I've made a conscious effort this holiday season not to put on the pounds, and much to my surprise, I've actually been able to lose some LB's instead of gaining, without starving or feeling deprived. Here are a few snacks that have helped to make this possible without making me feel like the "Diabetes Snacky Grinch" is on my back.
Also... These work great for holiday parties and spreads.
Trader Joe's Flaxseed Tortilla Chips: - I can't say enough about these tasty treats. Lower in carbs & calories and much higher in fiber then the corn chips of yesteryear. I actually prefer them to other tortilla chips. Just match them up with some homemade black bean dip (no fat by the way, and super easy to make), a sprinkle of shredded cheddar, and lots of spicy hot Salsa, and your good to go!
Homemade Hummus with Jalapenos and Garlic: Just take your basic Hummus recipe and add a Jala and some garlic to the food processor. Mix it all up until smooth and place in a pretty bowl. have some raw baby carrots, red and yellow peppers, and celery on hand for dipping and your friends and family will love you even more!
Edemame: You can buy them frozen at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods and they take about 5 minutes total to prepare. Snack on these babies while watching a marathon of "The Family Guy" and know that u are feeding both your body and mind with healthy doses of laughter and protein. Flavor some Sea Salt with turmeric or cumin and see how "Diabetesalicious" it can be! Also any leftovers can be put in the fridge and are just as tasty served cold.
Apple Slices with Peanut Butter and Honey: Tasty snack, nuff said.
Dark Chocolate Covered Soy Nuts: So good for your heart and totally feeds your chocolate craving.
Raspberry Vodka with lime wedges and Seltzer on the rocks. No sugar and low in calories.
Plus, potatoes are the food of my people..... CHEERS!
Look, I'm still enjoying the Christmas Cookies folks, but the snacks listed have helped me to balance it all out and keep the "fat jeans" loose & the sexy holiday skirt short!
$424 For A Sinus Infection...WTF!?
I just don’t understand it, $424 for a sinus infection? WTF!
As most of you know, I’ve been feeling under the weather as of late, for weeks I’ve been fighting it, but last Sunday, I caved so to speak and got really sick. A horrible cough, a really bad case of laryngitis, clogged ears, a pounding headache and a low-grade fever. Ironically, my throat didn’t hurt and my blood sugars were fine. Actually, more then fine – they were textbook perfect. I’m still not sure why they didn’t go all haywire on me. Maybe it’s because I raised my basal rate before the onslaught of sickness and I barely had an appetite so my carb intake was minimal to say the least.
On Tuesday I finally went to the Dr. and was given the full battery of tests. A Strep culture, chest & sinus x-rays, and a white blood cell test.
And according to the films, yours truly was diagnosed with quite the nasty sinus infection. To quote the Physician:,
"It’s really bad Kel, one of the worst I’ve seen in quite some time. Your sinuses are A MESS"
"GREAT – thanks.' But then I said to myself:
"OK, it could be worse, it’s treatable, and according to the Doc, I should be feeling back to my old chipper self in a few days"
So off to the pharmacy I went, armed with 2 prescriptions, 1 for Allerx and 1 for Augmentin. Twenty minutes later, my order was ready and the Pharmacist rang me up.
"$424.38 she said cowering – AND YOU HAVE INSURANCE!"
YES, you read correctly $424.38. Out of pocket, to be reimbursed a lousy 40% (or $169.74) by my insurance as these drugs did not come in a generic form.
I did a double take and thought WTF?!
"UMmmm, I don’t think so. THERE'S NO WAY A SINUS INFECTION COSTS $424.
This is not a chronic condition, there has to be an alternative. I mean, it’s a SINUS INFECTION," said I all ticked-off and yet truly amazed at the same time.
The pharmacist looked at my and said, “Ah, yeah – that’s crazy.”
I wanted to know what the cost was without the insurance.
The Augmentin (which they were charging me a whopping $196.38) would go for a price of $225 sans insurance. And the Allerx (which they were charging me $228) would be $260 without insurance.
Needless to say, I told them to keep the drugs and I would have my Doc call in another RX in the morning.
After suffering through another night of major coughing, which no amount of Nyquil or humidifying could help, I called the Doc and who called in an RX for Clarithromcin ($16.70) and was told to buy some Claritin ($18.99 for a 20 count pack) and a Neti pot ($14.99 and by far the most helpful)
SO, $424.38 verses $51.68. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize what a rip-off the first price was.
I don’t care how much research goes into those drugs, $424.38 is highway robbery for a freaking sinus infection! And I have insurance! My diabetes drugs/supplies don’t cost that much!
Do the insurance companies want us to stay sick Or, do they just not care if we ever get well?
I just don’t get it, in the season of giving and good will towards our fellow man, I feel as if I was about to be “taken” for a ride in order to get better and I want to Kick someones ass majorly! WTF?
Health Freedom. Patient Choice. What would happen to the NHS if this became a reality?
[So] long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. Voltarine de Cleyre
A different National Health Service
The political and financial principles underlying the National Health Service are worth maintaining. A free health service for all, regardless of the ability to pay, and offering the best health care therapies available, is a worthy objective for a civilised and caring society.
However, the drug-based medicine currently offered by the NHS is best avoided, except perhaps in dire emergency, and alternatives should always be offered.
An increasing number of people are beginning to realise this. They are slowly turning back to traditional, more natural medicine. There is a growing realisation that if we want to receive effective and safe medial care we have, at the moment at least, to go outside the NHS/Big Pharma monopoly.
This means that for large numbers of people, who are turning their back on the dangers of Conventional Medical drugs, and looking for drug-free therapies, no longer have a 'free at the point of need' medical service. For those able to pay privately for their medical care this is possible. However, for those who cannot afford to pay twice have just two options
*** to accept an ineffective and dangerous form of medicine, and just hope that they do not suffer from the DIEs they bring with them.
*** or to struggle on with illness, without treatment.
For this reason alone the current position of the NHS, as a monopoly provider of drug-based treatment, has to be ended.
The main argument for fundamental change within the NHS is to facilitate patient choice. To achieve effective patient choice, however, patients will have to be given more open and honest information about their health, and the treatments available to them. The NHS should be a clearing house for patients, diagnosing their medical condition, and giving them information about a wide variety of medical therapies. The NHS Bureaucracy, dominated as it is now by conventional medical practitioners who seek to deny patients access to any other form of medicine within the NHS, will have to be challenged, and where necessary replaced by people willing to facilitate real Patient Choice.
At present the NHS in firmly in the hands of those who wish to maintain the ConMed monopoly. This monopoly must be ended. In providing health care to the nation, the NHS must recognise that every patient should have a choice of all the medical therapies available.
The Patient Choice Agenda
1. Every individual should have the right to the medical treatment of his or her informed choice.
2. The National Health Service, as an organisation, should not favour, promote or dispense any one medical therapy over and above any other.
3. The NHS should not seek to impose any one form of medical treatment without reference to the informed choice of the individual. There should be no expectation, or pressure on any individual to accept any kind of medical treatment they do not wish to have.
4. Informed choice is obtained by providing patients with good quality information. The NHS should commit itself to providing good quality information about every medical therapy available.
5. This information should be full, honest and openly available to all patients. The information should include evidence about the effectiveness and safety, as well as the dangers, of each treatment.
6. When an individual becomes ill, he or she should expect to have access to comprehensive information about the treatments available from each medical therapy. Patients should be able to discuss their treatment with any local medical practitioner, within or outside the NHS.
7. Health funding for each individual should be based on a medical assessment of need, based on the severity of their illness. This assessment should provide an 'indicative level of funding', within which patients should have access to any form of medical treatment they prefer.
9. The role of the NHS should be to facilitate, to provide access to, and to fund the individual's choice of medical treatment.
10. The decision to fund, or not to fund particular medical therapies should be removed entirely from the NHS bureaucracy.
ConMed and Traditional Medicine - comparisons
When Conventional and Traditional Medicine begin to be used on an equal footing within the NHS some important comparisons can then be made about the relative effectiveness and safety of different medical therapies. These will not be comparisons on the basis of 'randomised double blind scientific trials', which has led to so many medical disasters, but instead, on the basis of 'patient outcome' - in other words, does the patient get better on particular medical therapies, or not.
Actually, this is all patients ever want - to get better - and to get better safely.
Will conventional, drug-based medicine prove itself to be safer and more effective than other, more traditional or natural therapies? Will drugs and vaccines be able to prove their worth to patients when compared on a level playing fields with therapies conventional medicine has sought to undermine and ridicule for centuries? It is perhaps unlikely but it will be interesting to see!
Yet ultimately with Patient Choice the answer to this question does not matter. What matters is that people are informed about the health choices they have, and that they are able to decide which kind of treatment they prefer. This ability to choose will provide the NHS with useful insights and comparisons. For instance, if people find that homeopathy is safe and effective, they will use it, and tell their friends. If it is not, people will choose something else, or perhaps stick with ConMed.
However, the Conventional Medical Establishment will find it difficult within a genuine ‘Patient Choice’ agenda. For the last 60 years people have accepted Big Pharma drugs because they have been readily and freely available, heralded by great claims for their efficacy and safety. Will patients take these drugs if homeopathy, herbalism, osteopathy, acupuncture, et al, are also readily and freely available to them? It will depend on what forms of medical therapy they see to be safer, more effective, and produce better outcomes. For Conventional Medicine, cosy within its present monopoly, this is seen as a threat!
The Conventional Medical Establishment will not welcome the challenge of open, fair competition with traditional therapies like Homeopathy. They will prefer to hide behind the so-called 'science’ they claim for their drugs, seek to retain control of the NHS, and continue to disseminate misinformation about homeopathy and other natural therapies.
Big Pharma, of course, will continue to threaten politicians and governments with moving their factories, and their research centres elsewhere, unless their monopoly is maintained. And they will continue to support people and organisations who are willing to attack homeopathy, and other traditional therapies. So the struggle is likely to be long and fierce.
What will patients choose?
Patients will choose what they want to choose! That is the nature of choice! Do they prefer a Ford to a Vauxhall, the Telegraph to the Guardian? Initially, without any doubt, most people will continue to use ConMed drugs. It is what they know, what they currently use, and what they understand. But gradually, people will begin to make comparisons, and consider the merits of other medical therapies.
** They will do so when they discover that ConMed is not working with their illnesses, even after years of treatment.
** They will do so when they are told they will have to be on ConMed medication, with potentially dangerous DIEs, for the rest of their lives.
** They will decide when friends tell them that homeopathy does, in fact, work, and that it works, and they will want to try it for themselves.
When this situation emerges, entering a GP surgery, or an NHS hospital, will become a different experience. Visits will be more about seeking information about the choices open to them, and making personal decisions about the treatment they want. It will no longer be a matter of being told
"Here you are, this is our diagnosis, this is what we have got for you, and so this is what we are going to give to you".
Health will no longer be about what emanates from a bottle of pills. Traditional medicine will gradually move the focus to a wider, more holistic understanding of health, to life-style choices, to supporting the body in maintaining its health, and eventually, when illness does strike, using gentle therapies that helps the body heal itself.
Patients will select their treatment from different therapies. They will discuss their experiences with their friends and family. They will teach each other what works, what is safe, and what is not. The 'word of mouth' route that works for homeopaths and traditional therapists now will begin to work in favour of 'the best' medical therapies, the one's that suit patients, the one's that work, the one’s patients prefer. No-one will feel obliged to take Big Pharma drugs. And no-one preferring natural treatment will have to pay twice for their medical treatment.
The Health Marketplace
Initially, the NHS Establishment, dominated as it is by ConMed practitioners, will protest that they cannot afford to spend even more money, certainly not on traditional therapies! The costs of providing health care, they will complain, are already exorbitant (as indeed they are). But they will soon discover something they have never considered in their present monopoly position.
Patients will receive treatment, they will get better, and go away.
Gradually, the NHS will find that less people will pass through their doors. They will discover that Homeopathic remedies and Acupuncture needles will not generate more illness, treatment will not lead to yet more disease, and so increase demands on resources. Costs within the NHS may even begin to stabilise. And demands for ever more resources will begin to reduce.
Moreover, the cost of Big Pharma drugs will cease to rise to astronomic levels. Big Pharma will soon have to recognise that they are operating within a competitive health marketplace. Their drugs will have to stand comparison in terms of cost-effectiveness with Homeopathic remedies (which cost very little to produce). Perhaps the Pharmaceutical industry will even feel obliged to test their drugs more vigorously in order to ensure they are safe! They will certainly have to do more than just tell patients they are 'wonder' drugs, and rely on their NHS monopoly to distribute them on their behalf.
Patient Choice in health will make the NHS a more dynamic, pluralistic and interesting institution. Patients will re-assume a larger measure of responsibility for their own health. And health practitioners, of every persuasion, will be expected to demonstrate the safety and efficacy of what they do in terms of the outcomes they produce.
This piece was first published as Chapter 8 of the E-book "The Failure of Conventional Medicine".
New 'Game-Changing' Heart Drug. Or new threat to our health
Pulse announced today (19th December 2014) that a new 'game-changing' heart drug was to be fast-tracked through the drug approval system. The drug is called LCZ696 and is being developed by Novartis. It is a combination of two 'antihypertensive' drugs, Valsartan (Diovan), an 'angiotension II receptor blocker, and a new drug, Sacubitril, a 'neprilysis inhibitor'.
So, as with most conventional medical drugs, the purpose and function of the new drug is to 'block' and 'inhibit' bodily functions
As a result, I predict danger, and massive harm to the patients who will be given this drug, probably as soon as September 2015. But, of course, I could be wrong! This could be a first for the Big Pharma industry - a safe drug - that actually works.
But this is not the usual process. Normally, drugs are introduced by pharmaceutical companies as 'game-changing', and doctors, the NHS parrot these hopes, and the media comply with such assessments, without question. Then, reality begins to dawn!
I have described this process elsewhere. Will this new 'wonder drug' fit into this regular, too predictable pattern? I intend to follow and report on the progress of this drug on this blog over the next few years - so we will see!
But the signs are not good. Both drugs restrict, interfare and meddle with the normal functioning of the body. Fast-tracked drugs have had, in the past, an even worse record then those that go through the normal process. And Valsartan, one of the drugs used in this new combination, already has a record of serious 'disease-inducing effects'.
Valsartan (Diovan).
Shortness of breath, pounding heartbeat (or weak pulse and slow heart rate), fluttering in the chest, weakness, confusion, rapid weight gain, fainting, muscle weakness, headache, dizziness, flu symptoms, nausea, stomach pains, diarrhoea, back pain, blurred vision, skin rash - et al.
And as Wikipedia has already pointed out, tests on this new drug have already identified that the problems are likely to be similar to all antihypertensive drugs.
"Common adverse effects the main study were cough, hyperkalemia (high potassium levels in the blood, which can be caused by valsartan), renal dysfunction, and hypotension (low blood pressure, a common side effect of antihypertensives). 12% of the patients withdrew from the study during the run-in phase because of such events."
So, as with most conventional medical drugs, the purpose and function of the new drug is to 'block' and 'inhibit' bodily functions
As a result, I predict danger, and massive harm to the patients who will be given this drug, probably as soon as September 2015. But, of course, I could be wrong! This could be a first for the Big Pharma industry - a safe drug - that actually works.
But this is not the usual process. Normally, drugs are introduced by pharmaceutical companies as 'game-changing', and doctors, the NHS parrot these hopes, and the media comply with such assessments, without question. Then, reality begins to dawn!
- Soon, 'side-effects' are noted. Then 'adverse reactions'. These are downplayed, balanced by some game of 'risk-benefit' analysis.
- Then, when the harm the drug is causing becomes more obvious, drug regulators place them under restriction, and place 'black-box' warnings on the packaging. But the drug is too profitable, and doctors who have prescribed it are reluctant to admit that they may have damaged their patients. So it is kept on sale, and the suffering continues.
- Then, the harm caused by the drug begins to clearly outweigh any possible benefits, which it has been found anyway, have been severely over-hyped.
- So the drug is withdrawn, as quietly as possible. Or on some occasions, drug regulators will actually ban it.
I have described this process elsewhere. Will this new 'wonder drug' fit into this regular, too predictable pattern? I intend to follow and report on the progress of this drug on this blog over the next few years - so we will see!
But the signs are not good. Both drugs restrict, interfare and meddle with the normal functioning of the body. Fast-tracked drugs have had, in the past, an even worse record then those that go through the normal process. And Valsartan, one of the drugs used in this new combination, already has a record of serious 'disease-inducing effects'.
Valsartan (Diovan).
Shortness of breath, pounding heartbeat (or weak pulse and slow heart rate), fluttering in the chest, weakness, confusion, rapid weight gain, fainting, muscle weakness, headache, dizziness, flu symptoms, nausea, stomach pains, diarrhoea, back pain, blurred vision, skin rash - et al.
And as Wikipedia has already pointed out, tests on this new drug have already identified that the problems are likely to be similar to all antihypertensive drugs.
"Common adverse effects the main study were cough, hyperkalemia (high potassium levels in the blood, which can be caused by valsartan), renal dysfunction, and hypotension (low blood pressure, a common side effect of antihypertensives). 12% of the patients withdrew from the study during the run-in phase because of such events."
Yet the European Medicines Agency (EMA) are happy to fast-track new drugs if "the medicine is expected to be of major public health interest particularly from the point of view of therapeutic innovation".
In the Pulse article it outlines what Novartis are saying about the new drug, prior to launch.
"Treatment with LCZ696 was shown to significantly reduce cardiovascular deaths and heart failure hospitalisations when compared with 'gold-standard' treatment....." with other drugs.
Pulse report that 'GP experts' have told them that the "drug could be a ‘game changer’ in the management of heart failure, because it appears to be so much more effective than established treatments".So LCZ696 is really something for us all to look forward to! It is already being proclaimed as another triumph for the conventional medical establishment, who cannot get it to us quickly enough! And naturally, nowhere in the article is anything mentioned about side-effects, adverse reactions, or disease inducing reactions to the drug!
So, just watch this space over the next few years, and we will see whether the hype of the conventional medical establishment, backed by Big Pharma funding, is correct. Or whether my more mundane prediction is more accurate!
