"Canary in the coal mine"

The following video is proof that it can be done.  Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes...  

Please take 18 minutes to watch Dr. Terry Wahl's TEDx Presentation.  She touches on the nutrient deficiency of the standard american diet (SAD) and how she has been able to take herself from wheelchair bound with MS to living a normal life.  Hope.

TED talks are a great seque to the topic I wanted to address today.  (It's amazing how overwhelmed I am currently with topics).  If you are unaware of TED as I was until last year, you can definitely learn more here: TED: Ideas worth spreading

Independent and Alternative resources are important.  There is so much information out there.  Dr. Terry Wahl has the background and understanding to dig through the PubMed materials on her own.  We all have access to massive amounts of materials, but do we have the skills to understand it?  Do we have the time?  Do we even care?

So here I am putting out more info... thanks, eh?!  But I promise to only share the pertinent info, I'll try to filter - but I don't want to present too much bias as I am aware that I am already harnessed up and ready to belay down the cliff to hippy vegan liberalism.   Not that I don't think love should be free, but I understand that it taking things too extreme is off-putting to most.

In this sea of information, where do I get mine?  Well I started by rocking it old-school.  Good old books with a new school twist.  Amazon!  Not that Amazon is an improvement over the mom & pop book stores (Shout out to The Frugal Muse, my wife Kim's favorite bookstore).  But Amazon and their algorithms of shopping has a convenient big brother ability to suggest related materials, a useful feature that has guided my exploration.  "You may also enjoy...."  Shit, they were right.  I'm learning that big brothers can be good guys too.  (Right Rob?)

Another great alternative which surprised me was Netflix.  We originally switched to Netflix (over cable tv) due strictly to budget.  We did it in Canada where the budget was very tight.  Now back in the states, Netflix has rights to many more options.  Tons of options, now the trick is finding the good stuff.  And beside the ability to watch Breaking Bad, West Wing, How I Met Your Mother, and marathons of The Bernie Mac Show (Who ya wit!), there is a great selection of independently made documentaries.  There are even a ton of TED Talks broken down to a variety of topics, among the topics are Disease and Nutrition.  Entertaining and brilliant stuff.

I'd love to share my reading list, but let's be honest, we readers are a minority!  How are we to get through to those who are too rushed in their lives to sit down and devote 6-8 hours to reading a book?  Audible books are probably a good option.

Another option is radio.  I love NPR podcasts like To The Best of our Knowledge (TTBOOK.org), and recently added in the Rich Roll Podcast.  I don't think Rich is correct on many of his topics, but I have serious respect for the fact that he brings interviews with people that present views that he disagrees with.  That's how we learn folks.  Republicans should spend a week reading The Nation and Democrats should listen to WTMJ (local Waukesha radio).  If all we do is listen to opinions that we agree with, we only get further entrenched in our narrow views and don't learn anything.

We may be older, but we are not done learning.  I've probably learned as much here in the past 3 months as I have in a semester of studying Anatomy Phys, Organic Chem, Rhetoric of Campaign & Revolution, Psychology 411 Topics: Stress & Coping, and another Topics course on the Environmental Toxicity.  (This was actually my Senior year - good stuff).  But I'm also able to learn on my own with out the expensive tuition.  How do you like them apples?