A Truth Journal: Why Wont Pentagon Pay For PTSD Service Dogs For Returning Soldiers?: From Denny: This new fledgling effort service dogs project in Louisiana between two vets has the potential to significantly lower the funding necessary for mental health costs for our soldiers returning from the battlefield. Yet the Pentagon and Veteran Affairs slough it off as meaningless. In the home for 24 hours a day, service dogs are always cheaper than years of talk and drug therapy with expensive psychiatrists on a weekly or monthly basis.
From Denny: This great grandmother, Eva Elizabeth Woodrow, doesn't let a little thing like age get in her way of learning the new technology. She lives life to the fullest while she employs Facebook to help her keep in touch with family.
She remembers how it used to take days to hear from friends when she was a young girl at the turn of the last century. She marvels at how in the blink of an eye she can contact and hear back from family and friends so quickly in cyberspace.
Check out her piano playing skills. She wrote a book on what it is like being a woman in the 21st century - and for living a century. She also holds a masters degree in Asia studies. Eva shows no signs of slowing down!
Image via WikipediaImage via Wikipedia Image by paul goyette via FlickrFrom Denny: Nutritionist Kimberly Synder talks beyond calorie count and healthy to reveal what foods make your skin look beautiful too.
Have you ever really thought about how you can make your beauty routine tasty with great healthy foods? You win on both fronts.
Take a look at what Kimberly Synder offers up to include in your diet so you can look good while you eat well too.
* Cabbage - vitamin C brightens skin and repairs damaged skin and heals collagen. Has more vitamin C than oranges. How much to eat? Try a few servings a week. You can add some shredded cabbage to your salads or saute it with spices as a side dish.
* Sunflower seeds - are high in vitamin E and prevent cellular damage. Helps with maintenance, growth and repair of tissues and delays aging. While we enjoy the roasted seeds, it's the raw ones that give the full beauty benefit.
* Avocado - high in vitamin E and heart healthy fat that keeps you satisfied and moisturizes your skin from the inside out. Prevents fatigue, anxiety and depression. This fat feeds your brain and stimulates healthy functioning. This fat helps us absorb the fat soluble vitamins like A and D.
Image by warrantedarrest via Flickr From Denny: The controversy of legalizing marijuana has raged for decades. Cancer and eye patients have long championed the legalization for medical use.
Americans now approve of legalization by 50 percent to those opposed as 47 percent. This is the first time in polling history the numbers have been this strong for approval.
How do the numbers break down as far as sections of the country?
More men than women approve. More Westerners than Easterners approve. More young people than old approve.
From Denny: Need help with your No Manners Munchkin or Bedtime Beast? Parenting Magazine's Ana Connery and psychiatrist Gail Saltz are here to share tips to help your parenting formula be more successful.
They are sharing tips on how to effectively unspoil a child and raise a grateful person with realistic expectations and the ability to deal well with the disappointments in life.
The pivotal issue is the pendulum swing of giving your child too much or giving in to them too much. Everyone loves their children and it is easy to get caught up in wanting to give them everything and make their lives easier than perhaps it was when you were growing up. Unfortunately, we can end up creating a difficult person no one else will like, hire or marry.
Psychiatrist Gail Saltz says there are several areas that need to be taught in parenting for the child to make their way into adulthood as a balanced and happy adult. Without teaching these tips to your child they can learn to behave as if they are entitled to everything and responsible for nothing:
* Teach about Life disappointments
* Help your child learn frustration tolerance
* Teach your child about delayed gratification
* Teach your child about how to learn to work hard for something they want. Don't give in to them for the short term. They must learn a long term work ethic. They will learn a lot about themselves on their journey of self-discovery.
* Teach your child how to deal with loss, whether it is over a toy, the death of a pet or the death of a loved one
* Remember: you are your child's most immediate and constant example. Are you living up to what you teach them? Are you modeling the behavior you expect from them?
Here are some useful tips to help create a child that will grow up to be a happy adult, equipped with the ability to handle anything Life throws at them.
Store meltdowns with a five year old: Most parents have encountered this and it sure is embarrassing. The pressure is on to stop the behavior quickly in public so the parent often gives in. Unfortunately, what giving in teaches your child is a positive reinforcement of bad behavior.
Stick it out and refuse to give in. If you do give in you send your child the message to do more of the bad behavior. When kids figure out it works they will do more. Shut it down now before it gets out of control.
Trust that most people passing by you in the mall are parents and have experienced the same when raising their children. Know they are quietly wanting you to succeed as a parent.
When you hold the line you show your child a negative reinforcement to their wrong behavior or attitude. Eventually, your child figures out they can't push your buttons to do what they want and the bad behavior disappears over time.
Can you unspoil them? The answer is yes. Working with them when they are younger is easier than dealing with a teenager. You can "unring the bell" with teenagers though it is a more difficult process.
Unspoiling a teenager is more difficult because you have lost a lot of parental control over the years. In essence, you have given over your authority to the child to do with what he or she will.
The Mall Brat: When they demand the latest toy or technology, don't give in to them. That is responding to bad behavior and zero respect for you as the parent.
With teenagers who have had the run of the house - and you - for years, the most effective way to start the process of unspoiling them is to sit them down for a heartfelt talk from you. Tell them you have made parenting mistakes and it's time to chart a new course and revamp the system. Tell them you honestly love them and want the best in life for them. You want them to be a happy adult able to take on any life challenges with ease.
With an older child you may require the help of a professional counselor. "Just know that it is a stoppable cycle," says psychiatrist Gail Saltz.
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From Denny: The health sphere is where crazy imaginative science fiction meets the newest health aids. Sleep apnea affects millions of troubled sleepers in America every night. It can be a dangerous obstructive sleep disorder.
Scientists must either have a great sense of humor or be odd sadists because now their latest effort to stop sleep apnea is to use a device to zap your tongue while you are sleeping. It's like a tongue taser, a tongue nerve pacemaker.
Seriously, what is the research community trying to achieve here? The object is to prevent the tongue and throat muscles from relaxing so much during our sleep that they actually collapse and block our breathing. Who knew getting relaxed and mellow was a bad thing?
The tough thing is that sleep apnea sufferers can experience this breathing obstruction as often as every 30 seconds. It can cause a sleeper to jerk awake and gasp. This cycle can repeat itself as much as 30 times an hour. They are also known for loud snoring which can affect their sleeping partner. It gets to the point that sufferers dread going to bed every night since the cycling tires them.
Talk about not getting a good night's sleep. Sufferers are deprived of our crucial deep sleep. How does this affect them during their waking hours? Being so sleep deprived of that restorative deep sleep we can be at higher risk for car crashes and deadly diseases.
New study to find relief
Inspire Medical System in Minneapolis, Minnesota, will begin a 100 apnea patient study come January 2011. What they will study is if stimulation of the hypoglossal nerve is effective. Two companies developing this implant device are ImThera Medical based in San Diego, California and Apnex Medical based in St. Paul, Minnesota.
"In this kind of research, we're not looking for little changes," says Dr. Meir Kryger, a sleep medicine specialist at Gaylord Hospital in Connecticut, who is helping to lead the study. "What we're looking for is actually cure."
How many Americans suffer from obstructive sleep apnea? About 12 million, many who are overweight and middle-aged men - but anyone can have it.
To date what is the best treatment for sleep apnea? Right now sufferers use a mask that gently blows air through the nose to help keep airways open while sleeping. This is called CPAP - Continuous Positive Airway Pressure. As many as 30 percent of sufferers will not or cannot use the CPAP mask. They complain some masks leak or fit poorly. Others complain about feeling claustrophobic. Still others end up ripping off the masks during the night while they toss and turn during sleep.
Is it wise to go untreated? No. Apparently, going untreated is a risky business. Sleep apnea raises the risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. What is the most immediate risk is that severe sleep apnea actually increases the chance of you crashing your car by seven times!
What do surgeons do for severe forms of sleep apnea? There is an operation where they actually remove part of the roof of the mouth or some other soft tissue. These are tricky operations and difficult to predict if they actually help. They are reserved for the most severe cases and are questionable as to effectiveness.
So what about this new device, the equivalent of a pacemaker for your tongue? Doctors implant a small generator near the collarbone. Then they snake a wire up under the jaw to the tongue-controlling nerve, the hypoglossal nerve. A sensor at the patient's diaphragm will detect when the person inhales and signal the implant to zap the tongue nerve. The power has to be adjusted so that the tongue nerve gets stimulated just enough to keep the tongue from falling backward during sleep.
"I don't have any idea while I'm sleeping that it's on," says Krohn, the Minnesota man who'd given up on apnea treatment until volunteering for an early Inspire study last year - and says he now gets a good night's sleep. "It's a game-changer for me."
This tongue pacemaker device is still experimental. Before you get to this level try the CPAP mask first and then talk to a sleep technician. They may know more than your doctor since they specialize in the field. There are several details you might not know like adjusting humidity levels while sleeping. If you are overweight or obese, they work on losing what weight you can. Weight loss is known to help tremendously.
Hopefully, this tongue pacemaker may take the place of the uncomfortable mask. Until then check out a sleep disorder clinic and talk to them in depth. And may you get a good night's rest.
*** Photo from istockphoto.com
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September and October were a bust for writing as the Louisiana humid hot weather we experienced across the nation this summer was pure misery. It sure slowed me down and it was time to rest. Check out the archives here during those months to see the posts roundup on all the blogs and you might find something you enjoy.
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