Category Archives: Health

Accessible Adventures for those with limited mobility

Vacations are fun!  Even if  you’re in a wheelchair or have limited mobility.  Accessible Adventures is a new video series, hosted by former radio host John Williams, that SHOWS accessible vacation spots featuring wheelchair and limited mobility people having fun in the Northwest!  Also check out the blog to see Jim Martinson skiing Crystal Mountain on a mono ski. Here’s a video with John Williams telling more about this timely idea:

High School Students Work To Clean The Air

 

April2014Final(1)Be blown away by youth that demonstrate a passion for restoring the health of the environment! The April 26th Sharing Ideas event, features the Roosevelt High School Science Club, a group of students determined to counteract pollution in Portland, Oregon. These local youth are experimenting with planters that recycle polluted air into clean air and testing of air quality surrounding Roosevelt High School. They have been invited to Washington, D.C. later this year to present their findings.

Sharing Ideas events raise awareness of local grassroots efforts throughout Portland Oregon that strengthen community. Project presenters share the inspiration that launched their idea, how it moved into action, where they are today, and their hope for the future.

Everyone is invited. RSVP suggested online or by phone at 503.546.7499. Refreshments will be provided. Childcare (9 and under), transportation, and interpretation are provided upon request, with 48 hours advanced notice.

When: Saturday, April 26th, from 11 AM to 1 PM

Where: Central Library, 801 SW 10th Ave, Portland, OR 97205.

Who: You! Bring your friends and family to this free event and discover pathways to new possibilities!

 

Book: Journey of Souls: Case Studies Of Life Between Lives

journeyofsoulsWhether religious or not, this is a fascinating look into an unexplored possibility of what happens after death. I enjoyed the example of the creator/source being an active and living presence in our lives – here and in the hereafter- as opposed to the current working definition that tends to separate the creator as the big judge outside that has created a hierarchy of painful separation through rules, rewards, and punishments.

Author Michael Newton PH.D has a background as a counseling psychologist, master hypnotherapist, teacher, and researcher. This book covers such topics as How it feels to die, What you see and feel right after death, When and where you learn to recognize soul mates on earth, Different levels of souls- beginning/intermediate/and advanced, What happens to “disturbed” souls, and The purpose of life and manifestation of a Creator.

If you’re able and willing to stretch your mind and imagination, enjoy this fresh look at the age old idea of ‘what happens after we die?’.

What if our healthcare system kept us healthy?

Rebecca Onie asks audacious questions: What if waiting rooms were a place to improve daily health care? What if doctors could prescribe food, housing and heat in the winter? Here’s a Ted Talk that gives concrete information to create a healthcare system that actually keeps us healthy.

Free wood chips help local small business, local landfills, and homeowners

IMG_2450What do you do if you’re a small tree chipping company and you don’t want to spend your money on dumping fees? What do you do if you’re a city planner trying to keep your landfills from filling up so fast?  What do you do if you’re a homeowner who wants to do some sustainable and frugal landscaping pathways?

IMG_2441A new website in Portland Oregon solves this three way problem with chipdrop.  You open an account and give your address, and whatever local tree chipping company has a load of chips they need to dump, they drive it to your house and dump it free in whatever location you mention. It helps the tree chipping companies because otherwise they’d have to pay dump fees. It helps the homeowner because you get free wood chips delivered to your door. It helps the city because it doesn’t get it’s landfills full of woodchips. Everybody wins.

We took advantage of this new service and created front and backyard pathways!  Our load, we were told, was mostly douglas fir, so the whole yard smells wonderful, and it’s safe for our backyard free range chickens.

Kids cars turned into mobility devices

Dr. Cole Galloway is turning kids toy cars into mobility devices and physical therapy for young children. This is making a lot of people happy – especially the little kids who get to drive the cool cars.

Learn more about the University of Delaware Go Baby Go! program here.

Read more about this on Upworthy here.

Fight Crime with a Fashionable Hair Clip

first_sign_clip-3The First Sign Hair Clip was designed by Rachel Emanuele as a tool to protect women from violent crime.  The clip can attach to hair or even a purse strap, and then detects through algorithm  if you are being attacked (it knows the difference between a violent attack, a bump on the head, or jogging for instance).  It also has a panic button you can push in case of danger as well.  The included app collects data as evidence such as where you are, records your conversation, notifies authorities that a crime is being committed, and sends out a verbal message saying you have been located and help is on the way (thus possibly scaring away the attacker so no more harm is done, but also gathering information about him for prosecution).

Here’s the background story

You can reserve a clip for yourself or a loved one, and bring this hair clip to market through your contributions to this  Indigogo account.

Thanks to Gizmag for this article on Impact Sensing Hair Clip Helps Fight Violent Crime.

Public urinal goes green

pplanterWhat happens when you combine bamboo plants and simple green science to create a public urinal?  The PPlanter.

The PPlanter is a simple and attractive public system that allows you to privately pee in a urinal (there are disposable women’s adapters as well), then step on a foot pedal that brings fresh water to wash your hands.  The fresh water flushes/cleans the urinal with liquids going into a holding tank.  From there, the mixed liquid is pumped into the planter/biofilter, where bamboo plants are growing in a mixture of rocks, wood chips and styrofoam. The water, nitrogen and phosphorous are used by the bamboo, while bacteria living in the growing medium break down carbohydrates and protein.

I talked to my son and he says guys would have no problem with this, but probably women wouldn’t be all that enthusiastic.  According to the Gizmag article, the test project had plenty of volunteers, but they didn’t break down how many were men/women.  Also what would you do if you ended up needing to do more than just pee – this particular invention doesn’t cover that.  But I think it’s a good start to re-imagine how to simplify waste systems.

Thanks to Gizmag for this article.

Garden Terrace Apartment Building uses recycled water and solar power

clearpoint-12Here’s an innovative apartment building in Sri Lanka.  It uses recycled water (including rainwater) to water the outdoor plants and flush toilets, and a solar panel to run the lobby lights and other shared resources.

When it’s completed in 2016 it will be the tallest residential vertical garden in the world, with planted terraces circling the entire structure.  The 164 apartments, each with 2300 square-feet of floor space and an open feel, are designed to give residents a sense of ground-level living, as well as privacy and tranquility in a bustling city.

The planted terraces for each apartment will help absorb sound, provide shade, and cleanse the air. They’ll be automatically watered using a drip-irrigation system of rainwater, and along with recycled water to flush toilets, will help to reduce intake from the national water supply by an estimated 45 percent.

Check out this innovative Sri Lankan apartment building here.  Thanks to Gizmag for this article.

A Cancer Therapy

photo 1Even though I don’t have cancer, many of my friends have walked that road.  So I thought reading this book would be enlightening.

In the book A Cancer Therapy, Dr. Max Gerson gives a foundation to understand how cancer can best be framed so that it can be cured.  According to Dr. Gerson, studies show that cancer is a degenerative disease that takes a long time to develop.  So when we find a lump, that is the culmination of years of degeneration, so much that the liver has finally grown too weak to fight the cancer.  This book is a summary of thirty years of clinical experimentation by Dr. Max Gerson M.D. from the 1930’s-1950’s.  He successfully took advanced cancer patients that traditional medicine had written off, and figured out how to heal the majority of them.

Dr. Gerson said that there is no magic pill that cures cancer.  Yes, if you remove a large cancerous lump, sometimes that takes enough of the toxins out of the body where the liver can resume to clean the rest itself.  But many times there is still so much sickness left in the bone, blood, and organs that’s just not showing signs yet, that the cancer ‘returns’.  Dr. Gerson’s therapy was developed to treat not just the end symptoms (the tumors etc.) but the many causes  – such as toxins from our pesticides and poor soil nutrition, using food and rest medicinally, detoxifying gently and slowly so the body doesn’t go into shock, etc.

This book was first published back in 1958.  Today, as then, this research seems to be the last resort for those with advanced stage cancer who have been told they will die.  So they get this book, find out about the Gerson Institute where they can get updated information on how to treat their disease at home, or go to a clinic where it can be treated for them.  The regime is currently a little less intensive then what was written originally in the book, but it is still a slow, steady, time-consuming walk to healing.  While the typical person prefers a faster more heroic rescue to a slow personal climb, if you’re willing (or desperate) to see results, this book is a fascinating read.

I found some healthy concepts I’d like to use/modify for use in my own life.  The suggestions list of potassium rich veggies and fruits (many I already enjoy, some I want to buy and try out) look like a delicious and easy addition to my diet.  And the detox ideas are ones I may explore in the future as well.

solid shampoo is a win

photoSo I’m wandering the haircare aisle looking for a shampoo that won’t strip the oils out of my dry hair, isn’t full of toxic type chemicals, doesn’t cost a fortune, doesn’t pollute the environment, and is in a skinny enough bottle that it will fit on the side of my tub.   I spied a tiny little package – the only bar in the shampoo aisle.  I’d never heard of a bar shampoo so took a closer look.  This is J.R. Liggett’s old fashioned bar shampoo. It has no synthetic oils, no chemical concoctions, no plastic bottle, no detergents, so this shampoo won’t strip the natural oils from hair, is good for our water (from bathing in streams, to city showers because it travels well and doesn’t pollute!)

It sounded interesting, and seemingly fit all my criteria and more.  The ingredients are mostly oils such as  olive oil, coconut oil, castor oil, a little bit of New Hampshire spring water, sodum Hydroxide (a binder) and essential oils for fragrance.

Since it was cheaper than most regular shampoos, I bought a bar to try it out. It doesn’t have a noticeable smell, so I can’t tell what essential oils were used.  I rubbed the bar shampoo around in my wet hands to make a lather, and shampooed as usual.  I can’t say my hair came out looking salon like, but it looks and feels CLEAN, and it’s not as dry as when using regular bottle shampoo with no conditioner, so probably all those oils in the bar soap are doing a good job of moisturizing.

I used it on my guinea pig and it lathered up and rinsed out fast and complete ( a plus when bathing animals!).  My husband tried it with his short hair and said he barely used any at all and it was effective.

I think J.R. Liggett’s is a keeper:)

I got the wire chair as an attempt at a soap dish, and it seems to work well to keep the shampoo bar dry.  I think the bar would melt into a sloppy mess if it didn’t have a place to dry out between uses.

inventors create affordable brace to correct clubfoot

What looks like a toy, works like a charm, and corrects clubfoot in children … all for $20?  This new invention by Stanford students is a game changer for the 1 in a thousand children born worldwide with clubfoot each year.  These kids currently wear heavy ill-fitting braces with attached boots that are difficult if not impossible to walk in – that is, IF their parents can afford the $300-$700 price.

These new braces are lightweight, designed to look and feel like a child’s toy, children can stand and walk in them, and they cost $20.  Instead of boots attached permanently to a metal brace, this new technology  features  shoes that can be removed and worn separately, so it’s easier for parents to fit them on wiggly toddlers.

Learn more about this new clubfoot brace and see a video of happy kids using the technology here.

Book: Choosing Easy World

photo 1You know all those books that tell you “just have a positive mental attitude?”  Well, this book is the manual on how to achieve that effortlessly.   Read this mix of practical examples, storytelling, science, and you can be in easy world as well.   If you believe there could be parallel universes or realities…why not parallel worlds of difficult and easy?  This book gives tools to actively (or at times quite passively) change your perspective to make joy your main operating source instead of fear/control/worry.

 

Julia Rogers Hamrick’s writing style makes this book a fast read.  I can see how many of the good things that have happened to me, the “wow, I can’t believe my luck!” experiences, took place when I was in what this book refers to as ‘Easy World’.  It’s the world of flow, of connection, of joy and fun and hard work that ends in satisfaction.  This Easy World perspective isn’t a striving place or a place of pushing, worry, stress, etc.    And it’s not a pill you take once and everything is peachy.  It’s a place to live.  Take a journey through Choosing Easy World by Julia Rogers Hamrick, and see if your perspective changes for the better.

Easy new way to eat oranges

photo 2It’s that time of year where oranges are plentiful, in season, and an easy and sweet vitamin C fix. But having to peel the darn things leaves pith under fingernails, as well as the possibility of getting more sticky sweet juice on your fingers then in your mouth.  Well, here’s a novel idea of how to eat oranges where you create a wonderful easy long carpet of juicy orange that you can eat right off the skin!  No pith under your fingernails!  No juice running down your hands!  Just a few cuts with a knife and you’ll be getting all that orange AND juice where it belongs – in your mouth.

Your welcome.

Make your own prosthetics for less then $10

Using free internet plans, your local 3D printer, and less than $10 for materials you can make your own hand prosthetics (what currently cost $20,000 ready-made).  Here’s what curiosity, collaboration, and a little love can do.

Cardiovascular imaging glasses

Do you hate it when you go to the doctor and they need to draw blood or give you a shot but they can’t find a vein?  Searching for a vein (and multiple pokes of needles) may be a thing of the past with this new invention by Evena Medical that allows cardiovascular imaging through special glasses called Eyes On.  Learn more about Eyes On “see through your skin” glasses in this video.

Thanks to Gizmag for this story.

book: Zero Waste Home

zero waste homeZero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, is a book  of  fun and practical ideas written by a frugal French mom living in America with her American husband and 2 boys. While several of her ideas I already have in practice (she details composting, de-cluttering, simplifying), I found many new ideas such as a simple multi-purpose balm, techniques for waterproofing leather, and special towel folding techniques to carry food to picnics and wrap gifts.   So far I’ve tried her cocoa powder eye shadow, where I brushed cocoa powder on my eyelids.  I then asked my 17 year old son what he thought.  He was like “Mom – it makes you look old and wrinkly!”  I put on my glasses and sure enough even though I liked the color, this is a tip for someone much younger…but it was fun and simple to try!

Bea gives a list of houseplants that clean the air, tips on travel, recipes, stories from her own family, decorating, cleaning, wardrobe, gift wrapping, simple home building/craft projects, holidays and more.   It was a fun read, a cross between homesteading and housekeeping, humor and practicality, simplicity and relaxation.  Instead of making me feel overwhelmed, she made me feel comfortable and curious to try new ideas.

Check out Zero Waste Home By Bea Johnson from your local library or bookstore.

Free fruit gleaning from all over the world!

pear tree lots of pearsFallingFruit.org is an an urban harvesting map that brings together community and city data bases from all over the internet/world.  Find, add, and edit information on the wild edibles growing in your neighborhood.  Check out  http://www.fallingfruit.org/ to find and share free urban fruit that otherwise would go to waste.

New Pancreatic Cancer Screening

Pancreatic cancer research has led to a cancer screening test strip that is cheap and accurate.  This invention was created by a 14 year old boy.

Tapping your face can change a bad childhood

This video shows the history and science of how tapping certain acupressure points can help heal painful emotions – and bring about positive change – on a cellular level.

Another thing I like about this, is you can access these videos free online – free health care!