http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/you-can-choose-the-ending-choices-today-determine-your-death.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/fitness/you-can-choose-the-ending-choices-today-determine-your-death.html Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600 You Can Choose the Ending: Choices Today Determine Your Death

By: Ron Yates


In the mid-1990's I served as the Chief Executive Officer of Pentagon City Hospital which as the name suggests is adjacent to the Pentagon located in Arlington, Virginia. This is just on the opposite side of the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Although I served well after the event it was never far from my mind that my hospital was the receiving hospital for the fortunate survivors of an airline accident. On January 13, 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 crashed into Washington, DC's 14th Street Bridge and fell into the Potomac River shortly after taking off. A total of 70 passengers and 4 crew died and four motorists on the bridge.

Air Crashes really make an impression on all of us and we remember them with vivid detail. It may be the randomness, the unfairness, the sudden calamity or maybe the process of group death in a common event. For whatever the reason, it sticks with us. Even as a practiced air passenger I regurgitate these feelings each time I fly; more so if my travel is infrequent and the opposite if frequent. I know I am not alone in contemplating how such a grisly death could play out. We play the odds however and usually go on with our travel plans.

We play the odds every day in just about any activity we choose to engage. In the case of commercial air travel even the slowest of us can pretty much understand the odds of success and we know that big sweeping changes usually occur after such tragic events. With Air Florida's crash it was about anti-ice systems; other air crashes brought on expected major changes based on lessons learned from these tragedies.

When we learn more about the air traffic system and specific airlines operations we can modify the odds as we go along. If you have just bought the cheapest ticket available on an already oversold flight the odds of you getting bumped at the gate just went up, but you choose to play these odds. I once boarded a flight departing late at night from Dulles International Airport and all was going well until we determined one member of the flight crew couldn't get out of the back galley restroom as a result of food poisoning and the flight was canceled. This was a bad result that I certainly had not counted on.

We know and expect big change after these events, how do we go about accounting for the day to day changes? If I figure out the guy I just watched knock back several vodka laced watermelon shooters at the terminal restaurant bar ends up as my pilot, I figure my odds of having a bad flight were drastically modified and I would need to make a decision based on this new information. In this case, a personal decision is required based on new insight to how the odds might change; this might be a life or death decision for me.

We can understand the impact on our imagination and the actions taken as a result of the Air Florida crash killing 74 human beings. Can you begin to imagine the public furor if we were to have 18 Air Florida crashes each and every day? If you heard that 1,332 people died yesterday in an air crash and that we expected another 1,332 people to be killed in an air crash today, would you actually be willing to get on an airplane? And, if we had such an air crash every day, in a year's time we would we would record 6,756 Air Florida crashes killing 500,000 people. We would demand and expect big changes to take place to avoid these deaths.

Heart disease, killed more than 700,000 Americans in 2001 and is the mathematical equivalent of over 6,000 Air Florida air crashes, accounted for 29 higher among blacks than whites and 49 of heart attack patients do not make a complete recovery which places an even greater burden on families, budgets and human misery.

The usual first sign of heart disease is death. Heart disease is the nation's leading cause of death. Much of the burden of heart disease could be eliminated by reducing the prevalence rates of its major risk factors: high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, tobacco use, diabetes, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition. Modest reductions in the rates of one or more of these risk factors can have a large public health impact.

We are committing "Epigenomic Suicide". Where is our outrage? Where is our self control? Where are the big changes? When do we say it is enough already? How do we get ourselves and others to think in new ways about the outcomes of our day to day decisions? We aren't dying together in common groups. We appear to be voluntarily agreeing to individual private grisly death scenes played out in hospital emergency rooms, nursing homes and the back of ambulances; all 1, 332 of us, each and every day in America.

--
Ron Yates resides in Charlotte, NC. He has a MPH degree and 10 years of clinical experience as a Navy Corpsman and LPN. He stopped clinical service and operated healthcare organizations for over 30 years. He developed an internet patient assistance and education program. He now operates web based sharing through various websites with a bias towards patient advocacy, knowledge and practical understanding about disease processes and issues.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/health/medicine/cardiovascular-heart-disease-reversal.html http://www.articletrader.com/health/medicine/cardiovascular-heart-disease-reversal.html Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 -0600
In my case, I denied my problem and searched for over 2 years until I reached a point of crisis. I was lucky to receive proper intervention which saved my life. You also may be reading this now because you have already joined our "Cardiac Club". You will be an active member of this club until the day you die. If you are smart, work hard on the problem and create a sustainable program I think you have cause to be optimistic about living an enjoyable normal life. That's my mission in any case.

If the first symptom of your disease was an actual heart attack, you are truly one of the lucky ones given another chance; 50% of the time attacks like that result in death. Death is a real tough complication to overcome! The information I share is a "work in progress" and about what I have already accomplished with 10 years of intensive “learning and experimentation”. The good news is a smart and motivated individual can accomplish the same thing in 18-24 months.

In the beginning of this journey I had to overcome a sense of awkwardness as I have a Master's in Public Health (MPH), was a US Navy Hospital Corpsman, was previously licensed as a Practical Nurse and have operated hospitals over thirty years. I think I was a little embarrassed that I hadn't done a better job with my own health.

"It might be helpful to know that I did not want to make any lifestyle changes and avoided making change until it became a necessity. The good news in this for you is that if I can embrace this different approach then there is most certainly hope and reason for you to think you can do it too, perhaps even better!"

I realized I was just doing the best I could with the typical understanding of what constitutes a good "Healthy lifestyle". I learned I was normal about these things, just like you. I made a decision to make whatever changes were required to live free of discomfort (angina, chest pain) and to stop the continuing deterioration of my health status and constant dread of a sudden death. "Pain is a very strong attention getter and signal that something is wrong."

But, even with the two year span of pain I didn't get the message which I have found is just being human. The trap I fell into was my significant first angioplasty resolved the pain therefore my denial of the problem overrode good judgment. I embarked on the next phase of denial and rode the yo-yo of multiple heart catheterizations & angioplasties. In my reading I found one study that indicated it took men 4 heart catheterizations to learn that the path they had chosen wasn't working so well. Boy, it took me five!

I may have even gone for more but, you guessed it, my last heart catherization kicked up a very significant recurring angina problem which I had trouble controlling. I soon realized that I had overlooked an important goal available to all of us today, DISEASE REVERSAL.

So, I didn't choose this path exactly as a volunteer; I came through the door kicking and screaming. And, like most life lessons, in retrospect I just can't believe I missed the boat by so much. This was a "life or death proposition" and here I was marginalizing and rationalizing my likes and dislikes.

In one self exercise I started imagining my tombstone :

Here lies Ron Yates-RIP
-He was killed by oatmeal raisin cookies!
-He was killed by extra butter movie popcorn!
-He was killed by a tub of extra virgin olive oil!
-He was killed by Ruth Chris medium rare filet mignon wrapped in bacon!
-He was killed by one more day at the office!
-He was killed by sitting on the sofa!

So, I decided I was smarter than any of those prospective tombstones! I think I was able to learn and integrate information that might make a difference before it's too late and my Public Health background inspires me to share what I have learned. This is working for me, the key is to find something that works for you and that you can sustain.

Yeah, I still have some of those desperate killers mentioned above. One of the neat things about an effective program is occasionally you can indulge and the body seems to be able to process the indulgence much better. The key is to return to your program the next day. In this case, it really is "the first day of the rest of your life." Feel free to ask me any follow up questions.

The program is at Healthsmartsonline.net. This requires easy and healthy cooking located at Reluctant Cook.net.

--
Ron Yates resides in Charlotte, NC. He has a MPH degree and 10 years of clinical

experience as a Navy Corpsman and LPN. He stopped clinical service and operated healthcare

organizations for over 30 years. He developed an internet patient assistance and education

program. He now operates web based sharing through various websites with a bias towards

patient advocacy, knowledge and practical understanding about disease processes and issues.

You can find more about this subject at Healthsmartsonline.net

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>