Obesity is America’s number one health problem. It commonly leads to diabetes, Type 2, heart disease, kidney disease, and sometimes cancer.According to a recent report quoted by the New York Times, obese citizens spend about 42% more per year on health care than normal-weight Americans.”Obesity, and with it diabetes, are the only major health problems that are getting worse in this country, and they’re getting worse rapidly,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the Center for Disease Control, said.If obesity is driving up health care costs, what can we do about it? Ask doctors to charge less? Make the drug
companies provide free diabetes medicines and diet pills to obese people? Ask the insurance companies to provide their services for free?Maybe we could nationalize the whole health care system and force all American taxpayers share the cost equally of caring for these unfortunate Americans who are the victims of…what? The restaurant industry! That’s it! Fast food and Doritos did it to them! Lays potato chips: “Bet you can’t have just one!” They dared these poor souls to become addicted to their deadly products–and it worked!.I’m sorry. I’m being ridiculous to make a point. My point is, our health care system is buckling under the weight of
the expensive round-about procedures we do and drugs we provide to counteract the effects of what people are doing to themselves.Digging Our Graves With A Fork & Knife
We are a nation of food-aholics. Most of us don’t eat real foods prepared at home from fruit, vegetables, whole grains and beans. Most of what we eat has to center around either some animal meat and fat and lots of highly refined carbohydrates. Very few vitamins and minerals are left in our food–and almost no fiber. And we wonder why we get fat , have diabetes, heart attacks, and require expensive medical care.My medical care costs me nothing but the time it takes to do some daily exercises and eat right. Chalk
it up partially to vanity–I never wanted to let myself get overweight or suffer the diseases that plagued my family tree.A big part of my medical care is to eat what science and my conscience tells me I should, rather than stuff that merely tastes good.But it’s all worth it to me. I’m not pleading with the government to get me health care. Nobody had to inform me that eating too much of the wrong foods would make me sick: I figured it out on my own after reading a few good books and research reports. It wasn’t hard–and it was a benefit for me to stay well.What would I do about the health of the American people?
The best thing the health care professionals could do is to stop coddling us. Stop treating us like imbeciles.
Tell us the truth. I suspect that if doctors and public health officials leveled with citizens and told them the
golden truth that “We all are about 97% responsible for our own health, based on what we choose to eat,” it might make an impression after a while.It probably won’t happen, I know, because the fast-food industry and other makers of fat-food(meat packers and the dairy and sugar industries) are in control of our FDA and the US Department of Agriculture. They would scream bloody murder if the public were told the truth about how their food products are the reason our arteries are plugged up with cholesterol and why we’re growing obese.But, the bottom line is, we don’t have to eat those foods. Nobody is forcing us to eat foods that lead to heart
attacks, breast cancer, strokes, Alzheimer’s Disease, colon cancer, etc., etc. If you don’t believe me, then read the medical research that clearly establishes the connection between what we eat and these diseases.Did you know that there are still pockets of people who still eat traditional diets that are primarily vegetarian–and
they rarely have heart attacks. Their women very rarely get breast cancer. People of these nations live to 90 and 100 years frequently, with sharp minds, good eyesight and they continue to work in their gardens and orchards. They are respected and contributing members of their society. If we chose to eat like these people, we could reduce our need for expensive and dangerous health care.Here’s a simple truth of economics: If there was no demand for health care because everyone was healthy, then health care would be cheap. It’s a matter of supply and demand. A lot of cardiologists standing around with no triple-bypasses to do would quickly lower their prices. That’s my answer to the high cost of health care: Get healthy!How do you get healthy? A good starting place to help you understand what’s wrong with our typical American diet is a book by T. Colin Campbell, Jr., PhD, entitled “The China Study.”
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Commercial Financing Advice – Commercial Lenders to Avoid
This commercial financing article will describe the importance of avoiding “problem commercial lenders”. The article will NOT name specific lenders to avoid, but key examples will be provided to illustrate why prudent commercial borrowers should be prepared to avoid a wide variety of existing commercial lenders in their search for viable commercial financing.I have been advising business owners for over 25 years, and I have encountered many commercial financing situations which have involved commercial lenders that I would not recommend as a result. These problematic situations have especially involved commercial mortgage loans, credit card factoring and unsecured business loans. As a direct result of these experiences and daily conversations with other commercial financing professionals, I do in fact believe that there are a number of commercial lenders that should be avoided. This conclusion is typically based on more than one negative experience or an obvious pattern of lending abuses.I have published many articles which are designed to assist commercial borrowers in avoiding commercial financing problems. One of the most serious commercial financing situations is a commercial lender that causes problems for their commercial borrowers on a recurring basis. It is particularly this type of commercial lender which prudent commercial borrowers should be prepared to avoid unless viable alternative commercial financing options do not realistically exist.Here are a few examples of why certain commercial lenders should be avoided.COMMERCIAL FINANCING AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 1 – Yes or No?I have published an article which discusses the tendency of many banks to say “YES” when they mean “NO”. Such banks will typically attach onerous commercial financing conditions to business loans instead of simply declining the loan. Business owners should explore other business loan alternatives before accepting commercial financing terms that put them at a competitive disadvantage.COMMERCIAL FINANCING AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 2 – The Commercial Appraisal ProcessFor commercial real estate loans, commercial appraisals are an unavoidable part of the commercial loan underwriting process. The commercial appraisal process is lengthy and expensive, so avoiding commercial lenders which have displayed a pattern of problems and abuses in this area will benefit the commercial borrower by saving them both time and money.COMMERCIAL FINANCING AND COMMERCIAL LENDERS TO AVOID EXAMPLE NUMBER 3 – Think Outside the BankIn smaller metropolitan markets, it is not unusual for a dominant commercial lender to impose harsher commercial financing terms than would typically be seen in a more competitive commercial loan market. Such commercial lenders routinely take advantage of a relative lack of other commercial lenders in their local market. An appropriate response by commercial borrowers is to seek out non-bank commercial financing options. It is neither necessary nor wise for commercial borrowers to depend only upon local traditional banks for commercial financing solutions. For most commercial loan situations, a non-local and non-bank commercial lender is likely to provide improved commercial financing terms because they are accustomed to competing aggressively with other commercial lenders.Copyright 1995-2007 AEX Commercial Financing Group and Stephen Bush. All Rights Reserved.
Why Cloud Storage is a Better Idea for Small Businesses
Like big businesses, small businesses have varied requirements from infrastructure, IT deployment, daily operation, and manpower to data management. However unlike big businesses, small businesses have budget constraints that often limit their scope of expansion and expenditures in the needful projects. Despite the limitations it doesn’t mean that small businesses do not have options. In fact there is a plethora of options available for small businesses to fulfill their wide-ranging business requirements.One of such options is cloud storage, also called as online storage, for data management, which is the biggest need of small businesses. Cloud storage is an answer to all the prayers related to data backup and restore of small businesses which are more prone to data loss/damage as compared to large businesses. According to a survey, 70% of the small businesses shut down within one year of their operations after they suffer major data. According to a survey conducted by Sage North America, about 62% small companies do not have a proper disaster recovery plan in place for safety from catastrophic disasters, man-made debacles, accidental deletions, thefts, power outages, hardware failure. In the same survey, it was concluded that around 33% of the businesses do not have data backup and recovery plans in place because there hasn’t been observed any catastrophic disasters or emergencies in their areas while around 30% said that “have never thought about it”. Around 28% of the participants said that they regularly back up their data because they have major data losses in the past.This is the poorest scenario for any small business that needs to be able to run properly without facing operational hitches which may occur and recue in the absence of a proper data backup and recovery plan. If you run a small business from your home or office, you can understand how vital it is to keep your data organized and safe to be able to meet the tailor-made demands to your clients, protect your business ideas and information from competitors, and from employees who might take advantage of your personal or professional information for monetary purposes among other things.The question that arises here is ‘why small businesses do not pay attention to data backup and recovery plans when they cannot prevent a tornado or other such catastrophic disasters, accidental deletions, thefts, power outages, or hardware failure for that matter from occurring’? Small businesses may be taking this risk because data management is not affordable for them. Besides, regular data backups and recoveries on several devices involve lots of hassles that put them off from maintaining proper data management plans. However with the onset of cloud storage, it has become extremely convenient and affordable for small businesses to maintain data. Businesses can back up their data as many times as they want and access it anytime, anywhere from their computers, Smartphones, tablets, servers, and networks etc. connected to the Internet.Since your data is stored in a cloud server, which is the only place for all your digital possessions viz. emails, contacts, documents, images, family videos, music numbers, social network updates, and bank details etc., the cost of regularly data backups and recoveries drastically come down. It’s is because you don’t have to use multiple hard disks and/or USB devices to store your data. In the cloud server, your data is stored once and forever. You can access, add, delete, edit, re-edit, backup and restore your business data as many times as you want without going through the lengthy and cumbersome procedure.In fact the data stored in a cloud server remains protected and safe from the tactics of hackers. Besides, cloud storage services are scalable as you can store higher volumes of data according to your needs. With cloud storage, it only takes a computer, server or mobile device with an active Internet connection or Wi-Fi to be able to manage the data. Such a flexibility and convenience is absent from the external storage media on which the cost of backing up and recovering data is also very high, in fact the highest.Considering that cloud storage is the only contemporary, affordable, and viable solution for small businesses and users, several major tech giants including Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Netgear, and McAfee among others have come up with integrated cloud storage. Cloud storage is around 1,000 times more affordable than the external backup media whose reliability and safety are always at risk due to environment, physical conditions, catastrophic emergencies, accidental deletions, thefts, and other contingencies. Thus, if you own a small business, make sure that you cloud-power your data. It’s your choice to keep spending big money on the external storage media or spend only once and forever with a cloud storage services. It’s your choice if you want peace of mind or want to constantly run around losing business, clients, and money.