Don’t waste your $$ on Vitamin C supplements…

Posted on 10/05/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

Especially, if you expect them to prevent the common cold.

With flu and cold season fast approaching, an article in the San Francisco Chronicle caught my eye and inspired this post.

For the first 58 years of my life, I had my fair share of bouts with the “common cold.” Unfortunately, they were much more common (frequent) than I would have liked. As a young child, I remember the agonizing trips to the doctor to have what seemed like gallons of mucus being sucked from my nostrils by some kind of noisy vacuum apparatus.

During my childhood in Mississippi—colds, fevers, sore throats, and coughs were about as routine as the bacon and eggs we had every morning for breakfast. The only good part of the “common cold” routine was getting to stay home from school.

Juicy grapefruit, one of many whole plant sources of Vitamin C—every day, not just when you feel a cold coming on.

Things didn’t get much better as an adult. From ages 19 through 58, I probably averaged 3 or 4 colds or bouts with flu every year—even though I was religious about taking my daily Vitamin C supplements and taking megadoses at the first sign of a cold. I probably wasted a thousand dollars on all those tablets.

Now we have some not-so-great news about Vitamin C. Reported on 10-4-12 in the San Francisco Chronicle (See link below):

After decades and dozens of studies, it appears the idea that vitamin C prevents colds is just an old wives’ tale. But there is some evidence that high doses of the vitamin, which is found in citrus fruit and other produce, may slightly shorten the length of a cold.

So what is a person to do? Well, I can tell you what I did and I can also provide you with some anecdotal information from other members of my family. It’s all about giving your body what it needs to build the strongest possible immune system—to fight flu, viruses, cancers and anything else that might invade your body.

It all begins with what your body needs to optimize your immune system; beginning with   the right food for our species. You might say that a strong immune system is a component of vibrant health. In addition to the right food, you also need clean water, fresh air, sunshine (Vitamin D), regular exercise, adequate rest and a positive state of mind. Even with all of the above, some of us still get sick from time to time but not nearly as often—and with much less severity. Here are my personal anecdotes:

Jason and me with Mount Washington. The 4Leaf lifestyle is our best protection against the common cold. (Ages 35 and 63 in this picture)

Myself (67). Since adopting a near optimal diet in 2003, my frequency of colds and flus has gone from about 3 or 4 per year to less than one per year on average.

And, oftentimes, when I feel the early symptoms of a cold, it disappears in less than two days. In the past, whenever I felt those early symptoms, it almost always developed into a horrible 2-week ordeal. FYI, I haven’t had a flu shot in over ten years, and I no longer take any Vitamin C supplements.

My son and co-writer, Jason Hicks (39). He reports that his frequency of colds has dropped 90 percent since adopting the near-optimal 4Leaf lifestyle. His main problem is probably not enough rest as he leads an extremely busy lifestyle.

Dr. Shawn Lankton, my nephew and fellow 4Leaf health enthusiast

My PhD nephew in New York (28). Shawn (shown was mentioned by name in our book. Now, a strategy consultant in New York for a premier international consulting firm, here’s what he reported for our book: “If I get sick, it lasts for about twelve hours (instead of days or weeks). Maybe the most interesting effect is that I feel ‘lighter’—sort of like having a clear sinus as opposed to being stuffed up, but for the whole body. It’s very refreshing.”

Two of my grandsons (Age 10 & 11). These guys  live in different homes in the Boston area. The ten-year old eats 4Leaf all the time and is one of the healthiest children in all of New England. The 11-year old eats the Standard American Diet (SAD) most of the time and suffers often (colds, fevers, ear aches, etc.) from its effects–about ten times more frequently than the ten-year old (shown here with me).

Andrew, my 4Leaf grandson (wearing a 4Leaf shirt) with me at a VegFest in Worcester, MA earlier this year. FYI, he can now outrun his older brother.

I might add that none of us 4Leaf-ers take Vitamin C on a regular basis. But we’re all constantly getting a great quantity of that vital nutrient at almost every meal. My 7 or 8 servings of fruits and green vegetables each day provides me with more Vitamin C in nature’s package every day—than the average American gets in a full month.

Back to the Vitamin C piece in the Chronicle; they really got it right in the last paragraph after emphasizing getting more of this nutrient from foods rather than from pills:

Citrus fruits, dark green vegetables, peppers, strawberries and cantaloupe are all good natural sources of vitamin C, but storage and cooking can take their toll. The longer a food is stored, the more vitamin C it loses, and cooking and steaming dissolves some of the nutrient.

To maximize the vitamin C you get from food, the National Institutes of Health recommend eating fruits and vegetables fresh and raw

The Bottom Line. It’s all about your immune system—and your lifestyle choices have a lot to do with how well it functions. Do yourself and your family a favor and make 4Leaf eating a routine habit in your home. And do it now—before your children get too set in their bad habits. While your children are young, you hold the key to the future health of all of your family members who follow you. Do them all a favor and use that key.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Vitamins & Supplements | Tagged | 3 Comments

Cancer “Breakthroughs” that Cost Too Much and Do Too Little

Posted on 10/04/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

That was a recent headline in Newsweek & Daily Beast

We hear news about cancer every day—often many stories on any given day…and not just during October, which is breast cancer month. We’ve become obsessed with cancer and most of us have some kind of personal experience with the disease. We’re either a victim, a survivor, have a loved one with cancer, have friends who are oncologists and/or we’re involved with efforts to raise awareness or funds aimed at finding the cure.

It becomes mind-numbing after awhile. And it continues to get more complicated. We learned just last week that they’ve discovered four different types of breast cancer—each with different treatment regimens depending on the genome map of the patient. And with all of that complexity comes a price: in pain, anguish and dollars.

For this blog, I selected a few recent headlines that tell much of the story themselves. Listed below, each was delivered by a different major news organization (all names that you trust). From the frequency of the news that we see, each of those news companies must have dedicated staff who write nothing but cancer stories. (See links to all below)

  1. The Cancer “Breakthroughs” that Cost Too Much and Do Too Little – Newsweek
  2. Texas hospital plans ‘moonshot’ against cancer – CBS News
  3. Cancer’s growing burden: the high cost of care – USA Today
  4. The costly war on cancer – The Economist
  5. The World’s Most Expensive Drugs – Forbes

From Newsweek: Americans spent more than $23 billion last year for cancer drugs, more than we paid for prescriptions to treat anything else.

CBS News. The nation’s largest cancer center is launching a massive “moonshot” effort against eight specific forms of the disease, similar to the all-out push for space exploration 50 years ago.

USA Today New drugs often cost $100,000 or more a year. Patients are being put on them sooner in the course of their illness and for a longer time — sometimes for the rest of their lives.

Forbes. The nine drugs on our list all cost more than $200,000 a year for the average patient who takes them. Most of them treat rare genetic diseases that afflict fewer than 10,000 patients. For these diseases, there are few if any other treatments. So biotech companies can charge pretty much whatever they want.

The Economist. Cancer plays a huge role in raising costs. America’s National Institutes of Health predict that spending on all cancer treatment will rise from $125 billion last year to at least $158 billion in 2020. If drugs become pricier, as seems likely, that bill could rise to $207 billion.

So what does all this mean? To me, it means MONEY. And with cancer, it almost seems like there is no end in sight. From The Economist article:

CANCER is not one disease. It is many. Yet oncologists have long used the same blunt weapons to fight different types of cancer: cut the tumour out, zap it with radiation or blast it with chemotherapy that kills good cells as well as bad ones.

New cancer drugs are changing this. Scientists are now attacking specific mutations that drive specific forms of cancer.

And with every person possessing a totally unique genome map, the possibilities are endless. Times are changing in the drug business. In the old days, a drug company would sell millions of people the same drug, like Lipitor. But for the future, “Big Pharma” is betting that most of their money will be made in personalized medicine. And it’s their PR departments that drive the news cycle—that makes that happen. From the article:

This chart from “The Economist” article tells the story. The number of cancer drugs in development compared to the other leading categories.

This month Pfizer, an American company, announced that America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would speed up its review of a cancer drug called crizotinib. Roche submitted an FDA application for a new medicine, vemurafenib. The industry is pouring money into clinical trials for cancer drugs (see chart).

This is part of a shift in how big drug firms do business. For years they have relied on blockbusters that treat many people. Now they are investing in more personalised medicine: biotech drugs that treat small groups of patients more effectively.

The Bottom Line. The chart above tells the story. CANCER has almost as many drugs in development as ALL of the nine other leading categories—COMBINED.

But what about alerting people to the leading cause?

Sadly, not a single one these articles even mentions the fact that most cancers could be prevented with an optimal diet. And many could be slowed, stopped or reversed with the same simple, painless, inexpensive lifestyle changes. But there is no money to be made in those lifestyle changes.

Consecutive daily blogs (numerals today from Nevada)

Another option. For those who don’t wish to see their families suffer the pain, agony and expense of conventional cancer treatment, the alternative can be yours for less than $50. The earlier you adopt a near-optimal diet, the less the chances that you and your family will ever have cancer—or any other chronic disease.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Cancer, Cost of Health Care | Leave a comment

Why are insurance companies not “really” promoting health?

Posted on 10/03/2012 by J. Morris Hicks

“How Insurers Can Help” was the headline.

According to the 9-30-12 article, they can help reduce the cost of health care by replacing “fee for service” with “fixed budgets” that reward doctors for delivering less service.

This is what they’ve done at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts, where the results of such a scheme have been encouraging and the strategy is now spreading to other states—and even to Medicare. The New York Times article leads off:

Private insurance companies should be leading the way in the struggle to control health care costs. They know about every contact a patient has with the health care system and can see how much is wasteful or redundant. By altering the way they pay doctors and hospitals, they can potentially push providers to reduce costs, improve quality and even transform the whole culture of American medicine.

One problem. Eliminating waste and redundancy is not the same as promoting health. It’s  kind of like having a big gaping hole in the bottom of your ship. Instead of plugging the hole—all of the smartest people on board are busy at work—designing better pumps to constantly remove the gushing waters to keep the ship afloat.

Eliminating waste and redundancy is not the same as promoting health.

We know from many studies that a truly health-promoting diet will enable us to cut an estimated two trillion dollars a year from our health care tab in the United States. So why don’t we hear the insurance industry talk about truly promoting heath? Wouldn’t they make a lot more money if medical claims were suddenly slashed by 80%?

A step in the right direction for reducing waste; but precious little in terms of promoting health.

The simple answer is NO. That’s because the health insurance industry is comprised of many independent companies, all of whom are competing for our business. As with any form of insurance, when risk approaches zero, the cost of insuring against that risk moves in the same direction.

So what would happen to the health insurance industry if everyone adopted an optimal diet and our nation’s health care expenditures suddenly dropped from $2.8 trillion to less than one trillion—a 75% drop? Simple arithmetic tells us that within a short period of time, the size of our entire health insurance industry would shrink by 75%. You see, the heath insurance folks get a piece of the total health care “pie.” If the pie shrinks by 75%, so does the insurance industry.

What other industries would suffer if we all got healthy and our cost of health care took a nosedive?

    • Pharmaceutical industry
    • Cancer research industry
    • Cancer treatment industry
    • Heart surgeons
    • Hospitals and nurses
    • Manufacturers of devices to “manage” diabetes, heart disease, etc.
    • The huge organizations who “fight” our chronic diseases
    • The food producers who sell the disease promoting foods
    • The advertising industry that promotes all of the above
    • Nutritional scientists who can’t seem to agree on what we should be eating—while our nation gets fatter, sicker and deeper in debt.

One of the victims of people taking charge of their own health—the giant international pharmaceutical industry—now gathering steam in the wonderful world of personalized medicine made possible by the Cancer Genome Atlas.

Beginning to get the picture? While doing research for our book, we discovered that that there are some 35 million people in the above collective “system.” And not a single one of them has a financial incentive for us to be healthy.

Back to the Blue Cross story. From the article:

The results from the first two years of a five-year contracting period are quite encouraging, and this strategy is spreading to other places. More than 225 health care provider organizations around the country have entered into agreements with public or private insurers for some form of budget-based contracts. And Medicare has started demonstration projects like the Blue Cross model with 32 organizations.

Under fee-for-service, which still dominates American medicine, insurers pay doctors a separate fee for each office visit, test or procedure they perform, giving doctors incentive to do more rather than less.

Consecutive daily blogs (Numerals from N.J.)

The Bottom Line. Without a doubt, there are billions of dollars of waste and redundancy in our health care deliver system. But those dollars pale in comparison to the trillions in savings that would accrue from an urgent shift in the direction of a truly health-promoting diet for all Americans.

Proponents of the Blue Cross strategy predict trillions of dollars of savings over the next few decades—by eliminating waste.

But by promoting health, we eliminate trillions of dollars of costs within years—not decades.

Want to help save a quick $2 trillion in just the United States? If every adult followed the simple advice from this handy kit, the annual savings within just a few years would exceed one trillion dollars. So what’s our return on investment (ROI)?

  • Investment = 200 million x $50 = $10 billion
  • Annual return = Over one trillion dollars a year
  • Return on investment; ROI percentage = Over 10,000 % a year. Not too shabby.

Handy 4-piece take-charge-of-your-health kit—from Amazon.com

Want to find out how healthy your family is eating? Take our free 4Leaf Diagnostic Survey. It takes less than five minutes and you can score it yourself. After taking the survey, please give me your feedback as it will be helpful in the development of our future 4Leaf app for smartphones. Send feedback to jmorrishicks@me.com

International. We’re now reaching people in over 100 countries. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter or get daily blog notices by “following” us in the top of the right-hand column. For occasional updates, join our periodic mailing list.

To order more of my favorite books—visit our online BookStore now

J. Morris Hicks, working daily to promote health, hope and harmony on planet Earth.

For help in your own quest to take charge of your health, you might find some useful information at our 4Leaf page or some great recipes at Lisa’s 4Leaf Kitchen.

Got a question? Let me hear from you at jmorrishicks@me.com. Or give me a call on my cell at 917-399-9700.

SHARE and rate this post below.

Blogging daily at hpjmh.com…from the seaside village of Stonington, Connecticut – Be well and have a great day.

—J. Morris Hicks, board member, T. Colin Campbell Foundation

Posted in Corporate Wellness, Insurance | Tagged , , | 1 Comment