Want the Best Organic Produce? Its at the Farmer’s Market

Over 2,000 years ago, the Greek physician Hippocrates said: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

All who strive to eat for health know what this means: Among other things, consume more vegetables, especially green leafies and cruciferous ones like broccoli. But how do we make up for the fact that over the years, the nutritional value of vegetables and fruits has gone down significantly? How can we get what we need in the form of phytonutrients, minerals, and cancer-preventative substances in a world where even produce labeled “organic” just isn’t what it used to be?

Fifty Years of Bad Agricultural Practices

A comprehensive report published by the University of Texas in The Journal of the American College of Nutrition evaluated U.S. Department of Agriculture data for 43 different vegetables and fruits. They found that all of these produce items experienced “reliable declines” in protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, vitamin B2, and vitamin C between the years 1950 and 1999.

The U of T researchers concluded that the reason for the decline had to do with “the preponderance of agricultural practices” which were (and still are) designed to improve characteristics such as size, length of time it takes to grow and resistance to pests but not nutritional value.

Get Thee to a Farmers’ Market!

Apart from monitoring our own soil and growing our own veggies, there isn’t much a single person or family can do about the overall state of the soil today. We can make a difference with our consumer dollars, however, while at the same time obtaining the most nutritious veggies out there and supporting our local economy.

Studies have shown that there is a big difference in nutritional value between produce that is grown commercially, picked before it has ripened, and shipped long-distances versus produce that is allowed to grow for as long as possible on the vine, tree or in the ground, then shipped just a short distance.

Although some health food stores strive to work with local farmers to bring in fresh regional produce, the “best nutritional bang for your buck” may be found at your local farmers’ market.

U.S. consumers appear to be catching on to the appeal of farmers’ markets. According to Cornell University, between 1994 and 2006, the number of farmers markets in the U.S. more than doubled. There was an estimated 3 million Americans who shopped at them and roughly 30,000 small farmers and food entrepreneurs who “earn(ed) a partial or full living selling their local produce at farmers’ markets” in 2006. That number is more than likely much larger now.

When shopping for produce at your local farmers’ market, consider these three factors:

• Choose local and heirloom varieties whenever possible. If you shop locally, chances are you are already going to see a big difference in taste as well as nutritional content based on the factors mentioned above. There is also a huge difference in nutrient content between
  “regular” varieties of many veggies and region-specific or “heirloom” varieties. A purple/yellow carrot (a common cite at many farmers’ markets across the country) has about 38 milligrams of phytonutrients for each gram of dry weight, compared to an orange carrot, with a mere 2.5 milligrams of phytonutrients. Heirloom seeds are also among some of the last remaining seeds that are still not genetically modified.

• Be sure that what you are purchasing really is organic. At the market, go for the produce stands that have the “Certified Organic” seal on their banners. Talk to the people working at those stands about the farm’s organic practices. Those behind the counter should be able to easily tell you what they are, and many will even invite you to visit their operation. If they are not willing to talk to you, go to another stand! Unfortunately, charlatans exist in the world of organics as well.

• Stick around for a while to enjoy the “scene.” Let’s face it, it’s hard to be in a hurry at a farmers’ market—and that is a very good thing. These weekly events often showcase local music and ready-to-eat items you can snack on while you shop. Educational opportunities and chances to connect with your community abound at weekly farmers’ markets, so be sure to take advantage of the opportunity.

Long before there were supermarkets with their shiny aisles, there were market stands where local farmers would sell their wares. Whenever possible, get yourself and your family to a farmers’ market. Do it for your health’s sake, for your local economy– and also because it is just a lot of fun!

Want the Best Organic Produce? Its at the Farmer’s Market

The NHS is wounded by internal market and inspection culture | Letters

Here is an alternative our chronic impasse over the NHS (Report, 17 February): abolish the internal market, together with its draconian micromanagement and inspection culture. These are flawed and failed ideologies. In attempting to replace vocational motivation with commercial incentives we have all but destroyed the best of healthcare’s professional art, heart, spirit and intellect. Our profession’s impoverishment of morale is widespread and increasingly hazardous. The internal market is inviably complex and divisive. It has undone collegial trust and therapeutic networking, and has replaced these with dense, rigid institutional procedures and documents that are often known to be senseless, often corrupting. Increasingly I have witnessed just-legal feints and “creative accountancy” to deceive yet formally comply: redesignations to double-count, cherry-picking referrals for financial or statistical advantage, for example.

Our earlier, pre-marketised system worked much better. Older practitioners know this well; many patients sense it, often without fuller understanding. The government’s position is nervously defensive; the opposition is now too disarrayed to marshal the formidable counterculture to rid ourselves of this tumourous burden. The longer we leave it, the worse it will get.
Dr David Zigmond (GP)
London

• It is unfortunate that you didn’t reference the important role that health visitors play and how they are currently being cut in many areas across England (Report, 15 February). The coalition government correctly addressed the need to increase health visitor numbers in 2011, but since 2015 NHS statistics show their number is decreasing, caused by the scandalous cuts to public health budgets which are totally counterproductive to both improving the nation’s health and the cost-effectiveness of services. The government, and the prime minister herself, talks about the key importance of early support but the reality of their policies totally undermines this rhetoric.
David Munday (health visitor)
Stalybridge, Greater Manchester

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

The NHS is wounded by internal market and inspection culture | Letters

An Emotional Gut Check For An Aging Bull Market

What an wonderful few years it has been for investors. Despite morbid political headlines in the Middle East and Europe and worrying economic news from, effectively, all over the place, markets for risk assets have been on a tear.

The numbers are gaudy. Above the past five years (through July 25, 2014), an investment in an S&ampP 500 ETF (SPY) delivered an annualized return of 17.5%, far more than double the prolonged-phrase average for U.S. stocks. From the market bottom, regular investors have about tripled their nest egg. Much less attractive but still strong, non-US designed markets (EFA) have annualized at 10.three% for 5 years. Fixed revenue traders have also carried out well, specially in riskier credits. The principal higher yield ETF (HYG) is up on typical eleven.2% over this exact same time period.

Equally essential, it is been a comparatively calm time period since the commence of the rebound, with the exception of a nasty but short period in 2011. And since then, significant markets have had nary a wobble. In the 618 trading days considering that the commence of 2012, there have been only eight in which the S&ampP 500 dropped far more than 2%, and the largest reduction was just 2.five%. And on the other side, there have been only 4 days with better than 2% gains. Slow and regular has the the m.o. for a lengthy time now, reflected in VIX levels flirting with all-time lows.

In the meanwhile, there’s a multi-12 months bull industry of another sort that is also worth mentioning: the area of behavioral finance. The seminal occasion of this surge was the vital and well-liked accomplishment of Daniel Kahneman’s Pondering, Fast and Slow. In that fantastic book, Kahneman recaps his stellar profession with colleague Amos Tversky and their path-breaking investigation into the cognitive and emotional biases that effect us all (and define who we are). They provactively talk about the numerous heuristics we use to make sense of a noisy planet. There is now a seemingly endless parade of books and blogs elaborating on these tips.

A main theme of the behavioral finance literature is that a lot of of the fiscal selections we make are, in retrospect, unwise. Biases that are hard-wired in our brains lead us to do items that we possibly would want to do differently, if offered a Mulligan. Fear and greed end up becoming unreliable tour guides for our journey.

If we juxtapose these two phenomena, a huge query arises: How should we be contemplating about the investment decisions we’re at present making and anticipate producing in the foreseeable potential? Bull markets stoke complacency and inspire greed. And non-decisions — doing practically nothing — count as well. To channel the ideal in Canadian traditional rock, “If you pick not to decide, you nonetheless have made a choice.”

So here are some simple concerns that I feel are sensible for our current scenario (and that I’m making an attempt to think through as a individual investor):

The worry of missing out. This is that nagging feeling that your friends and neighbors are acquiring richer than you are. It is possibly the case that you really do not even know if this is real, but irrespective there is a sense of aggravation and even envy that you haven’t participated as considerably in the bull market’s spoils. As great instances hold going, this concern of missing out — and not maintaining up — grows. Thus you maintain — or even boost — your publicity to chance assets, specially stocks. We start to perform hypothetical thoughts-games and a whole lot of “if only” scenarios: If only I had invested more on _____ (fill in the date), then I would have ____ (fill in the amount) much more in wealth. Thus, we occasionally truly feel compelled to make decisions that are actually far more about trying to address the consequences of prior decisions (I deliberately did not use the word “mistake,” as that is a complicated notion) than make a sound selection primarily based on existing circumstances.

A relative value mindset. As you believe about your up coming acquire determination, are you now mostly evaluating how your investments are doing versus other instruments, particularly strong performers? Are you pondering that simply because stock or fund X is up “only” a hundred% that it is more affordable or a lot more appealing seeing how stock or fund Y is up 200%? Be careful with this line of thinking. It may possibly depart you vulnerable to taking much more threat than you may well be comfy with. Perhaps the most stylish description of investing I’ve witnessed comes from Howard Marks, who wrote ”It’s the investor’s work to intelligently bear danger for revenue.” It’s this kind of a loaded phrase (in a good way) that I’ll most likely blog about it in a separate piece, but for now the level is this: Are you very likely to be compensated for the risk you are taking by owning a distinct asset? That is a question about absolute value, and it’s the appropriate one to ask. Bull markets frequently compel us to think about relative worth, which can get us into problems.

Downplaying risk. It’s at times easy to fail to remember that there is a relationship between danger and return. It is not the situation that taking much more chance always creates better returns, even more than the extremely long run, as some investments ruin worth, even falling to zero. But the romantic relationship holds that there is no totally free lunch. When the industry feels like it’s on autopilot, it can truly feel like you are receiving some thing for nothing. But that’s just not accurate. Even more, as assets get a lot more pricey (reflected in an increase in valuation, not always price), they by definition have significantly less upside. And as a type of recency bias, we have a tendency to feel that what recently happened will carry on to happen, so this multi-yr calm can lull us into a false sense of security. Confirmation bias, another traditional bugaboo, can also be supercharged throughout bull (or bear) markets, in that we tend to seek and uncover details that supports our prior beliefs. If we’re feeling comfy and not contemplating about chance, there’s a very good likelihood we are absorbing material and socializing with others who reinforce, rather of challenge, the standing quo.

Bull markets create plenty of monetary wealth, but they also spur a host of unpleasant feelings, like greed, complacency, envy, and regret.

No one particular is immune from this predicament, a single that is most likely aggravated by this specific market’s regular upward grind. Aggressive investors are regularly reminded they could have created even far more if they pushed harder. Conservative, especially bearish, traders fare even worse, each financially and emotionally. Losing when other folks are winning is a lousy feeling. It’s not pleasant to truly feel out of sync with the rest of the world (as reflected by “the market”), and even to begin thinking that “the industry is wrong,” which can be a harmful mindset. What’s left is the tough (frequently subconscious) determination to be stubborn or capitulate, neither of which feels totally appropriate.

Here in mid-2014, is the market wrong? Note that I’ve supplied these considerations above with out any argument as to in which the marketplace may go up coming. There is a basic explanation for that: I really do not know. All of us, including the experts, are lousy at predicting the long term. Is the marketplace prepared for a tumble? Certain, in accordance to some really wise people. Or possibly not, in accordance to some other extremely sensible people.

Alas, the stage is, we require to deal with our portfolios — and our emotions — not understanding what’s coming next.

An Emotional Gut Check For An Aging Bull Market

Should the e-cigarette market be restricted? - poll

The burgeoning e-cigarette industry is proving really controversial amongst public wellness specialists. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Photographs

A group of 129 doctors and specialists has written a letter to the director of the World Health Organisation, urging it to treat e-cigarettes as it would tobacco products, and spot stricter controls on the burgeoning industry.

Criticising the part of big tobacco in the e-cigarette market, casting doubt on the role e-cigarettes can have in assisting smokers to quit and highlighting the attraction of e-cigarettes to youngsters, the doctors create:

The two scientific evidence and best practices are obtainable to support a regulatory framework that will ideal avert initiation of use amid youth and other non-tobacco consumers, defend bystanders in public areas from involuntary exposure, regulate advertising and marketing, and prohibit unsubstantiated claims.

The public well being community is polarised in excess of the concern. This week’s letter was in response to a letter in Might from a group of scientists, who advised that e-cigarettes could be a hugely important wellness innovation. They accused WHO of “overlooking or purposefully marginalising” the role e-cigarettes have as a lower-threat alternative to cigarettes.

What do you believe? Is the growing e-cigarette market a potential danger in need to have of tighter regulatory controls, including a restriction on advertising and promotion? Or do e-cigarettes supply a lower chance option to tobacco cigarettes that could have considerable constructive public overall health implications.

Take our poll below and comment below the line – particularly if want to share experiences (great or poor) with e-cigarettes.

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Should the e-cigarette market be restricted? - poll

Doctors urge WHO to rein in e-cigarettes market place

An e-cigarette. Photograph: Tim Ireland/PA

A lot more than a hundred leading public overall health physicians and professionals from about the world have signed a letter to the director basic of the Planet Wellness Organisation, Margaret Chan, calling for new controls on e-cigarettes and warning that they may possibly be a stalking horse for the tobacco industry.

The authorities want the WHO to deliver e-cigarettes beneath the exact same tight controls as tobacco products, with bans on advertising and promotion. They say there is inadequate evidence so far that e-cigarettes are harmless and can aid folks to quit smoking.

Their most significant concern is that, if advertising and advertising are allowed, smoking will be “renormalised”, undermining public smoking bans and undoing decades of work to marginalise cigarettes and persuade people of the harm they do.

“By moving into the e-cigarette market, the tobacco sector is only maintaining its predatory practices and escalating earnings,” says the letter. It says the WHO must not be misled by the industry’s efforts to current itself as a partner, as it did with filters and “reduced-tar” cigarettes in the past before scientists showed that these issues did not minimize harm.

“If the tobacco sector were committed to minimizing the harm triggered by tobacco use, it would announce target dates to end manufacturing, marketing and advertising and selling its far more damaging products rather than just including e-cigarettes to its item mix and rapidly taking more than the e-cigarette market place.

“It would also right away desist from its aggressive opposition to tobacco manage policies such as tax increases, graphic health warnings and plain packaging,” says the letter, whose signatories incorporate Prof John Ashton, president of the United kingdom Faculty of Public Well being (FPH) Prof Rifat Atun, of the Harvard College of Public Wellness and Prof Robert Beaglehole, of the University of Auckland.

Supporting the public well being medical professionals are authorities in paediatrics and cardiovascular disease, such as Dr Hilary Cass, from Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS trust in London, and Prof Helmut Gohlke, of the German Cardiac Society. Other signatories consist of Dr Jay Berkelhamer, of Emory University School of Medicine in the US, and Prof Frank Chaloupka, director of the Well being Policy Centre at the University of Illinois.

URL:

The situation is controversial even inside the public overall health local community. This month, 53 scientists who consider a diverse view wrote to Chan (pdf), saying that regulating e-cigarettes in the very same way as tobacco items would expense lives by decreasing the variety of people making use of them to quit smoking.

“These items could be amid the most important health innovations of the 21st century – maybe conserving hundreds of hundreds of thousands of lives. The urge to manage and suppress them as tobacco items should be resisted,” they wrote.

But Simon Capewell, professor of clinical epidemiology at Liverpool University, speaking on behalf of the FPH, said its members were concerned by the boom in e-cigarette use and the feasible commercial interests behind it.

“The FPH is deeply concerned about the superficial evaluation of e-cigarettes and that the possible harms of e-cigarettes have been systematically underestimated,” he said. “The faculty is also concerned that the tobacco industry is cynically using discussions around e-cigarettes to undermine productive tobacco controls.”

He said the market was claiming e-cigarettes were solely a device to aid folks stop smoking, but the addition of flavours this kind of as strawberry and bubblegum to the nicotine vapour suggested youngsters have been being targeted. It was attainable that they might assist some people to quit, but a lot more evidence was essential, he explained. “From the faculty’s point of view, that is the single achievable worth they may well have.”

Prof Robert West, from University University London, whose recent study showed e-cigarettes were far more powerful than nicotine substitute therapy at helping individuals stop smoking, was a signatory to the earlier letter asking the WHO not to clamp down.

“The explanation I was keen to join in with the original letter is that what ever policies are suggested by WHO or any individual else, the crucial issue is they need to be based mostly on a dispassionate evaluation of the evidence and what is worrying is that that is not what they are receiving,” he mentioned.

He felt, even so, that concern about the tobacco industry’s involvement was valid. “That is a properly genuine argument as prolonged as no one is making an attempt to pull the wool in excess of anyone’s eyes,” he mentioned.

Doctors urge WHO to rein in e-cigarettes market place

Cigarette makers cannot market to youngsters. So why do tobacco farms even now utilize them? | Margaret Wurth

Grace, whose identify has been changed to defend her privacy, does not smoke – at 15, she’s too youthful to buy a pack of cigarettes, anyway – but she might as nicely have had a standard habit. At her work on a tobacco farm final summer season, she dealt with tobacco plants for up to 12 hours a day, steadily absorbing nicotine through her skin.

Although precise numbers are tough to come by, it is fairly common to find kids working on US tobacco farms in the summertime months (the height of the increasing season). But even though the US has laws to defend kids from the harms of nicotine in cigarettes, there are no restrictions to shield them from nicotine exposure in tobacco fields – in spite of proof that this kind of publicity could be particularly dangerous to young children, whose brains and bodies are still developing.

In 2013, my colleagues and I interviewed 141 kids who worked on tobacco farms in North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, exactly where 90% of US tobacco is developed. In every single state, we heard comparable stories of sickness and struggling.

Most of the youngsters we spoke to stated they received sick even though doing work. Grace explained how she got sick on her initial day doing work in tobacco final summer: “My abdomen began hurting. I felt like throwing up,” she mentioned, “And then I received a headache.” The symptoms she described are consistent with acute nicotine poisoning, a well-documented condition also identified as Green Tobacco Sickness.

Many of the children we interviewed labored for 50 to 60 hours a week in sweltering heat, usually with out shade. Some described how pesticides – acknowledged neurotoxins with the possible to cause long-phrase neurological and reproductive damage, among other damaging effects – drifted more than them as tractors sprayed in fields in which they worked, leading to their eyes and skin to itch and burn.

“Your hands get really dirty,” Grace said as I followed her down a row of tobacco plants six feet tall and watched as she snapped off huge white and pink flowers to help the tobacco plants grow. “They get black.”

But it wasn’t just filth on her hands: they turned black in component from the toxic residue of nicotine and pesticides.

Other teenage staff described hacking down tobacco plants with axes, at times cutting their legs and hands, and climbing numerous stories into the eaves of barns to hang tobacco plants to dry, without having any safety from falls. One boy I met lost two fingers on the job after he was suspended in mid-air to trim seedlings with a mower.

Under US law, young children are not permitted to function until they are at least 14, and there are strict limits on the hrs they can perform and the jobs they can do, except in one business: farm operate. As prolonged as a parent offers permission, a child as young as 12 can legally be employed to function on a farm for any number of hours– and there are no special protections for kids doing work on tobacco farms.

The worlds biggest tobacco businesses obtain tobacco grown in the United States – businesses like Altria Group (mother or father of Philip Morris USA), British American Tobacco, China National Tobacco, Imperial Tobacco Group, Japan Tobacco Group, Lorillard, Philip Morris International and Reynolds American. Most of people tobacco firms informed us that they are concerned about youngster labor in their provide chains.

But their existing approaches do not sufficiently defend youngsters from hazardous function and some firms allow for reduce standards of protection for youngsters in their US provide chain than for young children working on tobacco farms in other countries.

Grace, however, was pleased to have a summer season work and be earning funds. When I asked why she commenced doing work in tobacco, she stated, “I just wanted to assist out my mom.” Like Grace, most of the little ones we interviewed utilized their earnings for school supplies, for clothes or to aid their mothers and fathers pay the payments. But earning funds for standard wants shouldn’t expose a kid to nicotine and pesticides, not to mention debilitating, or even fatal, injury.

There are people who say that there have always been youngsters functioning on tobacco farms in the US, or that specific jobs on tobacco farms are protected for children. But offered the hazards and the exclusive vulnerability of kids, a tobacco farm is no place for a little one to function.

Tobacco firms must make it clear that they will not buy tobacco from farms that use kid labor, and help option educational and employment options. And Congress ought to enact laws restricting youngster labor in tobacco fields.

In the meantime, children across the southeastern US are getting ready for nevertheless another prolonged summer season in the tobacco fields.

Cigarette makers cannot market to youngsters. So why do tobacco farms even now utilize them? | Margaret Wurth

How can employers market excellent mental health? Reside discussion

Social care and healthcare are regularly ranked as amid the most demanding fields to work in – perhaps due to a mixture of the trouble of the perform itself, spending budget cuts, a large turnover of employees, and personnel shortages. Statistics from the Well being and Safety Executive present that, between 2009-12, individuals in overall health and social perform professions experienced the highest costs of work-related anxiousness, tension and depression of any discipline. Then there are the psychological wellness issues triggered by the nature of social care and healthcare jobs, this kind of as vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue or burnout.

There are signs that the scenario has worsened in current many years, as assets have acquired smaller and caseloads bigger. The 2012 State of Social Work report from the British Association of Social Work showed that 77% of social workers uncover their caseloads unmanageable, although 85% had skilled notable cuts to services in the previous twelve months.

Aside from the ethical obligation that employers have to make certain the wellbeing of their personnel, be it bodily or mental, there are also financial considerations. Worker absence due to stress costs the economic climate a huge amount of money each and every 12 months. In an era of shrinking budgets, it is anything that the overall health and social care sectors can ill afford, and an concern that have to be taken critically.

So, what can well being and social care employers do to support minimize the quantity of staff impacted by work-relevant mental illness, and support people impacted? And if you work in the sector, what are the methods you can use to aid self-care? We’ll be discussing these problems with a panel of authorities on Friday 16th Could in between 12 – 2pm (BST).

We’ll be seeking at:

• The brings about of function-connected stress, nervousness and depression


• What structures are currently in place for workers to get benefit of


• How self-care can be manufactured portion of the training method


• Sensible answers: sabbaticals, buddy methods, reflective supervisions


• Examples of very best practice – there are some related case scientific studies in reducing stress on the Well being and Security Executive’s internet site

The Q&ampA will take place in the remarks section under this article. Taking component is simpler than ever: you can generate a totally free Guardian account, or log in making use of your Twitter or Facebook profiles to comment. Alternatively, you can tweet us @GdnSocialCare or e-mail Ruth Hardy (ruth.hardy.informal@theguardian.com) who will post your concerns for you.

To be up to date as panellists confirm

David Niven – former national chair of the British Association of Social Employees.

Peter Beresford – professor of social policy at Brunel University and psychological wellness service user

Nat Miles – senior policy and campaigns officer at Thoughts

Debbie McAulay – lead nurse for clinical and practice growth at Northamptonshire Healthcare Basis Believe in, and a part of the steering committee for the Royal College of Nursing’s Psychological Wellness Forum

Amy Leversidge – employment relations adviser at the Royal University of Midwives

Lydia Bennett – registered social employee with expertise in youngster safety teams, and a expert standards officer in the School of Social Work’s professionals crew

How can employers market excellent mental health? Reside discussion

Will Digital Technologies Disrupt The Psychotherapy Market?

@giorodriguez  Most likely.  And a discipline named constructive psychology may be helping to form the disruption

Not lengthy in the past, I wrote a quick article about the curious rise of a new technology group, which for lack of a greater term can be called pleased-tech.  I asked the question, in my headline:  “Can Social Technologies Help Make You Satisfied?”  The short answer:   “yes, but it depends on what you mean by pleased.” The inspiration for the post was an application known as Happify, which, according to its founders, took its own inspiration from the positive psychology movement.  The motion — an increasingly influential discipline of practice that is tough the psychotherapy status quo – asks society to target not just on what can make individuals miserable but also on what can make them flourish.

The core insight from that report was that apps like Happify were scratching an itch that engineering was prepared to scratch.  But my view, at the time, was that technological innovation was only scratching the surface.  Lately, nevertheless, I started to enjoy that the provenance of some of these apps – the constructive psychology movement – may possibly be driving a more substantial tech disruption.  But, as we shall see, not all disruption is destructive.  The influence of good psychology on tech-based mostly disruption has as a result far loved a mostly good storyline.

Expansion of providers

1st, by shifting the concentrate from psychological sickness to psychological wellness, the positive psych motion is not just introducing a paradigm shift but provoking an expansion of providers.  In addition to talking treatment (on the wane) and psychopharmacology (holding powerful), practitioners of good psych bring a combine of new interventions to the counseling expertise.  And the practitioners consist of specialists qualified in the oldest of traditions:  MDs.

On a recent enterprise journey to New York, I met up with Samantha Boardman, who numerous many years ago supplemented her health care training with a credential in positive psychology awarded by the University of Pennsylvania.  The plan, the first of its kind, is led by the founder of good psychology, Martin Seligman.  These days Boardman is assisting the school create the program, even though incorporating its teachings into her psychiatric work. “Positive psychology has altered my practice on many amounts,” she wrote in a current electronic mail exchange. “It has changed the way I technique patients. Rather than focusing solely on what is wrong with them I also search for what is ‘right’ with them and check out their strengths.”

Boardman had previously in reality shared this information level with me, and it was effortless to see how the small tweaks in habits advocated by the motion – i.e., expressing gratitude, savoring constructive experiences, recording your blessings on a daily basis – deserve at least a number of minutes in the hour one will get in standard treatment.  But it was not what Boardman is doing in the offline globe that got me pondering.  It’s what she is doing in the on the web world.  Like numerous other graduates of the Penn program, Boardman is utilizing the World wide web not just to publish her observations but to prescribe the tiny conduct tweaks in little digital doses.  And Boardman does this especially well.  She dispenses these small bits of virtual psychopharma in a superbly designed weblog known as Constructive Prescription, which characteristics branded beats and columns like “Mind Tonic,” “Positive Rx,” and “Visual Prozac.”  It is not silly things – she backs up her prescriptions with tough science, and, like all great medical doctors, with care and empathy. What’s outstanding, of program, is that Boardman is using digital artifacts as the units of therapeutic currency itself.  And when you contemplate the artistry of the artifacts – the high quality of the style and the top quality of the text – you will see that it is in a various category from the tips column, a mainstay even today in mainstream media.  In other words, the addition of optimistic psychology to the psychotherapeutic toolkit – which favors bite-sized experiential exercise routines – very easily lends itself to digital experiments.

Growth of practitioners

And you really don’t have to be an MD like Boardman or any variety of licensed psychotherapist or counselor to engage in these experiments.  You might be a physical therapist (Larry Bentz). You may possibly be a coach (Emilia Lahti). You might be a could, in fact, be a tech entrepreneur — like the individuals who began Happify and other pleased-tech apps – and get an even much more significant interest in the possible of tech for probably disruptive experiments.  The growth of market place entrants, especially from tech, is accelerating disruption in the psychotherapy.  Which is not to say that conventional psychotherapy is doomed the need persists, and there is no substitute for dwell expertise.  But the disruption that digital has wrought in other markets – say media, education, and old-time retail – may well force psychotherapists to rethink what enterprise they are genuinely in, or at least reimagine their company models.

One factor that is confident to get attention:  the business model for distribution.  This yr at SxSW Interactive – an annual convocation for innovation in tech – a new startup referred to as ThriveOn won a prize in the overall health-care group with a platform that promises to provide “personalized on the internet plans coached by skilled pros to strengthen your psychological overall health.”  The platform is not yet available, though you can consider a extremely extraordinary evaluation (which I assume leverages some of the core IP).  But the stage actually worth making here is that the most disruptive idea in ThriveOn is the redistribution of articles and talent, the same forces that are reshaping other markets.

Towards a a lot more purposeful disruption

Even though not technically a good psychology app – related philosophical bent, but from a more various background of founders – ThriveOn may win huge because it is scratching a bigger itch.  But I’m betting there are even higher disruptions to come.  One particular purpose is that the psychotherapy market place is basically also big to ignore. Though antidepressants peaked in 2008 at $ 12 billion, they are nevertheless, in accordance to a current research, “the most consumed class of therapeutics in the US.”  The place there’s a market place to disrupt, there will be disruption.  One more purpose is the seemingly unstoppable demand for self-improvement and self-monitoring apps and devices the future of that trend factors to innovation in artificial intelligence, the perceived threat to so many professions. But I’m betting on nevertheless yet another driver of innovation, and it goes in the opposite course of artificial intelligence:  the need for a optimistic storyline for a profession that’s frankly in need to have of a improve in morale.  In an insightful cover story for the New York Instances Magazine in 2010, Daphne Merkin chronicled her struggles in turning into clinical psychologist at a time when speaking treatment was beginning its decline.  What she realized:  she wasn’t extremely great at branding herself.

As a business guy who as soon as regarded as — and still considers — the existence of a counselor, I identified her conclusion depressing.  But if good psychology can aid specialists plot a a lot more productive path into the marketplace, and if technological innovation innovation can assist facilitate people transitions – say via even a lot more clever techniques to match counselees with counselors, both online and offline, the place some of the much more critical things still requirements to happen – that would be a blessing worth recording.

Will Digital Technologies Disrupt The Psychotherapy Market?

NHS hospital closures need to be shaped by health wants, not by the market | Anne Perkins

Strategic choices must a matter, not for politicians, but for a panel operating to defined criteria and in collaboration with the public. Photograph: Neil Hall/PA

There are many desirable reasons to reorganise the way hospitals and healthcare are managed. Reorganisation can supply much better outcomes, as the merging of care for stroke victims in London has shown. It can cut costs at the identical time by closing outdated hospital internet sites, or decreasing the assortment of providers they supply, or the quantity of folks employed. It can lead to much more and smarter investment, as effectively as better value for income. Producing the situation for rationalisation in general terms is effortless. But arguing it by way of on the ground is a nightmare. The only point that can make it even worse is for the well being secretary to consider the power away from the folks who are impacted by it and make closures all about money and the marketplace.

Jeremy Hunt’s Clause 119 of the care bill, which the Commons will contemplate for the first time on Monday, is an emergency response to the court ruling, last October, that Hunt had acted illegally in cutting A&ampE and maternity providers at Lewisham hospital in south-east London. The trust special administrator did not have the electrical power to order the closure of some of the hospital’s providers in buy to shore up the South London healthcare believe in of which it was not part. The providers had been reprieved, but probably not for long. The new clause indicates trust special administrators appointed by the well being secretary to consider more than any NHS believe in failing financially will in potential have the power to drive through whatever nearby modifications are required. The regime of failure will dictate the shape of hospital services.

Monetary crisis driven by the want to make £20bn of efficiency cost savings in NHS trusts is expected to drive tens of hospital closures in the close to long term, which includes very good, hugely valued neighborhood units that never fit into the income-making model. As the Nuffield Believe in remarked in its commentary, this efficiently provides the secretary of state “the capability to undertake large-scale reconfiguration”.

This is no way to reform the NHS. There is presently proof that hospital closures take place not for the public good, nonetheless defined, but simply the place they can be produced to occur. That is, where there is least political challenge. Each politician has discovered the lesson of the Kidderminster effect, when a regional hospital advisor swept to victory in Wyre Forest in the 2001 basic election, in defence of the A&ampE department at his hospital. So if hospitals are to near or services are to be withdrawn, it is most likely to take place the place men and women are least capable to organise properly in defence. How much much more probably are unfair closures when the ultimate say is in impact in the hands of the health secretary?

It will not only put politics at the heart of the process. It will volume to reconfiguration by crisis, cuts shaped by the market rather than by the community’s well being wants. A couple of years back, the Kings Fund suggested the reverse technique. It stated far from ministers taking management of the approach, they must be removed from it altogether. It found that nearby politicians were too usually a barrier to, rather than a facilitator of, honest dialog ue with the public. Strategic decisions must be a matter for a panel, operating to plainly defined criteria and in collaboration with the public. Which is how, twenty years ago, the Canadian province of Ontario decreased 44 hospitals to 14. Their expertise – the method was driven by steep spending budget cuts – may not be a ideal model for Britain, but at least the choices were manufactured on a rational basis that permitted good quality, specifications and accessibility to be set towards cost-cutting and efficiency.

Hospitals are the emotional repository of back links between person and community, neighborhood and the state. But they are also the physical representation of the purpose of the NHS, the embodiment of the notion that we are all in it together. The service undoubtedly wants reconfiguring, and modify in the NHS takes also prolonged. But if ever this government desired a way of demonstrating that they think the whole 1948 vision of a Nationwide Overall health Services is broken, forcing by way of cuts on the basis of a market place model is how to do it.

NHS hospital closures need to be shaped by health wants, not by the market | Anne Perkins

The Market place For DNA-Sequencing-Based Down"s Syndrome Exams Could Exceed $six Billion

On Wednesday evening the New England Journal of Medication published a research showing that a new, DNA-sequencing based blood test provides a dramatic improvement in accuracy at screening for Down’s syndrome and a 2nd, connected ailment. That could open up a $ 6 billion market to the biotechnology companies that are presently advertising these exams.

Each 12 months in the U.S. there are 6.six million pregnancies and 4 million births, in accordance the Centers for Ailment Management &amp Prevention. The record costs of the exams, which are sold by four distinct organizations, assortment from $ 700 to $ 2500. Assuming that pricing settles in the middle of that range and that there are 5 million women who select to have the test, that would be a $ eight billion marketplace.

But give that number a haircut. “I have to imagine pricing could come down much more aggressively if tips expanded,” says Douglas Schenkel, an analyst at Cowen &amp Co. Not each and every pregnant woman will ever get the check. But he still argues that the industry for these exams could increase six-fold from its present dimension of about $ one billion. Isaac Ro, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, supplied comparable estimates in a note to clientele.

Such a industry expansion could be critical to all of the companies that make the tests, such as Ariosa, which can make the lowest cost check, Natera, and Sequenom Sequenom. But the biggest winner could be Illumina, the San Diego maker of DNA sequencing gear that funded the trial and that obtained Verinata, a fourth maker of the new exams, for $ 350 million final year.

Illumina says it believes Verinata has strong intellectual home position in this booming new industry. Past that, however, all four producers run their exams on Illumina’s DNA sequencing machines, which means the firm wins no matter what. Francis DeSouza, Illumina’s president, stated in an interview that, if anything at all, he expects to commit significantly less on marketing Verinata and that the business is taking care for there to be an even playing field for the exams. It prices its check in the mid-range of the marketplace, at a $ one,500 checklist price tag.

Illumina also says that it does not anticipate a value war, since the market place expansion will be dependent on healthcare societies writing suggestions that endorse the new check. Right now the American University of Obstetricians and Gynecologists suggests the DNA-based mostly tests only for mothers at substantial danger, including people more than 35.

But the NEJM paper makes a strong argument for expanding that recommendation. Proper now it is suggested that all pregnant females be presented a pair of tests – a blood test and an ultrasound to search for fluid at the base of the fetus’ neck – to display for 3 issues induced when the infant has an further copy of 1 of the 46 chromosome bundles that incorporate the human genetic code. There are 3 this kind of issues that occur commonly: trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, is the most common, creating diminished intellectual ability and slower development trisomies 18 and 13 are less typical, but are often fatal for the infant.

Present screening exams yield a huge variety of false positives, so they have to be followed up with an invasive test that samples cells from the fetus. One such check, chorionic villus sampling, has a miscarriage price of 1 in 200 the other, amniocentesis, causes miscarriages one out of every single 600 instances.

These invasive exams would nevertheless be essential to verify positives from the DNA exams, but they’d be utilised in ladies whose fetuses really do not have Down’s or other trisomies far less typically. The NEJM examine gave the old screening exams and the new DNA-based mostly test to 1,914 pregnant women and followed them right up until the baby was born. For Down Syndrome, the new test gave just six false positives compared to 69 for the previous screening exams. For trisomy 13, there had been 3 false positives with DNA sequencing in contrast to eleven with the classic number. For trisomy 13, the numbers were 1 and 6.

Assuming five million women are tested each and every year, that would indicate 245,000 would be spared an invasive check, and 358 miscarriages may possibly be prevented. Even at a larger expense, that could be tough for insurance coverage companies to say no to. Some professionals, which includes Illumina, assume that more studies will be needed to modify the recommendations.

How does the new check perform? Basically, by counting. Because some of the fetus’ cells circulate in the mother’s blood, researchers can sequence DNA and see if genes from any chromosomes appear also typically. For a much more complete description, examine out the video embedded from Steve Quake at Stanford, who co-invented Verinata’s technological innovation. His explanation commences at five:fifty five.

Not everyone is positive that the new technological innovation, recognized as non-invasive prenatal testing, is an unmixed blessing. Hank Greely, a professor of law at Stanford Law College who has written extensively on genetic concerns, says that the new test is “more reason to think NIPT will largely take more than Down’s screening.” But he warns that these very same approaches may possibly lead to exams for far more difficult tests. “If, say, 70% of American pregnancies obtained broad genetic screening, the up coming generation would look diverse – some will say for better, some for worse.”

The Market place For DNA-Sequencing-Based Down"s Syndrome Exams Could Exceed $six Billion

For Healthy Food items Stay away from Farmers Market Scams

Just Simply because it’s at the Farmer’s Market place Doesn’t Make it Wholesome!

When you’re looking for fresh, neighborhood food, there normally is not a far better option than the farmer’s industry. This is where your community and the farmers of the region get with each other to acquire and promote produce, amongst other factors.

Regrettably, even the farmer’s market isn’t immune from scams. If you are not cautious, you could wind up with meals that is not as nutritious as you believed. To prevent that from occurring, you need to have to arm yourself with knowledge. The far more you know, the much more tough it will be for any person to trick you. Familiarize oneself with the tricks and scams in this report, and you’ll make oneself a a lot more tough target.

Unregulated Terms

Unless the word describing your produce is “organic,” it may not be as meaningful as you would think. That’s since a lot of phrases, this kind of as “natural” and “chemical-free” are fully unregulated.

Since these descriptions are unregulated, they can be utilized to describe almost something. Items that declare to be “natural” could have been sprayed with pesticides, or if it is meat, it could have been fed antibiotics and hormones. Don’t allow any person fool you with these meaningless buzz phrases.

Non-Regional Make

Numerous farmer’s markets hope you will shop underneath the assumption that every little thing is nearby. In many circumstances, that is just not real. Some markets actually purchase generate from farmers that are found a great distance away, and then resell these goods at your neighborhood marketplace.

What you want to appear for is a “producer-only” marketplace. This is in which a farmer comes to sell what he has grown himself. Also, you must stay away from any farmer’s markets that take spot in a grocery store’s parking lot. They are normally selling the identical generate that you would discover if you went buying inside the store.

Not Certified

Really don’t believe anyone that tells you they are offering an organic product that has not been certified. It is generally a lie. The most widespread excuse that they give is expense. They declare it is too high-priced to go by way of the certification method.

A small research shows that it’s actually a extremely inexpensive procedure. Quite tiny farms shell out small, and if they are modest ample, they won’t finish up paying anything at all at all. There are subsidies in location that stop natural certification from being too costly for the regular farmer.

Not Automatically Better

Really don’t presume that just since make is locally grown that it’s greater good quality than what you could get in the supermarket. If you are more concerned about the overall health facets of consuming fresh make, you’re better off receiving natural foods from a grocery shop than you are getting non-organic food from the farmer’s market.

Nearby meals could even now incorporate several of the pesticides, chemical compounds and hormones that make much of our foods unhealthier than it ought to be. If you want to steer clear of eating these issues, going local might not aid. Purchasing certified organic foods is the only way to be confident that you’re acquiring the healthiest possibilities.

Don’t Make Assumptions

Most of the Farmers Market place scams that you’ll discover depend on you producing assumptions. If you know what you’re searching for, it won’t be as straightforward for an individual to fool you.

Do not be afraid of the farmer’s industry, just use caution. Support the neighborhood farmers who deserve your believe in.

Lindsey Dahlberg works for a firm that aids determine scams and fraud. However, scammers are all over the place – even farmers markets! Lindsey assists buyers file a scam report when required. Scam reports are not the only way she aids her fellow shopper Lindsey also assists unearth possible fraudsters, scammers and thieves.

If you loved Keep away from Farmers Market place Scams, please pass it on.

Resource: The Natural Foods Shopper’s Manual

Healthier Living Weblog

For Healthy Food items Stay away from Farmers Market Scams

NBA"s Magic Johnson, Alonzo Mourning Newest Celebs To Market ObamaCare

The Obama administration, in its most current push to boost the quantity of Americans signing up to enroll in well being positive aspects below the Inexpensive Care Act, mentioned NBA legends Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning who are effectively familar with making use of the health care care method will appear in adverts starting tonight.

The adverts will appearing nationally on ESPN ESPN, ABC, TNT and NBAtv in the course of NBA games and in “local markets that have higher concentrations of the uninsured,” the Centers for Medicare &amp Medicaid Solutions explained in a statement. They will run through the finish of the open enrollment time period on March 31.

“As portion of our sustained, aggressive outreach to young adults, today we are launching new television ads featuring Magic Johnson and Alonzo Mourning to help increase awareness about the Health Insurance Marketplace,” said CMS spokeswoman Julie Bataille. “We know the younger and wholesome audience responds well to sports figures, and these 30 2nd advertisements characteristic two NBA legends that each have a compelling health story.”

Johnson, who led the Los Angeles Lakers to 5 NBA championships in the 1980s prior to retiring in 1991 soon after currently being diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has been outspoken for the need to have for Americans to obtain accessibility to health coverage. Mourning, who battled kidney condition and survived a kidney transplant, helped the Miami Heat to an NBA championship

In his advertisement, linked below, he stated Americans can get “side by side comparisons” to name brand ideas. He says it may sound like “Magic,” but “it’s actual.”

Neither Johnson, nor Mourning are currently being paid for their appearances in the advertisements, the Obama administration said.

Here’s a link to the ads:

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NBA"s Magic Johnson, Alonzo Mourning Newest Celebs To Market ObamaCare

The Billion Dollar Market Microsoft And Sony Are Ignoring

The console video game market remains large. Last September, Grand Theft Automobile 5 generated more than $ one billion in revenue in its initial couple of days, a feat even the wizards of Hogwart’s and Middle Earth by no means matched on the silver display. And the new PS4 and Xbox A single have generated tens of billions in hardware sales since their launch final fall the expensive boxes mixed for a lot more than seven million units in just the last number of months of 2013.

Not that long in the past, the rise in casual gaming on mobile units was predicted to be the downfall of game consoles. No doubt this alternate game format has had an influence, but plainly the console market place is far from dead. However, just coming out with new versions of Halo and Uncharted isn’t sufficient to allow the console makers convert massive groups of new users.

What could Sony or Microsoft deliver to the industry that truly would draw in newcomers to console gaming? One particular market they seem to be to be ignoring is cognitive enhancement, a.k.a. brain training. Neuroplasticity researchers have demonstrated that our brains are certainly malleable. We can not only discover new particular expertise, we can even improve the standard working of our brain.

To exploit this opportunity, companies like Lumosity and Posit Science have rolled out brain instruction video games. Lumosity in certain has been aggressive, raising nearly $ 70 million in funding and signing up a reported 50 million consumers across mobile and other platforms.

These aren’t the only players. Fellow Forbes contributor David DiSalvo just wrote about an energy at the University of Wisconsin, the Games+Studying+Society (GLS). They are creating video games to boost one’s potential to target – see How Video Games Will Help Us Steal Back Our Target. And, as I described in Video Game Improves Multitasking Capabilities, yet another company, Akili Interactive Labs, is doing work on video games to enhance multitasking as nicely as detect Alzheimer’s condition.

The difficulty with the current generation of brain education games is that they basically aren’t a lot entertaining. In contrast to extremely addictive video games like Candy Crush Saga (see 5 Marketing Lessons From Candy Crush Saga and immersive console video games like the Phone of Duty series, brain trainers seem much more like calisthenics. You perform them since they are supposed to be very good for you, not simply because you want to.

Maybe the greatest problem is the difference in the scale of game advancement. $ 65 million sounds like a huge amount of funds for an app developer, but a big chunk of that goes into marketing and other expense classes. And, of course, a brain instruction company has to offer you a range of video games. If any one particular game had more than a number of million dollars in improvement cost I’d be surprised.

Numbers like that search like a rounding error on the price range of a console game hit. GTA 5 reportedly cost $ 265 million to build, and titles like Tomb Raider, Disney Infinity, APB, and other individuals most likely price $ one hundred million or much more. These budgets allow armies of developers, artists, testers, and so on to create incredible experiences that individuals want to play. Not only do people buy the game, as they might a movie ticket, but they frequently turn out to be normal players logging dozens or hundreds of hrs enjoying.

Imagine if you charged the team that designed GTA five with producing a brain education game, and gave them a 9-figure spending budget – you’d have the likely to increase hundreds of thousands of brains at the identical time as the gamers engaged in what was to them exciting and even addictive perform.

Advertising and marketing, Not Technology
In a single sense, the distinction is far more advertising than technologies. Video games presently alter our brains. Study demonstrates that men and women who play action video games on a normal basis are ready to make more rapidly selections and multitask far better.

These hypothetical brain-enhancing blockbusters wouldn’t seem like the recent crop of brain-trainers. Rather, they would have to incorporate components that have been proven to yield particular cognitive advantages as element of their gameplay. This is not implausible. Today’s games usually force their gamers to do all kinds of issues – fix complex issues, deal with numerous attacking enemies, find out repetitive motions, and all types of other actions. Game gamers who would never ever pick up a book of puzzles don’t object at all when they should discover creative options to the problems that game developers place in their path.

The marketing and advertising of this kind of games would certainly have to be a balancing act. Sell a game as a brain-enhancer, and gamers will stay away from it as dull. Certainly, one particular would have to take the same method as a vitamin-enhanced soft drink. Yes, it’s the identical soft drink with the same taste you enjoy, but now it’s got healthier vitamins that you will by no means really recognize.

Still, it is unattainable to disregard the truth that far more than 50 million folks have shown at least some interest in cognitive enhancement by downloading an app or subscribing to a support. And one doesn’t have to commit $ 100 million to build a game that will play for hrs and preserve coming back – appear at Candy Crush Saga’s accomplishment. Its design and style is far, far simpler than console blockbusters but the game has proven to be addictive for a lot of hundreds of thousands of players.

Why do you believe these two worlds haven’t come together in a greater way? Is there actual potential here to build cognitive enhancers that people will crave?

Roger Dooley is the author of Brainfluence: one hundred Methods to Persuade and Persuade Customers with Neuromarketing (Wiley, 2011). Discover Roger on Twitter as @rogerdooley and at his website, Neuromarketing.

The Billion Dollar Market Microsoft And Sony Are Ignoring