Hihigh

After many years of running around trying to manage a career, taking care of children and running a household, older people find it difficult to suddenly have very little to do. As the years pass these people feel that they have no worth anymore. This again can manifests as depression or other related illnesses.

There are actually many things elderly people can do to keep their minds and bodies fit and healthy, while having fun.

Challenging games will help to prevent or at least prolong age related illnesses such as dementia and depression. Some physical exercise will help to prevent weight gain. Elderly people easily gain weight when their lives slow down. Weight gain is dangerous and can expedite heart attacks, strokes and blood pressure problems.

There are many fun activities elderly people can engage in to keep the mind and the body healthy.

- People who have always enjoyed crafts or art will now have the time to take it seriously. Some community centers offer classes, sometimes for free or for a small fee to cover materials. This hobby can even result in an extra income for the elderly person if necessary.

- Physical activities should be high up on the priority list. Again community centers or gyms might offer exercise classes focused on elderly people. These classes can vary from low-impact aerobic classes to yoga. Except that it is good to keep the body healthy, it is also a place to make friends and communicate with other people from the same age group.

- Dancing is a wonderful activity that doesn’t only provide exercise but it is also a great socializing event. Older people can even join a dance studio if they are serious about dancing. Many studios have special classes for different age groups. Dance competitions are also categorized into age groups and there is no reason the elderly, who are still fit, can’t take part in this.

- Trips venturing into nature for those who are still relatively strong and mobile are great for spending time with friends or family. The fresh air and nice scenery are bound to lift any spirits that might be a bit down.

- Board games are fun ways to keep grandchildren busy and in the process, stimulate the mind. There is nothing as engaging as a game of chess with a child or grandchild that proves to be a good challenge. The older person and the younger one will be able to stimulate their minds and in the process, bond, which is great for any relationship.

These are but a few possibilities to show that it is never necessary for an elderly person to feel lonely or worthless.

The idea of a patent makes good commercial sense. You give an inventor a monopoly to sell the new product without anyone being allowed to copy it. So, as a consumer, you either pay the asking price or go without. With no competition, the inventor can keep the price high and earn back the R&D costs fast. Once into profit, there’s a bigger return on the money invested and, in turn, this encourages more investment in R&D. The more consistently creative and innovative the manufacturer, the more money it makes. Except, this is a way of gouging the consumer. Let’s say for argument’s sake that the manufacturer gets a ten year monopoly and, at the end of five years, it has recovered all its R&D costs. It now has five years in which it can continue to charge the same high prices without there being any competition in the market. So here’s the question? How much profit should an inventor be allowed to make?

At present, this is never discussed let alone defined in law. Manufacturers simply demand increasingly long period of protection without regard to the payback time. Let’s say the development of a particular drug was a lucky accident. The company was testing for one use but noticed the participants were discussing an interesting side effect. That’s how the erectile dysfunction drugs were discovered. No one was trying to develop this drug so the actual R&D costs after the accidental discovery were to cover a comprehensive clinical trial and the application to the FDA – a fraction of the usual costs. Yet a court has just given one of the manufacturers protection from a generic manufacturer until 2019. That’s twenty-three years of protection in total. No one can possibly suggest this is anything other than a decision to keep on gouging the consumers. To make a sexist point – this is a decision of Rebecca Beach Smith, a female judge who obviously doesn’t care that men are paying excessive prices to keep their sexual satisfaction levels high.

So was this an unusual case? Actually, this was a standard case of a manufacturer taking out a second patent on the same product some years after the first. Nothing like stretching out your gravy train. Except there was one interesting twist. The generic manufacturer waited until it arrived in court and then accused the attorneys representing the patent holder of “inequitable conduct”. To translate this into English, it accused the poor lawyers of being dishonest, deceitful and fraudulent. Strong accusations except it was too late to raise them. To investigate would require the patent case to be adjourned, possibly for months. The judge ruled this should have been raised long before the case came to trial.

This leaves the market for erectile dysfunction drugs without an immediate threat of a generic product competing for market share. So although only one manufacturer was involved, the other two manufacturers benefit. They have all agreed to keep their prices high. Only the internet offers any competition on price. The moral of this story is for you to buy Cialis online at the generic prices. That way, you get the full value of Cialis at the lowest possible price. You can feel good when sticking one in the eye of the patent system.

Sometimes we in the America are the best. But the rest of the world has been steadily catching up with us in areas of life that really matter. Some countries have now overtaken us. So if you look at the international league tables, we’ve dropped way down in education standards, and we’ve got one of the worst value-for-money healthcare services in the developed world. That’s what happens when you allow capitalism to take responsibility for public services. If your political system depends on not raising taxes, you can only cut services and the first to be cut is usually education. Now add the profit motive into the mix. If your doctor’s pay depends on how many patients he or she sees in a working day, how many minutes do you expect to have in your consultation? So, for example, we have an infant mortality rate of 6.4 babies dying for every thousand births. This is worse than every East and West European country – only 3.9 babies per thousand die in the Czech Republic. Our hospitals and clinics make money by testing you to find out what’s wrong. This can take a lot of tests. Then the doctors might prescribe the cheapest drugs or they might prescribe the more expensive drugs where they get incentives and kickbacks. In Europe, tests and treatments are only allowed if there’s clear evidence both that they are needed and likely to be effective. Drug prices are controlled by governments.

So how does pain management work in the countries with the best international standings? The first part of the answer might surprise you. By making the patient more important than the doctors. This flows from the practice of socialized medicine. Doctors’ pay does not depend on the profitability of the hospital or clinic where they work. Their performance is measured by the length of time patients must wait to see them, by whether their treatments have successful outcomes, and by their “death rates”. Yes, that’s right, hospitals publish the survival rates after the most common surgical procedures. We only rarely hear about the death and readmission rates in our hospitals. Our doctors are terrified of medical negligence and malpractice actions, and no one ever admits to a mistake. Yet without access to this information, we cannot make informed choices about where to get our medical care.

When it comes to pain management, the first thing the Europeans do is review the patient’s medical history. If there’s any possibility of a mistake in the treatment so far, there are tests. If further surgery or other treatments are indicated, these are put in hand. Only if there’s nothing further to be done to treat the underlying cause do they then treat the pain as a problem in its own right. This brings a big team together including psychologists, counselors, cognitive behavioral therapists, physical therapists and specialist pain management doctors. In the US, only five of our medical degree courses make pain management a mandatory subject. So most of our doctors need never learn about how to make the best decisions on pain. They prescribe Tramadol for the routine case. If you still complain, they increase the dose. If you still complain, they abandon Tramadol and give you something stronger.

The problem of hair loss is certainly a very sensitive issue both for men and women. Hair is a good indicator of how healthy a person is, and if the person starts to get bald it is seen as either a sign of poor health or aging. Of course, it’s not always so and in case of male balding it’s often seen as a matter of genetic predisposition or poor hair nutrition. But how relevant these assumptions are to the actual causes behind hair loss in men?

A large number of scientific and clinical studies on the problem of hair loss in men have come to the same conclusion that there’s a reason for male pattern hair loss other than what was assumed before. Yes, genetics, nutrition, care and environment play an important role in maintaining a good condition of hair. But the majority of male hair loss cases have been observed to be caused by hormonal changes. And it’s not about a particular glad dysfunction or hormonal imbalance. It’s all about one of the most important male hormones – testosterone.

But it’s not the abundance of shortage of testosterone that really matters. Of course, the level of testosterone in general influences many aspects of a man’s health. But when it comes to hair loss, it’s the way testosterone is processed that really matters. Usually, testosterone is converted into another male hormone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT), after some time. And it’s the DHT that’s responsible for hair loss in men. When there’s a small quantity of this androgen in the bloodstream there’s nothing to worry about. But as it accumulates in the body and starts contacting with hair follicles it gradually stops natural hair growth and makes the follicles weaker. By having a low natural hair growth rate a person will gradually start balding because of the normal hair loss rate (100-200 hairs per day). Usually, the lost hair gets restored rapidly and we have a constant form of hair. But as the follicles get weaker, the usual hair loss becomes a real problem.

Some studies that focused on the genetic causes of male pattern hair loss have also concluded that in cases where hair loss problems have passed through generations it was also due to the abundant production of DHT that seems to pass from father to son. So it’s clear that hair loss in men is generally caused by the levels of DHT. But what can be done about it?

In fact, there’s only one actual medication that can help with DHT and it’s called Propecia. This medication is by far the only one available for treating male pattern hair loss and it works by affecting the actual cause behind the condition. Propecia blocks specific enzymes that are responsible for the conversion of testosterone into DHT and thus reduces the effects of this androgen over the hair follicles. However, like with any prescription medication you should first consult with your doctor regarding its use. It is also to be used only by adult men, as children and women shouldn’t even handle the drug due to its high absorption abilities and hormonal changes it can cause in children and unborn babies.

There are many ways in this life to entertain ourselves. Some people like to watch movies for their preferences, but even though they like to watch movies, not everyone has the same taste for the movies. Some people like to watch the movies from India, some other people like to watch foreign movies, some other people really enjoy watching Hollywood movies and some others more like to watch indie movies. But there are also people who really like to watch porn movies. These people who enjoy porn movies, they try to collect as many porn videos as possible and if they can, they must be able to get the rare titles too. They usually try to find the videos by visiting the DVD rentals or special sex shops that provide the DVDs or VCDs of porn movies. But sometimes they only get a few titles, because the shops also do not really update their movies collection. People can actually get more amateur porn movies in a better way and that can only happen if people use the internet. People can search as many porn movies titles as possible and they can also get most of the movies titles that exist. In the internet, there are many web sites that offer videos that can be downloaded, but most of them are paid sites so that people need to pay first before they can download anything from the web sites. But if people visit these web sites that are going to be mentioned, people will be able to enjoy the facilities for free, including downloading free movies. The recommended web sites are the Bang You Later, Red Tube, Porn Hub, X Videos and Porn Tube. People can choose whichever among those web sites and then they can enjoy the services on the web site.

Why learn healthy recipes? If you want to enjoy life to the full with natural healthy food recipes you wont’ be able to rely on processed food with its thousands of toxic additives. That means that you’ll have to marry a cook that likes healthy cooking, or hire a chef who will prepare only health food, or learn to cook.

Can you be sure that another cook will always use organic health food, or will they sneak processed food in behind your back? The only way to be sure of what you are eating is to cook it yourself.

That is an enormous obstacle if you have been brainwashed into believing that it takes an apprenticeship lasting several years to learn to cook.

When I was 20 I still hadn’t learned to cook. It was too difficult, or so I thought. Then I got a job living alone on a farm, snowed up for much of the time, with the boss out of contact 6 miles away. I realized to my horror that I was going to have to learn to cook.

So I bought “The Reluctant Cook” by Ethelind Fearon and really enjoyed my voyage of discovery. In her introduction she says

If you are hampered at every turn by tiresome complicated recipes; an inefficient kitchen… instructions to use half a dozen different containers or operations where one would do, I don’t wonder that you’re reluctant.

The approach of simplifying everything suited me perfectly. In a few weeks I was cooking eggs with recipes that I made up as I went along (the 400 hens on the farm produced a couple of dozen cracked eggs per day and I tried leave as few as possible to throw out), snaring rabbits and making rabbit and pigeon pies, making cheeses (I had to pour about ten gallons of milk down the drain each day so if I could convert 5 gallons to cheese that was OK).

I remember one lemon meringue pie that I made with the whites of a dozen eggs, that foamed up to about six inches high. I enjoyed the first slice so much that I ate it all at one sitting.

How did I become such an expert in a few weeks? The secret is that if you start off with good tasty food, it’s very difficult to spoil it. You can of course ruin it by tipping in too much salt or pepper or curry powder or garlic and so on. You can even make it taste like a poultice by adding too much sage and onions. But you can avoid the problem by increasing these tasty additives gradually until you find the level that you prefer.

If you are considering kids healthy recipes you have to find something that they are prepared to eat. The best solution is to teach them healthy cooking. Even if they ruin some food they’ll doggedly eat their way through it because they made it.

Why put up with unhealthy fruit juice and carbonated drinks or chocolates for snacks? Teach the children that they are clever enough not to be tricked into all these nasty foods that make their friends get sick so often, and show them how to make snacks of fruit, and even peas or celery foraged from the garden.

I like to wander round a good organic garden and pick fruit and vegetables and herbs, and collect duck and poultry eggs, then invent natural healthy food recipes to go with whatever I’ve gathered. It’s heart healthy but even better – it lessens the chance that I’ll ever get cancer.

Why learn healthy recipes? It gives you the freedom to be healthy. You no longer care how toxic additive 211 happens to be – you don’t use it.