HoundsGood: Chronicles of a Virtual Volunteer

There are many reports that the Bovine Growth Hormone used in dairy cattle is causes a host of maladies in individuals, form breast cancer, to obesity, to food sensitivity.  There are also antibiotics in beef cattle.  Solutions are injected into the meat so that it displays better, and hormones also are sometimes given to cattle to make them more substantial.  While some may argue the solution is to go off of eating meat entirely, there are many others who are looking for sources of meat that they can trust for their family.  Many of my readers are concerned with sustainability or are looking to consume an organic diet.  Also, some individuals have chosen a raw diet for their dog and the grocery store meat is just too laced with preservatives.

One company that provides Natural Meat to suppliers and restaurants is Niman’s Ranch. They source meat from small, 650 family farms across the United States where cattle, swine, and sheep are raised in a humane and organic way. All animals are fed the finest of vegetarian feeds, and are independently inspected by veterinarians regularly. Since small, independent farmers raise the animals, you are also helping family farms stay in business. While much of American food is going overseas, these small farms are committed to keeping it local.

Their site has an online store coming soon, where you can order meat and specialty products for your family to enjoy in your own home, skipping the middle man of a restaurant or market.  I do not eat beef, but My Favorite Guy and other relatives do.  I am going to definitely consider ordering, as eating humanely raised, vegetarian fed, and antibiotic free meat keeps your loved ones healthy.  It looks like they are going to have some specialty products as well.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. In my family, my Grandmother is a breast cancer survivor of over twenty years. We feel blessed every day to have her around. Hopefully, more women will be just as lucky and survive, or more hopefully, never have it at all.  It is known that stem cells from umbilical cords and menstrual blood have been effective in treating forms of leukemia.  Now, the National Institute for Health and Cryo-Cell are targeting breast cancer.  They are exploring the possibility of the stem cells in menstrual blood being effective against breast cancer.

In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness month, and in honor of the connection it has to their services, Cryo-Cell is giving a C’Elle Breast Cancer Donation of $25.00 for each sign up for their service.  Funds will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation.  The C’elle program involves preserving stem cells from a woman’s menstrual blood.  There is also a service that protects the infant as well.  In addition to the C’Elle service, the umbilical cord of the infant is preserved.  The best time to sign up is before the baby is born. The  Cyro-Cell Breast Cancer Donation to the Komen Foundation for the package is $50.00.

In the future, the stem cells will be preserved if the donor or immediate relatives ever need therapy for various genetic conditions or cancers.  The method is also compatible with the beliefs of many different individuals and groups, as it uses biological material that would normally be shed or thrown away.

Well, it is just a few more days to October. Many children I know have been talking about what they are going to be for Halloween for the past several months now. I remember my suffering parents had to watch us scramble, the procrastinators we were. Inevitably, with the aid of all the robes and bandannas in the house, my brother was yet another Ninja. It rotated every other year with being Jason from Friday the 13th just because he owned a hockey mask. While most of my friends decided hat a punk rocker costume was the easiest thing to put together, I was always cutting up or drawing on a box.  Hey, I could have been a Tetra Pak.  More on what this is later.

Now that I am an adult, I am more concerned about what goes into the stomachs of the children than what goes outside of them. I don’t have any children myself, but I have neighbors under five years old (oh, yes, they do live with parents. The neighbor couple is older than five years old), the nieces and nephew of My Favorite Guy, and of course, my cousins children. It is not so much about nutritional value. I will let the actual parents worry about that. It is the big sugar rush that may occur that I could somehow be in the line of fire of. I won’t pretend it doesn’t exist. I remember late night candy trading sessions with my friends and brother. We crashed right there on the living room floor.

Luckily, there is a Trick Or Treat Me blog which helps the adults in charge make the right decision. It also suggests that one should give out milk for calcium, in the new safe Tetra Pak cartons. I was a little skeptical about giving out milk, but apparently, Hershey’s Chocolate milk comes this way and is supposedly safe for many hours outside of the refrigerator.

In correspondence with this, you can Trick Or Treat Me on Twitter, or anyone else you know. For every tweet originating from Trick or Tweet Me, Tetra Pak will donate 10 cents to the World Wild Life fund. You can choose if your twitter friend deserves a Trick or a Tweet.   The more people you Trick or Treat, the more likely you are to become the scariest Twit on Twitter.

If you want to Trick or Treat me, I am at @thesnackhound.  I’ll Trick or Tweet you back!

I am several weeks into my back exercises from back2yourself.com. If you have been following my progress, I am generally pretty healthy but I tend to suffer from sitting my but in the chair too much while on the computer.  Last week I received an email reminder that I have not been exercising. How do they know?  I have not logged in lately to watch the videos and follow along.  That got me back on the stick.

Luckily, I did.

This weekend I had a fun filled trip to the emergency room. I can definitely say that I am bouncing back better because of the foundation of back exercise from the past few weeks.  It wasn’t a back injury that I had, but getting the core and the back in good health just helps you all around when you injure yourself.  Half of the trouble is when you favor one side or the other and you feel lopsided.  I will tell you all more about it later when I bounce back completely.  It’s rather embarrassing to talk about exactly what I did.

Along with volunteering for animal rescue, for the past year I have also volunteered in another way. I am supporting a 12 step recovery program. While I thankfully never been stricken with a chemical addiction, I feel drawn to help others who have realized that their life is out of control. My life was out of control, and while I did not turn to drugs, I greatly benefited from others who were there to lend me support and I like to return the favor.

Before embarking on a program, some people need a complete change in their environment to begin the healing process. It is not about running away from one’s problems, as they tend to follow you. The intent is when someone is particularly weak, to remove the powerful influences of peers for a short time until the individual can gain a little strength. I have known people that have an addiction, whether it is to alcohol or to shopping that find themselves relapsing because there are enablers, on the mild end, in their life, to people who also have the same issues and belittle them for no longer participating.

I always try to keep a list of places that offer drug rehabilitation in Michigan (thedrugrehab.com has a good resource), because now that I am in the helping role, I tend to have people cross my path who ask.  I recommend that you keep a list of books that have helped you the most, and phone numbers of resources too. Of course, I keep a very short list of animal rescue resources too.  People tend to flit into your life in line at the grocery store, at a meeting, or at the counter of a consignment shop.  You may never see them again, and exchanging numbers with an almost stranger doesn’t always gel.  Don’t be pushy, but sometimes it naturally comes up in conversation when someone asks and you are scrambling around in your brain a bit too much to find it.

There are many socially conscious gifts you can give, from fair trade coffee, sustainable fibers, and items that benefit rescues. C’elle has a different idea in mind.

There is a lot of controversy these days over stem cell research. C’elle offers the solution of preserving a woman’s menstrual blood for potential future use, and cryogenically freezing it. Research has shown that those stem cells can potentially be used to fight disease in her, a sibling, or a child if a match.  There are other therapies that have not yet been tapped yet involving the cells, but the anticipation is similar for other therapies using someone’s own adult stem cells without any invasive procedures. You can read more about the benefits on their newly redesigned website (celle.com).

Of course, this is a very sensitive subject and you should probably not randomly gift someone with a gift certificate unless you know it is something that they are interested in doing.   You may want to talk it over first before you order now for someone and determine their feelings and interest in the subject.

What do you think about it?  Would this encourage people to use animal research less?  Do you think that it is a legitimate investment or a waste of money? Whatever your answer, perhaps we will see women turning away from birth control that guarantees them to have only one period a year, and finding greater that the benefit far outweighs the inconvenience.

I wasn’t always kind to people who had cosmetic surgery on their list of “things to do” in their five year plan. I am far from a perfect physical specimen, but I have fought the good fight in my life to be comfortable in my own skin and accept myself for the way I am. I know that I will never have a perfectly flat stomach, or a perfect nose. What is perfect, anyway? If it was an uphill journey to battle my own sense of insecurity, who am I really to talk about that of others? I looked with pity on girls who have gone through dozens of surgeries to chase perfection.

Recently, I changed my mind about liposuction and Tummy Tucks after meeting Dorothy. Dorothy is 40, and has had four children. Of course, one’s body changes when they have kids, but she had not gained an large amount of weight for that reason. Her body also changed because she abused food and drugs for years. You would think at her enormous size, tipping the scale at 425 lbs, that she was a binge eater. On the contrary, for a long time Dorothy ate like a mouse. Her metabolism slowed to a crawl as a result, not to mention the the toll narcotics had taken.

Now, Dorothy has done an amazing job of changing her life. She has been clean for three years, and runs support groups for women who have been in her shoes. In fact, she even has her children back and is giving them the life she could not give them before, even though they had been on the verge of being adopted by other families. Now that Dorothy is eating healthy and taking better care of herself, she has lost 150 pounds to date and has kept it off. The color has returned to her face as well. Despite the healthy lifestyle, she feels she is going to have a lot of excess skin. Even with gradual weight loss and exercise, when someone has been a larger size for so long, the skins elasticity does not bounce back, and skin may hang in large folds. She hopes some day have a tummy tuck. It will happen down the road, after she gets closer to her goal.   It will able her to wear standard sizes, and will help her with back problems. She is already doing great work on her confidence, but it will increase it even more.  She is afraid that the excess will cause a hazard as well, as far as getting caught, and also putting extra strain on her heart.

Right now, Dorothy jokes that she will have a boyfriend someday or a sugar daddy who will pay for her surgery, because she will be so beautiful once she loses the weight.  Of course, she knows she is beautiful now, even though a bit insecure about it at sometimes.  I hope she gets her wish and is able to get closer to her goal.  It is not about vanity and trying to look like a model, but just about being able to be as healthy as you possibly can be.

I have written before on my quest for fitness. I am in pretty good shape if you consider my weight, and I am active on the weekends, but sitting at a computer like I sometimes do during the week, doesn’t help my muscle tone.  What I am most concerned about is my joints. My mom has arthritis and I am worried about developing it. Therefore, I have been doing my best to try some gentle back exercises to help with my alignment. There are some low back exercises that Back2yYourself recommends.

I was working hard on my core with sit ups, but if the back is not in the equation, it doesn’t work as well.  One exercise I have been doing while I have been sitting in the grass, watching my dogs in the yard has been the side clam.  I recommend you follow the alignment steps listed on the site before launching into the clam, but I have a description of what it is about so you get an idea.

To me, it works better than leg lifts, as I tended to let my hip jut out on the latter. Have you tried it? How did it work?

Sometimes a dog comes into a rescue who is very underweight, and it is a natural tendency to feed the dog “whatever it wants.”  It is important to first have the dog checked to make sure he or she does not have a worm infestation that could be affecting its nutrition absorption.  If that has been ruled out, gradually give the dog a healthy diet that corresponds with their weight and activity level.  If they are getting the proper nutrition, they will be absorbing nutrients and they will fill out.   Don’t just go by what the back of the dog food bag says, because activity level varies.  Check, also, to see how much filler is in there.

Contrary to many opinions, stacking on a ton of protein is not always the answer.  In fact, I knew someone who was so eager for their dog to gain muscle that they gave them Syntrax Nectar, which contains whey protein.  In fact, I heard of someone who was using a treadmill with their dog in concert with this, hoping it would tone them up.  Formulas like this are NOT for dogs, it is for people who are looking to build muscle.  It is slightly less expensive ($31.99 for over 2 lbs of powder at Dietdirect.com) than canine supplements, but it is not designed for their nutritional needs.  In fact, recent information suggests that dogs that are acting a bit snappish tend to mellow out with a lower protein diet, so the added protein doesn’t necessarily help them.  It helps with an increased activity level, but should not be a “go to” solution for mere weight gain.

Whey is a far more natural way for a person to increase their muscle mass than something like steroids or other hormonal treatments.  It is something that may also be recommended to people who can’t seem to keep healthy weight on. It is safe, but with anything else, use it as intended and in moderation.

On the weekends, I am extremely active. My rear end barely hits the coach. During the week, however, I am busy at work writing. The butt is firmly glued to the office chair. As a result, you can imagine sometimes that my back is a little cross with me. For the past few weeks I have been following the exercises for back pain that Back2Yourself.com has available and have had excellent progress.  There are a few exercises on the site to get you started, and then you can register for a subscription that offers progress reports and coaching.  This was quite a find for me and I wanted to share it with all of you whose rear ends are firmly planted in the seat today.

A few days ago I wrote about Cryo-Cell and the discount they have on their U-Cord service.   I just wanted to add something, as I just found out that while that sale may be over, if you enrolled in U-Cord by midnight, July 26th, using promo code 995PS, you are eligible for a discount on another service that not only protects baby, but mom.  If you use promo code P2PS, you will not only receive U-Cord but also be enrolled in the C’elle program for the combined price of $1299.  You need to enroll in U-Cord before the July 26th deadline, and you have until July 31st at midnight to add C’elle.

With U-Cord, The umbilical cord of the baby is specially preserved for the possibility of later harvesting the baby’s own stem cells in case of illness. The mother’s stem cells from her menstrual flow are also preserved under the C’elle program. So far, there have been successful stem cell transplants this way that have not involved harm to animals or the harvesting of embryos.  Your own stem cells, or that of a sibling are proven to be much more effective.

I actually know someone who had a stem cell transplant.  He had a form of leukemia and the prognosis was very poor.   It was about eight years ago that the transplant occurred, and he is alive today.  His own stem cells were used in the procedure.

Of course, the best case scenario is to take care of yourself and your body every single day.  Many diseases can be prevented or at least made more manageable that way.  However, there are some illnesses that are genetic and people inherit them no matter how healthy they keep themselves.   This has actually extended the life or cured individuals and siblings over the past few years, and may become more widespread in the future.  I am sure the nonprofit organization concerning this idea is not far from being formed.

Alone, these services cost several thousand dollars.  If you have been thinking about it, what are you waiting for?

My Sister’s Keeper was a best selling book, and now a movie, about a young girl whose parents gave birth to her to possibly be a match for her ailing sister.  The parents hoped that the child would be a bone marrow match.   I recall a true story, which I do not know if the book was based on, where this very thing happened, though it could have happened to more families, minus the medical emancipation.  Maybe the technology wasn’t there at the time, but the folks that advocate cord blood banking aim to educate the public that if a baby’s umbilical cord is properly preserved, it can save the life or health of the baby or possibly a sibling.

July is Blood Cord Awareness month.  Instead of using stem cells from embryos, or certainly raising a child to be a match for another, researchers have found it more effective for an individual to be treated with their own stem cells. They have found the best way was to preserve the stem cells in a baby’s umbilical cord for future use is cryogenically.  The cord cells would only be used for the individual baby at any stage in their life.  It also has a one in four chance of being useful for a sibling of the baby for cord blood transplants, should the need arise.  There is one transplant on the books that used the cells of a niece, but typically this match is less likely.

One of the largest places that bank the cells is Cryo-Cell. I suggest before selecting them, you go over the Cryr-Cell selection criteria to make sure they suit your needs and compare them with other companies. They have been in service since 1989, so are about the oldest cell bank, and have records of successful transplants.  I am sure they are the sponsorer of Blood Cord Awareness Month, but you never can tell.  I am not sure if there will be greeting cards and cakes next year if this catches on.

I was walking past a medical supply store, and they had an antique wheelchair in the window just for show.   The older ones reminded me of a woven rocking chair on wheels.   They didn’t have performance tires for an active lifestyle, nor would you sit securely if you needed a strap.  I am sure at the end of the 19th century, they didn’t figure you would do anything but exist should you need to use one.

A lot of folks who I knew who had gotten a bit older and were less mobile fought the idea of a wheelchair, but now the electric scooters that some people use almost seem to be talked about with a sense of pride.  They not only help you get around, should you have had a debilitating accident, or have an illness which makes you less mobile; they have cool horns, too.  I even saw one person affix flame stickers to them.

Unfortunately, scooters can be something people joke about as well.  Sometimes, when someone who is on the rubenesque side appears driving a scooter, there are some folks who naturally think that they “just gave up.”  They didn’t move it so they lost it.  While there are some conditions that we definitely contribute to by lack of exercise or poor health, we should not assume.  I think a relative of mine came to that conclusion when they saw a couple at Disney renting one.   He used it for awhile, and then they traded off.   They didn’t rent one because they really required one, but just because they wanted to get around the park faster and wanted to see more in a shorter period of time.   It may make some people think that there is a laziness factor, but on the other hand it destigmatizes scooters as well.

Overall, if you find that negative thoughts pop into your head when you see a scooter, turn it around. It is wonderful that people are out and about.  Staying at home all the time because one can’t get around can be a detriment to health.  It is much better for the spirit as a great depression fighter.  The next time someone honks at you with their scooter, smile and wave back.