Ten Most Compelling Heath Stories of 2006

Another year down and done. Health was a big topic in the headlines for 2006. Here’s a recap of the topics that drew our interest during the past 12 months.

Story #10. Brain exercises buff up your thought processes. Brainy “push ups” keep your mind healthy and sleek. Video game companies, like Nintendo jumped on the bandwagon aiming new game sets at families. Brainage is one. But crossword puzzles, math games, vocabulary quizzes and similar complicated activities will do the job.

9. Bird flu. A real scare early in the year. Maybe it still is, but where did it go – and where are those headlines?

8. Plan B contraceptive pill was approved in August by the FDA for over the counter dispensing to women over 18 years of age. Those under 18 will need a prescription. One small step toward giving women control of their reproductive systems and decisions related to it. It didn’t do enough, though and left young women in the lurch.

7. For the time being vitamin D is in the spotlight (till someone decides all the studies are wrong, right?) It’s thought to help with Multiple Sclerosis. It might have an effect on breast cancer, ovarian cancer, kidney cancer, and others. Some studies seemed to show it reduces bone loss (osteoporosis). HPA Kids Web has a page of info about this miracle vitamin.

6. Cruise ship uproars. Viral infections, food poisoning, mystery ailments, ship malfunctions. My husband and I considered a cruise this year and then decided there might be something better to do with our time and resources. I had conversations with several friends who took cruises and had major problems that never made it to the headlines. Maybe all those cruise lines need to step back and rethink how they’re doing things.

5. Americans seem to be eating fewer high-risk foods because of constant publicity about them. We consume less pink hamburger or ground beef, far less raw fish or oysters, not much unpasturized dairy, undercooked or uncooked eggs and we’ve slowed down on alfalfa sprouts. This according to WebMD.com.

4. Transfats got whacked by the government and everyone else on earth. About time, I think. Ask any cardiologist – he or she will tell you transfat is suicide on a plate. It will kill you sooner than later. With all the choices we have, there’s no reason to keep eating foods that contain transfats. Anyway, they make you fatter than other fats and that’s worth thinking about. See if you can find an older book called, The Omega Diet. It talks about the relationships between types of fats and your heart and brain health. Quite interesting and the food plan is delicious.

3. In 2006 we learned with more surety that women, seniors and minorities are not the same when you’re talking about health. Prevention, diagnosis and treatment of everything needs to be specific. Studies repeatedly show that race, sex, gender, age, cultural barriers, and socio-economic factors are primary reasons why some groups consistently experience poorer outcomes in major health areas from cancer to heart disease, says Newswise .

2. Vaccination for cancer. I like this one. The new vaccine is against human papillomavirus (HPV) and should immunize us women against infection by two strains of HPV, which seem to be the cause of about 3/4 of cervical cancers.

1.Food contamination. How often did we read about worries with our food supply. People began asking each other if it was terrorists. There was E Coli in spinach, then green onions at Taco Bell, then NOT green onions, but lettuce. Then I read something about 300 cases of something in diners who ate at Olive Garden Restaurants. Then Letterman made an issue of that for about a week. So what was the end of the story?

Grandmothers Counsel the World (Indigenous Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet) by Carol Schaefer

Published by Trumpeter Books (Shambhala Publications), 2006.
$18.95 – 160 pages
ISBN 1-59030-293-1

“What would the world be like if our grandmothers were in charge?”

Ponder that. It’s the first line of the introduction in Grandmothers Counsel the World (Indigenous Women Elders Offer Their Vision for Our Planet). I’m disappointed the project that spawned the book is not widely known. It’s further disappointing that the book has come quietly upon the scene with no fanfare and little notice. I can’t even remember how I stumbled upon it, but I’m happy I did. This is, for one thing, a song of the value of age and experience. It’s also a poem to the strength and resilience of women of every age.

We’re told at the front of the book that an ancient prophecy is being fulfilled: “When the grandmothers from the four directions speak, a new time is coming.” The fulfillment began in 1986 with a sacred fire outside the U.N. Building, ignited by a chief of the Iroquois Nation. From that fire, a torch was carried, the story goes, through 62 countries in 86 days by runners. The fire now resides in New Mexico, continuously burning. It traveled once more in 2004 to spark the meeting of 13 grandmothers, called “keepers of their tribe’s teachings from original times.”

Muddled up in this modern folk story are allusions to 9/11 and the new millennium, though chronology, as I read it, doesn’t mesh without vivid imagination. No matter. Elder women coming together to change the world is long over due. Men have been in charge for a long time. We’re in a mess. I like to think these grandmothers have the power to bring change. I think we all do, and if the women who speak in Grandmothers Counsel… encourage us to take back our individual power and create a new world, I’m for it.

Reading this is a calmative. The women’s stories are warm and personal, the photographs compel us to think deeply about beauty, about how lives might be lived better, and what would happen if. A deep lesson lies within the book – when everyone benefits, the individual benefits more.

Nothing in this story is new. We know that life is difficult and sacred. Our genetic memory clues us to a world of spirits, even if it’s deep inside each person. No one is unaware that there has been a corruption of human spirit. Overlook the hammering in the introductory and explanatory pages.

Author Carol Schaefer, well-known journalist, tries hard, maybe too hard, to write beautifully. Schaefer has written two other books, one fiction, one non-. This time, at least, she seems as conscious of her own prose as she is of the natural beauty of the ideas before her. The text-book sort of environment she chucks us into from the first is mildly annoying. We need the background to understand how the grandmothers came together and what they’ll do next. But her explanatory writing is something like Oliver Stone’s directing. We get it way early. The feeling is a little like being in a closed space with a woman wearing too much of a beautiful perfume.

Once I got through the obvious and over-stated, the indigenous women’s voices drew me in, making me hungry for more. Schaefer seemed to relax, intruding less. I liked her better when she stepped back and allowed it to unfold.

They speak of things that matter in everyday life and yet hugely impact our world. They speak of reciprocity to balance nature – how ritual and ceremony, no matter the genre, create energy for such reciprocity. Their stories remind us of the healing power of nature and the value of traditional healers. Simplicity is a constant theme.

We get to look into these women’s simple lives, each of them dedicated to nurturing and protecting their people. Each of them has faced adversity larger than what many are asked to overcome. We read about women overcoming alcoholism and drug addiction. We’re shown abject poverty and what it’s like to reach rock bottom. And we learn what one has to do to climb back and then go higher.

Grandmother Flordemayo, a Mayan, tells us women will walk with power. “We have an incredible journey and responsibility as women….We must learn to stay balanced in the moment.” I’ve heard modern, sophisticated mental health professionals say nearly the same thing. Then they go on to another pontification, but, refreshingly, Flordemayo explains how to achieve that balance.

Yupik grandmother Rita, from the Artic Circle believes we choose our parents before we are born and our learning begins in the womb – the epitome of life-long learning and something to think about. When people come to her for healing, her approach is wonderful, “The secret is, I don’t know anything. All I know is I am Rita Pitka Blumenstein. I am your friend, I am not sick, not sad, not angry. What about you?”

They speak of excesses and the modern addiction to “bigger is better.” Picture city folk bent on camping out and communing with nature. There has to be a camper, lots of supplies, and the obligatory bonfire. Tree limbs, indeed, whole trunks are piled high, the whole thing is torched and everyone stands back, out of harms way.

One grandmother ponders why non-native people build huge fires that make them all stand apart from each other. Native peoples build small fires that draw everyone together.

I heartily encourage you to add this book to your library, if you can find it. It’s beautiful to look at and inspiring to read, the perfect thing for winter evenings by the fire, or summer leisure on the front porch. It’s a great read-aloud. A bringer-together of people. A reminder.

Will Grandmothers Counsel the World bring about world peace? Not in our lifetimes, I fear. But the idea of elders gathering to collect their wisdom and experience is right. Compiling, for our children, the body of what we’ve learned as we struggled through life and what our elders told us of theirs, is right. It’s been done through all the ages. The grandmothers remind us we’re mandated to treasure our collective past and learn from it.

Nothing astonishingly new, but a great deal to be remembered and reborn.

MORE:

Grandmothers’ Council
Sacred Studies
The Next 7 Generations
Kayumari

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