Healthy Body & Mind 2018

Healthy Hudson Valley OCTOBER 25, 2018 • ULSTER PUBLISHING • HUDSONVALLEYONE.COM

Healthy Body & Mind

FAT ACCEPTANCE

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STAYING SHARP

JOURNEY WITHIN

CARNIVORE DIET

DYING WELL

Brain-training activities have stirred tremendous public interest. Can they effectively delay degenerative brain disorders?

Literary alchemy can broaden the scope of a middle-age life that rarely goes further than Kingston these days.

Though this fad is enjoying a surge in popularity, eating from just one food group doesn't appeal to this writer.

A planned Kingston facility will provide community-based end-oflife care. The healing there will be more emotional than physical.

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Heavy It’s about affirming one’s agency and choosing selfexpression above all else

By Ann Hutton

T

he term was once used by stoners to describe mind-blowing inspiration, as in “This shit is heavy, man!” Heavy weight might indicate the seriousness of a concept or condition, like: not light or frivolous. Heavy duty points to strength, power.

If someone is overly heavy in the flesh, however, all positive descriptors melt like butter in a pan.

Fat people are not thought to be especially strong or powerful or serious. They are rarely considered to be mind-blowingly inspiring.

We’ve all been told that thin is beautiful, healthful. Most of us believe this dictum — propagated by the medical establishment and mass media — even when we can’t achieve it. Our failure to manage our bodies and lose unwanted weight can bring on feelings of shame and embarrassment.

To combat these, we self-medicate with our favorite treats, most often sugar-loaded ones.

Interviewing three adults who have struggled lifelong with excess body weight, I looked for what they’ve learned about themselves. I asked whether they were chubby children, and when they became conscious of being heavier than others.

What emotional consequences did they endure because of their weight? What worked, or didn’t, in their attempts to lose weight? Do they think being heavy affected their long-term health?

with body image sometimes do, Nan became borderline anorexic in her twenties. She avoided social situations wherein she’d be eating in front of people.

She sometimes binges when she’s alone. “My body and how I think I’m being perceived or judged is always at the forefront of my awareness.

It’s why I sometimes isolate.”

At midlife, and after trying every diet imaginable, Nan is getting more comfortable with her body. “With work, I realize that the most important thing is health, not weight. I love to swim, but the idea for many years of putting on a bathing suit and swimming publicly was abhorrent to me. I gave up something utterly joyful, because of a huge dose of shame. Now I don’t hide my body.

I swim. I’ve stopped wearing baggy clothing, preferring leggings and tops that show my waist. I have a beautiful body. I work out, and I am strong.

In the therapy work that I do, I have come to selfacceptance. That’s the most important piece, and that’s the work I’m focusing on.”

R

ick had to shop in the “husky” section when he was a kid. It was demoralizing for him. “It was tough,” he said. “The emotions probably snowballed, perpetuating their own thing. The more I was self-absorbed with the fact that I was different, the more I’d eat to make that happen — like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I remember never having the ability to run around the neighborhood with other kids. Until I got into high school and thinned out because I was athletic, I was always out of shape and set apart, the guy who was picked last for baseball. Since three or four years old, I never felt like I fit, literally and

figuratively.”

Rick opted for Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) surgery to help himself attain a somewhat normal-sized body. “I feel much healthier and much more fit now that I’ve lost over 200 pounds in the last five years. My feeling was that, unless I got the weight off, it would contribute to an earlier demise. I feel much more capable of engaging in life now than I did before. Because of my family history with diabetes and heart disease, at 60 it was really important to do what I could to make myself as healthy as I could to live past 69. I still have this thing about being a fat little kid. That’s hard to change. It’s something that stays with you.”

He talks about how self-image affects the way he interacts with people. When he met the love of his life, Rick was grossly overweight. Once again, he dropped a significant amount but gained it all back in time. This is a confounding occurrence among folks struggling to control their caloric intake and retard obesity. Rick said he’s lost and regained over a thousand pounds in his lifetime.

“When it came to making a permanent change, one of my significant thoughts was that I felt my wife deserved better,” he said. “I didn’t do it for her, but for me and for us. She really saw through everything and fell in love with me as a person, rather than someone who was outwardly — for many people — repulsive.”

Deep down inside, Rick has contended with obesity fluctuating up and down all his life. “It’s the predominant scripting,” he said. “There wasn’t a doctor I’d ever gone to that gave me an answer or a magic pill. They’d just say, ‘Hey, you’ve gotta lose weight.’ I’d lose for awhile and then gain it back.”

RYGB surgery is the most drastic measure avail-

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“I

was not a chubby child, but discovered soothing myself emotionally with food, especially sweets,” said Nan. There was an implicit and explicit message in my family that fat was not okay. I started feeling like a fat kid when I was in junior high. I remember saying something to my gym teacher about being fat, and her reply was, ‘You’re not fat at all. Your body is changing because of hormones, your body is transforming to a woman’s body.’ I didn’t believe her.”

As adolescents who are pathologically obsessed

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Some fat acceptance / body positive images from the web, where the community shares studies claiming obesity is not necessarily unhealthy, and critiques “fat shaming” in the media able to give people the optimal results. “I can’t eat an overabundance of sugar and fats, because it affects me adversely. It’s a learning process,” he said, “You’re always dealing with it for the rest of your life. I’ve had yearly physicals and blood work to make sure everything is good. There are a number of social media groups and newsletter groups that I’m in touch with to keep me connected.”

To get to the point of choosing surgery, a person has to have “recovered” psychologically to the extent that they value their own lives above all else.

Rick talked about the pre-surgery process where he worked with a psychologist to deal with the reasons he became obese to begin with. “There was a focus on dealing with the reasons I overeat and a lot of journaling that had to be done,” he said. “They put you through a battery of questions that probe — questions that make you think of your history and what it was all about. It moved me past the point where I had to overeat in order to live, from where I was food-focused to lifefocused.”

Can a person be truly happy being obese? Rick says he’s never really talked with anybody who is completely okay with being fat. There’s always the shame and mocking and the physical limitations that curtail activities. “As happy on the outside as I can present myself, there’s nothing on the inside that matches. I’ve always has a positive outlook and a happy affect, but there was a whole lot on the inside that was incongruent.”

identifiers defend their rights to assess their own okayness, folks who are overweight according to medical and sociological norms are questioning the way they’ve been labeled and treated and dismissed in our culture.

Fat acceptance (also known as size acceptance, fat liberation, fat activism, fativism, fat justice, or fat power) is a movement to alter society’s anti-fat bias. Fat-phobia is a form of discrimination infecting the realms of healthcare, employment, education, interpersonal relationships, and certainly the media. Since the late 1960s, waves of activism against discrimination have occurred, most commonly mounted by feminists who challenge the way obese women are blatantly underrepresented in the fashion world.

While it is argued that extreme, potentially morbid obesity can be outright dangerous for an individual’s health and costly to society, the underlying bias against obese people is also counterproductive. If psychological stress is linked to obesity, certainly the pressure to lose weight, look thin, and be attractive according to cultural norms can bring increased overeating, which causes more weight gain.

As Nan’s story indicates, fat acceptance does not mean giving up on becoming strong and healthy and truly comfortable in one’s skin. Rather, it may prompt a person to join a gym or learn to meditate mindfully in order to tune in to the body’s messages.

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any overly heavy people are rethinking their self-identity. Just as women and ethnic minorities and assorted gender-

udith, now 70 years old, talks about how she never felt hunger before because she didn’t allow herself to, even during bouts of

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dieting to shed pounds.

Like Rick, Judith recently opted to undergo bariatric surgery to address her obesity. “I’ve had success in so many other areas of my life, but I’ve never been able to handle this problem,” she said.

“The social consciousness around fat is so ill-informed. I didn’t know until three years ago when I went to an endocrinologist to test my metabolism that, in this body, if I eat over a thousand calories a day, I gain weight. Not only when I’m on a diet, but every day for the rest of my life. Staying un-

Healthy Body & Mind October 2017 An Ulster Publishing publication Editorial WRITERS: Jennifer Brizzi, Elisabeth Henry, Ann Hutton, Fawn Potash, Carrie Jones Ross, Chris Rowley, Paul Smart EDITOR: Paul Smart LAYOUT: Joe Morgan Cover: Elsie Leininger, who has been living at Mountain Valley Manor, an assisted living facility on Wilbur Avenue in Kingston, was 103 years old when this photo was taken in October 2013. She lived in place until she was 100. She’s now 106. (Photograph by Peter Demuth) Ulster Publishing PUBLISHER: Geddy Sveikauskas ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Genia Wickwire DISPLAY ADS: Lynn Coraza, Pam Courselle,

Pamela Geskie, Elizabeth Jackson, Ralph Longendyke, Sue Rogers, Linda Saccoman PRODUCTION MANAGER: Joe Morgan PRODUCTION: Diane Congello-Brandes, Josh Gilligan, Rick Holland CLASSIFIED ADS: Amy Murphy, Tobi Watson CIRCULATION: Dominic Labate Healthy Body & Mind is one of four Healthy Hudson Valley supplements Ulster Publishing puts out each year. It is distributed in the company’s four weekly newspapers and separately at select locations, reaching an estimated readership of over 50,000. Its website is www.hudsonvalleyone.com.

For more info on upcoming special sections, including how to place an ad, call 845-334-8200, fax 845-334-8202 or email: info@ulsterpublishing.com.

October 25, 2018 Healthy Body & Mind

Ulster Publishing Co. der a thousand calories a day is almost impossible.

I didn’t find a way to do that until this year when I had my gastric sleeve surgery — a last-ditch effort for me, the only thing that made logical sense.”

She applauds anybody who tries to make peace with being overweight. “It’s a painful situation in which to find yourself in a society that promotes emaciated women as the goal,” she said. “But I don’t think it’s a healthy response to the issue. Our skeletal structures are not made to handle a hundred extra pounds.”

Judith had two knee replacements before undergoing the surgical procedure and lost 87 pounds this year, taking a lot of stress off her joints. “When you put that much pressure on your knees and feet, you’re going to have problems down the line.”

Like Nan, Judith didn’t gain weight until her adolescent hormones kicked in. All of a sudden at 18 she noticed her clothing size kept changing, “and other people’s didn’t.” She’s gained and lost over 100 pounds four times. “The applause for losing weight was nice but made me very uncomfortable. As soon as I went back onto regular eating, my weight would zoom back up. I never wanted to believe I looked as bad as I did. Then I’d see a picture of myself and be shocked. When I went into a restaurant, I wondered if my butt was going to fit into a chair — one with no arms because I could sit on it better.”

She too felt a sense of shame, guilt and humiliation. “The worst thing is the way people look at you. It’s like people are putting their noses up in the air, as if there’s a bad smell.”

Surgery removed about 80% of her stomach.

The procedure was a commitment to a way of life, a very different relationship with food. “I had to consider if I trusted myself to do that,” Judith said.

“A lot of people go to it thinking, ‘I just want to get this weight off my body!’ and they haven’t worked out the emotional issues. I’ve spent years working through the emotional issues I’ve had in terms of food addiction.”

Judith doesn’t think being proud of fat is a healthy solution. “I think a healthy solution is to educate people that obesity is a disease.”

If all this talk about fat acceptance seems like just so much rationalization, denial, or delusion, look again. Underneath the Instagram photo arrays of full-bodied people exposing their abundance is the cry for inclusion in society, not the expectation that obesity necessarily be admired or desired.

“It’s important for us to have a voice,” says Nan. “The most important thing to me is to understand and moderate my bingeing behavior and to heal the self-loathing that leads me to medicate in the ways that I do.”

In this context, fat acceptance is about selfacceptance. It’s about acknowledging one’s own

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Brain games The upsides and downsides of sharpening one’s mind

By Christina Coulter

T

he game “Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!” for the Nintendo DS was an immediate critical and commercial success back in 2006. There had been initial trepidation about the market for a “brain training” game of this type. Inspired by the studies of Japanese neuroscientist Dr. Ryutu Kawashima, the game’s success spawned numerous sequels. A combined 35 million copies were sold across the titles in the franchise, each featuring the floating, pixilated head of Kawashima, who administered various exercises.

Brain Age sold itself on the premise that a few short minutes a day of playing small electronic logic puzzles could “help consolidate memory and creativity and may hopefully help develop a resistance against decline in later life.” By stimulating the flow of blood to the frontal cortex, these games were designed to increase overall cognitive function. A workout session for the brain was akin to pumping iron or jogging on a treadmill.

In January 2015, the Federal Trade Commission charged Lumosity creators Lumos Labs with manufacture of bogus cognitive function-boosting supplements. The commission found that the company’s marketing “preyed on consumers’ fears of age-related decline, suggesting the product could stave off memory loss, dementia and even Alzheimer’s Disease.”

The company ultimately agreed to a $50-million settlement. Even after the lawsuit, the popular service now boasts 85 million users in 182 countries.

T

he unabated craze of brain-boosting games has continued to proliferate in the electronic realm, with everything from crossword puzzles to Sudoku, chess and Scrabble. A new legion of trivia tests roll out new applications quarter after quarter. The titles trade on the promise, substantiated or not, that keeping up through playing these games will sharpen the mind and bolster the ability to learn new words, solve math problems, orient oneself in three-dimensional space, or recall facts.

A portion of the neuroscience community further claims the participants in these games may be protecting themselves from or delaying the negative effects of degenerative brain disorders like Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. On the other hand, a joint statement by the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development cautions otherwise.

John M. Carroll Healer, Teacher,

“The strong consensus of this group is that the scientific literature does not support claims that the use of software-based brain games alters neural functioning in ways that improve general cognitive performance in everyday life, or prevent cognitive slowing and brain disease,” said the groups.

“Much more research is needed before firm conclusions on these issues can be drawn.”

Given the severity and high incidence of Alzheimer’s and related disorders among the aging, researchers are far from dragging their feet when it comes to exploring the value of these types of games and activities to act as a preventative measure. King’s College of London has carried out extensive studies, funded by the Alzheimer’s Society, into the impact of cognitive training provided by brain-training games. Their study, among the largest carried out at the time, showed extensive improvement in logical reasoning, verbal skills and day-to-day task assessments for participants who played brain games over a six-month period.

“Online brain training is rapidly growing into a [lucrative] industry, and studies like this are vital to help us understand what these games can and cannot do,” said Dr. Doug Brown of the Alzheimer’s Foundation. “While this study wasn’t long enough to test whether [brain training] can prevent cognitive decline or dementia, we’re excited to see that it can have a positive impact on how well older people perform essential everyday tasks. “ The researchers haven’t established the exact

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mechanism of prevention when it comes to the effect of these games on the brain. When a game includes social elements, such as in board games or Internet-based multi-player affairs like Words With Friends, the participant’s increased amount of interaction with other individuals may play the major role in improving the brain’s function. A panel of three expert neuroscientists concurred in a study that the frontal-cortex-stimulating properties of these games are just as easily achieved by surfing Wikipedia or engaging in conversation with neighbors.

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o why the full-court press by companies and other organizations to tout these products as beneficial to mental health?

The lack of clear information and proliferation of conflicting data has opened up an opportunity to capitalize on the consumer’s need for something, anything, that might alleviate their concerns. “If someone has strep throat, the doctor doesn’t talk with you about doing brain games and exercise, he just gives you an amoxicillin treatment,” lamented Yale-trained psychiatrist Sabooh Mubbashar, director of the senior behavioral health unit at Sharon Hospital in Connecticut. “If we had a treatment like that to cure dementia, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Mubbashar was quick to agree that playing these games can show positive cognitive effects, though he pointed to too many underlying and related factors for researchers to solidly affirm their benefits. “People who participate in these activities can sometimes reduce their symptoms by 29 percent or slow the progression of the condition,” he said. “For some of these interventions, whether it’s keeping in good vascular health or playing brain games, there’s a significant amount of overlap in their ability to prolong the onset of dementia.“ For MidHudson Regional Hospital neurologist Dr. Fabio Danisi, the use of brain games as a treatment method is a gray area that practitioners should be wary of. “The thing is that the research is very conflicting,” said Danisi. “There are some studies that show benefits and there are other studies that instead show no benefit. It’s a very complicated topic to analyze fully.”

What is likely true is that it’s important to stay engaged and do new activities throughout life. He said. “As far as I can recall, a lot of evidence suggests that staying active plays a very positive role in reducing the risk of dementia. What we don’t

October 25, 2018 Healthy Body & Mind

Ulster Publishing Co. really understand yet is [whether] people are less likely to get dementia because they’re staying active...There is a correlation, though, and there’s no downside to staying physically active.”

The most surefire way to prevent mental decline is to steel one’s body against the passage of time through exercise and healthy habits. If you’re itching to test your spatial awareness, reading comprehension, vocabulary, ability to divide your attention, math skills or reasoning abilities, go ahead and download a brain-training app. It can’t hurt. Just don’t forego your health or social life in the process.

“Right now it is not considered a standard of care to recommend these apps,” said Danisi. “They certainly don’t hurt directly, but they might hurt in so far as patients being put in front of a computer screen, taking them away from social interactions, exercise and more meaningful things. If these apps aren’t keeping you from your friends and loved ones, there’s no harm in it. But the jury’s still out.”

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Changing one’s mind Can reading about psychedelics be a useful tool for turning life’s corners?

By John Burdick ETTING: a rambling lakeside Victorian hotel, underpopulated and fusty in the off-season, floorboards failing slightly to one side in corridors lined with grave portraiture of prominent guests from the past two centuries: presidents and stewards, malevolent industrialists and heirs, great men and their broods, a taxonomy of period beards and corsets at leisure.

Set: post-counter-culture adolescent raised in hippie town on hippie myths, hungry for the kind of mind-expanding psychic adventures celebrated in books, films and music, and in the drug stories of peers, an adolescent who fears that he might be psychically stunted, ungifted, unamenable to expansion, corseted by insecurity and inhibition.

The book was the drug.

In the spring of 1979, I was working as the weekend game room supervisor at the Mohonk

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Mountain House. I didn’t know it at the time, but jobs wouldn’t get any sweeter than that one, unless you had a mind to be someone someday. I had my own booth to sit in; a ping-pong table and a steady stream of off-duty employees to challenge; a lockbox of quarters I was permitted to pump through the pinball machines and first-gen video games.

I enjoyed something that, every time I dared to ask, resembled “no real responsibilities.” I couldn’t even tell you who my boss was, though any number of managers frowned at me in the halls. In my booth, I kept the mandolin I was learning to play, books and snacks. Traffic was light, incidental.

The Smileys’ Mohonk never seemed quite comfortable with a noisy arcade in its sober, Quakernaturalist midst.

That spring, my generationally-issued Kurt Vonnegut obsession had led me to the steps of a potent little book called The Eden Express. It was written by Kurt Jr.’s son, Mark Vonnegut.

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Ulster Publishing Co. Although it shared in the playful and profound family voice, it was nothing like a Kilgore Trout novel. The Eden Express was Mark’s vivid, interior account of his own schizophrenia.

Critical consensus today seems to agree with what I discovered on my own. The kid could write.

His willing, musical prose seemed to produce in the reader an approximation, a short-acting taste, of schizophrenia. I would read 30 or 40 pages and rise to roam the haunted Mohonk halls, feeling a bit of the madness gnawing at the edge of my own sanity and undoing my reality. I wanted it. I coaxed it and I courted it.

I had just enough drug experience to know what a loosened ego felt like and to imagine an exploded one. I craved the shamanistic authority, the paradoxical distinction awarded those who have known the dissolution of their socially constructed selves and have returned to tell of it, stable but changed. Madness, I naively believed, is wasted on the crazy. Schizophrenia was not genetically available to me or for sale in the streets as such, but I had The Eden Express, and the book was the drug.

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predict that the gifted author Michael Pollan is already a little worried if not downright aghast by the indirect effect of his successful new book, How to Change Your Mind, a brilliant and inspiring account of the history and revival of research into the therapeutic benefits of psychedelic drugs — maybe too inspiring for the author’s taste.

Books aren’t so very popular these days, but via the casting of pods and the fastidious curation of NPR their stories and synopses are disseminated and discussed widely among the chatty classes, and Pollan’s popular book may well turn out to signal the dawn of a new age of de-mythologized, decidedly non-freaky interest in what psychedelics can contribute to human and planetary health. Thanks to Pollan and his 360-degree scientific, historical and autobiographical documentation of the agency of psychedelics, I imagine the acid and psilocybin flying off the shelves, wherever those shelves might be. I imagine hordes of respectable seniors, some infirm, others in rosy good health (for much of the current research into psychedelics studies the “betterment of well people�), showing up at EDM festivals and Phish shows looking for the product.

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chemistry with the same lyrical grace and unifying intelligence. His mode is new-journalistic and Heisenbergian. He continuously monitors, acknowledges, and adjusts for his own biases — an especially important trait when writing about psychedelics, a topic in which people tend to see what they want to see, a subjectivity that seems to be the essence of their power.

How to Change Your Mind starts with the goings on at Johns Hopkins University at the turn of the millennium, culminating in the 2006 publication of Roland Griffith’s “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance” in Psychopharmacology, the first serious clinical study of psychedelics in over four decades. From that time and place, the characters and concerns of Pollan’s story radiate in all directions, temporally and spatially.

M

uch of HOW TO CHANGE YOUR Mind celebrates the work of a dedicated group of researchers and advocates not named Leary responsible for the first, productive decade of psychedelics research, before Kesey, the counter-culture and the polarization of society over the subject of LSD. Many of these characters were distinguished researchers and practitioners whose ties were loosened and whose research priorities and methods were irrevocably transformed by a jolt of acid or mushrooms. Other characters come off as mythic American figures — the self-made mycologist and prophet of fungus Paul Stametz, for example, or Captain Trips (Al Hubbard) , who turned on thousands and who beat Timothy Leary to the set-and-setting way of understanding the variables of the acid trip.

Leary, who was once to psychedelics what Bob Marley is to reggae music, is rather coldly demoted, repositioned as a shoddy scientist who produced few meaningful studies and who, by accepting the role as the prophet of acid and the despoiler of young minds, did far more to end psychedelic research than to advance it. Still, Pollan grants him his role as a gadfly who went far out with it, providing cover for the researchers working closer to the mainstream of science.

Psychedelics have been shown — repeatedly and emphatically — to help cure alcoholism and addiction, to eradicate fear and anxiety and to promote profound acceptance in terminally ill patients, to stimulate the resourcefulness and imaginations of artists and engineers (with a direct role in the evolution of computer science), and to promote deep values, empathy and positive change in the

lives of the well. They have proven to be an especially valuable tool for people turning the corner into later life — when a little unsettling and unpatterning of consciousness can be useful.

Huge Problem #1, of course, is that the acid trip cannot be observed and studied directly.

The whole field of inquiry is perforce subjective and anecdotal, a fact of which Pollan is abidingly aware throughout the text.

There can be no doubt that How to Change Your Mind whets the appetite for the psychedelic experience, especially in anyone who still has the taste in their mouth. And this points to Huge Problem #2. While researchers now have access to the sub-

stances and some legislative ground is being made — you and I are not researchers, are we? — these drugs remain highly classified.

Reading How to Change Your Mind, how could I not crave some of that chemical magic? The undoing and re-modeling of my increasingly pinched reality? The re-patterning of my patterns? The loosening of all my impacted adult worrying, and the broadening of scope in a middle-age life that rarely takes me further than Kingston any more?

Alas, there is no pouch hidden inside the cover of How to Change Your Mind. The book itself, and the equally poorly understand art of literary alchemy, will have to be the drug for most of us.

October 25, 2018 Healthy Body & Mind

Ulster Publishing Co.

| 11

High hopes Local purveyors are beginning to provide CBD-infused products

By Terence P. Ward

I

ndustrial hemp is legal in New York State, and it contains cannabidiol, a compound increasingly available in a variety of products. Research into CBD, as it’s commonly known, suggests it can ease anxiety, seizures, pain and other conditions. It’s become the go-to ingredient to add to a wide variety of potions and products.

Among the 31 states with medical marijuana laws, New York’s is one of the more restrictive.

Fewer than a dozen serious medical conditions qualify patients to use pot therapeutically. But that hasn’t extinguished the interest of a variety of local entrepreneurs, several of whom sell or distribute their wares locally.

Though the legality of this compound continues to be debated and tested in federal courts, the variety of local purveyors seem confident they’re in the right legally. They’re eager to provide the health benefits they have often themselves experienced. And they see the potential for financial gain.

CBD is an important ingredient in an increasing variety of foods, drinks, lotions and potions.

CBD has been making a big splash in headlines and storefronts over the past year. Products containing cannabidiol lack the effects of a psychoactive, euphoric “high” but can provide relief from inflammation, pain, anxiety and stress.

New York State government has jumped on the hemp bandwagon, providing not only an extra level of legal protection for some participants but also funding to support research and in some cases equipment purchases.

As of earlier this year, some 62 farms and businesses had already received research permits focusing on biotechnology and agronomics, reported the American Agriculturalist. Others are in the approval pipeline. Some 18 companies have registered to process industrial hemp, key to advancing market research and supporting a grow-

ing demand for industrial hemp products.

For a sympathetic buzz, read “Keep calm and live in New York City, “ a story about the promise of CBD by Rachel Syme in July 19’s The New Yorker. This city dweller writer enjoyed “a creeping sensation of serenity.”

“There is a renewed interest in industrial hemp production and processing throughout the country,” said governor Andrew Cuomo. “With our strong grower community and innovative researchers, New York is in a great position to lead.

By providing an alternative crop for our farmers, industrial hemp has the potential to change the landscape of our agricultural economy, create jobs

and drive growth.”

J

oanna Hovling is one local CBD evangelist. The middle-school teacher recently began carrying CBD-infused products at her family’s Highland shop, Ice Bros. Frozen Treats.

Suffering for 15 years with chronic Lyme disease, common enough in her Clintondale neighborhood that she compares its incidence to that in Lyme, Connecticut itself, Hovling became interested in investigating the compound’s effects.

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For Hovling, the condition was expressed in symptoms like anxiety and pain. Conventional treatment for her condition was not covered by insurance (“Politics,� she explains). She concluded she needed a combination of medications and alternative therapies to manage her pain.

Many suppliers rely on court decisions indicating CBD is not a Schedule 1 drug as long as it is not extracted from a marijuana plant. Federal officials haven’t given up on regulating the compound, memos from the Drug Enforcement Agency offices make clear. According to Hovling, her attorney thinks she’s not going to get into legal trouble.

Three of her supplier’s attorneys agree with that assessment, she said.

Helen Gutfreund, a former massage therapist in New Paltz, is another new CBD entrepreneur.

She was impressed enough with CBD products that she reentered the entrepreneurial world to become “a CBD educator and distributor.�

New York City transplant Konstanze Zeller, now inhabiting a 300-year-old refurbished stone house in Marbletown, sells CBD powder. According to the packaging, one or two teaspoons of the stuff should be mixed into each five-ounce serving of liquid one imbibes. Her company’s line of six “Power Bites,� including one with CBD, serve as quick, ready-to-eat snacks for health-conscious consumers looking to elevate their health and energy while meeting their nutritional needs.

Bradford Beckerman is a Kingston resident who phoned in from a hemp-growing farm in Colorado. His company’s products include CDB-infused oils in bottles and lozenges. Beckerman’s local hemp store occupies three rooms at The Arc’s Cornell Creative Business Center in midtown Kingston, where he has an office, manufacturing facilities and a space for packaging and distribution. A serial entrepreneur, Beckerman tells a lively story of personal redemption, reform and business opportunity.

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nxiety was part of Gutfreund’s equation. “I am a person who has struggled throughout her life with anxiety and depression,� she explained. “I’ve been off and on antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication for 25 years and most recently was on a cocktail of three antidepressants and two anti-anxiety meds — five prescriptions total — for five years.� Although the medications helped her function and recover from a particularly dark period, she said they weren’t working in the same way any longer. “My head was in a fog,� she said. “I had no concentration or focus skills, and I found myself heavily medicated and once again in a deep depression.

I knew something had to change.�

Social media brought CBD to Gutfreund’s radar. “I started to notice that a Facebook friend from junior high school was posting about taking CBD, a cannabis derivative. I was familiar with cannabis, I thought, so I couldn’t understand why she was posting about it for the world to see. She was even giving it to her young son, which was really what made me take notice .... Instead of assuming that she was doing something illegal, I reached out to her to find out more.�

Hovling learned about the compound when her supplier -- Scott Wilkinson, under the business name Mr. Cannoli -- began collaborating with Chris Birdsall to infuse Italian ice, ice cream and cannoli cream with CBD. “Mr. Birdsall’s Wonder Elixirs� combined Wilkinson’s creamy confections with a CBD powder in flavors such as Pineapple Express. Hovling, interested in the potential benefits, was dismayed by the negative reactions she read about the New Windsor-based Birdsall’s products.

According to Gutfreund’s research, “CBD is available both from marijuana and from hemp, both being in the cannabis family, but . . . hemp has very low THC content ‌. Additionally, CBD itself is non-psychoactive and regulated by different laws than marijuana,â€? making it legal at the federal level, particularly when the product is imported. A quirk in law means that CBD products manufactured in one state can’t be brought to another, but when manufactured abroad it can be imported to any U.S. state. Gutfreund advises anyone interested to research the laws.

W

hile research into this compound is only at the beginning stages, Hovling decided it showed enough promise she wanted to be involved with Birdsall’s Wonder Elixir products. They’re discretely behind the counter, only advertised in limited fashion, and never sold to anyone under 18.

She found customers almost immediately. “I always ask why they’re interested,� Hovling said, curious about which conditions they seek to treat. In addition to chronic pain, which she calls “the big one,� CBD is believed to provide some relief from Family Practice

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everything from high blood pressure and seizures to anxiety and inflammation. “I would absolutely be using it and offering it in my practice if I was still an LMT,� Gutfreund said, but she sold her practice Bodymind Massage Therapy several years ago. Health benefits she lists for CBD include mood enhancement and anti-inflammatory properties.

In time, medical researchers may better understand the precise mechanisms involved. What can it best treat? “Read labels, learn where your CBD comes from, how many milligrams are in it, how many milligrams you should be taking, know the laws, find out how the molecule was extracted and what it is or isn’t mixed with,� Gutfreund urged. “There’s a lot to learn.� Her web site of choice on CBD information is echoconnection.org.

Hovling got into the ice business with her husband and three sons. She brought her boys in on this decision as well. “They watched me go through Lyme, and they’re very compassionate,� she said.

After looking into potential side effects, which can according to Web MD include dry mouth, low blood pressure and drowsiness, 13-year-old Theo decided CBD wasn’t for him.

Ice Bros. started out as a food cart, with which the family still maintains a presence by the Walkway Over the Hudson and at local fairs. “I won’t bring CBD products to the Walkway,� Hovling said. Events like the Rosendale Street Fair might be appropriate sites in her mind, she said.

G

utfreund and Hovling provided samples for this reporter, the former a chocolatey caffeine chew and the latter a creamy pineapple Italian ice. A July New Paltz Times article detailed the taste experience of an Ice Bros.

Italian ice. The CBD-infused variety was no less satisfying.

As with the candy chew from Gutfreund, there was nothing in the flavor to signal the inclusion of cannabidiol in the bowl of Pineapple Express.

The effects, at least on someone not suffering from chronic pain or other extant symptoms, are subtle: perhaps a reduction of stress from the single serving, but perhaps it’s a psychosomatic effect.

No dry mouth or drowsiness was observed, and the light-headed sensation was mild. It, too, may have been imagined.

Konstanze Zeller sees cannabidol products as poised to make serious headway in the health world. “CBD has such a market now. It’s taking over, and they’re predicting it’s going to be bigger than THC ever was,� she said. “I think it’s an important product for health, and feeling well ....

With CBD you don’t get stoned, but you’re really relaxed. It’s healing for any kind of inflammation.�

CBD is being used in an increasing variety of food products. “I’ll sell it until it’s illegal,� said Hovling. She sees the upside potential for both health and profit as too good to ignore.

Training for mental health

T

he Department of Health and Human Services’(HHS) Center for Mental Health Services has announced a $122,941 federal grant award to HealthAlliance Hospital. This federal grant will assist the Kingston hospital in increasing awareness of mental health in the community by training others on how to identify and appropriately respond to individuals with mental illness. “HealthAlliance and WMCHealth are deeply committed to providing Kingston-area residents with convenient access to quality healthcare services in the communities where they live,� said Michael D. Israel, president and CEO of Westchester Medical Center Health Network. “As the largest provider of mental health services in the Hudson Valley, providing accessible mental health care and working with our community partners to offer crucial services and education is a priority across the WMC health network.� “For too long, mental illness was overlooked, and treatment was underfunded,� said congressman John Faso. “We have taken great strides in recent years to bolster mental health programs and increase awareness. This funding is will allow HealthAlliance Hospital in Kingston to continue to provide dynamic and compassionate care to our neighbors struggling with mental illness by helping key members of the community to identify and respond to those most vulnerable.�

October 25, 2018 Healthy Body & Mind

Ulster Publishing Co.

| 13

Behind the times Women’s health care in the Hudson Valley lags in quality

By Karen Angel

D

espite the establishment of large healthcare networks in the Hudson Valley over the past five years, the quality of the gynecological care here doesn’t measure up to that available in big cities.

I recently sought treatment for uterine fibroids and received false and misleading information from three area gynecologists, one of whom is the director of his large practice’s gynecological division and onetime chairman of its board of directors. . He told me that because my uterus was so large my only option was abdominal surgery with a disfiguring vertical incision, rather than a much more subtle bikini-line incision.

It felt like a return to an earlier era, when women with fibroids basically had two options: do nothing or have open surgery. But given the Hudson Valley’s proximity to New York City, a major medical center, I expected more.

Even more upsetting, though, was the discovery that this medical practice, one of the largest in the Hudson Valley, doesn’t offer the standard diagnostic test for fibroids, a pelvic MRI. Nor could I find a facility in the area that does. Three other large medical providers, including one that specializes in radiology, told me they don’t offer the test. I couldn’t even find a local facility that was familiar with the test.

That raises the question, are surgeons here operating on women with fibroids without first doing this critical test, which pinpoints fibroids’ size and location and helps doctors determine the best treatment? Are they, in a sense, going in blind?

I contacted several top administrators at the practice, but none could explain why it doesn’t offer fibroid-mapping MRIs or how its gynecologists are able to operate accurately without them.

“Having up-to-date, cutting-edge diagnostics is just as important as having surgeons who have the training, skills, and resources to perform procedures,” says Dr. Jim Greenberg, chief of gynecology at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in Boston and a specialist in minimally invasive procedures.

Hysterectomy is the second most common surgery for women after Cesarean section. As many as 70 to 80 percent of women develop fibroids by age 50, and each year about 600,000 women undergo a hysterectomy, with up to half due to a fibroid diagnosis. Sixty percent of these hysterectomies

are performed d through a large abdominal nal incision, although h the operation carries arries a higher risk of complications, ns, more pain, n, and a longerr hospital stay and recovery period than less-invasive procedures.

A 2015 study in the American Journal of Ob-stetrics and Gyynecology found und that many hystersterectomies are unnecessary and 40 percent of women who ho had a hysterectomy weren’t offered alternatives. ves.

“In smaller communities, as new medical technologies ologies come forward, even though they may not have the people to do them, there should hould be more resources available lable for people to understand stand what all the options ns are,” Dr. Greenberg says. s.

I sought second ond opinions from two other er doctors in the same practice, ctice, since it accepts my insurance. surance. One told me that gynecologists no longer perform morcellation (a technique that allows enlarged uteruses to be removed laparoscopically by dissecting the tissue before ore removal) because of concerns about spreading potentially cancerous tissue. But a technique called in-bag morcellation that addresses those concerns by collecting tissue in a bag before removal has been used successfully for years.

The third gynecologist I saw also recommended abdominal surgery and told me the only way to know whether any of my fibroids could be removed laparoscopically was to open me up. A pelvic MRI can provide this information.

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did research online and discovered Acess Acessa, a minimally invas invasive technique app approved by the Fo Food and Drug A Administration i 2012 that has in been shown to significantly reduce uterine size. Acessa targets fibroids through radiofrequency therm mal ablation, w which uses heat wa waves to destroy tiss tissue.

Patients are typic typically released t from the hospital the da as the procesame day ca return to nordure and can w mal activity within a few days. menti When I mentioned Acessa to the doctor who had made the comment about morcellation morcellation, she first confused it with another, completely com different procedure that her office offers, and then admitted she had never heard of it.

No doctors or hospitals in the region offer o Acessa, according to the th device’s manufacturer, Acessa Ac Health, and I couldn’t find a doctor here trained in or knowledgeab knowledgeable about in-bag morcellation.

After getting a pelvic MRI at a New York City hospital, I discovered that the minimally invasive options I had researched weren’t the best solution for me. I found a surgeon in the Bronx who routinely performs hysterectomies with bikini incisions on uteruses the same size as mine.

My surgery is scheduled for November 12. I feel confident this is a good choice for me, but only because I did my own research and consulted three gynecologists outside the Hudson Valley. Gynecology patients here should be able to count on their doctors to provide the information and referrals they need.

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A place to die ‘Death is not an emergency...’

By Violet Snow

W

here would you like to die?

Most people say they want to be at home, not in a hospital or nursing home, said Laurie Schwartz, co-founder of the Circle of Friends for the Dying

(CFD).

The Hudson Valley non-profit group has purchased a Kingston house they plan to convert into a residence available to people needing compassionate care at the end of life. Instead of spending their final weeks or days in the isolating atmosphere of a hospital, the dying will be able to make their transition in the comfort of a house, attended by family, friends, a small staff and volunteer caregivers. The Circle is fundraising to renovate the house it bought in 2015. It hopes to make the facility available for use by 2020.

Actually, said Schwartz, a minority of people say they would prefer to spend their last days at a nursing home or hospital because they don’t want their loved ones to be burdened by taking care of them. The CFD home will address this issue, enabling family members to focus on “being with the loved one in way that’s healing for both parties,” said Schwartz.

“They can be family members, not caregivers. And not everyone has a family or friend to take care of them.”

Oncology social worker Elise Lark, also co-founder of the CFD, pointed out that death was more part of everyday life a century ago. “People died in community. It was a social, not a medical event. In the 1950s, people started to die more often in the hospital, which was considered the best setting — a sterile environment, safe, convenient to doctors. But we believe people should die in a non-institutional setting, with a sense of everyday life, where they can enjoy the rituals of having meals together, sitting with a group of people, participating in life.”

The hospice movement has made strides in this

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The Kingston house Circle of Friends for the Dying plans to convert into a residence available to people needing compassionate care at the end of life.

direction, often bringing patients home from the hospital and providing support and education.

Families can be allowed to ease the dying over the divide. But a home death is not always possible.

Often the patient needs round-the-clock care, which family members may not be able to provide if they live out-of-state, have to work, or are raising children. Some patients live alone. If home care isn’t an option, the only alternative in Ulster and Dutchess counties is a nursing home.

Lark was inspired by the Home for the Dying model, which started with a home in Rochester organized by lay Carmelites in 1984. There are now 30 of these homes in upstate New York.

“Every month we hear of at least one or two people in our area who would’ve benefited,” said Schwartz, “who would rather have died in a homelike setting, like the CFD home.”

The CFD in Kingston will have two beds, enabling it to host about 30 people per year who have been diagnosed with three months or less to live. It will be run by a small paid staff and trained volunteers providing skilled care and companionship for people nearing death. If family members are available, they can spend time with their dying relative in a warm, relaxed atmosphere — at no charge.

C

ommunity-based end-of-life care is a boon to volunteers as well as to the dying and their families. “I had deaths in my family where I wasn’t able to be there, and it stayed with me,” said CFD board member Gai Galitzine.

“I had a good experience with my mother, where I was able to get to her in time even though she’d had a stroke. The reassurance she felt when I was there was one of the most beautiful things. I could see it in her eyes, although she couldn’t speak. I love the idea of being able to help other people in that situation.”

“Death is not an emergency,” Lark observed. “It happens every day. It’s as normal as birth. I see death as a sacred rite of passage. To be present to that is an amazing experience, a gift.”

People arriving at the CFD home will already have hospice care lined up, although the home is independent from hospice services. Hospice shifts the focus from preserving life at all costs to enhancing quality of life.

The reluctance of doctors and family members to address the prospect of death is an impediment to getting end-of-life care in a timely manner. CFD has joined the international Death Café movement, organizing monthly informal gatherings in which people sit in small groups to talk about the subject most of us tend to avoid — how our lives will end. Death Cafés in Ulster County are run by Schwartz and social worker Barbara Sarah, founder of the oncology support program at HealthAlliance. For people who are fearing death, grieving for relatives, or wondering about the mystery of end-of-life passage, the conversations provide a forum for sharing often unspoken thoughts and worries.

The Home for the Dying in Kingston will be equipped with hospital beds for comfort and a wing with quarters for family members who wish to stay overnight. Meals can be prepared in a full eat-in kitchen. A wraparound deck and garden will be accessible by wheelchair from the resident bedrooms, which will have sliding doors to the outside.

An estimated $100,000 is needed for renovation, some of it donations in kind, such as building materials. The CFD board wants to have two years of operating expenses, $250,000 per year, in the bank or at least pledged, before the home opens.

“We want the first years to be about the people, not the funds,” said Schwartz. “We’re holding fundraisers, and we’re looking for angel investors who can contribute. Some of the money can be pledged out over a few years.” A recent benefit concert by the band Big Takeover was held at the Colony in Woodstock, resulting in an individual donation of $15,000.

“A hospital is a wonderful place to be if one can be cured,” said Schwartz. “The healing happening in a home for the dying is more emotional than physical. Our home becomes a person’s home, where they are surrounded by people who are there because they want to be there.”

For more information on Circle of Friends for the Dying, to see the schedule of Death Cafés held around Ulster County, or to donate to the fund for the Circle home, visit http://www.cfdhv.org or https://www.facebook.com/CFDHV.

October 25, 2018 Healthy Body & Mind

Ulster Publishing Co.

| 15

Meat-eaters’ heaven

by Jennifer Brizzi

S

ubsisting on meat, salt and water sounds absolutely nuts, right? No kale, no quinoa, no blueberries? A cholesterol fest, that would produce instant heart disease, right? Not to mention a sure, quick path to scurvy and other nutritional deficiencies. Not to mention the suffering of giving up ice cream, garlic, bread, pasta and everything that is not animal-based.

What deprivation!

My first reaction as a part-time healthy eating educator was close to horror. But the carnivore diet is a thing, and growing in popularity. It has been around a long time — hundreds of thousands of years per YouTube star Ken Berry, MD. It’s now enjoying trend status, with multiple YouTube videos by people swearing that eschewing all but meat saved their lives and cured dozens of diseases and other health problems, including overweight. Although most of the evidence is anecdotal, the sheer number of people swearing to its benefits invites a closer look at this strange diet.

In 1928 anthropologist Vilhjalmur Stefansson and a colleague decided to live on meat and water for a year. Stefansson had studied the Inuit people, who ate a diet that was 90 percent fatty meat and fish, with very few vegetables. He found that they were very healthy despite their diet, with no obesity or scurvy.

Steffanson ate as they did during the time he spent with them, and then when he returned home decided to publicize his findings by checking into a hospital to do a meat-only diet. He left the hospital after three weeks but continued the diet at home, eating only meat, including bones, organs, brains and fat. Though a brief experiment with lean meat caused adverse reactions, he was fine once he returned to higher-fat meats.

At the end of the experiment he was tested and found to have no scurvy nor vitamin deficiencies.

He had suffered no negative effects at all.

M

ore recently, a young woman named Mikhaila Peterson suffered from debilitating arthritis and joint replacement surgeries, as well as depression. She sought to determine whether her diet had any influence on her illnesses. She started to eliminate foods one by one. When she was down to eating only meat, the symptoms of her afflictions diminished. Her father, controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, author of the best-selling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, was impressed by her success and adopted the meat-only diet himself, losing 50 pounds and finding his own health issues cured.

Orthopedic surgeon and athlete Shawn Baker MD is another high-profile proponent of the carnivore diet. The 50-something buff guy lives mostly on ribeye steaks.

Although Dr. Baker limits himself severely, other carnivore diet proponents expand their meals a bit, with burgers and other fatty red meats from lamb to bacon and sausage. Some include poultry, fatty fish like sardines and salmon, and other animal products like eggs, cheese and butter. Some add bone broth, tallow and lard. Some stress quality, grass-fed, organic, pasture-raised or wildcaught meats. Most eschew seasonings, sauces or spices except for salt and perhaps pepper.

Proponents of the diet and a couple of studies claim that high-fat meat-eaters have less inflammation and better cholesterol numbers than the rest of us, and that their lack of fiber does not adversely affect intestinal workings but makes them more efficient. They claim that plant-based foods contain compounds such as lignans, lectins, gluten, phytic acid and self-protective substances that don’t agree with many people, although the pro-plant camp claims that cooking and digestion eliminates these effects.

People practicing the carnivore diet report improved mental clarity and focus. They also claim that without the carbs you don’t need much vitamin C, and that there have been no reported cases

of scurvy. They say that eating carnivore leads to weight loss, more energy, better moods, higher testosterone and the end of disease states in the body.

T

he carnivore way is the latest in a collection of recent trendy diets. There was (and still is) the macrobiotic diet that promotes whole foods and is based on whole grains, fruits and vegetables but may skip certain nutrients.

Atkins began in 1972 and became wildly popular. Not long ago the high protein and fat-based diet was so popular that one supermarket I shopped at had an Atkins aisle. The diet had phases that became gradually less restrictive, with very low carbs that increase as you go from 20 to 100 grams a day.

The South Beach Diet followed, based on lean protein, low fat and “good carbs” like vegetables, fruit and whole grains.

More recently, practitioners of the raw vegan diet claim that breaking down the enzymes in food by cooking it destroys nutritional value. Detractors say it’s too tough to stick to and that cooking actually makes the food more digestible and better assimilated by the body.

A hot new-ish diet is paleo, which is based on what humans ate in the Paleolithic era, with no sugars, grains, dairy or processed food. It focuses on healthy wholesome foods like wild fish, lean grass-fed meats, fruit and vegetables, combined with exercise.

The ketogenic diet was developed in the 1920s to treat children with epilepsy but has become very hot as of late. Also known as LCHF or low carb/high fat, it is based on counting “macros,” or calories, carbs (5 percent of your calories), protein (20 percent) and fat (75 percent), according to your age, gender, weight, and whether you want to lose, maintain or gain weight. Eating at these ratios causes your body to enter a state of ketosis, which is when ketone bodies in your liver cause you to burn fat for fuel instead of carbs. Recent studies have maintained that low-carb has better results in reducing diabetes and heart disease than lowfat.

K

eto is probably the newest on the scene of these diets. The carnivore diet is considered by some to be an outgrowth of keto, although clearly much more severe. The diet has many detractors beyond those of us that feel it’s just plain weird. It’s so restrictive that it has

to be very tough to stick to, especially when you have any kind of social life that involves sharing food with friends. As much as you may love steaks and bacon, they too can get boring after a while.

Variety is the spice of life, after all.

If everyone went carnivore, we’d run out of animals pretty quickly. Meats are rich in iron and iron can be toxic if you consume too much. Long-term studies on the effects of the diet are non-existent.

The benefits that we get from plant-based foods extend to eye and taste appeal, antioxidants, vitamins and fiber.

“The carnivore diet is not a diet I would recommend,” says Vicki Koenig, a New Paltz-based registered dietitian nutritionist and certified health coach with OptaVia. “It’s not something, I believe, one could sustain long-term. It reminds me of a fad; something trendy to follow. The best ‘diet’ is a food plan that supports health and has variety to choose from. Life is colorful!

“For me to recommend a carnivore diet,” Koenig adds, “I need to see some research (there is currently none!) on the long-term benefits of only eating animal products. The research would have to be especially strong for me to recommend eliminating so many healthy other foods!”

Koenig recommends the cardiometabolic food plan for her clients that “emphasizes a variety of proteins, good fats, lots of vegetables, and is fairly low in grains and starchy vegetables. There is some fruit with emphasis on low glycemic choices. It supports the heart and helps balance blood sugar.”

I’m not a nutritionist, but my personal feeling is that the pescatarian diet is probably the best. In practice I do eat meat because I crave it sometimes, but I feel that eating as few processed foods and as little refined sugars as possible is the way to go, with a good variety of foods.

Eating from just one food group just doesn’t make sense to me.

The folks on YouTube who have been practicing the carnivore diet for a while don’t look quite right to me. Their skin seems to have an odd texture.

They look sallow and unwell. While I don’t believe in telling people what to do or eat, we are all different in our nutritional needs. Even Dr. Ken Berry, who practices the carnivore diet, says it’s probably best for those of Nordic heritage and/or high Neanderthal DNA. He does not recommend it to his patients.

So, take that steak-only diet with a grain of salt.

And maybe pepper.

25, 2018 16 | October Healthy Body & Mind

Ulster Publishing Co.

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