on my mind monday 1.30.12

newspaper | photo: mconnors

Once again, it's time to see what's on my mind.  These are the articles that have come across my desk and that I am interested in this week.

My Subversive (garden) Plot - Roger Doiron's funny TEDx talk about gardening and food.  While it's funny there's also a message.  He talks about how we are going to feed people and how we need to grow more food to keep up with the growing population.  But we need to do so with less. Less oil, less water, less farmland, less genetic diversity, and so on.  I highly encourage you to watch the clip, it's worth the time.

Local Food Sovereignty Being Challenged in Maine - Roger's talk, above, lead to to search for food sovereignty.  I discovered that in some ways Maine is ahead of the curve.  Hey, they voted in many towns for food sovereignty - allowing cottage food industries to come into existence and grow.  But then there's the challenge that comes up from one farmer who is being challenged.  I am continually amazed at how major corporations produce harmful food, salmonella laden peanut butter, the massive egg recall of 2010, and others.  There appears to not only be very little consequence for these companies for knowingly producing bad food, but the government is increasingly going after small producers whose food is not contaminated or harmful.  Their primary crime seems to be that they are small producers.  Doesn't make sense to me.

Big Pharma Is Putting Microchips in Drugs - This article disturbs me on a lot of different levels.  First of all, I don't want to be microchipped.  For any reason.  Second of all, I'm not convinced that the data collected from this will be able to take into account bio-individual response to the medication or to other lifestyle issues.  I see this as a potential gateway to the doctor deciding that based on your results you need more medication.  Thirdly, I think it has the potential to go massively awry.  We are not meant to eat or ingest microchips.  One of the thoughts that occurs to me is that although right now we can know if we have it because the chip transmits to a patch on the skin, what if they find another way for the chip to transmit.  Then we won't know if this is in our medications.  Just not a good idea.

Why Woman Should Stop Their Cholesterol Lowering Medication - I was stunned to learn that for post-menopausal women, taking statins can increase their risk of diabetes by as much as 48%.  That's an enormous risk.  Cholesterol is important to our health.  It comes from two sources, either we make it naturally in our liver, or we ingest it from our food.  In the rush to reduce cholesterol many of us lose sight of (or are unaware) that cholesterol that is too low is also unhealthy.  Studies done in 2000 show that low cholesterol (below 160 mg/dl) can cause anxiety and depression in otherwise healthy women.  And other studies show that reduced cholesterol (and saturated fats in the diet) can increase the risk of hemorrhagic stroke.

All of the above indicates a need to look carefully at your diet, your cholesterol intake and cholesterol levels before taking statins.  As a side note it is important to know that if you are taking statins you would do well to also take CoQ10.  Statins deplete CoQ10 from your body.  Adding it to your supplemental routine can help prevent or reduce some muscle problems that can go along with statin use.