Photo by Vanessa Pike-Russell

Improving the quality of the air you breathe at home may not require you to install expensive air purifiers or fancy machinery. It may be as simple as bringing in some household plants. Choosing the right plants can make a positive impact on the air you breath in your home environment.

Our homes contain many irritants both seen and unseen, which contribute to poor indoor, air quality. Invaders such as molds, bacteria, pollen, dust, and pet dander seem to be the most prevalent culprits. Often contributing to the development of chronic respiratory diseases as well as headaches, nasal congestion, nausea and fatigue. For more information on the facts regarding home air quality and what plants you can use to improve it, read the article on Greenworld365.com titled A Gerbera Today May Keep The Doctor Away.

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Photo by Eric Allix Rogers

Whether you are starting out on a new road to better health, a long time chef, or just enjoy a great homemade meal, there is nothing like the taste of fresh organic ingredients. One way to ensure that some of your staple ingredients are fresh and pesticide free is to grow your own. Herb gardens can be fun, healthy, and established just about anywhere even if you have limited space.

If wondering  about starting an herb garden, a few things to consider can be found in an article on GardenTower.co titled How to Start an Herb Garden.

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Between May 1 and May 26, a broad coalition of food, farm, health, public interest, and environmental groups across the country, joined by leading organic food companies, will attempt to raise one million dollars to support the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, a citizens’ ballot initiative. The online fundraising campaign is expected to reach more than 6 million people, through websites and e-newsletters.

The campaign’s organizers – who have already secured a $1 million matching gift if they achieve their goal – say that in addition to raising money for the California campaign, they hope to show Monsanto and the rest of the biotech industry that the public overwhelmingly supports GMO labeling, and that through a combination of direct democracy and grassroots fundraising, citizens are determined to pass laws requiring food producers and marketers to label GMOs.

“Big Biotech and Big Food are going to spend millions to defeat this citizens’ initiative in November,” said Ronnie Cummins, Director of the Organic Consumers Association and its allied grassroots lobbying arm, the Organic Consumers Fund. “They’ve already attacked this initiative, intentionally distorting basic facts about its impact on consumers and food companies. However, no matter what Monsanto says, the polls show that 90% of California voters support GMO labeling. We know from our nearly 80,000 members in California that consumers are wary of genetically modified foods, and that they are fed up with the federal government’s failure to act on labeling laws. Today, the people are speaking up – and donating to this cause – in unprecedented numbers.”

The collaborative online fundraiser is a first, organizers say. It has brought together a wide range of bi-partisan organizations, including nonprofit and for-profit, health, consumer interest, organic farmers, and environmental groups. “The fact that so many different organizations, representing disparate points of view have set aside their differences in order to form a united front against powerful corporations is a testament to how important this issue is, and how widespread the support,” Cummins said. “People realize that passing this law in California is the first critical step toward national GMO labeling laws.”

Among the groups promoting the ‘Drop the Money Bomb on Monsanto’ campaign via unpaid ads, blogs, and e-newsletters are Food Democracy Now!, Mercola, Inc., Natural News, Real Food Media, Lundberg Farms, Eden Foods, Nature’s Path and many others.

The first of the online fundraising appeals launched on May 1. On May 2 – the day that thousands of volunteers will deliver almost a million petitions signed by registered voters to County Clerks’ offices in all 58 counties in California – many other groups will join in the campaign through letters to their members and promotions on their websites. The online fundraising campaign will end on May 26, the 20th anniversary of the FDA’s decision, under the leadership of ex-Monsanto lawyer Michael Taylor, to declare as federal policy that GMO and non-GMO foods are “substantially equivalent” and that therefore genetically engineered foods and food ingredients would not need to be labeled.

“For the past 20 years, Americans have been denied their basic right to know what’s in their food and how it’s produced as a result of the pseudo-scientific theory of “substantial equivalence,” said Dave Murphy, founder and Executive Director of Food Democracy Now! and its allied grassroots lobbying arm Food Democracy Action! “In a free market, access to information and transparency is essential for consumers to make informed choices. Labeling GMOs is a reasonable and common sense proposal to inform consumers about what they’re eating. It’s time for Monsanto and the biotech industry to stop hiding behind this blatant loophole that denies Americans their basic right to know what they’re feeding their families.”

All funds raised through this campaign will run through the Organic Consumers Fund, a 501(c)4, and will be used to support the California Right to Know campaign. Any organizations still interested in participating in the campaign should contact Katherine Paul, 207.653.3090, katherine(at)organicconsumers(dot)org.

The California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act is a citizen’s ballot initiative that if passed, will require that all genetically engineered foods and food ingredients be labeled, and will ban the routine industry practice of labeling or marketing GMO-tainted foods as “natural.”

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots non-profit 501(c)3 public interest organization campaigning for health, justice, and sustainability. The Organic Consumers Fund is a 501(c)4 allied organization of the Organic Consumers Association, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action.

Photo by Jackie Kever

Older subjects who regularly practice Tai Chi were found to have better arterial compliance and greater muscle strength than non-practitioners. Exercise which can achieve both cardiovascular function and muscle strength “would be a preferred mode of training for older persons,” say investigators

Experienced practitioners of Tai Chi, the traditional Chinese mind-body exercise now enjoyed worldwide, have been shown in a study of older subjects to have improved expansion and contraction of arteries according to cardiac pulsation (arterial compliance) and improved knee muscle strength.

The findings, say the investigators, of better muscle strength without jeopardising arterial compliance suggest that Tai Chi may well be a suitable exercise for older people to improve both cardiovascular function and body strength. A number of studies, they explain, have shown that strength training to improve muscle function and offset the effects of aging have also been accompanied by a decline in arterial compliance. “Evidence that strength training could change arterial compliance in middle-aged and older subjects is still elusive,” they note.

As background to their report, the investigators explain that arterial stiffness — when an artery fails to distend or rebound in response to pressure changes — is closely associated with cardiovascular diseases, possibly through elevated blood and pulse pressure and atherosclerosis. Arterial compliance, therefore, has been identified as an important predictor of cardiovascular health in the elderly and a therapeutic target for physical exercise in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

The study, recently published online in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, involved 65 elderly subjects from Hong Kong, 29 recruited from local Tai Chi clubs who had each practised Tai Chi for at least 1.5 hours a week for three years, and 36 controls with no Tai Chi experience. All subjects’ physical activity levels were defined according to metabolic index units as light, moderate and heavy — but there were no differences between the two groups.

Initial results showed that the Tai Chi subjects were better in almost all haemodynamic observations — including blood pressure, vascular resistance, and pulse pressure. Measurements also showed that both large and small artery compliance was significantly higher in the Tai Chi group (by 40-44%). Additional analysis showed that the Tai Chi subjects had greater average muscle strength in both their knee extensors and flexors.

Tai Chi is well known for its aerobic affects. Significant improvement in cardiopulmonary function has been found in Tai Chi practitioners when compared with sedentary controls, and Tai Chi training has been shown to improve cardiopulmonary function in patients with chronic heart failure and myocardial infarction. The effect of Tai Chi training in lowering blood pressure has also been extensively reviewed.

“However,” said principal investigator Dr William Tsang from the The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hong Kong, “this is the first study to investigate the possible effects of Tai Chi on arterial compliance by comparing older Tai Chi practitioners with non-practitioners similar in age and activity level. The improvement in arterial compliance could have resulted from a combination of aerobic training, stretching, mental concentration and calm meditation during Tai Chi movement.”

The study findings showed that older Tai Chi practitioners have better arterial compliance and knee muscle strength than their healthy counterparts. And, because Tai Chi can be practised at any time, anywhere, and without the constraints of equipment or a gymnasium, Dr Tsang added that this traditional Chinese exercise could be a good exercise strategy for older adults, both for vascular health and for muscle strengthening.

source: The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Society of Cardiology (ESC), via AlphaGalileo.

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Dave recently returned from Antarctica, where he completed the last of four 155-mile endurance races as part of Racing the Planet’s “4 Deserts” series (4deserts.com). Earlier in 2010 he completed the three other 155-mile races: across Chile’s Atacama Desert in May, the Gobi desert in China in June, and the Sahara desert in Northern Africa in October – quite a feat for a man who turned 57 in January.

“I didn’t start running until I was 30 years of age,” Dave relates. “My mum told me that our neighbor Cyril was running in the first ever Dublin City Marathon, and asked me if I would go down and support him. I watched him run through our village with family and friends cheering, and got completely caught up in the excitement of the crowd and all the banners. I thought, ‘This is for me. I’ve got to do this.’

“The very next year, I ran my first Marathon – without any training,” Dave continues. “I finished the race, but in great pain, as I had torn ligaments in both knees. It took months before I could run again, but I trained and ran the Marathon the following year – without injury.”

The rest, as they say, is history. But how did Dave go from running marathons to becoming the second oldest person ever to complete the grueling 4 Deserts series in a single calendar year?

That’s where Juice Plus+® comes in. “When I’m out on the course, I usually double or triple my normal amount of Juice Plus+®,” he reports, “and Juice Plus+ Complete® is my main source of food. You’re putting your body through so much that you’ve got to put in that extra nutrition to help reduce all the extra oxidative stress. And I was certainly creating heaps of that.”

Join us for this special event to hear more about Dave’s incredible journey.

Thursday, March 17, 2011, 7:00 p.m. Long Beach convention center, Hall A
Free and open to the public. Visit online for to receive additional info on this event or future events in your area.

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

Celebrated British chef and food activist Jamie Oliver announced his 2010 TED Prize “wish to change the world” earlier this afternoon on the first day of the annual TED conference.

Oliver, a longtime activist in the fight against obesity and diet-related health issues, wished for the creation of a grassroots movement and a new foundation working to inspire children and adults to change the way they eat and to reduce the incidence of obesity and other diet-related health problems….Read the Everything Long Beach article.

Photo Credit: TED / James Duncan Davidson

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