Some Children Left Behind

WENDY COLE

Although their explanations differ, Illinois and Montana have both failed miserably in complying with the controversial federal education reform law.

Not since Lewis and Clark included both sprawling territories on their famed 19th century westward expedition have Illinois and Montana been so closely linked. But now they share a dubious distinction as the only two states to have failed thus far to compile and release standardized student test results for 2006 as required under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law, giving further fodder to the law's critics who claim test scores have little to do with providing a solid education in the first place.

In Illinois, a Kafkaesque series of computer glitches, printing and labeling mistakes and human error by the testing company and state education officials have prevented schools from determining whether they made adequate yearly progress on reading and math exams taken by third through eighth graders last spring. Montana officials, by contrast, argue that their tardy score reporting was in fact planned. Regardless, the delays means that students in both states are unable to know officially whether they are eligible for free tutoring or to transfer to another school if they attend a failing school, as mandated under the reform law. While a dozen states have experienced delays this year in getting their scores pulled together, none were as far behind as the bureaucrats in the Land of Lincoln and Big Sky Country.

Illinois officials initially blamed the cascading snafus on Texas-based Harcourt Assessments, which in March delivered to about a quarter of the state's 895 districts tests that were riddled with errors or had missing or duplicate pages. Some boxes arrived at schools containing no tests at all, requiring last-minute scrambling (and planes chartered by Harcourt) to distribute the exams in time. While the testing itself appeared to proceed without many problems, a mountain of mistakes ensued afterward during the largely automated scoring phase that delayed the processing. Illinois officials have also conceded to contributing to further hitches in the state's new student identification system. Designed to streamline the scoring process by assigning each student a number that included demographic and school data, in reality the scoring verification slowed to a crawl because district officials across the state entered incorrect information pertaining to race, income level and special education status for roughly 11,000 students, out of about 900,000 Illinois test-takers. The state originally promised final results would be released by Oct. 31. but officials say it will be well into the new year before the work is complete.

Montana school officials were sympathetic about Illinois' predicament, but quickly distanced themselves from the storm of errors and incompetencies that characterized their Midwestern counterpart. "We didn't have any assessments aligned to our standards prior to No Child Left Behind, so we we've had to build our tests from scratch," said Joe Lamson, communications director for the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Because 2006 was the first testing year that required assessments for every grade from third through eighth, Montana set a generous mid-January deadline to process its results. In 2005, only students in fourth, eighth and 10th were tested, so the state easily got its scores in by late August. "We wanted to give ourselves extra time this year to get all of our scoring calibrated properly. We've met all our deadlines along the way," said Lamson. The Montana spokesman couldn't lavish enough praise on its contracted testing company, New Hampshire-based Measured Progress, which he says has performed well on all aspects of its commitment. But it's worth remembering that Montana was only responsible for 60,000 student tests, less than one tenth of Illinois' workload.

Measuring the significance of late-arriving scores depends almost entirely on your perspective on standardized tests. As the federal NCLB law comes up for reauthorization next year, testing critics are quick to point to the extensive delays. "Nowhere have schools stopped functioning because of the missing test scores. But they also don't know if they've moved up or down the performance ladder," said education advocate Julie Woestehoff, executive director of the Chicago-based non-profit Parents United for Responsible Education. She hopes snafus like Illinois' may actually help in rethinking the law's parameters to include other forms of assessments in evaluating schools."These testing errors show the need for multiple measures like student grades and performance portfolios which are not as cheap and fast to administer, but are more accurate," Woestehoff says. In 2005, 84% of Illinois schools made adequate yearly progress based on established annual targets under NCLB, up from 71% the prior year.

Indeed, criticizing the states and testing firms charged with carrying out the federal law ignores a far more crucial issue: whether standardized tests can ever really drive high-quality education. Says author and well-known standardized test skeptic Alfie Kohn: "These recent problems with implementation pale beside the appalling effects of NCLB itself. It's when this law is working 'properly' with all the tests given, the numbers obediently reported, and the attendant punitive consequences enforced - that we really need to worry." Montana may not be sweating out its scores; last year, 92% of its schools made adequate yearly progress, one of the highest percentages in the nation. The state can only be grateful that speedy tabulation isn't part of the ranking system.

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How We Confuse Real Risks with Exaggerated Ones

DAN CRAY

Our emotions allow us to ignore some threats as we grow overly concerned with others.

Cass Sunstein earns his living researching how misplaced fears skewer our ability to assess risk, so he figured himself the last person to fall into the same trap. But when his teenage daughter planned a long-distance swim last summer, Sunstein found himself dwelling on the remote possibility she would drown. "It's crazy," says Sunstein, a University of Chicago law professor specializing in risk regulation. "But I couldn't counteract my brain's rapid, intuitive emotional system for evaluating risk."

Few of us can, and that's a dangerous problem. When our emotions overtake our reasoning we worry about sensational events which are statistically unlikely to harm us — such as airline disasters, shark attacks, or terrorism — rather than everyday dangers that kill thousands. John Graham, who spent four years as administrator of the federal Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, says news of SUV tire failures left him besieged with demands for tire pressure warning systems even though government reports listed 41 car-crash deaths per year due to under-inflated tires, versus 9,800 deaths from side-impact crashes. "People's capacity to visualize a risk is an important part of the attention they give to it," says Graham. "If you're within six months of a Three Mile Island, a Love Canal, or a 9/11, the policymakers and the public don't have the patience for the kind of cerebral risk analysis we need."

That falls in line with what Princeton professor Daniel Kahneman coined "the availability heuristic": the concept that if people can think of an incident in which a risk has come to fruition, they will exaggerate its likelihood. "Somehow the probability of an accident increases [in one's mind] after you see a car turned over on the side of the road," says Kahneman, who won a 2002 Nobel prize for his work. "That's what availability does to you: it plants an image that comes readily to mind, and that image is associated with an emotion: fear."

But our experiences also sway us, goading our brains into assessing risks based on rapid whispers of positive or negative emotion. "If you look at genocide, we just don't react," says Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon. "With 9/11 we lost 3,000 people in one day, but during 1994 in Rwanda 800,000 people were killed in 100 days — that's 8,000 a day for 100 days — and the world didn't react at all. Now you see the same thing with Darfur."

Nassim Taleb, a probability expert at the University of Massachusetts, says the first step to better risk assessment is understanding that most dramatic news images represent the exception rather than the rule. "Television," he says, "messes up the probabilistic mapping you have of the world." Our questionable math skills don't help either; most people have trouble distinguishing the statistical difference between one chance in 1,000 and one chance in ten million. "Both sound small," says Graham, "but one is ten-thousand-fold more likely." Understanding those numbers, rather than taking what Sunstein calls a "risk-of-the-month" approach, will save lives. "Right now we've got a lot of concern about vivid events," Sunstein says. "We'd do much better with a more disciplined approach."

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What We'll Be Dying Of

Michael Lemonick

It's been 13 years since the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a landmark report titled Global Burden of Disease, which forecast the most likely causes of death worldwide up to 2020. Now the WHO has come out with an update, based on the latest demographic data (from 2002) and reaching out until the year 2030. It's just been published in the online journal PLoS Medicine.

You can't predict the future with any certainty, of course, so the researchers played out three different scenarios, assuming optimistic, pessimistic and middle-of-the-road rates of economic development--a key in projecting disease and death rates.

Among the highlights: in all three scenarios, overall worldwide life expectancy should increase, overall mortality for kids under 5 and non-infectious diseases, including cancers and cardiovascular disease will increase as causes of death. That's partly because those illnesses tend to be consequences of higher incomes, and partly because infectious diseases will diminish (which also explains the drop in child mortality). One exception: AIDS, which will continue to grow as a killer. Even so, says the report, tobacco-related illnesses will cause half again as many deaths as AIDS by 2015.

Finally, the three leading killers worldwide by 2030: AIDS, heart disease and--a surprise--depression. That's true for all but the most optimistic of the three scenarios; if economic development is better than expected, then car accidents are likely to overtake heart disease for the #3 spot.

What it means: Public-health policy--what illnesses to tackle in order most effectively to keep people healthy longer--depends on knowing what the greatest risks are. This report helps public and private institutions figure out how best to allocate resources for future problems.

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An African Miracle

CHRISTINE GORMAN

How a few doctors and some antiviral drugs brought a child with AIDS--and thousands like him--back from the dead.

It's hard to believe that these photos are of the same little boy. When 8-year-old Bokang Rakabaele arrived at the new pediatric-AIDS clinic in Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho, in May, he weighed less than 20 lbs. and was suffering from AIDS, pneumonia and tuberculosis. Today he's 18 lbs. heavier, his shy smile has returned, and he plays once again with other kids in the neighborhood. When I visited the clinic in August, Bokang was already on the mend. He was asked through an interpreter why he thought he was feeling so much better, and replied very simply, "It's the medicine."

Leave it to a child to get to the heart of the matter. For years, giving antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to children living with AIDS in the poorest parts of the world was perceived as a lost cause. It's hard enough, the experts thought, to get ARVs to pregnant, HIV-positive women to reduce the chances they will infect their babies in utero or at birth. Pediatric versions of the drugs are expensive, and cutting down an adult dose of the medication to give it to a child is tricky. Without treatment, however, nearly a third of HIV-positive infants die by their first birthday, and half die by age 2.

Now Bokang and thousands of African children like him are getting the lifesaving treatment they need. What changed? Researchers showed that children respond faster and better than adults to ARVs, and it no longer seemed fair to ignore poor youngsters with AIDS. Then several groups rose to the challenge. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief allocated $63 million this year for the treatment of pediatric AIDS. The Clinton Foundation negotiated a 50% reduction in the price of a key medication. And a handful of nonprofit organizations, corporations and faith-based groups began sending more doctors to the developing world to help plug some of the health-care gaps for children.

The need is great. More than 2 million children in Africa under age 15 are living with HIV, according to a study published last week by UNAIDS and the World Health Organization. Of these youngsters, perhaps 660,000 are sick enough to require medical intervention. Yet only 1 in 20 children who need ARVs get them. In addition, fewer than 1 in 10 HIV-positive mothers receive the drugs they need to keep from transmitting the virus to their newborns.

This is usually the point at which most of us in the rich countries of the world throw up our hands in despair. Not so Dr. Mark Kline of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "If you focus on the enormity of the problem, you'll never get started," says Kline, who has cared for hundreds of HIV-positive children over the years in the U.S. and has seen many of them grow old enough to have children of their own (see box). "You have to tackle it piece by piece."

Kline's plan for dealing with the ongoing emergency in Africa was to create several pediatric centers of excellence for AIDS. (Four have opened--in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi and Swaziland--and four more are in the planning stages.) Then he set about finding the staff and the money to run them. Since there aren't enough doctors and nurses in most African countries, that meant recruiting young physicians from the U.S. to spend a year or two at the clinics. Most of the funding for the first class of 52 doctors in his Pediatric AIDS Corps comes from Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) and Baylor. The clinics were built with money from BMS and Abbott. But the day-to-day operating budgets of the centers are the responsibility of local governments.

You can already see the difference in Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom of 2 million people surrounded by its much larger and richer neighbor, South Africa. At least 22,000 Basotho children are HIV positive, but as of two years ago, fewer than 20 were on ARVs, and there were only two doctors in the whole country looking after children with AIDS. In the year since the children's clinic opened on the outskirts of Maseru, 700 kids--including Bokang--have received treatment from 10 pediatricians.

Kline expects that the influx of U.S. doctors will be temporary. The plan is to dramatically increase the ability of local health-care staff to treat children with AIDS. To that end, the children's clinics and their doctors, including the Pediatric AIDS Corps, have provided training in the past six months for about 3,600 health-care workers.

The Americans aren't alone in their efforts. Dr. Edith Mohapi was born in Lesotho and left when she was 17 to pursue advanced studies and medical school. She returned last year to run the clinic in Maseru and was joined earlier this summer by her daughter Dr. Lineo Thahane, also a pediatrician and one of the first Pediatric AIDS Corps members. The nurses, social workers and other staff are also from Lesotho.

Their optimism in the midst of extreme difficulty is contagious. "It's hard to see children that sick," Mohapi says. "But children respond so quickly--that's why I went into pediatrics--and after just a few weeks of us treating them, they come back, and they're smiling, they're running, and they're eating better."

Not everything runs quite as it should yet. While the ARVs are free, getting to the clinic is not. A ride in one of the ubiquitous minivans everyone uses for public transportation can cost $1 or more--an exorbitant sum when you're living on $1 or less a day. Because the government's telecommunications agency wants more money than Mohapi's budget allows to set up high-speed Internet access, the clinic still depends on a sluggish dial-up connection. Meanwhile, the center has become a de facto emergency room for the neighborhood--further evidence of the fragile state of basic health care in the region.

What happens next in Lesotho and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa depends a lot on how broadly these first efforts expand. All the ARVs in the world aren't going to help much if children and their families don't have enough food to build up their strength or clean water to keep from picking up infections. Tough as it has been to focus attention on children with AIDS, it has been harder for clinics to get and use a common antibiotic to prevent pneumonia and other ills in HIV-positive children who don't yet need ARVs. "One of the biggest obstacles in treating children has been having a consistent guardian," says Dr. Martha Sommers, head of clinical services at Embangweni Hospital, a church-run facility in rural Malawi. "Often the guardian is sick or dying, or the children are orphans and getting passed from one guardian to the next."

Some of the challenges go even deeper. "I did not realize how much women lack basic rights in this country," Dr. Julia Kim writes from Swaziland, north of Lesotho. Women traditionally turn over all their income to their husbands, she says, and defer to them on matters of treatment--a practice Kim struggled with when trying to convince one father that immediate care was needed for his daughter whose immune system had collapsed.

Nor are all children who come to the clinics infected at birth. In some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, teenage girls are now eight times as likely to be infected with HIV as their male peers. Study after study has shown that the best way to ensure that young girls who are HIV negative remain that way is to keep them in school, delay sexual intercourse and marriage, help them get good jobs and allow them greater control of their income.

Still, there is reason for hope. The mortality rate for children with AIDS at Baylor's pediatric clinic in Botswana has fallen from nearly 5% in 2003 to 0.3% this year. Other groups are scaling up. More than 1,400 children are receiving antiretroviral therapy in Rwanda--up from 354 in 2004--and more than a third of pregnant women are getting treatment to preserve their lives and reduce the risk of delivering an HIV-positive infant, according to UNICEF. There will always be more to do, but at long last the work has begun.

To see video from the Lesotho clinic and read more about U.S. doctors in the Pediatric AIDS Corps, visit time.com/aidskids

With reporting by With reporting by Alice Park / Houston

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The classes of hassles

It is literally impossible to get through even a single day without encountering one or more of the endless varieties of hassles. As you read through the following list, think about an average day and how these hassles, commonly called stressors, may be reducing your enjoyment of life.

• Emotional hassles. This category includes the fears and anxieties we struggle with. For example: Can we prevent nuclear war? What if I run out of gas? How am I going to pay the light bill?
• Family hassles. Interactions with family members can be stressful: The striving of teenagers for independence, a spouse who drinks too much, in-laws visiting.
• Social hassles. Our interaction with other people: Asking a person for a date, expressing anger at another's behavior, giving or going to a party.
• Change hassles. There's a limit to the amount of change we can comfortably sustain before something becomes a hassle: Leaving a job, buying a house, moving to a new city. You may be able to handle one or even two changes at once, but the third could send you spinning.
• Work hassles. Whether you work in an office or from home, you'll experience work-related stresses like asking for a raise, rushing to meet deadlines, or cleaning tracked-in mud off the floor for the fourth time in one day.
• Commuting hassles. This is the category of unpleasant life events like the stress of discourteous or reckless drivers that occurs in rush hour traffic. It also includes the hassles of air, bus, or train travel.
• Decision hassles. Making decisions, especially regarding important issues or when there is no perfect solution to a problem, can drive you bananas: Should I have the surgical procedure now or wait? Should my aged parent be institutionalized? Should I get a divorce?
• Pain hassles. Pain stressors are the aches and pains of new and old injuries, or of ongoing medical conditions like a sore tooth, migraine headaches, and PMS. Chronic pain and discomfort can lead to social isolation and depression.
• Environmental hassles. This category of stressors includes aspects of our surroundings that are often unavoidable: Smoke-filled rooms, cramped offices, the glare of the sun, or the cold of winter.

The first step toward managing your stress is to identify the external events that set you off. And now that you can recognize the day-to-day categories of life's hassles and that you're not alone in combating them, let's peer into the inner part of the story of stress. This discussion will give you a better understanding of why stress affects you in the way it does.

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How Foods Can Affect Cancer

ANDREW WEIL, M.D.

Good news for soy-based foods, bad news for T-bone steaks.

What do steak, tofu and sushi have to do with cancer? Plenty, it seems, if several new studies served up at the American Association for Cancer Research in Boston are to be believed. And not all bear good news: the latest report from the sprawling Nurse's Health Study, for example, detected an unsettling association between red meat and breast cancer.

The report that interested me most looked at the association between breast cancer and soy-based foods. This is a controversial topic because soy contains isoflavones, some of which in isolated form can stimulate the growth of estrogen-receptor-positive breast-cancer cells. That's why many Western doctors warn women against eating soy. Yet the epidemiological evidence has been promising: Asian women on diets rich in soy have significantly lower rates of breast cancer than Western women have.

So I was particularly gratified by a new study of Asian-American women done by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). It looked at women who ate a lot of soy-based foods as children, adolescents and adults. The strongest and most consistent association was among women who ate the most soy-based foods from ages 5 to 11. They reduced their risk of developing hormone-fueled breast cancer 58%, compared with women who ate the least. The reduction for women who ate a lot of soy as adolescents and adults was 25%. Regular, moderate consumption of whole-soy foods (such as soy nuts, edamame, soy milk, tofu and tempeh) probably affects the development of breast tissue in young females, possibly making it more resistant to carcinogens, including estrogenic agents in the environment.

The lead researcher of the NCI study says it would be premature to recommend changes in children's diets on the basis of these results, but I don't agree. Women who have a family history of breast cancer ought to be introducing their kids to soy foods as early as possible. Substituting soy milk for cow's milk is one way to start. I believe the same thing will be shown to hold true for boys; a similar diet may lower their future risk of prostate cancer.

The other piece of good news came out of a large population study of more than 22,000 U.S. physicians. It found that men who ate fish five or more times a week had a 40% lower risk of developing colorectal cancer than men who ate it less than once a week. I've long believed that the omega-3 fatty acids in oily fish inhibit the COX-2 enzyme that increases both inflammation and cell proliferation.

The bad news came in another large population study, this one of more than 90,000 nurses. A report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that the risk of estrogen- and progesterone-receptor-positive breast cancer increased most in those nurses who ate the most red meat. Women who ate more than 1 1/2 servings of red meat a day had nearly double the risk, compared with those who ate three or fewer servings a week. The authors offered several theories for what's behind the correlation. One possibility is that red meat delivers too much iron in a form that promotes cancer. Another is that carcinogens form in meat as it is cooked. Yet another (and one that I would bet on) is that conventionally raised beef carries residues of the hormones ranchers give cattle to make them grow faster.

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Allergies at the Dinner Table

PAMELA PAUL

For children with food allergies and their parents, an allergy isn't just a medical condition, it's a psychologically taxing way of life.

Stuffing. Candied yams. Baked ham. And lots of cakes and cookies. For most of us, the holidays are largely about food, and that s what makes them so enjoyable. But for families with food-allergic children, the holidays are all about food—and that s what makes them so terrifying.

The American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology estimates that 6 to 8% of children suffer from severe food allergies, and though no one can agree on exactly why, the number of young sufferers has grown significantly (LINK HERE TO SIDEBAR ON GROWTH IN FOOD ALLERGY VICTIMS) over the past couple of decades. Nearly 90% are caused by milk, eggs, peanuts, wheat, soy, fish, shellfish or tree nuts. On January 1, a federal law took effect requiring food labels to state clearly whether a product contains any one of those main eight culprits. But significant difficulties-not necessarily medical-remain. A food allergy diagnosis has a tremendous impact on the psychological wellbeing of the entire family, says Anne Mu�oz-Furlong, founder and CEO of the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN), a nonprofit patient advocacy group.

The holidays are especially difficult, says Remi Hahn, whose 4-year-old daughter Olivia is severely allergic to dairy, eggs, mustard and sesame. The most stressful thing is the lack of control, Hahn says. One undetected wrong morsel and her daughter could be on her way to the hospital.

Several hospitals around the country are in the process of developing psychiatric programs specifically for families with food allergies. According to Anaphylaxis: How Do You Live With It? , a 2005 article in Health and Social Work, coping with a child who has a severe allergy is similar to dealing with a chronic disease. In a study of 17 families with children with anaphylaxis, the authors describe the profound psychosocial impact on parents of knowing an illness can cause death. "I was completely shocked and surprisingly emotional," says Stefanie Jones, who burst into tears when daughter Darby was diagnosed four months ago with egg, milk, wheat, and peanut allergies. "I realized I'm going to have that weird kid at the party with the dairy-free, prune juice cookies."

Children, of course, bear the brunt. "The emotional toll is huge," says Mu�oz-Furlong. "It tends to wear them down, particularly after they have a reaction." Some children lose the ability to trust people. They may want to stay home all the time within a controlled environment. If they have a reaction at home, they may become afraid that even their parents can t control the allergy. Others are fearful of food or develop eating disorders. They might become hypochondriac, phobic, or suffer from panic attacks or post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. Many see counselors who teach them relaxation tips and how to speak up about their allergies.

For Jill Mindlin, watching her 5-year-old daughter suffer—more times than any parent should—through an anaphylactic reaction to dairy, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, or seeds is torture because she sees the effect it has on Maya. One of the symptoms of food allergy is dread, Mindlin explains. She knows something is very wrong and literally tries to jump out of skin. It's unbearable to watch. As a result, Maya tends to shut down around food and new people. Some of Maya s first words, her mother says, were "Read the 'gredients."

And that's just what her daughter goes through. To cope with her own stress, Mindlin not only founded a local support group, she attends allergy conferences and lobbies local and state governments to protect food-allergic kids in school. One parent in Mindlin's support group had to ask the principal to intervene when kids at her child s elementary school were bullying her son, chasing him around the schoolyard with peanut butter.

Torn between reasonable fear and hypochondria, safety and overprotection, parents struggle to raise their children with some semblance of normalcy-without driving themselves, their kids, their friends, and their communities crazy. Waiters roll their eyes when parents ask to view labels and school staff often resist accommodations. Parents whose kids dive into birthday cake with abandon and live on PB and J aren't necessarily sympathetic to what they call the peanut police. Even the most understanding moms aren't accustomed to the precautions involved (LINK HERE TO TIPS FOR HOSTING STORY) in having an allergic child over for a playdate.

Adjustments go beyond tailored birthday cake recipes. A 2001 FAAN study of 253 parents of children with food allergies found that childhood allergies have a significant impact on family activities and lifestyles. Heidi Pasternak, a part-time tutor in Lexington, Massachusetts, had to quit her full-time teaching job because she couldn't find a milk-free daycare for her son Lucas (peanuts, tree nuts, milk, egg, sesame, shellfish, fish, barley). The choices of things we've done as a family are severely limited, Pasternak says. "We only went to food-free places when he was a toddler. No Chuck E. Cheese. When I see an ice cream truck I have to walk the other way because he s contact-sensitive. I thought I was going to be the cool mom and travel to Europe with my baby and take him to Fenway Park. But even at minor league games, everyone's throwing peanuts at each other." One saving grace has been an annual trip to Nantucket that Pasternak takes with her friends from college. "They make the house totally safe for Lucas," she says. "Nobody uses milk, eggs or nuts. I don't have to be the food police. It's one of the rare times I can feel totally relaxed while socializing. And that's a huge deal."

Remi Hahn goes out her way to make her daughter Olivia feel included during the holidays. She offers to cook cupcakes for the preschool class party, using egg and butter substitutes. At Christmas time, she hosts a party so that her daughter can participate in the baking of a gingerbread house without breaking into hives or having an anaphylactic reaction. And on Christmas Eve, when her family goes out to dinner, Hahn is sure to have the roast beef cut in front of her and to bring extra food in her purse just in case nothing on the menu works. "I try to be as unobtrusive as possible because I feel like Olivia's allergies are our issue," she says. "I try to go out of my way so that other people don't have to go out of theirs', especially around the holidays when everyone else has their own traditions to follow."

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Finding a Master Heart Cell

Scientists have identified a cardiac stem cell that could be the basis for new heart therapies.

Although embryonic stem cells have certainly grabbed most of the attention — and headlines — in the stem cell field in recent years, embryos aren't the only source of these versatile mother-cells. Political leanings aside, researchers are beginning to appreciate that many tissues in the body have their own stem cells. Blood cells, for example, derive from a single hematopoietic stem cell in the bone marrow, and now two groups of scientists from Boston report that they have identified a similar mother stem cell from which most heart cells arise. Working with mice, one group at Massachusetts General Hospital isolated a cardiac stem cell that generates the three major cell types of the mammalian heart, while another group at the hospital found a stem cell that gives rise to the contracting and smooth muscle cells found in heart vessel walls.

The findings are certainly exciting — these stem cells could form the basis of new heart therapies, and could become a source of healthy, replacement cells for heart tissue damaged after a heart attack or by heart disease. But they represent only the first step in what will be a long road. First, the studies were conducted in mice and rats, and while these animals can serve as a template for understanding how heart cells develop, any stem cell-based therapies that come out of them will have to go through more testing in larger mammals before doctors can even begin to think about trying them in human patients.

And even if the heart is created from these master stem cells, scientists still have to master the process of recreating the normal development of heart tissue in the lab. They have to understand the delicate and perfectly timed steps involved in coaxing some stem cells to develop into heart blood vessels, while guiding others on the path to becoming the steadily beating heart muscle that methodically pumps blood to the entire human body.

What these findings do promise, however, is the possibility of developing heart-based therapies without the need for using embryonic stem cells — a welcome prospect for researchers in the U.S. who are restricted from working with these cells unless they secure private, non-government funding.

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Tackling AIDS in China

Christine Gorman, Simon Robinson and Bryan Walsh

In most countries a 30% increase in HIV/AIDS cases would be a cause for alarm. But in China—where new cases jumped by 183,733 year to year from Oct. 31, according to the Ministry of Health—it's a sign that the government is at least taking the deadly disease seriously.

For years Beijing insisted that HIV was a problem for other countries, and as recently as 2000 the government's official estimate of total AIDS cases was just 20,000. The reality: the number was far higher, thanks in part to a scandal in the country's Henan province that saw tens of thousands of peasants infected when they sold their blood using contaminated needles.

Today, an estimated 650,000 people are HIV-positive in China, according to the latest report by UNAIDS, though because of poor surveillance and a reluctance by HIV-positive Chinese to admit their disease, the true number is likely far higher.

Beijing has taken admirable steps to control the disease since 2003, when Premier Wen Jiabao was photographed shaking hands with an AIDS patient. Migrants, who could spread HIV nationwide as they travel thousands of miles from their home provinces to China's prosperous coastal cities, are eligible for free testing, and the government has begun offering free condoms in karaoke bars, while promoting needle exchange and methadone programs. (Intravenous drug use is still a major factor in the spread of the disease.)

The government is still wary of AIDS activists, occasionally locking up the more outspoken ones, but Beijing knows HIV is a serious problem—which may be more than you can say for China's neighbor India, where the government has failed to face up to the country's estimated 5.7 million HIV cases.

That's an important step for China. As we've seen in devastated countries like South Africa, official denial may be the single biggest factor in the spread of HIV.

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Fast Food Cravings Conquered!

Lynn Grieger,
RD, CDE for iVillage

Fast food is a way of life. The typical American eats three hamburgers and four orders of fries each week. The majority of these visits are spontaneous; we see the fast food sign as we're driving by and before we know it we're munching as we hum the music from the latest commercial.

According to Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, "Americans now spend more money on fast food than on higher education, personal computers, computer software or new cars. They spend more on fast food than on movies, books, magazines, newspapers, videos and recorded music -- combined."

We all know that fast food isn't healthy, but that doesn't seem to stop us. The next time you're speaking to the sign at the drive-through window or waiting your turn in line at the counter, keep these thoughts in mind:
# A Hardees Monster Burger weighs in at 1,060 calories, more than half of an average woman's daily calorie needs!
# Think you're keeping it light by eating a Taco Bell taco salad? Think again! It contains 850 calories, enough for two meals. I have to give it credit, though -- along with the 52 grams of fat (more than you need in an entire day) it does have a beneficial 16 grams of fiber. Of course, you could simply eat a high fiber breakfast cereal and save yourself approximately 600 calories.
# Are french fries your downfall? The best bet is the small fries from White Castle. With only 115 calories and 6 grams of fat, they're actually not a bad choice. As you can imagine, the more fries you order, the more calories and fat you get. At McDonald's, the small fries have 210 calories and 10 grams of fat. Add 240 calories if you eat the medium size (450 calories total), 320 additional calories for the large (530 calories total), and the super-size weighs in at an astounding 610 calories and 29 grams of fat! Believe it or not, a Chicken McGrill (hold the mayo and you have 340 calories) has fewer calories than the medium fries, a Quarter Pounder with Cheese (530 calories) has about the same amount of calories as the large fries, and the only sandwiches with more calories than the super-size fries are the Big X-tra (710 calories) and Big X-tra with Cheese (810 calories)!
# The skinless chicken you roast at home may be healthy, but chicken nuggets have more fat per ounce than hamburgers! The same goes for fish sandwiches. Here are the numbers:
# A 6-piece Chicken McNuggets has 290 calories and 17 grams of fat, a Filet-O-Fish sandwich has 470 calories and 26 grams fat, and a hamburger has 270 calories and 9 grams fat.
# Don't drown your sorrows in the milkshakes. Burger King's shakes contain 66 grams of sugar -- that's 16 teaspoons! The 430 calories aren't too shabby either.
# Beware of large portions. They entice us with special pricing, but what we're really doing is contributing to the financial bottom line and our own derrieres. Supersizing gives the companies additional profits while we pack on the calories and fat. Do we really need a triple cheeseburger and super-size fries? Take a look at Burger King burgers:

* Hamburger, 320 calories and 15 grams fat
* Whopper Junior, 400 calories and 24 grams fat
* Whopper, 660 calories and 40 grams fat
* Double Whopper, 920 calories and 59 grams fat

What about our kids?

How many times do you purchase fast food for your child? Hold birthday parties in the fast food playlands? My boys used to play with the toys and not eat the food (I think they're smarter than I give them credit!). Fast food companies are no dummies. By marketing heavily to children, they develop loyal, life-long customers who've developed a taste for high-fat fries and burgers early on. But think about this: The rate of childhood obesity has more than doubled in the past 20 years, at the same time that eating fast food has become a way of life. Granted, there are many reasons for the appalling rate of weight gain in the United States, but eating fast food is most likely a factor.

The bottom line

Make a resolution right now to drastically decrease your fast food consumption. Then make another vow to never supersize, and to always order the smallest items on the menu the few times you succumb to fast food. Read my article on Fast Food Made Healthy and commit it to memory. We really can have it our way!

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12 Steps To Higher Vibrational Health: Getting Younger and Living Longer

Mary Kurus

Why Do You Need High Vibrations

Part of the ageing process means that the vibrations within you, penetrating you and around you are slowing down. This is ageing. Organs and systems work slower and less effectively that when they were younger. Eventually they just stop working. Our physical, electro-magnetic, magnetic and electric systems become damaged, clogged up, numb, and much weaker than when we were young. The chemical system, the hormone system, each cell works more and more slowly until it barely works, and then it stops working completely and we depart Mother Earth.

A healthy organ and system vibrates at a high rate when it is healthy, regardless of your age. High vibrations mean vibrant health. Vibration is energy and energy is alive and intelligent. To live long and healthy you need to keep your systems vibrating at high levels.

Scientists can now tell us about the rate of vibration and functioning of major organs and systems within us. They tell us that when you have the flu the rate of vibration lowers from the optimum high rate. When you have pneumonia the rate of vibration is even lower. And when you have cancer the rate of vibration is very low. They are not able to yet tell us what causes the vibrations of our organs and systems to decrease but they can now at least provide these types of readings. Many alternative practitioners have been saying for some time now that the cause for lower vibrations is a combination of parasites, worms, viruses, fungus, chemical, metal and atomic poisons, repressed emotions, and many other factors I’ll discuss in this article.

The secret to living a life that is intellectually, physically, emotionally and spiritually vibrant is to have very high vibrations. The following are 12 essential steps to achieve high vibrations within, penetrating and around you.

Step 1 - Admit You Have a Problem

Before you can begin to find a solution, you need to admit you have a problem. The symptoms you might be experiencing could include an overall general dissatisfaction with your life, a feeling of “so what” or “is that all there is”. You may be experiencing health problems feeling fatigued and debilitated, lacking in energy, not sleeping well. You may find yourself angry, fearful, depressed, fatigued, or with a general anxiety and uneasiness about your life.

You can blame society, the government, your parents, your husband/wife, your children, your job, the fact that the sun is shining or that it’s raining, there’s always someone or something to blame. But if you take a moment you will admit that you rarely feel happy, grateful, or satisfied with your life, that you don’t understand the cause of your dissatisfaction, and that you might be part of the problem. After all, if you do have the answers why are you unhappy?

The first step to vibrant health is to admit you have a problem and that you are part of that problem. You need to admit that your life is not bringing you the satisfaction you want, and that this is affecting your health and this will most likely affect how long and vibrantly you will live.

Step 2 - Make A Decision

The first step in the journey to a long and vibrant life is to make the decision that you want to life a life that is fulfilled, happy and long, and that this is really what you want. Some people will decide they want to continue their current lifestyles and would rather do that and live a shorter life than make the required changes. It’s a huge decision to make to live a long life since it will require major changes in many aspects of your life.

This is a deep decision that requires serious consideration of the potential changes required. Please read the following steps carefully since they will help to guide your thinking and decision making process. Often we decide things incrementally, in stages. Life rarely flows along a smooth line, but rather resembles a roller coaster but one that has many side rails. Sometimes the ride is smoother and sometimes it is rougher with high peaks and valleys.

Making a decision to live long and healthy requires a plan or roadmap. Your roadmap needs to be yours since only you can truly design what is essential for your vibrant health. Take time to make a decision and to design your roadmap. This means truly loving yourself and caring about yourself.

Step 3 - Taking Inventory

The first step to developing a plan is to take a look at what you have right now. There will be many good elements to your life and you will want to treasure and keep. There will be elements that are problematic and that require change, but that you want to keep. And there will be elements that need to be eliminated. To make these decisions you need to make an inventory that identifies what you might want to keep, change or eliminate from your life.

EVERY INVENTORY NEEDS TO IDENTIFY ALL ASSETS - GOOD AS WELL AS NEGATIVE. MAKE SURE YOU LIST THE POSITIVES AND NOT JUST THE NEGATIVES. OTHERWISE YOUR INVENTORY WILL BE UNBALANCED AND NOT AS PRODUCTIVE.

It’s helpful to break things down into pieces even though these elements are integrated in our lives. I like to look at the physical elements, intellectual/ mental elements, emotional elements and spiritual elements in our lives.

It’s important to write this inventory down. Reality is easier to achieve when it’s in writing in front of us. It’s essential to put your Inventory into writing.

Physical Health: Write down your normal living physical habits of today and be sure to identify the positive practices as well as those not so healthy. Do you eat healthy foods or do you eat a lot of sugar, junk foods, lots of processed foods, drink quite regularly, and eat out a great deal - most restaurant food is loaded with fat and sugar. Have you been checked for digestive food sensitivities to identify foods to be eliminated from your diet? Is the water you’re drinking vibrating at a high rate or are you drinking tap water or distilled water - both are dead water with no vibration at all? Are you exercising on a regular basis? Are you detoxifying on a regular basis? Do you know if you have mineral or vitamin deficiencies? Are you tired and fatigued on a regular basis? Are you sleeping deeply, peacefully, and sufficiently?

IMPORTANT - TO RAISE THE VIBRATIONS OF WATER AND FOOD: If you want to raise the vibrations of water/food to high levels I suggest you use one of the copper coils made by a man called Slim Spurling. You can find out about his Light-Life Rings at www.spiritofmaat.com/maatstore/spurling.htm. These coils can raise the rate of vibration of all water and food to very high rates.

Energetic Health: Have you had your auras and chakras checked for blockages or under-activity? Are you doing the Five Tibetan Rites, an energetic exercise program to activate your chakras, and endocrine system - and activating your endocrine system is said to reverse ageing? Are you spending at least one half hour outdoors daily to absorb the energizing rays of the sun and other elements of the Universe? Are you clearing your auras and chakras daily? Are you ensuring your chakras are running without distortion and that there are no holes in your auras?

Emotional Health: Are you excessively angry, lonely, unduly fearful, depressed, bored, stressed, feeling guilty, grieving excessively, over-reacting to situations, looking after others and not yourself, isolated, full of regret, full of resentments, blaming others for how you feel, or procrastinating? Do you know yourself and are you fully present and aware of your emotional reactions? Do you escape being present with yourself and others through working or exercising too much , being too busy, over-eating, drinking, smoking, drugging?

Do you try and control those around you, a certain symptom of underlying fears. Do you have emotional issues from the past buried within you that are affecting you in today? Do you have loving friends in your life? Are you part of a community, a family/friends? Do you feel love for yourself and others?

Are you able to express your emotions with those who are directly involved in situations dealing with your emotional states in a calm and constructive manner? People who cannot express their emotions often have difficult and unfulfilled relationships.

Identify the emotions troubling you the most and what you perceive to be the cause of these emotions. Sometimes we need to change perspective on issues and at other times we need to make substantive changes in our work, relationships, activities. But we need to look at things slowly and not make rash decisions that we might later regret. Emotions can be tricky and it helps to have someone look at our findings before we take major steps in our lives.

Intellectual/ Mental Health: Are you being creative in your everyday life? Are you enjoying learning in a new or expanding area in your life? Are you able to concentrate or focus? Do you have difficulty remembering things? Do you have the time and energy to learn and create in your life today?

Spiritual Health: Are you spending time in prayer and meditation on a daily basis? Are you living in truth with yourself and others, not pretending to be or to believe that which is not true for you? Do you trust yourself and others in relationship? Do you have compassion for yourself and others? Do you have a relationship and live in faith with the Universal Power/ God of your understanding? Do you come from a place of fear or love? Fear based thinking and behavior causes a different set of chemicals to be released in your body. Sustained released of these chemicals damages the endocrine system which accelerates ageing. Spiritual health definitely affects physical health.

Underlying Limiting Beliefs: After identifying the emotions causing difficulties in your life, try to identify what are often called your limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs are things you believe to be true but which really are not true.

For example you might not believe that you really should be living a life that’s rich with material blessings. Or perhaps you believe that you’re not intelligent enough or gifted enough to study something that really interests you. Another limiting belief might be that you are too old to begin the type of a program that I’m suggesting. We place so many limitations on ourselves and these limitations keep us from living life to its richest and fullest blessings. You can find heaven on earth, regardless of your age, and you can begin at any age.

Taking a personal inventory is a major undertaking and you might find it helpful to do it in stages, but it’s essential to complete this type of an inventory in support of a long and vibrant life.

Choming Flower Essences, Tree Essences, Gem Essences and Grass Essences can give you a great deal of support as you travel on your journey towards a healthier and longer life. They can help you with physical, energetic, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual issues. I hope you take the time to read about some of the 170 or so Choming Essences on my website at www.mkprojects.com.

Step 4 - Identify Changes Required in Your Life - Make a Plan of Action

There can be so many changes you feel you need to make that you need to be gentle in identifying what you might like to change and then setting some simple priorities. Develop a set of priorities for your improved physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual well being. All are required if you want to get younger and live longer. Be gentle with yourself and try to be realistic about how quickly you can change things.

Many years ago I read somewhere that there are three types of difficulty one experiences in life. There are difficulties of commission or the things we do, omission or the things we don’t do, and disposition the way we are towards others, our attitudes and general disposition. Doing good deeds with arrogance and superiority and without compassion is called a difficulty of disposition. We need to look thoroughly at all three areas in this inventory.

I have been working on changes in all areas of my life for the past 30 years and I have made great progress but have much more to do. What counts is that I’m deeply committed to a healthy and spiritual way of life and that I’m making progress. I remember in my early 30s when I wanted to change my sleeping habits, it took me two and one half years to make the change. I had become accustomed to going to sleep at about 2Am and was very tired for work every day. It took many experiments and much effort to learn to go to sleep at 11PM most evenings. They say it takes a minimum of one year to change a habit and often two to three years for new habits to become fully entrenched.

Step 5 - Decide On Your Priorities For the Next 6 - 12 Months

This is a grounding step that helps you to put excessive idealism into perspective and to begin to decide on what you can actually do. You might need to do some reading and studying before you can begin to work in a specific area? For example, if you have anger issues, you might want to investigate different ways of releasing negative emotions and take a few workshops to learn different methods for releasing negative emotions.

You will need to do a full detoxification first. My experience in my practice has shown me over and over again that people who feel tired, depressed and ill need to build up their physical energy first before they can deal effectively with emotional, intellectual, and spiritual issues. This often means a full detoxification program for elimination and cleansing. Remember that very often, fatigue and depression are caused by parasites, candida and other physical invaders, not just emotional issues. Cancer in its early stages also causes fatigue and depression. A vibrational detoxification can eliminate the causes of these physical symptoms.

Step 6 - Review Your Inventory and Plan of Action With Another Person

This step is difficult for many people but it’s an essential step when developing a plan of action for change. Showing this inventory and future plan of action to another human being takes humility, courage and a deep commitment to change. You might consider a therapist, counselor, Minister, Priest or Rabbi, or someone who you trust not just for confidentiality but also for guidance, wisdom and good common sense. Confidentiality is very important so choose someone who you know you can trust to keep your personal inventory and plans completely confidential.

So often we don’t understand the amount of time and effort that’s required to make real and sustainable changes. Reviewing your plan with another person will help you to be realistic and moderate in your expectations of yourself. If you try to achieve too much too quickly you will become discouraged and give up. We change by taking small steps, a little at a time.

Step 7 - Undertake a Deep Vibrational Detoxification Program

Vibrational Detoxification and Cleansing - Vibrational detoxification with Choming Essences will increase the rate of vibration of your organs and systems helping you get younger and live longer. It’s an essential step for long and vibrant health to do a complete detoxification that includes eliminating all parasites, worms, viruses, cellular fungus, other fungus overgrowths such as candida, cleansing out metal, chemical and atomic poisons, and poisons from pollution, pesticides and many other sources. You cannot have vibrant health as long as any of these invaders live within you.

I estimate that today more than 75% of North Americans and Europeans have what I call invaders such as parasites, worms, etc. I estimate that Asians have even higher percentages. Many have residues of vaccinations they received as children. They are filled with toxins from pollution and chemicals. Their homes are filled with negative energy. The sources and effects are endless. A vibrational detoxification program with Choming Essences will eliminate these invaders and cleanse the toxins from not only your physical body but also your energetic body with you and your auras and chakras around you.

Vibrational detoxification with Choming Essences will help to increase the rate of vibration of your organs and systems, an extremely important step to longer life. Herbs and fasting and other detoxification methods cannot penetrate in the same manner that vibration penetrates. They also cannot detoxify your energetic systems. Vibrational detoxification is deep, slow, and very powerful. For more information about vibrational detoxification please visit my website at www.mkprojects.com for more information.

One important word of caution. Choming Essences can raise your inner vibrations but your systems will not sustain the high vibration if lifestyles are not changed to eliminate what caused the low vibrations in the first place. In some cases children have picked up worms and parasites at an early age and lifestyle changes are not the issue. However, over the years adults develop many bad habits that require elimination to sustain high rates of vibration and a long life.

Step 8 - Identify and Eliminate Foods Causing You Digestive Difficulties

To live a long life that is vibrant at a physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual level, you must learn a great deal about the food you can, cannot, and should eat and make the adjustments required to your daily diet. In my practice I am finding that so many clients have deep digestive food sensitivities and that elimination of certain foods is the only option. Some can introduce major changes to their diets easily, while others introduce the changes slowly and gradually. For more information about digestive food sensitivities please read my article “All About Food Sensitivities and Healing With Choming Flower Essences, Tree Essences and Gem Essences” on my website www.mkprojects.com. Regardless, the changes must take place if you want to age with vigor and vitality.

I conduct Vibrational Assessments and one complete section in this Vibrational Assessment identifies your personal Digestive Food Sensitivities. Please visit my website at www.mkprojects.com for more information.

Affluent societies have broadened the use of food for pleasure, creativity and entertainment, not just for the purpose of nourishment. Food has always been used to bond families and communities, as part of many types of celebrations. Societies today have access to a much broader range of foods as well as the means to enjoy eating in restaurants as never before. However it is now bringing many difficulties as well. If you’re having difficulty giving up certain foods, you will need to examine carefully your relationship with food and the role it plays in your life.

Step 9 - Meditation and Prayer

We humans live in an energetic world surrounding us that is complex and beautiful beyond imagination. Unfortunately the majority cannot see the beauty of this energy around us. There are many forms of intelligent energy available to us at a moments notice if we will but take the time to train ourselves and to become open to these energies. Meditation and prayer are the most effective means of learning to work with the intelligent energies of the Universe. Meditation and prayer are essential to vibrant and long and healthy living. The benefits far exceed the normal benefits expected of meditation that are relaxation or a reduction of stress.

Meditation is a process that connects you with the invisible center of the intelligence of the Universe. It’s through the process of meditation that you quiet the mind so that you can connect with deep powers within the Universe. Meditation takes you to that place where you no longer think or have thoughts but where your mind is silent and your body is deeply relaxed. As the mind relaxes so the body relaxes.

Meditation helps you move into the Mind/ Body healing that has been talked about so much for the past 10 years. It takes much time and practice to achieve meditations where the mind no longer thinks and where you are deeply relaxed. Many visualization techniques taught today as a means to influence your subconscious are considered to be shallow and cannot produce the benefits they promise. To change beliefs/ elements in your subconscious, meditation states must be deep and to achieve this you must contact and connect deeply with the soul of intelligence in the Universe.

Certain Choming Essences can help you move more deeply into meditative states. The most complex and helpful essence to meditation that I have made to-date is the Whalebone Essence. It’s an essence that makes you want to slow down your life, to realize that being you is perfect, you don’t have to achieve anything or be anything special, being you is perfect to love. If you live near a good Rock Shop, ask them to get you a piece of whalebone and hold it in both hands the next time you meditate. But VERY IMPORTANT - have someone clear the piece of bone of all viruses and other invaders that might reside in the whalebone. Many of whalebones today are not clean and should not be handled until someone has cleansed them of all impurities.

Meditation will bring amazing benefits to your physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being. It will strengthen your intuition and ability to just “know”. It will help you to get in touch with your deeper self, what some call different layers of your personal consciousness.

Prayer is the two-way communication between you and the God or Universal Power of your understanding. Prayer involves speaking and listening. Gregg Braden has written a wonderful book about how to pray and achieve results through your prayers called “ The Isaiah Effect”.

Step 10 - Review and Update Your Inventory and Plan Once a Year

A plan is a limited tool that helps you to begin moving towards a certain goal - vibrant health and long life. But a plan is outdated the moment it is completed. All plans are very imperfect. We are all limited and can only see a certain part of ourselves at any given point in time. It’s therefore important to review your plan at least once a year, see the progress you have made, and update your plan and priorities for the upcoming year. For the first year it would help you to review your plan every four to six months, to help you keep moving towards your personal goals. You might begin my having physical priorities for the first year and then moving on to other issues in future years, the options are truly limitless.

Step 11 - Other Alternative Healing Modalities

Today there are many new vibrational healing modalities evolving that it’s difficult to keep up with such exciting developments. Many alternative practices can provide good support to helping you get younger and living longer.

I personally believe that healing with sound and color are the two deepest alternative healing methods that can help people live longer and with more vibrancy. I suggest you investigate resources in your area that would strengthen and support your healing journey especially in healing with sound. Ancient societies, much more knowledgeable than ours in healing with vibration, used sound and color to heal at physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual levels.

Step 12 - Have Fun, Laugh and Enjoy a Vibrant and Long Life

We are meant to have fun and enjoy being on Mother Earth. Life is not a punishment or an opportunity to learn lessons. It’s a journey where we are meant to feel real joy and happiness. It is said that it’s not what happens to us that matters so much as our attitude to what happens. Have fun, have a good time. Be creative and that can mean cooking, gardening, running marathons, studying, writing, traveling, as well as painting, sculpting, whatever gives you deep pleasure. As long as it doesn’t hurt you or others unnecessarily do whatever is fun for you.

We need to have laughter in our lives, to hear ourselves laugh deep and heartily. A life without laughter is guaranteed to be lacking in spirituality. There are many serious issues in this world but we must learn not to take ourselves too seriously. We are but a tiny speck of sand in the ocean of life.

Live your life to its fullest. Focus on your journey in today and not the result it might or might not produce tomorrow. Let go of your regrets of the past. Live a life filled with love for your Universal Power, yourself and everyone on this and other planets. I love the following prayer that helps me put many issues into a healthier and more balanced perspective.

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Digestive Food Sensitivity Vibrational Assessment

Mary Kurus

A Digestive Food Sensitivity Vibrational Assessment will help identify which food items to which you are digestively sensitive. Over 200 food items are assessed including beverages, condiments, sauces, salts, pickled foods, This assessment is undertaken with dowsing by identifying the vibrations of food items. Reading vibrations with a pendulum is one of the most accurate ways of identifying your digestive food sensitivities.

Individuals develop difficulties in the digestion of certain foods. These difficulties can be caused by a variety of factors including: candida; drugs; poor diet and digestion; the excessive intake of a particular food; as part of other illnesses such as diabetes; and the presence of various invaders including parasites, worms, viruses, fungus and mould. A digestive food sensitivity usually remains with an individual and normally does not disappear even though the condition which caused it has disappeared.

Digestive food sensitivities should not be confused with food allergies or food sensitivities. These difficulties are problems which relate to the immune system and what is called a leaky gut syndrome. In his book title Eat Right 4 Your Type, Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo speaks about the body's different needs depending on the various blood types. I highly recommend this book. Add to the food needs by blood type the digestive sensitivity that is often created by candida, mould, parasites, worms and viruses and you begin to understand the environment which has helped to create digestive sensitivities.

If foods which have been identified as digestively sensitive are ingested by an individual some or all of the following symptoms may be experienced: bloating; stomach pain; fatigue; lethargy; a strong need to sleep after eating; depression; restlessness; hyperactivity; feeling spacey; disoriented; headache; muscle aches and weight gain. Long term intake of digestively sensitive foods can create loss of sexual desire; a weakened immune system; and weight problems.

The cost of a Digestive Food Vibrational Assessment is $CDN120.00 or approximately $US80.00. If an individual has undertaken a Vibrational Assessment the cost will be $CDN80.00 or approximately $US53.00

If you wish to order this assessment, please contact Mary Kurus.

Disclaimer: The ideas and suggestions identified here are not in any way intended as a substitute or replacement for qualified medical advice. Please consult a qualified medical practitioner in person for your health problems.

Rating of Food Items: Each of the food items will be rated as positive or negative. The assessment will also identify whether the positive or negative reading is low, medium or high. A low reading means a food should be eaten only once per week; a medium reading allows for the food item to be eaten twice or three times a week; and a high reading means the food can be eaten daily.

The following foods will be assessed:

Beverages:

alcoholic beverages	fresh fruit juices	soft drinks (Coke, Seven-Up etc.)
coffee	frozen fruit juices	tea
instant coffee	canned fruit juices

Miscellaneous Foods:

chocolate

tofu products

all yeast based foods

Condiments, Sauces and Salts:

accent or MSG	ketchup	soy sauce
seasoning salt	mayonnaise	steak sauce
table salt	mustard	Worcestershire sauce
Sea salt	barbecue sauce	horseradish
	chili sauce

Pickled Foods:
pickles
pickled vegetables
olives

Preserved Meats:

smoked meat	sausages
wieners	bacon
cold cuts	salami

Other Foods With Yeast/Moulds:

dried fruit	all leftover food	currents
candied fruits	raisons

Sugars and Sweeteners

white sugar	honey	maple syrup
brown sugar	molasses	beet/date sugar
artificial sweeteners

Dairy Products:

butter	cream	ice cream
buttermilk	cream cheese	milk
cottage cheese	hard cheeses	sour cream
cheese slices	kefir	yogurt

Whole Grain Foods:

Barley	oats	spelt
Buckwheat	rice	wheat
Bulgar	rye	quinoa
Cousous

Nuts and Seeds

almonds	pecans	sunflower seeds
brazil nuts	pumpkin seeds	walnuts
cashews	sesame seeds	filberts
chestnuts	peanuts

Oils:

corn oil	peanut oil
olive oil	sesame oil
linseed oil	canola oil

Butters:

almond butter	cashew butter	tahini (sesame butter)
butter	peanut butter

Meat and Eggs:

beef	ham	turkey
chicken	lamb	veal
duck	mutton	venison
goose	pork	eggs

Fish:

Anchovies	scallops	snails
Crab	sea bass	trout
Cod	shrimp	tuna, canned
frozen breaded fish	smoked salmon	tuna, fresh
haddock	snapper	whitefish
halibut	sole	sardines
herring (fresh)	salmon (canned)	lobster
herring (pickled)	salmon (fresh)

Root Vegetables
potato
sweet potato/yam
turnip
carrots

High Carbohydrate Vegetables:
corn
peas
squash

Beans and Peas:

Aduke beans	lentils, green	lima beans
Azuke beans	lentils, red	peas, black-eyed
Black beans	Garbanzo beans	pinto beans
Kidney (white)	Kidney beans (red)	soy beans

Other Vegetables:

Artichoke	peppers, green
avocados	peppers, red and yellow
asparagus	pumpkin
broccoli	radishes
cabbage	spinach
cauliflower	sprouts
celery	string beans
cucumbers	tomatoes, fresh
eggplant	tomatoes, canned
garlic	tomatoes, sun-dried
greens, various	mushrooms
onions

Dried and Fresh Herbs
basil rosemary
cilantro mint
dill sage
oregano thyme
parsley
Fresh Fruits

Assorted:

apples	kiwi fruit
apricots	mangoes
bananas	nectarines
cherries	peaches
figs	pears
grapes, green	pineapple
grapes, red	plums
grapes, purple

Berries:
blackberries
blueberries
gooseberries
raspberries
strawberries
Melons:
cantaloupe
honeydew melon
watermelon
Citrus Fruits:
grapefruit
lemons
limes
oranges

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A Guide to Healthy Eating and Living

Mary Kurus

Why Eat Healthy?

Do you want to go through life feeling tired, needing a nap after you've eaten, overweight, bloated and overfull, nauseous, with intestinal gas, cramps or pains in your stomach, belching after you've eaten, with heartburn, constipation, foul stools, dull and slow thinking, depressed, highly emotional, and so forth? If not then it's time to take a good look at what you're eating and not eating, how you're combining what you're eating and what you are drinking. In so many ways we are deeply affected on many levels by what we eat. What we eat can make the difference between really enjoying a day or dragging ourselves through a day without any sense of joy or fun.

What we eat affects us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It's not easy to have a loving and caring attitude when feeling fatigued, bloated, buzzing around from a sugar high, or just feeling rather down and ill and not knowing why.

Why Foods Affect Us Now That Never Bothered Us Before:

In my Vibrational Healing practice, I have found that the majority of people who come to me have over the years become infected with a variety of invaders that can include parasites, candida overgrowth, mould, infectious bacteria, viruses, chemical and metal poisons and many other foreign toxins in their bodies. To learn more about how to rid yourself of these invaders, please read all about a Vibrational Assessment and Choming Essences at www.mkprojects.com.

One of the major effects of these invaders is a high degree of difficulty in digesting many foods. Some practitioners call these food sensitivities, others call it a leaky gut syndrome, I call it digestive food sensitivities. All it means is that when you eat certain foods you will experience many types of symptoms including the need to sleep, fatigue, intestinal gas, cramps etc. These symptoms are indicative that you are having difficulty in digesting certain foods.

Do Foods Have the Same Nutritional Value Today?

I personally do not believe that the meat, vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, dairy products etc., have the same nutritional value as the food we ate twenty or even ten years ago. Farming today is highly technical and is based on chemical fertilizers to maximize yield and profit. This means that the soil is not worked in a manner that keeps it rich and full of nutrients.

In organic food farming or traditional farming practices, the soil maintains its richness in nutrients and minerals through the rotation of crops, and other farming practices that allow the soil to regenerate and re-mineralize itself. This maintains the nutritional content of the soil.

When two, three or four crops are grown with chemical fertilizers, the soil loses its balance and overall nutrition, and the foods grown in that soil cannot provide people with the nutritional value they need to stay healthy. The fooler is that the food looks so pretty, shiny, healthy and good. So often it is tasteless, and more important, it's lacking in the minerals and nutrients we need to stay healthy.

Vitamin and Mineral Supplements

Because the food being eaten today is so often lacking in the minerals and vitamins required for vibrant health, I strongly recommend that everyone take vitamin and mineral supplements on a daily basis. Minerals need to be chelated or citrate, a treatment that ensures they are easily absorbed directly into the blood stream rather than being flushed out with body fluids.

Major studies have been conducted that link many mental illnesses to mineral and vitamin deficiencies. Some of the results from supplementation are quite promising. This only reinforces the need to carefully review the need for daily supplementation of vitamins and minerals.

Please go to a reputable health food store to purchase your vitamin and mineral supplements. The quality of vitamins is very important and quality varies greatly between different brands. Ask about the absorption of the vitamins and minerals. Different treatments can make a big difference in the body's ability to absorb the supplement. For example, minerals that are chelated or citrate go directly into the blood stream and are absorbed more easily. Vitamin C buffered with bioflavonoids, is absorbed more easily by the body.

Techniques such as dowsing with a pendulum or muscle testing can easily identify if you are deficient in minerals and vitamins as well as the daily amounts of supplements you need to take.

Magnesium: I'd like to make a special note regarding this mineral. A number of studies have been conducted that have come to similar conclusions that much depression being experienced today is the direct cause of a magnesium deficiency. The results of these studies can be found on the Internet. If you tend to suffer from depression, have a dowser or kinesiologist check you for magnesium deficiency and have them identify the amount you need to take on a daily basis. It's important to ensure you are taking the right amount and that it is chelated or citrate. There are many causes of depression, but a magnesium deficiency is one major cause that needs to be considered.

Sugar Consumption Has Serious Effects on Your Health:

The books "The Sugar Blues" by William Duffy and "Get the Sugar Out: 501 Simple ways to Cut the Sugar in Any Diet" by Ann Louise Gittleman describe in detail the effects sugar can have on your physical, intellectual and emotional well being.

So many of our everyday foods contain substantial amounts of sugar. Just look at the content of all soft drinks, ketchup, ice cream, donuts, cakes, cookies, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, etc. Most North Americans eat a lot of sugar each day. It has been stated by many that many North Americans and Europeans have now developed a strong addiction to sweetness.

The food we eat today is shipped all over the world and is often quite old by the time we purchase it in the store. When food gets old the natural sugar in the food turns to starch and the food then looses its good taste. We then add sugar to give this food the flavor it would have had if we had been able to eat it when it was fresh.

The more sugar you eat the more you need to eat to taste the same level of sweetness. Just be highly aware the next time you eat ice cream. Notice how sweet that first spoon or two tastes. Then notice how the subsequent spoons just don't have the same level of taste or sweetness, as if your taste buds have become numb to the taste of the sugar. The more sugar you eat, the more you need to eat to keep tasting the sweetness. That is part of the addiction of sugar. The increased energy boost is another part of the addiction of sugar. The increase in short-term energy leads to a real let down, increased fatigue, and depression in the medium and long term.

Healthy eating means eliminating foods that are made with refined white and brown sugar from your diet. We do need sweet treats occasionally. Desserts made with maple syrup or honey, both natural products, can easily satisfy that craving for sweetness without setting up the addiction for sweetness.

Sugar Cravings

It seems the more sugar you eat the more sugar you seem to need to eat. Developing a taste for sugar can lead to frequently craving more and more sweet foods and drinks.

Sugar cravings can also be a symptom for parasite and worm infestation as well as candida overgrowth. These types of invaders feed on sugar and actually set up a craving that demands satisfaction. And the cravings they set up are very very strong.

A client recently told me the following story. For the past thirty odd years she has indulged what she called was her "sweet tooth" and had to have at least two or three chocolate bars and other sweets every day. Her office drawer and her refrigerator always contained chocolate bars. After two months on an elimination and detoxification program with Choming Essences to eliminate her parasites, worms and candida overgrowth, (for information and articles see www.mkprojects.com ) she completely lost her craving for sweets. She is absolutely shocked to realize that her cravings were not emotionally based, a sign of weak character, or a lack of self-discipline.

We judge ourselves so harshly at times when we indulge this "sweet tooth". A deficiency in Vitamin C or other vitamins can be the cause of a craving for sugar. A craving for sugar can be caused by emotional factors, addictive behavior, difficulties with insulin, and many other causes. Sometimes the cause is parasites, worms, candida overgrowth, or certain vitamin deficiencies. It's important to slowly identify the cause of your cravings so you can deal with whatever is causing you to eat sugar on a daily basis.

Potential Disorders Linked to Sugar

Sugar today is implicated in many physical, mental and emotional disorders including hyperactivity in children and adults, increased aggression and violence, depression, inability to think clearly and concentrate, increased blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, nutrient deficiency, heart disease, cancer, many serious illnesses and conditions.

Candida Overgrowth and Healthy Eating:

Many good books have been written on the special diets that you must follow in support of eliminating a candida fungus overgrowth. It often includes the elimination of wheat products, all yeast products, and all sugars, all fruits, both fresh and canned and frozen. The reason these need to be eliminated is because these foods feed the candida fungus helping it grow and become deeper and stronger. All fungus has roots and candida overgrowth also puts down roots. These foods will feed these roots as well as the fungus itself. So if you have candida overgrowth, healthy eating means eliminating many foods from your diet.

Parasites, Viruses, Infectious Bacteria and Health Eating:

All invaders are fed by basically the same foods that feed candida overgrowth. And so that means eliminating these foods groups while the invaders are being eliminated. Most individuals who have these invaders are found to have a lot of difficulty digesting wheat products, most dairy products, foods made with yeast or any fermentation process, fresh and canned and frozen fruits, and the majority of sugar products, especially anything made with white or brown refined sugars. The elimination of these foods requires major dietary changes that are normally implemented slowly and gradually. This is a drastic change in eating and overall living.

Digestive Food Sensitivity to Wheat and Dairy Products:

Many individuals today have developed a strong digestive sensitivity to wheat and dairy products and are unable to digest these foods easily anymore. There appear to be a number of reasons for these digestive sensitivities but the causes are not yet totally clear.

One of the major factors is the presence of parasites, worms, infectious bacteria and candida overgrowths in so many people today. These invaders dump many toxins into the body and blood stream daily. This affects all organs and systems as well as the chemical makeup within the body.

To feel healthy you need to know whether you are digestively sensitive to wheat products or dairy products. If you are sensitive and cannot digest these foods easily you need to eliminate them from your diet. A few of the key symptoms to watch out for are: needing to sleep after you have eaten; heartburn; many types of intestinal problems; spitting up mucous after eating; mental dullness; poor memory; wide swings in emotions; regular constipation.

Someone experienced in using a pendulum or who does muscle testing can let you know quite easily. If you do read positive it's important to eliminate these foods from your diets. A Vibrational Assessment ( www.mkprojects.com) will tell you if you have difficulty digesting major groups of food.

Health Shops today offer many alternatives. You can purchase pasta that is made from brown rice or other grains. This pasta tastes the same as pasta made from wheat and comes as spaghetti or in many novelty pasta shapes. Breads, crackers, cookies, and many other foods are made from other flours, e.g. spelt flour, as a replacement for bread or pasta made from wheat.

Many alternatives exist for dairy products. You can purchase goat milk, goat cheese, and other dairy type of products made from soy beans. These will help you fill the voids in your diet when you remove foods you can no longer digest.

Protein Deficiency:

One of the readings I provide as part of a Vibrational Assessment is to identify if a protein deficiency exists. Many people today are deficient in protein, even when these individuals eat meat on a daily basis. It's difficult to fully understand the cause of this deficiency. Perhaps the protein from animals is not the same as it was many years ago.

Another cause of protein deficiency is the difficulty many individuals experience in not being able to absorb protein as well as other nutrients into their systems. This absorptive problem is often caused by toxins in the system which eventually block the absorptive capacity. Absorptive difficulties can be resolved through thorough detoxification and cleansing and rebalancing of systems.

I strongly suggest that everyone begin their day with a protein drink, either soy based or rice based. I find the vanilla flavors to be the best but a variety of choices are available in most health food stores. After two or three months the deficiency in protein tends to disappear with this type of supplementation. A healthy protein level supports improved physical strength and subsequent emotional and mental strength.

Salt and Salt Cravings:

Salt is a chemical compound that circulates in the blood and tissue fluids of humans and animals. We all need a good balance of sodium in our bodies. But it's important to consume the right type of salt and to understand the difference in various types of salt.

Natural salt that is harvested properly contains more than 80 minerals, trace minerals and nutrients that are essential to healthy and vibrant health. Refined white salt is processed and the majority of minerals are processed out of the white iodized table salt that most people use today. Many of the sea salts being sold today are refined, have lost most of their mineral and nutrient values through the processing, and have relatively little value, the same as refined white salt.

Magnificent sea salts rich in natural minerals and nutrients can be purchased from a small company in British Columbia called Celtic Sea Salts. They can be reached toll free at 877-477-5123. The salt they provide is gray in color and has such a rich salt taste, so different from other sea salts. This salt contains the natural mineral, trace minerals and nutrients of natural salt.

If you have a craving for salt, take time to be tested for mineral deficiencies since a salt craving can be one of the indicators of mineral deficiencies. Salt cravings are also associated with low energy, the inability to taste food properly, PMS, adrenal exhaustion, and diabetes. If you constantly crave food you need to investigate all possible causes. However, a major cause that often is overlooked is mineral deficiencies.

Food Combining:

Since the 1930's the linkage between health and eating different combinations of types of food has been discussed and argued. There are those who dismiss it and say it doesn't matter what you eat and combine during a meal, that all combinations are equally good. Others strongly believe that since different foods require different digestive processes and enzymes, that large stresses are placed on digestive systems when we combine certain types of foods. I agree with this latter group that only certain foods should be eaten at the same time. The following is a summary of key foods in major groupings of foods for health combining.

Starchy Foods	Low Starch Veggies	High Protein Foods
Grains	asparagus	beans
Pastas	broccoli	beef
Rice	brussel sprouts	poultry
Carrot	cabbage	pork
Potatoe	cauliflower	lamb
Eggplant	celery	all meats
Avacado	cucumber	seafood
Corn	green beans	seeds
Turnip	leeks	nuts
Squash	leafy greens	dairy products
Beet	onions
	Peppers
	Parsley
	Radishes
	Tomatoes

Low starch foods can be easily digested with either high starch vegetables or high protein foods. However high starch foods should not be eaten with high protein foods. This means that meat should not be eaten with potatoes or fish should not be eaten with rice.

Fruits should be eaten as a separate meal, without foods from the other food groups, or at least one and a half hour before or after a meal is completed. They should not be eaten with high starch foods or with high protein foods.

Organically Grown Foods

Whenever possible, eat organic foods including all types of meat, fish, grain products, vegetables, pastas, beans, dairy products, whatever is possible in fresh, canned and frozen foods. Organic foods are not full of chemicals from pesticides and fertilizers but are grown in soil rich with minerals and nutrients. This helps to keep your body free of chemical toxins as well as providing you with many minerals and nutrients.

Whenever possible, find the organic farmers market that meets on a Saturday morning and you'll be delighted to find such a wide variety of farmers and products. You'll find pure honey, croissants, many types of breads, all types of vegetables, and many types of meats, even sausages. Sometimes you have to hunt a little to find these markets, but once you do you'll keep going back. The food tastes so much richer. The carrots and potatoes are denser. Be good to yourself and go and find the organic farmer's market in your area. These are real farmers and its real and healthy food.

Major grocers are now beginning to carry a wide variety of organic foods today. You can find organic milk, butter, cheeses, cereals, meats, canned fruits, all types of vegetables, nuts, beans, soups, certain fruits, and so many different types of foods. You can also find organic personal products, makeup and hair products, as well as home cleaning products.

Clean and Vibrant Drinking Water

I am a Canadian living in our capital city of Ottawa. Canada's difficulty in providing its citizens with clean and healthy drinking water is becoming a national disgrace for Canadians. Canada possesses nearly 10% of the worlds renewable fresh water and is experiencing major crises resulting from water contaminated with parasites, bacteria, chemicals and metals. In the past year thousands of communities across Canada have had to issue boil-water advisories, a sign that water contamination is making the water dangerous for human consumption. It's a national disgrace that a country with massive fresh water supplies and a population of only 30 million is unable to guarantee its citizens clean and healthy drinking water.

An essential factor to healthy water is the vibration of that water. Many years ago we would drink water that came from rivers. These rivers flowed and the process of flowing provided water with a certain level of vibration. Today the vibration of drinking water coming out of a tap is zero. That's the result of chemicals and storage in containers.

Today water sits in metal storage tanks for long periods of time, is filled with chemicals or treated with ultra-violet treatments to help eliminate parasites, viruses and bacteria, is filtered to help eliminate dangerous metals and chemicals, and is finally sent to our homes through pipes that are often old and corroded inside. This type of water does not contribute to vibrant health, and that is a major under-statement.

There are many filtering systems available to help screen out contaminants. But it's essential to change the filter very regularly. There are a number of ways you can provide drinking water with a good rate of vibration. If you know how to run energy, just run some energy into the water for about 30 seconds.

A man called Slim Spurling from the United States makes what he calls Life Light Rings that I have used for the past year. These rings are made so that anything you place within the ring becomes highly energized. You can find information about these rings at www.4dshift.com/products/slim.htm. They provide a high rate of vibration and can energize food, water, anything you place within the ring. There is one caution regarding these rings. They need to be used in moderation and you should drink only 2 glasses of water each day energized within these coils.

Coffee, Tea, and Other Drinks

Purists will tell you they never drink anything with caffeine. I believe that you need to limit carefully the caffeine you consume, but a little does not do any serious harm. There are many organic teas available today, both for hot drinks as well as iced drinks in the summer time. You can find many delicious types of organic coffees that are also delicious either hot or cold.

I strongly suggest you avoid completely all colas and carbonated drinks. They are filled with so much sugar and other chemical ingredients that it's best to eliminate them completely from your diet and that of your children. Organic soda drinks are available, and at a reasonable price.

Eating With Gratitude and Relaxation

You can have the highest quality of organic food, the healthiest water from a fresh spring in the mountains. We need to eat and drink this nourishment in love and gratitude to Mother Earth for the bounty she provides us with. We need to be relaxed when we eat.

Before you begin to eat, take a moment and give thanks to the Universe for all we have been given. We are nourished in so many ways; Mother Earth shares her riches so willingly. We need to show our love and gratitude.

Father Sun sends the powerful rays of energy to Mother earth so plants and animals can grow and feed us. It energizes the water we drink. It energizes the quartz in Mother earth, the foundation of so many new technologies today that support our everyday needs. Mother Moon supports the inner rhythms within nature so that they can thrive and reproduce. She is so nurturing. The planet Venus sends us her energies of love. Before each meal, take the time to thank Mother earth and all the planets in our solar system for caring for us so much and giving us what we need to flourish and develop.

Before eating, take time to relax yourself. Food is more easily digested when you are physically, emotionally and intellectually relaxed. Try to avoid discussing subjects that make you anxious, angry or just frustrated. Love yourself and eat within a positive environment.

Healthy Eating and a Healthy Sex Drive

There is a direct relationship between a healthy sex drive and what you eat and drink. Eating large amounts of sugar can seriously affect your sex drive. My experience shows that a lower rate of vibration also means a highly reduced sex drive. So many men and women wonder, especially in their mid-forties why their sex drive seems to have disappeared and are often too embarrassed to ask about it.

As invaders such as parasites, worms, viruses, and candida overgrowth are eliminated, the rate of vibration increases within a person and a healthy sex drive returns. To learn more about vibrational healing, read other articles at www.mkprojects.com . The presence of candida overgrowth, parasites, viruses and other invaders can seriously reduce your sex drive.

Healthy Living Habits

We need to do many other things other than eating healthy to ensure we have vibrant and energetic health. We need to exercise and have regular physical activity; we need to detoxify our systems regularly; we need a good balance of work, play and sleep; we need loving and caring friends in our lives; we need to be intellectually stimulated on a regular basis; we need to work with our emotions and learn how to process out certain emotions; we need to grieve our losses, large and small; we need to we need to have a daily contact with our Creator or whoever we believe in as our Higher Divine Being; we need to pray and meditate; we need to continue learning and growing and moving towards our highest consciousness. We need all these elements in our lives whether we are retired, at home bringing up children, working outside of the home, a student, disabled, or in any state of life.

A Living Habit That Really Hurts Us - Smoking

Every living person, tree, flower, rock, and animal, is surrounded by an energy field called an aura. It is an electro-magnetic field. There are many books today that provide a great deal of information about our auras. We also have chakras, that are electro-magnetic, that I liken to energy transformers. They take the energy from our auras and transform it and move it through our bodies through what is called the meridian system.

Smoking is one of the most destructive things we can do to affect our auras. And this refers to smoking of anything including cigarettes, marijuana, hashish, or whatever else is being smoked today. Smoking systematically weakens and breaks down our auras, eventually creating holes in them. Our energy leaks out of these holes so that we feel weak and tired. External negative energies can easily penetrate a weak aura or an aura with holes in it. Regular exposure to second hand smoke is equally damaging to our auras.

We cannot experience vibrant and energetic health regardless what we eat when we smoke or are around anyone who smokes. It's an important element of good health.

The Benefits of Healthy Eating and Living

The benefits of healthy eating are endless but the major benefit is vibrant and energetic HEALTH. Without healthy eating you cannot feel healthy. Eating healthy will give you increased energy; increased vitality; a revitalized sex life; clearer thinking; you will sleep more deeply and quietly, require less sleep, and feel rested when you wake up; some of your cravings may disappear making you feel more in control; depression can ease; intestinal difficulties can lessen; your emotional extremes can disappear.

You will live longer and enjoy your life more fully. Healthy eating is not going to solve all the problems you might have, but it's an essential element to healthy and happy living.

Eat Well, Be Well and Enjoy Life,

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