For the love of all that is good and holy stop with the frggin’ news reports on swine flu.

Plain old seasonal flu kills thousands ever year. And Swine Flu (or H1N1) is no more severe so far as I can tell.

The Alberta Health website (http://www.health.alberta.ca/) states that the symptoms of  H1N1 are no worse than a regular flu. You should only see a doctor (emergency room) if you have trouble breathing or experience a high fever. I would say that that would be reasonable for any friggin’ sickness!

The website also says that the number of RECORDED H1N1 cases so far has been 314.  There have been 13 deaths and as far as the news goes, those have only been recorded in people with underlying problems (think asthma).

If you can do math, that is a death rate of 4%. And if you consider the fact that the symptoms are NO MORE SEVERE than regular flu there is a great chance that you or someone you know may have had H1N1 without having any knowledge of it. That means the death ratio may be closer to 2%.  See here: http://www.health.alberta.ca/health-info/influenza-H1N1-cases.html

Does that sound like something to be freaking out about and blamming our governments over? Every day there is a new scandal regarding shortages or some Hockey Team getting while “the children” go without.

This has been SO overblown. Everyone thinks that if you get Swine Flu that you’ll die. The truth is that 96% -98% of you will power through it just like any other flu.

Let’s get some perspective people!

I don’t friggin’ care if you still want a vaccine. Personally I’d take my chances with H1N1. But please stop avting like this is the plague!

Oh my god!

I borrowed a cookbook called Vegan Express from the library a couple of days ago. I wanted to share some of the foreword written by Neal Bernard, MD. He is the President of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

He states that by simply reducing the amount of meat and eggs we consume we ill only slightly reduce our cholesterol, blood pressure and body weight.

He states that collectively, Americans are more out of shape than any other American generation.

“Numerous scientific studies have shown that the healthiest diet of all is one that is low in fat and is completely comprised of plant foods. Vegetarians have healthier hearts, healthier skin, lower blood pressure, less risk of diabetes, fewer kidney stones and gallstones, and forty percent less cancer risk.”

He also says that vegan diets are even better and that vegetarians are about ten percent slimmer than non-vegetarians.

I know for myself that I lost thirty pounds just from giving up meat. I am having a hard time losing the rest of the baby weight but I think that exercise and giving up cheese will probably fix that. LOL.

Despite all of the evidence showing how dramatically a change in diet can affect your health and lenghten your life span it is unfortunate that doctors and dieticians don’t encourage these low to no cholesterol diets to their overweight and diseased patients.

I suppose there is no profit for large corporations in eating healthy…

 

Side note:  I saw some type Pharmaceutical companies wrong. They spelled it like this: Pharmapsodical. I wonder if they were trying to say pharma.pseudo.cal. That would be funny. Ha ha ha.