Dr. Oz Turns Meat-Eating Cowboy Vegan
Very cool! Big ups to Dr Oz. And big thanks to Veronica Bosgraaf for the link.
Dr. Doris Taylor: Meditation yields largest increase in stem cell creation she's ever seen
Speaking of Faith's host, Krista Tippett, interviewed leading stem cell researcher Dr. Doris Taylor about role of stem cells in healing the body.
The following is an exchange that blew my mind:
Stem Cells, Untold Stories
Ms. Tippett: Talk to me about the experiment you did with Matthieu Ricard, who is a famous French philosopher Buddhist who's worked with the Dalai Lama.
Dr. Taylor: Right. And …
Ms. Tippett: Oh, and he's said to be the happiest man alive, I think.
Dr. Taylor: Yes. He's written a book called Happiness.
Ms. Tippett: Right.
Dr. Taylor: He's doing some studies with some people at the University of Wisconsin where …
Ms. Tippett: Oh, Richardson Davidson?
Dr. Taylor: Yes. He and a number of his colleagues meditate, and as they meditate they measure differences in their brainwaves. Right? And I basically said I would predict that those very same things that when you meditate and you have positive brainwave changes would also have an effect on your stem cells. He very graciously, and this is an N of one, let us measure cells in his blood before and after meditation. And what we found was a huge increase in the number of positive stem cells in blood. Largest increase I've ever seen after 15 minutes of meditation.
Ms. Tippett: And so that meditation kicks in your body's own regenerative reparative powers?
Dr. Taylor: It's all about endogenous repair. And I don't think I said this earlier, but you know how when your son falls down, scrapes his knees, got a red spot?
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Taylor: That's inflammation. Inflammation, I think, is nature's cue to say, "Send me cells."
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Dr. Taylor: "I've got an injury. Send me cells." And if you get the right cells there you turn off that inflammation and you heal. If you don't get the right cells there and you don't heal, you get more inflammation. And I think your body's saying, "Hey, I said send me cells. Will you get with it and send me cells?" And if you don't get the right cells there, you ramp up inflammation and you start getting the negative consequences of inflammation.
Ms. Tippett: OK.
Dr. Taylor: Well, we see that on our skin when we fall down and scrape our knee or when we cut our finger or something, but that's going on inside our body all the time. We have inflammation.
Ms. Tippett: Every time you eat a cheeseburger, right?
Dr. Taylor: Every time you eat a cheeseburger.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Taylor: We have inflammation going on inside our blood vessels, inside our organs, inside our tissues. And I think those are nature's cues to say, "Send me cells." Well, I would also say that meditation is essentially doing that without the inflammation. It's nature's way of sending those cells to the sites where you need them in a way to turn down the negative aspects of stress. So stress in my mind is another word for inflammation. I would say inflammation is the physiologic consequence of stress.
Ms. Tippett: Which also has mental and — it's also …
Dr. Taylor: Emotional, mental, spiritual, physical.
Ms. Tippett: Inflammation. We have all that too.
Dr. Taylor: Right.
Ms. Tippett: Yeah.
Dr. Taylor: If you don't believe stress ages someone, look at a president before and after they've been in office for four years.
Wow! Amazing. You can listen to the full audio interview here.
Spirulina Salad with Courtney Pool
Two of my favorite peeps! Tim Van Orden and Courtney Pool.
Crazy Sexy Love
I want to give some major love to Crazy Sexy Life and Kris Carr. They are really killin it over there with some of the most fantastic holistic health content I've ever seen.
If you haven't been there recently, def check it out sometime.
Philip McCluskey's Rockstar Birthday Party in NYC
Hey NYC Tribe!
It's time to do things BIG again in NYC. I'm taking nice venue, dope music, tons of hotties, lots of amazing food... You know, NYC RawkStar Style!
This time we're celebrating Philip McCluskey's birthday and how far our little NYC Tribe has come in the last 2 years.
Yes... I know Philip McCluskey is a Scorpio who loves to be showered with attention and love, but shit, I say let's use that as an excuse to get together anyway!
Full details listed below, hope you can make it out.
Philip's Rockstar Birthday Party
So you want to party like a rockstar? Join us on Nov 7th and part it up in honor of Philip McCluskey's birthday!
You can purchase your ticket here.
What: VIP early club admission, DJ, dancing, free Gnosis Chocolate all night long, cash bar, and of course... good vibes and chill conscious party peeps. It's Philip's birthday party, you know how we do it!
Where: Sutra Lounge, 16 First Ave, NYC (private Chakra lounge downstairs)
When: Nov 7th, 8pm (sharp)
Investment in your sexiness: $25 for early VIP admission, chocolate, and dancing if booked before Oct 23rd, $30 after. Purchase tickets here.
$55 for early VIP admission, chocolate, and dancing... Plus a copy of Shazzie's new Ecstatic Beings book. This is $10 off the U.S. price, special for this event only.
Alicia Silverstone pimps her new book, raw foods and Café Gratitude
How awesome is it that the host has been to Café Gratitude?
Maybe next time the crew rolls through we'll run into to Ms. Silverstone!
p.s. The whole segment is vegan, but not raw but now raw, but who cares!
How Safe Is Your Drinking Water?
NPR's Terry Gross interviews journalist Charles Duhigg on the status of American drinking water and how "one in 10 Americans have been exposed to drinking water that contains dangerous chemicals, parasites, bacteria or viruses, or fails to meet federal health standards."
Listen to the full interview here:
Duhigg reports on the "worsening pollution in American waters" — and regulators' responses to the problem — in his New York Times series, "Toxic Waters." In researching the series, he studied thousands of water pollution records, which he obtained via the Freedom of Information Act.
The Botany of Desire: PBS Documentary
PBS will be airing a two-hour-long documentary based on Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire, (via Kottke.org).
Selling Sickness: How Drug Ads Changed Health Care
A fantastic story by NPR about the rise in prescription drug use and its relationship to advertising:
Selling Sickness: How Drug Ads Changed Health Care
Prescription drug spending is the third most expensive cost in our health care system. And spending seems to grow larger every year. Just last year, the average American got 12 prescriptions a year, as compared to 1992, when Americans got an average of seven prescriptions. In a decade and a half, the use of prescription medication went up 58 percent. This has added about $180 billion to our medical spending.While there are more medicines on the market today than in 1992, researchers estimate that around 20 percent of the $180 billion increase has absolutely nothing to do with the number of medications available, or increases in the cost of that medication.
Why the increase in spending? Advertising! But why the spike in advertising during the 90's?
In the early 1980s, FDA regulations required that drug ads include both the name of a drug and its purpose, as well as information about all the side effects. But side-effect information often took two or three magazine pages of mouse print to catalog, and this wouldn't do for a major television campaign.
Flash forward to today...
Today, drug companies spend $4 billion a year on ads to consumers. In 1997, the FDA rules governing pharmaceutical advertising changed, and now companies can name both the drug and what it's for, while only naming the most significant potential side effects. Then, the number of ads really exploded. The Nielsen Company estimates that there's an average of 80 drug ads every hour of every day on American television. And those ads clearly produce results:
Quite fascinating. Read (or listen to) the full article here.
Dominiq Li puts the movement in "raw food movement"
Blogger Dominiq Li (twitter) demonstrating her love for her fitness routine of choice: pole dancing. Pretty amazing!
Be sure to also check out Dom's Story. She talks very openly about body image, eating disorders and how she overcame it all.
Big thanks to Anthony Anderson for sharing Dominiq's blog with us.
Jim Dee and Charles Balcer on the Living Sun Foods Show
Michelle Pierson from Living Sun Foods interviews my buddies Jim Dee and Charles Balcer.
Charles's past posts about his west coast trip here and his My Way feature here.
Behind the Scenes at 105degrees
One of the dopest meetups in raw food history went down this weekend. Luckily our friend Penni Shelton was there to cover it!
More on coverage of the 105degrees meetup on Penni Sheltons blog:
Swine Flu: What To Do? by Frank Lipman MD
My buddy Frank Lipman MD talks about the Swine Flu Vaccine and more on the Huffington Post.
p.s. Big ups to The Huffington Post for allowing so many integrative health doctors and healers to share their un-editing thoughts.
You Can't Complain About Health Care Reform If You're Not Willing to Reform Your Own Health
Pretty funny New Rule by comedian Bill Maher
Here's my favorite part:
And get this: Surgeon General Benjamin had previously been a nutritional advisor to Burger King. The only advice a "health expert" should give Burger King is to stop selling food. The "nutritional advisor" job was described as, "promoting balanced diets and active lifestyle choices" -- and who better to do that than the folks who hand you meat and corn syrup through a car window? When you have a surgeon general who comes from Burger King, it's a message to lobbyists, and that message is, "Have it your way."
