppose to be full of carbohydrates?

To keep myself from not going crazy I use the show around the edges rule, i.e. when in the groceries store I only choose from the areas on the exterior. Usually this starts with fruits and veggies, moves to meats and fish, then the dairy case and finally the bakery with fresh bread. This way I choose mostly whole foods with a lot less of unnecessary ingredients and packaging.

An article I just ran across alerts me to just how harmful shopping in the middle can be.

Processed, packaged foods have almost completely taken over the diet of Americans. In fact, nearly 90 percent of our household food budget is spent on processed foods, according to industry estimates.

Unfortunately, most processed foods are laden with sweeteners, salts, artificial flavors, factory-created fats, colorings, chemicals that alter texture, and preservatives. But the trouble is not just what’s been added, but what’s been taken away. Processed foods are often stripped of nutrients designed by nature to protect your heart, such as soluble fiber, antioxidants, and “good” fats. Combine that with additives, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The article lists 4 big no nos when it comes to ingredients:

  1. Trans Fats
  2. Refined Grains
  3. Salt
  4. High-Fructose Corn Syrup

Simply put, why waste your calories on ingredients that harm your body instead of support it by way of high nutrient content.

great-wall-marathon-002.jpgThe ancient saying goes “your not a man until you have climbed the great wall” sounds better in Chinese but you get the gist. This past weekend I participated in the Great Wall Half Marathon along with five friends from work. And let me tell you… starting a 12 km run after lots of up and down on the Great Wall leaves one with legs of jello! My training prepared me so that I had a wonderful day and a solid finish.While in transit to and from Shanghai we had a little down time in Beijing. With spring and the up coming Olympics in the air it was interesting to stroll about Beijing as witness the last minute finishing touches taking place before the big event. Unfortunately the air quality was still horrible and thus made me wonder how in the word are they going to get it clear enough for athletes to compete and not be harmed.img_2344.JPG

Air pollution is a factor that all of us that live in big cities deal with. I find that it’s all about taking advantage of those opportunities when the air is clear to get outside and play as well as making sure that I have a backup plan in place so that I don’t let pollution get in the way of maintaining an active lifestyle.

Hopefully the officials in Beijing will have the air crisp and clean for the athletes as well as the spectators come August and it will be something that all of us in neighboring provinces will benefit from.

Imagine what it would feel like to be able to disconnect from stress and worry?

As Neuroanatomist, Jill Bolte Taylor explains during here talk on “Stroke of Insight” on TED our brains two hemispheres are very different.

Right hemisphere…right here and right now, present moment through the senses.

Left hemisphere…linearly methodically, the past and future. Picking apart the present moment…detail by detail, categorizes it into experience we already know. Thinks in language “internal dialog”…I am. This separates us as individuals.

In her moments of having a stroke she had a rear opportunity to experience first hand the power of thinking through here right hemisphere without the stress and worry of her left. She explains the right as “the place of peaceful, compassionate and purposeful people and the left as the place of single, individual and separate. The power to choose who and were we are at every moment of the universe. These are the we inside of me which do you choose and when? The more time we spend in the right hemisphere the more peace we will spread in the world and the more peaceful our world will become.”

Applying this to emotional health has endless possibilities. Knowing that one has the power to choose at any given time to be in their left side, worried and stressed about details connected to the past and future or, be peacefully experiencing the present in the right side, is truly astonishing.


As Tom Ashbook reports on Onpoint last Friday “Some say that the richest video games are growing a new narrative richness. Moral dilemmas. Nuances. Truth and consequences.”

The new version of Grand Theft Auto (IV) definitely gives one the freedom to do just about anything like never before. In a choose your own adventure format players really have the ability to explore. So what does that tell about a person that chooses to treat women violently or senselessly shoot people with shots guns to the head vs. watch comedians on TV or cruising around in a car listening to the witty radio chatter? Obviously the consequences of ones actions aren’t sensed on the same level as in real life however in the situation where neither meets to objectives of progressing toward winning the game it offers moral dilemma like never before.

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At first glance the shear novelty of checking e-mail or watching TV and being able to flip through the channels while playing a video game is something that is at first play much more exciting then shooting people even if it doesn’t meet the objective.

I was digging myself out of an e-mail pile, wow how a week away from it adds up, when I found a note from Brandyn, a dear friend. She is competing in an adventure race sponsored by Land Rover called the Nevada Passage G4 Challenge. The event is the US qualifier for the world challenge that most likely will be held in Asia. img_0916.JPG

She will compete over multiple days in all sorts of adventurous activities with her partner who climbed Everest last year. As I sit on my couch blogging and trying to catch up on all I missed while being out of contact last week I can’t help but be motivated to get out for a run after reading what my dear friend Brandyn is up to, especially considering that we will be playing outside together in a little over a months time.

This is a trend that I have noticed a lot lately with myself, get online, seek information, find all sorts of motivators and as a result find the little kick in the behind I need to not waste a minute of life.

 

Techno beats thumped as girls dressed in the latest high fashion gowns glided into the room on the arm of young gentlemen wearing custom tailored suits. Nervousness and excitement filled the air as girls exchanged complements on dresses and boys talked about where they took their dates for dinner. In the middle of a city of 18 million people student’s danced and giggled the night away as they enjoyed the vainly ceremonious American event known as PROM.

In a blur of immigration lines, substandard prepackaged airline food the stilettos were stealthily exchanged for flip flops as we found ourselves careening across the turquoise tropical waters toward an island off the East Coast of Malaysia, Pulau Redang to live for a weeks time to conduct IB Environmental Science projects and voluteer to help SEATRU with Sea Turtle nest monitoring. As the motors slowed to a quite idle the boat made its way into an enchanting lagoon. The contrast of crystal clear water, intense green jungle against a vivid blue sky was the catalyst for student’s jaws to drop and comments such as: “this can’t be real” or “I didn’t know that the sky could be so blue” or how about “looking at this makes me realize just how GRAY everything in Shanghai is.”

seaturtle.jpgDr. Chan Eng Hang, the director of the Turtle Research and rehabilitation Group at the University of Malaysia Terrenganu gave a wonderful introduction to tagging and nesting research of both the green and the hawksbill turtle population around Redang island. After settling in to a one room wood shelter that doubled as a Sea Turtle research exhibit gallery the students plunged into the lagoon for an afternoon snorkel. They were welcomed in style by two white tip reef sharks and four sea turtles, one of them being a rare Hawksbill. They were immersed in wild uninhibited nature from that point forward.

In the days to follow students fell into a rhythm of gathering data for various environmental science projects, cooking their own meals and just plain enjoying being outside. The beats of traffic, pollution and competitive school life where drowned out by cicadas and quickly became a remote memory to the 13 students from Shanghai .

As quickly as they could set up a new group on Facebook the students had set simple rope snare traps and caught a 1.5 meter monitor lizard in an effort to relocate it to a beach free of innocent fragile turtle eggs. They witnessed green sea turtles come to shore and laying eggs in the moon light just as they had seen on National Geographic. They successfully marked and recaptured over 400 hermit crabs with the dexterity developed through the typing of thousands of text messages sent through their cell phones over the past semester.

They were adapting and blending into a simple life of removing human marks of plastic trash on the beach and ropes tangled in the reefs as they reflected on their additive actions back in Shanghai were they never think about where all their garbage comes from.

Increasingly, 24/7 communication and the flow of information seems inescapable; yet over the past week two teachers and thirteen students managed to disconnect from “human created” information and tune into “wild” information, 24/7. Surprisingly, what followed was an inspirational series of events that should give us all hope that it isn’t in the least bit to late to reverse global problems. The ability of our youth to adapt and help has never been higher. Many of the activities that at times are criticized for “disconnecting” students from that natural world just may be allowing them to gain the skills they need to understand and be able to jump head first into reversing global problems.

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Wilderness is not peaceful and calm if you take the time to look beyond the surface. It’s chaotic and ruthless much like the human urban environment. This past week students showed time and time again their ability to be flexible, adaptable and patient and if they are given the opportunity to be surrounded by wilderness they will demonstrate the same level of enthusiasm as they would for their own PROM. Showcasing hope that the a lack of connection with nature isn’t because they aren’t capable it’s because standard educational curriculum rarely allows for it.

Every day we are inundated with tens of thousands of messages. Information is following at us at to an alarming rate. A question that I am constantly confronted with is, how to I find balance between staying connected with the world and having time to disconnect and listen to myself ?

In the news in the past few weeks at an alarming rate I am seeing headlines focused those that have put their health in serious risk as a result of being “to” connected, i.e. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.

On twitter it seems that thought streams dance between the sharing of information, “check out my blog post” and reflections about personal experience, “it’s 3am and I can’t sleep” or “logging off to go for a walk”. And although the time that I have been focused on monitoring this phenomena is short I can safely say that in this age of 21st century information individuals are struggling to find a balance.

Balance….it must be possible. Thoughts~

[1] Richtell, Matt. “World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop.” New York Times Website, April 6, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/technology/06sweat.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin. (accessed April 17, 2008).