Angry Eyebrows
Got the uni-brow look going? Got them big caterpiller eyebrows that seem to squirm on your head?
Well fear not! Eyebrows by Cecile can come to your rescue. She’s a Best of Boston winner for eyebrowin’ ya. She does chica’s and hombres so give her a call. She’ll get your brows the way you need to give you a nice look. Yes guys, your bushy brows or unibrows can use a clean up too! I’ve used her and was very satisfied with her work.
You can find her website and information at this link HERE.
(eyebrow photo courtesy of Mirandala used under Creative Commons License)
Low fat diets and breast cancer: Eat to live not please the researchers
You may have seen the headlines that exploded across the headlines in February, in referece to the results of two studies considering the connection between dietary fat and health: The Women’s Health Initiative Study and the Nurses Health Study
“Low Fat Diets do not cut the risk of breast cancer”
“Low-fat diets not as effective as expected: Little change in cancer, heart disease risk”
“Low-Fat Diets Disappoint for Cancer and Heart Disease”
But what is the skinny on these corpulent quotes packed with controversy? Could it be that we need to re-think of using hot fudge and fatty steaks medicinally? I’m not so sure that’s the whole story. So let’s take a look at some alternative views, maybe there’s some cream to be skimmed from this after all? It’s almost Summer and while food is fun, what we eat is important to our health.
Let’s take a look at a letter that was originally sent out by Dr. T. Colin Cambell. Dr. Cambell co-authored the first ever study on the connection between dietary fat and health in 1982 during his time at the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Cambell’s letter was submitted widely to major newspapers but rejected by each one. You can read the full letter at this link HERE But here are some excerpts. In referring to both studies, Dr. Campbell states that:
Both studies were prompted by a major 1982 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report that was the first major document to recommend cutting fat consumption from 40% of calories to 30% to prevent cancer risk, a report that I co-authored. But the researchers who subsequently organized these two very large studies misinterpreted our report’s findings, then designed studies that were seriously flawed, despite recommendations to the contrary. Aside from their recommendation on fat, the committee also advocated increased consumption of “fruits, vegetables, and whole grain cereal products” but cautioned that this did not apply to the effects of individual nutrients. They made clear that the 30% fat recommendation was arbitrary and was only meant as a “practical target” to monitor dietary change, adding that the evidence on fat even suggested, “the[sic] data could be used to justify an even greater reduction”. Together, these recommendations emphasized the effect of whole foods on cancer risk, not the effects of individual nutrients.
Dr. Campbell has more to say regarding the results of his original work on this topic compared with the current studies:
The available evidence for our NAS committee showed that the association of dietary fat with breast and other cancers was attributed to the consumption of animal protein, reflecting excessive consumption of animal based foods, perhaps also inadequate consumption of plant based foods. Laboratory evidence, including our own, also was showing that consuming animal protein had multiple adverse health effects. It could markedly increase cancer development, elevate blood cholesterol and atherosclerotic plaque and induce loss of calcium needed for strong bones. But all of this evidence was minimized and ignored, and continues even today. This also was a personal challenge for me. I was raised on a dairy farm milking cows, then started my research career at Cornell University attempting to promote more not less animal protein consumption. This negation of the evidence has had serious consequences. For example, the vast majority of subjects in both of these recently reported studies used diets rich in animal protein, total fat and animal based foods, leaving virtually no opportunity to experimentally investigate the effects of a diet of whole plant based foods naturally low in fat. Women who consumed less fat, actually consumed more animal protein. Indeed, they were urged and coached to do this. At best, these women only made minor changes in fat consumption, leaving intact their imbalanced consumption of foods likely to make the most difference.
It strikes me as a real injustice to the public, and women in particular, that evidence to the contrary was ignored regarding the link of dietary fat and breast cancer.
Besides Dr. Campbell’s commentary, is there any evidence that might be to the contrary? Well, turns out there is. The University of California published a report in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. The researches did an analysis of 13 studies on diet and breast cancer between the years 1966 and 1998. What they found was that reducing fat intake below 20% of calories will reduce breast cancer risk. You can read the report’s abstract at the Journal of the National Cancer Institute HERE.
But there’s not just that report, Dr. Dean Ornish, one of the most influential researchers on low fat diets and health has this to say regarding another study that alleges no link to breast cancer and low fat diets:
One study from Dr. Michelle Holmes of the Harvard School of Public Health was widely quoted to have found no relationship between dietary fat and breast cancer, but the group of women who ate the most fat before being diagnosed had a 70% greater risk of death than the women who ate the least fat. Also, they found that women who ate the most vegetables were less likely to die from breast cancer.
It’s not just a question or reducing the amount of dietary fat but also increasing consumption of fruits, vegetables, grains, and legumes, especially soy products. There are at least 1,000 substances that have anticancer properties, and with few exceptions these are found in fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans.
You can read Dr. Ornish’s full statement on breast cancer and low fat diets at this link HERE
You can read a news article on this controversy at SFGate.com at this link HERE
Understanding and coping with mourning in transgender relationships
I don’t know when it hit me exactly, and frankly I’m still not sure I get it completely. But to a large degree those around me are mourning my death. Or to be more frank, the death of a part of me. That part is my male person.
What is hard to understand from my perspective is that I’m the same me I’ve been all along, indeed I’m more me than the me that was before (body wise there’s more of me too – but let’s not go there). There was a time not too long ago when my ability to function was greatly impaired and reduced to finding appropriate male models to work from in order to get through the day. That becomes embarrassing when you pick the wrong one and debilitating when you can’t find one at all. Bizarre as this sounds, this was my way of coping – then that didn’t work anymore. Fast forward to today and my current status as “trans-person”, not full time but definitely someone who is grappling with this issue on a day to day basis sometimes successfully and sometimes not. While it’s very common for those of us who are transgendered to focus on ourselves I’m often way more concerned about the people I love so much and what their reactions are and how they are doing through this. And you know what, sometimes their reactions are emotionally incredibly painful to me. And I think I’ve finally understood why.
What I’ve learned is that, for you or I who are transgendered, there is a grieving process for those around us with whom we’ve decided to share our unique nature. My therapist warned me of this but I never really listened I don’t think. I’m not an expert, I’m a learner, but some of this might be helpful to you too.
When you look for a listing of the stages of grief you’ll see there are five of them, and they have an order and a varying intensity depending on the person and what the scenario is. They are:
Stages of Grief
| Grief Stage | Description |
| Denial | First stage in the grief process. Generally characterized as numbness, avoidance, isolation or direct denial. The stage of “simply cannot believe the loss (or news) is true”. The general line is, “you cannot possibly be like those transgendered folk. |
| Anger | Some of the denial has been gotten past, now it’s a function of anger. Angry at the fact the spouse or friend has GID, anger at the spouse or friend for being transgendered at all. Anger at this transgendered person, this stranger for upsetting everyone’s lives. In an odd sense, in my experience, the people who are angry at us in this stage are seeing us as two people and they are very upset with the “new” second person. In some cases, with male-to-female trans-folk, the wife may feel this other “person” is the other woman. That causes alot of strife in the home. In the end, someone or something is to blame and anger is levied. |
| Bargaining | Here there is simply an attempt to get back what was lost or further work to find who is to blame, who the culprit is. It’s not un-common to hear things like, “If only I had just ….” or “I wish we could have….” or “Maybe if I do this….” In some cases the two (or three or more) who are bargaining with the trans-person may be coming to some point where this won’t be an issue for anyone, or some balance can be reached. Even the trans-person wants this. Somtimes that happens even. But the grieving process seems to occur anyway, even at some level. Somtimes what seems to happen is that there is one sided bargaining, “if you do not change or adjust, you will lose “x” “. |
| Depression | You are simply, sad – and so are those who are grieving around you, with you, for you, because of you. It generally follows denial, anger, and bargaining when we feel helpless and hopeless to stop the loss. It may include crying, withdrawal, or any other way that expresses sadness. |
| Acceptance | It seems that before acceptance is reached, the grief cycle is in fact cycled through many times to lesser and lesser intensity. At this stage and to some extent, those involved have re-thought out what this loss is all about. This does not mean that sadness is gone, it may return from time to time, but the sadness is now a part sort of a part of those involved but does not keep people from functioning normally most of the time. Eventually, the intensity may fade but may never go away. |
While this is a list, a linear, logical list, ordered for readability, grief is not linear. The grievers don’t just grieve about something then go to the next step and be done with it. It’s a cyclical sloping effect. See this chart for what I mean:
What this means is that the stages are cycled through again and again, with lessening intensity, until some level of completion is reached. But what can you do to help those around you? As the trans-person, you probably ache to help the ones grieving depending on where they are in the process. You may in fact be a grieving trans-person yourself. You might not be sure what is going on, what is happening with your emotions, even if you are not on hormone replacement therapy yet (if ever you even do that). You may be grieving the loss of your own self even or the fear of loss of what is around you. You may even be celebrating and joyous over your new found peace and wholeness, yet, you find you grieve the pain that others are going through trying to come to grips with who you are. This is very real for many of us in the transgendered community.
What to do?
- Be patient with them and with yourself. This is going to take time. You cannot force this. I have and it’s not pretty.
- Amputation is as ugly as it sounds. You can amputate the relationship of course – as the other person or persons can you. Sometimes it’s so painful you wish you were dead. But in my opinion, there is some potential growth here for everyone in the grieving process. But I won’t kid you, it hurts about as bad as anything you’ve ever experienced.
- Never raise your voice, they may, you can’t, this is like pouring iodine on an open wound. A wound you did not cause – this is not your fault – but that is very real for some of those around you.
- Don’t close the doors between you and the other person(s). Understand that a closed door does one thing – kill communication. I’ve been in abusive relationships before and sometimes you just have to walk away, but be certain this is what you must do.
- You need a listening ear; and so do they. You need someone to vent to, cry with, complain with. You will sound like the proverbial broken record but you need people with whom you can confide and open up to about the grief you have and the grieving you are the target of. The other persons need people too. This took courage on my part as I was allowing others to actually out me publicly. I had to trust them. It was a gamble, but I hurt so bad for the others in my life and yearned for their own relief (even as I grappled to understand it) that I was willing to take a risk. I would encourage you to do so as well as you feel you can.
- Pray. I know, I know, maybe I’m being overly religious and in no way am I a saint. But you might want to consider doing this. And if you can do it with the hurt person, you might find some walls slowly crumbling.
Please, drop a comment to let others who read this article know what you’ve done to cope, it will help someone I’m sure.
Ecosystems in business – cut your costs, raise your success (part I)
Intel does them well. eBay/Skype isn’t so bad at it. WordPress knows how to knacker this about. What is it? Its organizational ecosystems. Organizational ecosystems are amazing entities that can help you reach your goals as a company or organization more easily. They help to reduce your costs and allow for more entrepreneurial and independent thinking for an area that might otherwise be dominated by a single company vision.
Let’s define what an ecosystem is though first. An ecosystem, according to the University of Illinois Department of Natural Resources is:
An ecosystem is an interacting system of plants, animals and humans and their surrounding physical environment. An ecosystem contains living and non-living organisms that each provide or contribute to a unique service or function that other organisms depend upon.
Sounds simple enough (if you’re an gnat or perhaps a wallaby) doesn’t it? Now let’s apply it to organizations:
An ecosystem is an interacting system of companies, consultants, and educational institutions in their surrounding economic environment. An ecosystem contains for profit and non-profit organizations that each provide or contribute to a unique service or technology conceptthat other organizations come to rely on.
So an ecosystem of companies makes it possible for multiple companies or organizations to effectively work together to meet their own individual goals while insuring that a larger goal is achieved – which in turn helps everyone as well. Such co-working makes it possible for a tide of sorts to rise bringing with it each company. Oh, and if the larger goal that is across the different companies or organizations is not met, guess what? No one succeeds individually either. See figure for a layout of what I’m getting at here:
Now you might be thinking, “isn’t this like what the chamber of commerce does when I join it or another professional organization?” Not really. Those organizations generally promote a concept known as networking and they help to insure that a profession is viewed well at large. That’s a good thing for sure, but it’s not the same as an ecosystem.
You also might be thinking, “Didn’t Joseph Stalin dream something like this up?” No, not exactly. Socialism infers a central control by a government. An ecosystem is a banding together of independent companies for their own self-interest and the greater interest of the group involved – since both are intertwined.
A good example of an ecosystem in technology is the VME market. VME stands for Versa Module European and is a long standing modular computing architecture for a wide variety of applications such as communications, industrial, and military/aerospace. VME has been alive for 25 years and show no sign of losing its usefulness. Using our definition of an ecosystem above, VME as a technology is the rising tide and approximately 240 companies encourage that market to grow. As each company works to promote the market, contribute to the technology, and work to see it grow, each company in turn is promoting its own agenda so that it too can be successful in its own right.
In practical terms it means that there is a trade association (known as VITA) that each member of this ecosystem supports that insures the technology continues and is promoted for it’s own sake – not to meet any one particular company’s objectives. Each company however moves toward it’s own goals with the technology as they see fit.
Another example is in the area of cooperatives, such as cranberry growers. In this scenario, such as with Ocean Spray, each individual cranberry farmer can’t really be successful by themselves. They have a great product (cranberries) but what do people do with them? Eating a handful of cranberries is not on most people’s list of culinary delights. Ocean Spray answers that issue though, promoting cranberries, processing them for bottling in juices and other edibles, and generally making it possible for you and I to enjoy something we might not otherwise be able to. This in turn makes a small segment of the farming industry sustainable.
So how does one create an ecosystem, and why should you and should you at all? We’ll have to pour another cup of cocoa for that one and cover that in part II.
Beck’s Cafe and themage
I am really liking Beck's Cafe now. At Typepad, things felt somewhat constrained and limited. With Beck's Cafe on WordPress and A Small Orange, I'm feeling pretty good that I can do pretty much whatever I like. The theme part though is something I have to play with. I like using what I have now, wp-andreas09, but I'm yearning for these new simple themes that are coming out now. The point of Beck's Cafe is the writing, the content and hopefully the dialogue around it. Does my current theme and color scheme help or hinder that? I'm not sure. The black and white coloration emphasizes the writing, but looks so drab. The color seems to pull people's eyes back to the sidebars away from the core writing – maybe it's just me. So we'll see.
In the meantime, feel free to plop on over to Beck's Cafe for a look, a cup of coffee and a read 
