Mom’s Soap Box

“Vote No on S 324: Melanie Blocker Stokes Mom’s Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression Act.

This sweeping government policy for all new births in the United States has just passed the House of Representatives and is now headed to the Senate. The Mother’s Act, if passed, will mandate that all new mothers be screened by means of a list of subjective questions that will determine if each mother is mentally fit to take their newborn home from the hospital. Just imagine that after your child is born, you are told that you can’t take them home since a multiple-choice questionnaire wasn’t answered correctly. Just imagine being told that the only way you can take your child home is if you or your spouse goes into treatment or on anti-depressants, which we know causes psychosis, delusions, and even homicidal thoughts. It just doesn’t make sense. Unfortunately, this bill is on a fast track - No public disclosure of the broad impact on our society and that is why we need you to act now!

The Mother’s Act violates our Constitutional right to privacy and your right to liberty and it is just outright dangerous.”

This sounded scary, so I decided to do some research:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-324 (full text of Mother’s Act)

The only thing I could find was this in ‘SEC. 330G-1. SERVICES TO INDIVIDUALS WITH A POSTPARTUM CONDITION AND THEIR FAMILIES.

‘(b) Certain Activities- To the extent practicable and appropriate, the Secretary shall ensure that projects funded under subsection (a) provide education and services with respect to the diagnosis and management of postpartum conditions. The Secretary may allow such projects to include the following:

‘(2) Delivering or enhancing inpatient care management services that ensure the well-being of the mother and family and the future development of the infant.

You could interpret “services that ensure the well-being of the mother and family” to mean mothers must be tested/medicated before taking their baby home. Even I think that’s a bit of a paranoid interpretation, but it is a valid fear. Our government has been known to make unpleasant interpretations of too-vague laws. One can be forgiven for thinking they might make one with this Act.

That being said:

Don’t take my word for it, go and read the bill for yourself, then decide. Then call your Senator and let them know what you think.

S 324: Melanie Blocker Stokes Mom’s Opportunity to Access Health, Education, Research, and Support for Postpartum Depression Act

This is pretty neat. I’ve seen it a few times in email chains, but it’s fun to do and doesn’t take too much time. I have seen some people claim to get incorrect results, but it worked for me.

DON’T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST!

It takes less than a minute…

Work this out as you read.

Be sure you don’t read the bottom until you’ve worked it out!

1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10).

2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold).

3. Add 5.

4. Multiply it by 50 — I’ll wait while you get the calculator.

5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1759…
And, if you haven’t, then add 1758.

6. Now subtract the four-digit year that you were born.

You should now have a three-digit number.

The first digit of this was your original number
(i.e.: how many times you want to have chocolate each week).

The next two numbers are:  YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!)

My mom worked for Child Support Enforcement for seven years. In that time she saw some really crazy things. The following are all replies that women have written on Child Support forms in the section for listing “father’s details;” or to put it another way… Who’s Your Daddy? These are genuine excerpts from the forms

• · Regarding the identity of the father of my twins, Makeeshia was fathered by Maclearndon McKinley. I am unsure as to the identity of the father of Marlinda, but I believe that she was conceived on the same night.

• I am unsure, as to the identity of the father of my child as I was being sick out of a window when taken unexpectedly from behind. I can provide you with a list of names of men that I think were at the party if this helps.

• I do not know the name of the father of my little girl. She was conceived at a party at 3600 East Grand Boulevard where I had sex with a man I met that night. I do remember that the sex was so good that I fainted. If you do manage to track down the father, can you please send me his phone number? Thanks.

• I don’t know the identity of the father of my daughter. He drives a BMW that now has a hole made by my stiletto in one of the door panels. Perhaps you can contact BMW service stations in this area and see if he’s had it replaced.

• I have never had sex with a man. I am still a Virginian. I am awaiting a letter from the Pope confirming that my son’s conception was ejaculate and that he is the Saver risen again.

• I cannot tell you the name of Alleshia dad as he informs me that to do so would blow his cover and that would have cataclysmic implications for the economy. I am torn between doing right by you and right by the country. Please advise.

• I do not know who the father of my child was as they all look the same to me.

• Tyrone Hairston is the father of child A. If you do catch up with him, can you ask him what he did with my AC/DC CDs? Child B who was also borned at the same time… well, I don’t have clue.

• From the dates it seems that my daughter was conceived at Disney World; maybe it really is the Magic Kingdom.

• So much about that night is a blur. The only thing that I remember for sure is Delia Smith did a program about eggs earlier in the evening. If I had stayed in and watched more TV rather than going to the party at 8956 Miller Ave, mine might have remained unfertilized.

• I am unsure as to the identity of the father of my baby, after all, like when you eat a can of beans you can’t be sure which one made you fart.

Our country has the most expensive health care system in the world, yet we were ranked 37th by the World Health Organization in 2000. The United States spends at least 40% more per capita on health care than any other industrialized country with universal health care.

Health care should be a right for all, and we need to support a Single-Payer system as the most efficient and effective way to get there. A Single-Payer system would eliminate the for-profit insurance companies, lower the cost of health care in the United States by as much as one third, and would remove the financial burden on businesses suffering from the recent economic meltdown - replacing employee-based health care benefits.

Federal studies by the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting office show that single payer universal health care would save 100 to 200 Billion dollars per year despite covering all the uninsured and increasing health care benefits.

According to the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus, a single-payer system is:

An approach to health care financing with only one source of money for paying health care providers. The scope may be national (the Canadian System), statewide, or community-based. The payer may be a governmental unit or other entity such as an insurance company. The proposed advantages include administrative simplicity for patients and providers, and resulting significant savings in overhead costs.

But Single-Payer has been barred from the public debate because of the influence of insurance, HMO’s, and pharmaceutical lobbies through campaign contributions, ‘astroturf’ (false grassroots) operations, and dishonest advertising. Democratic and Republican politicians are swimming in campaign donations from the insurance industry, receiving over $46 million in insurance money in 2008.

The United States is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee access to health care as a right of citizenship. 28 industrialized nations have single payer universal health care systems. The United States ranks poorly relative to other industrialized nations in health care despite having the best-trained health care providers and the best medical infrastructure of any industrialized nation.

Read more here and here.

The Lolaloo is a clever, German-designed, rocking device that, with bit of luck, helps put baby to sleep.

If you need just a few moments of peace or just have to deal with something other than your baby, this would be a nice gadget to have around. It’s actually an electronic item that rocks your child’s stroller back and forth. Putting them to sleep and giving you just a few moments of sweet silence. The Lolaloo is a battery-powered rocking aid that attaches to a pram or stroller. It is designed to gently and noiselessly rock baby from side-to-side. It simply attaches to a pram using two Velcro straps. The speed of movement can also be altered depending on what works for the baby – slow rock or hard rock?

The Lolaloo uses a rechargeable battery, which lasts between two and four hours. The integrated chargeable battery means that the lolaloo can be applied on a mobile basis, turning the pram into a cradle anywhere - at home, in the park or on the playground. If your baby is particularly restless, you can also convert a regular cot into a swinging cradle with the addition of four BRIO bed rockers and the Lolaloo.

The Lolaloo is only available to buy or rent in Germany, but if it takes off perhaps it will become more widely available. It retails for EUR129 (about USD$175). It might seem pricey but if it helps stressed-out, time-poor parents get some “me” time, the investment is bound to be worth it.

I just want to know where this was when my kids were babies?

Brain chemicals such as endorphins, and drugs, such as marijuana and heroin are known to have significant effects on sperm and eggs, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them. In an article published in the latest issue of the journal Bioscience Hypotheses, Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay of Research Center Halabe and Darwich, Mexico, suggested that the hormones and chemicals resulting from happiness, depression and other mental states can affect our eggs and sperm, resulting in lasting changes in our children at the time of their conception. Bucay suggests that a wide range of chemicals that our brain generates when we are in different moods could affect ‘germ cells’ (eggs and sperm), the cells that ultimately produce the next generation. Such natural chemicals could affect the way that specific genes are expressed in the germ cells, and hence how a child develops.

“It is well known, of course, that parental behavior affects children, and that the genes that a child gets from its parents help shape that child’s character,” said Dr. Halabe Bucay. “My paper suggests a way that the parent’s psychology before conception can actually affect the child’s genes.”

“This is an intriguing idea,” commented Dr. William Bains, editor of Bioscience Hypotheses. “We wanted to publish it to see what other scientists thought, and whether others had data that could support or disprove it. That is what our journal is for, to stimulate debate about new ideas, the more groundbreaking, the better.”

The article, entitled, Endorphins, personality, and inheritance: Establishing the biochemical basis of inheritance is available online.

Man Vs. Woman

Success:
A successful man is one who makes more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.

The Morning:
Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate during the night.

Money Management:
A man is a person who will pay two dollars for a one-dollar item he wants.
A woman will pay one dollar for a two-dollar item that she doesn’t.

Happiness:
To be happy with a man you must understand him a lot and love him a little.
To be happy with a woman you must love her a lot and not try to understand her at all.

Marriage Expectations:
A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change and she does.

Marriage Decisions:
Men marry because they are tired.
Women marry because they are curious.
Both are disappointed.

Marriage and the Future:
A woman worries about the future until she gets a husband.
A man never worries about the future until he gets a wife.

Memories:
A woman will always cherish the memory of the man who wanted to marry her.
A man cherishes the memory of the woman who he didn’t marry.

Understanding Women:
There are two times when a man doesn’t understand a woman - before marriage and after marriage.

What a Woman Wants:
Only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy:
One is to let her think she is having her own way.
The other is to let her have it.

Longevity:
Married men live longer than single men, but married men are a lot more willing to die.

Mistakes:
Any married man should forget his mistakes - no use two people remembering the same thing.

The Battle:
A woman always has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.

Every day, over 27,000 children are exposed to domestic violence in the U.S. and four will die as a result of child abuse and neglect. But if everyone knew the 10 common signs of child abuse, we could help these kids live lives free from violence and full of possibility.

Learn and watch out for the 10 common signs of child abuse:

* Unexplained injuries. Visible signs of physical abuse may include unexplained burns or bruises.

* Changes in behavior. Abused children often appear scared, anxious, depressed, withdrawn or more aggressive.

* Returning to earlier behaviors. Abused children may display behaviors shown at earlier ages, such as thumb-sucking, bed-wetting, fear of the dark or strangers.

* Fear of going home. Abused children may express apprehension or anxiety about leaving school or about going places with the person who is abusing them.

* Changes in eating. The stress, fear and anxiety caused by abuse can lead to changes in a child’s eating behaviors, which may result in weight gain or weight loss.

* Changes in sleeping. Abused children may have frequent nightmares or have difficulty falling asleep, and as a result may appear tired or fatigued.

* Changes in school performance and attendance. Abused children may have difficulty concentrating in school or have excessive absences, sometimes due to adults trying to hide the children’s injuries from authorities.

* Lack of personal care or hygiene. Abused and neglected children may appear uncared for.

* Risk-taking behaviors. Young people who are being abused may engage in high-risk activities such as using drugs or alcohol or carrying a weapon.

* Inappropriate sexual behaviors. Children who have been sexually abused may exhibit overly sexualized behavior or use explicit sexual language.

Some signs that a child is experiencing violence or abuse are more obvious than others. Trust your instincts. Suspected abuse is enough of a reason to contact the authorities. You do not need proof. The parents and authorities will be able to sort out legitimate behaviors, such as the risk-taking of an ADHD child, from those caused by abuse. Don’t be afraid of being a troublemaker. This kind of trouble is worth it. Children are worth it.

A little boy in foster care is dead by his own hand, but a poorly functioning child welfare system also is responsible. 7-year-old Gabriel Myers hanged himself while in a South Florida foster home.

St. Petersburg Times staff writer Kris Hundley reported that at the time of his death, Gabriel was taking Vyvanse, an ADHD drug, and Symbyax, a combination antipsychotic and antidepressant, which warns of heightened suicide risk in children particularly when first prescribed.

Those drugs are so hard on children, even when they have a loving, supportive family to help them deal with the use of such strong psychiatric medications. I can’t even imagine my ADHD daughter dealing with foster care, and she doesn’t have even half the “issues” that Gabriel had to deal with on his own. It’s obscene that “the system” consistently fails such vulnerable children.

When a child is in state custody, a parent must give explicit consent after being “expressly informed” about changes in a child’s medication, including being told of medications’ benefits and risks and about alternative treatments. That never happened in Gabriel’s case, and it appears this case is not unique. It has been a common practice for DCF workers and physicians to fail to obtain parental consent when a psychotropic drug is for a nonpsychotherapeutic use, under the mistaken impression that the law didn’t require it.

And foster care advocates say that DCF’s internal records are abysmal in tracking children taking psychotropic medications. Six times, Gabriel’s caseworker documented that the Department of Children and Families had parental consent for the medication. There was no such consent. Gabriel’s mother signed a general medical authorization on the same day she was found unconscious in her car with powder cocaine, crack and oxycodone in her possession. This suggests that proper consents are not being obtained.

DCF Secretary George Sheldon is closing the loophole that allowed the prescribing of mood-altering drugs without parental consent. He also named an impressive committee to investigate Gabriel’s death and make recommendations. Sheldon made public the details of Gabriel’s situation rather than try to cover up DCF’s failings. That alone bodes well for an honest accounting and a sincere desire to reform.

But to prevent a similar situation, Sheldon will have to look beyond a caseworker’s failure to inform a parent and address a system’s failure to adequately meet Gabriel’s needs.

Gabriel said he had been a victim of sexual abuse before moving to Florida, which means he should not have been placed in any foster home where there were small children present. Gabriel also didn’t receive all the behavioral therapy he needed, and he lost the therapist with whom he had established a relationship. As Gabriel started engaging in inappropriate touching, he was bounced from one foster placement to another to protect other children. This kind of shuffling can add trauma to a child who is already at risk.

Sheldon noted that in the days before his suicide Gabriel changed medications, moved to a new foster home and received a new therapist. State law needs to be followed when prescribing medication for children in foster care. And particularly when it comes to traumatized children, there has to be a realization that drugs are no substitute for basic human care and attention.

It’s not entirely brand new but interest in the PediSedate has been resurrected by Technologizer looking at Game Boy oddities as part of a 20th anniversary tribute to Nintendo’s handheld gaming console. The PediSedate is a clever medical gadget consisting of a colorful, toy-like headset that connects to a game console like a Game Boy system or some portable digital music player.

The pediatric sedation headset is designed to distract children, through giving them something that is fun and familiar, so they are calm and comfortable while they are being sedated in preparation for surgery or some other medical procedure.

While the child is listening to music or playing a game, the PediSedate monitors breathing continuously and distributes nitrous oxide, an anesthetic gas. By being in a calm state when sedated, the child has less chance of being traumatized by a stressful medical or dental procedure.

Maegan has been sedated twice for dental procedures and once for a surgical procedure. (She’s only 7!) The first time she was only three and needed tubes placed in her ears for drainage. The worst part of the whole experience was the sedation. The pre-op sedation wasn’t too bad, although she did almost fall out of her seat before going completely under. I think the PediSedate would have been a handy way to keep her still while the sedatives kicked in. The subsequent sedation experiences were even worse. She hates sitting still and doesn’t understand that moving around while being sedated is a risky proposition at best. If only the PediSedate had been available then, the whole experience might have been much less traumatic for us.

Now if they could just find a way to make coming out from under sedation easier. If you have never had to deal with a small child waking from sedation, count yourself very, very lucky. It is not pretty or enjoyable. In fact, it was more painful than childbirth for me.

Are they dead that yet speak louder than we can speak, and a more universal language? Are they dead that yet act? Are they dead that yet move upon society and inspire the people with nobler motives and more heroic patriotism? ~Henry Ward Beecher

The legacy of heroes is the memory of a great name and the inheritance of a great example. ~Benjamin Disraeli

Better than honor and glory, and History’s iron pen, Was the thought of duty done and the love of his fellow-men. ~Richard Watson Gilder

A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. ~Joseph Campbell

I have never been able to think of the day as one of mourning; I have never quite been able to feel that half-masted flags were appropriate on Decoration Day. I have rather felt that the flag should be at the peak, because those whose dying we commemorate rejoiced in seeing it where their valor placed it. We honor them in a joyous, thankful, triumphant commemoration of what they did. ~Benjamin Harrison

All we have of freedom, all we use or know -This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. ~Rudyard Kipling, The Old Issue, 1899

Your silent tents of green We deck with fragrant flowers; Yours has the suffering been, The memory shall be ours. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave” ~Muhammad

“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.” ~Thucydides

“True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.” ~Arthur Ashe

“Nurture your minds with great thoughts, to believe in the heroic makes heroes.”~Benjamin Disraeli

Whoever, and however, you remember, have a safe and peaceful Memorial Day.

Tires are made to last a long time and are almost indestructible, yet about a billion of them are discarded worldwide each year. Disposal typically involves shredding, burning or dumping in landfill, all of which can lead to health and environmental problems such as toxic fires, leaching of chemicals into the soil and creating breeding grounds for vermin and pests.

With the growing affordability and popularity of cars, especially in countries such as India and China, global demand for rubber far exceeds supply, making the need for an economical and environmentally friendly recycling solution, such as this, all the more critical

A much-needed new process of recycling old tires is being developed in Australia. The developers say the energy-efficient, economically viable method is environmentally responsible, and could result in 50 per cent more tires being recycled.

CSIRO and VR TEK are working together to create a new technique that will cut old tires into specific segments for reuse. Those segments are then used to produce high-quality rubber powders for making new rubber products. Even better, this new method enables tires to be recycled without metal contamination. Which has been one of the main deterrents for recycling tires.

The rubber powders could be used to produce new tires, elasto-polymer-based rubber products, industrial insulation, road pavement, industrial and domestic flooring or geo-textiles for retaining walls and embankments.

VR TEK managing director Michael Vainer says that “not only is there commercial potential for all these new products, but also, recycling rubber is a cheaper and more energy-efficient option than producing virgin materials.”

Four negative effects of industrial agriculture:

• Genital feminization of male humans and animals: This one always gets them where it hurts, but the industrial pesticides used in agriculture are among the class of chemicals that mimics or stimulates estrogenic activity in the body and are linked, or suspected of being linked, to decreased sperm counts and genital abnormalities in male animals up and down the food chain.

• Herbicides linked to cancer, neurological disorders: Nanaimo, British Columbia, has recently banned the use of herbicides on residential lawns based on the growing body of evidence that they’re linked to a host of cancers, reproductive problems, respiratory illness and neurological effects from learning disorders to full-blown Parkinson’s disease. The herbicides used on lawns are often just repackaged versions of the same chemicals, like Roundup, sold in bulk to farmers.

1. Antibiotics fed to livestock have created antibiotic-resistant bacteria: Called MRSA, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, these difficult to treat infections commonly only attack people with compromised immune systems and were once more commonly associated with hospital environments. They don’t seem to have developed forms that are very easily transmissible, but they keep showing up in farm environments where low-dose antibiotics are used as growth promoters and infection preventives.

• Plants absorb antibiotics from soil amendments: If you use manure from an animal that’s been given lots of antibiotics as a plant fertilizer, the plants will incorporate those antibiotics into their tissue. Even people who eat organic food, even people who have a totally vegan diet, can thus get our livestock antibiotics passed on to them in low, irregular doses - just about the worst possible way to take antibiotics. The genes that confer antibiotic resistance in bacteria don’t necessarily help them survive any better in the environment at large; which is why penicillin has become useful again, because the resistance genes faded from the active bacterial population after it fell into disuse. Maintaining regular exposure of bacterial populations to antibiotics puts positive selection pressure on antibiotic resistance genes.

Developed at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the controller automatically recharges electric vehicles during times of least cost to the consumer and lower demand for power. Widespread use of these devices could help advance a smart power grid.

“If a million owners plug in their vehicles to recharge after work, it could cause a major strain on the grid,” said PNNL engineer Michael Kintner-Meyer. “The Smart Charger Controller could prevent those peaks in demand from plug-in vehicles and enable our existing grid to be used more evenly. Using the device could save up to $150 a year for electric vehicle owners who pay based on when they charge their vehicle,” Kintner-Meyer said.

A previous PNNL study showed that America’s existing power grid could meet the needs of about 70 percent of all U.S. light-duty vehicles if battery charging was managed to avoid new peaks in electricity demand.

The Smart Charger Controller does just that. Owners program the controller to charge at a specific time or at a set price point. The controller uses a low-range wireless technology to communicate with the power grid and determine the best and cheapest time to recharge vehicles. By charging vehicles during off-peak times, the controller saves consumers money.

In addition to the financial savings, “smart” technologies also save the grid from brownouts with little impact to the consumer. Grid Friendly™ technology inside the Smart Charger Controller senses stress conditions on the grid. When the grid says more power is needed, the controller can temporarily stop charging the vehicle until the stress subsides.

This instant reduction in charging load, multiplied on a large scale with many vehicles, could serve as a shock absorber for the grid. The technology would relieve load instantly and give grid operators time to bring new power generation sources on line to stabilize the grid - a process that usually takes several minutes.

Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

You are constantly being advised, by the media, to drink milk, eat low-fat yogurt, or cheese, and other dairy products, and to take calcium supplements and estrogen.

Why?

To avoid osteoporosis.

Here’s the bad news . . . . . despite taking calcium supplements, getting exercise and taking estrogen, at least 1.2 million women suffer fractures due to osteoporosis every year. And the number of these fractures has been increasing - more than twice as many fractures occur now, compared with 30 years ago.

A study by the Mayo Clinic reported that extra calcium supplementation tripled the risk of fractures in some women already suffering from osteoporosis. A 1972 study of autopsies showed a close correlation between osteoporosis and calcification of the abdominal aorta. What this means is the calcium is leaving one place, namely your bones, and ending up in the wrong place - your arteries.

According to researchers, osteoporosis is a disease of modern civilization. Skeletons from the 1700’s and 1800’s have been studied. Scientists found that the women living two to three centuries ago had stronger bones than the women today. In underdeveloped countries, there is also much less osteoporosis with a daily calcium intake much less than ours. So, clearly osteoporosis is not simply a lack of calcium in our diets.

Calcium is just one element in a delicate balance of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and hormones. Many women actually have plenty of calcium but are very low in magnesium and/or other essential minerals. The first problem with taking calcium supplements is that you increase the need for other minerals, like magnesium, which helps to get the calcium out of your bloodstream and into your bones.

If you don’t have enough magnesium in your body to match the extra calcium, then the calcium you’re taking gets deposited in your muscles, arteries, and joints (causing fibromyalgia, blocked arteries, and arthritis). And if the calcium starts to clog the fine capillaries in your brain, guess what - your thinking and memory can be affected. If this happens in your arms and legs you may experience cold hands and feet.

Viral infections, fatigue, muscle aches and pains (fibromyalgia), diabetes, increased urination (so you may not have a bladder infection after all), constipation, flatulence, or serious depression are signs of too much calcium in your system.

Our bodies are very good at recycling calcium - that’s one of the great functions of your bones - they are a storehouse of calcium. And it’s a two-way street - when everything is working properly you can get calcium out of your bones or put more into your bones - kind of like a bank account - money in, money out. However, our bodies are not good at storing and recycling magnesium. Taking more calcium may be causing a magnesium deficiency.

Some other important minerals are:

· B-6 & ZINC (birth control pills are especially noted for depleting these)

· VITAMIN “F” or essential fatty acids like flax seed oil (if you get cold sores, fever blisters, canker sores, if you have itching, or if you get hives from going out in the sun you need more vitamin “F”; this vitamin unloads calcium out of your bloodstream and delivers it to your tissues)

· MANGANESE (at least half of the manganese in your diet is lost by eating breads with refined flour instead of whole wheat flour),

· COPPER

· PHOSPHORUS

· VITAMIN K (known for blood clotting, it’s also necessary for strong bones - it’s depleted by using antibiotics).

· HYDROCHLORIC ACID, a normal stomach acid, is also essential. Having adequate hydrochloric acid is more important for your bones than calcium, because stomach acid helps you to absorb nutrients from your food. Most nutrients must first be dissolved or put into solution. Calcium dissolves easily in stomach acids, but dissolves hardly at all in water. If you have low stomach acid you won’t be able to break down all the calcium you’re taking.

Knowing what to do is much more complicated than just swallowing a few calcium tablets. If you want to see how your minerals are doing, one of the best tests I know of is a hair mineral analysis.

FOUR THINGS YOU MUST DO IF YOU WANT STRONGER BONES AND BETTER HEALTH

#1) Find out which vitamins and minerals, besides calcium, are important to maintain YOUR bones.

#2) Find out if you need natural progesterone. Estrogen is not the only hormone that influences your bones.

#3) Reduce your body’s burden of heavy metals such as aluminum, cadmium, and lead.

#4) Reduce bone robbing foods in your diet. (There are five major “bone mineral robbing” bandits: sugar, caffeine, refined grains (white bread), soda, and smoking.)