Tag: California

General interest/Health/Money/USA
Posted on

How's your brain fitness today?

by Fran Johns

Pick five random numbers, say them out loud. Now say them backward. No fair using props. You have now exercised your brain, and your brain appreciates it.

Alvaro Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of SharpBrains, author of The SharpBrains Guide to Brain Fitness, enthusiastic speaker on healthy brains and how to keep them, addressed a group at the New York Library — great spot for exercising brains — recently and another in San Francisco a few days later. If you’ve ever despaired over forgetfulness or worried about some day getting Alzheimer’s, Mr. Fernandez will brighten your day. Much as the gym trainers promise you your muscles can be strengthened, Alvaro Fernandez can convince you those neurons can multiply and prosper. With an energy and demeanor to match his several degrees, he may one day be the Jack Lalanne of brain fitness.

The San Francisco audience was made up of members of San Francisco Village, the second such aging-in-place organization in California. (Other village-concept communities are springing up across the country, preferred options for many seniors who want to stay in their homes.) Most of them highly active and engaged, they were receptive to Fernandez’ proposals about how to stay that way.

Fernandez began by offering facts to debunk a few popular myths about brain function: Lifelong neuroplasticity means we can always help our brains evolve through lifestyle and activities; brain function can be affected by a variety of things, from yoga to cognitive therapy; and nothing is carved in stone that says brains deteriorate with age. In short, you might not be able to avoid Alzheimer’s completely if it’s in your genes and your karma, but you might well be able to forestall it with vigorous exercise.

Four “pillars of maintenance” will keep the brain fit, Fernandez says: good nutrition, stress managment, physical exercise and brain exercise. Potato chips and TV are not on the pillars list. The best comment of the event, in fact, probably came from author/healthy aging expert and SF Village advisory board member Walter Bortz, MD, who quoted a Harvard study that revealed “watching TV is like staring at a brick wall.”

Your brain is, when you come right down to it, not interested in the TV.

General interest/Health/Politics & Causes/USA
Posted on

Pelosi's Plea for Calm

by Fran Johns

However you feel about Nancy Pelosi’s performance as Speaker of the House so far, or however much you agree or disagree with her views, yesterday’s comment (as reported by San Francisco Chronicle Washington staffer Carolyn Lochhead) is worth both consideration and support.

For the first time anyone can remember, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi teared up at a news conference Thursday morning in response to a question about the current state of political discourse.

Visibly struggling to retain her composure, Pelosi recalled a time in San Francisco when emotions ran out of control, referring to the 1978 assassination of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk by former Supervisor Dan White.

“We are a free country, and this balance between freedom and safety is one that we have to carefully balance,” Pelosi began. She then became emotional as she recalled the events, startling the reporters gathered for the weekly news conference.

“I saw this, myself, in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” she said. “This kind of rhetoric was very frightening and it created a climate in which violence took place.”

I was not it San Francisco at the time, but those who were affirm that the intensity of anger, fear and hostility abroad in the community at large offered the ground out of which such an appalling act could grow. Many say the movie Milk accurately caught that mood, and watching the movie made my heart rate accelerate. I don’t think we need any more heart rate acceleration in the U.S. right now.

Regaining control, (Pelosi) expressed a wish that “we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made” and “take responsibility” for what is said.

Those of us who have lived through other periods of polarization in this country — the McCarthy witch hunts, the Vietnam war, the battles for civil rights — retain vivid memories of too many brutalities, assassinations and cruelties. Pelosi is right about the need to retain a balance between freedom and safety. Unless we return to some semblance of civility in the public discourse we stand the chance of losing either, or both.

via Emotional Pelosi urges civility in discourse.

General interest/Money/Politics & Causes/USA
Posted on

Will consumerism rise again?

by Fran Johns

For some reason, maybe it’s the stock market, maybe it’s just wishful thinking-of-anything-but-wars-&-health-reform, consumerism is all over the news of late. Summer tourists didn’t tour as much or buy enough, clunkers were eagerly turned in for cars, caution abounds in the land. People are even beginning to save for the rainy days that have not yet cloudburst upon them.

A closer look at all this was taken through a couple of recent studies reported on by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Tom Abate this morning. Abate focuses on California, but the trends are all over.

California will trail the nation in emerging from the Great Recession, as consumers save more and spend less in a behavior shift that will slow growth and job creation in the short term but eventually lead to a stronger economy.

That message emerged from two separate reports released Tuesday by the UCLA Anderson Forecast and Beacon Economics, a consulting practice with offices in San Rafael.

Both forecasts characterized California as the epicenter of back-to-back consumption binges fueled by the dot-com boom and the housing bubble, and argued that now the state faces big adjustments as it recovers from ills that have long plagued the U.S. economy.

“Consumers have been on a spending binge ever since 1995,” said Jon Haveman with Beacon Economics, as soaring 401(k)s and, later, inflated home prices made Americans feel so wealthy they stopped saving money.

California, of course, rather outdid itself in the business of spending too much, buying too much and borrowing to do more of the same, but none of this was peculiar to the left coast.

It did not go unremarked, however, by one of the current candidates for Mayor of New York, Rev. Billy. You don’t know Rev. Billy of the Church of Stop Shopping? You’ve been missing something. The Rev, probably going on the ballot as Bill Talen, does not get the coverage that other candidates do, but he is dead serious about his mission and pretty raucous about delivering the message. He is seriously running for Mayor. He doesn’t like consumerism, or the corporate takeover of America, or war. At times his church becomes the Church of Stop the Bombing. In any event, if we’d been listening to Rev. Billy all these years we might have missed getting in quite so deep a mess — but we’d also have missed a lot of Starbucks lattes.

Now comes word that senior shopping at Walgreen, Rite-Aid and Family Dollar stores is going to be made more comfortable, just in time for Boomers to start turning 65 in 2011. According to a recent Wall Street Journal story by Ellen Byron, in one exercise designed to help participants in a Kimberly-Clark program understand the difficulties confronting senior shoppers, Kimberly-Clark executive Don Quigley tried going through the aisles with dark-tinted glasses, un-popped popcorn in his shoes and his thumbs taped to his palms. This rather hurts my senior-shopper feelings if it is how Rite-Aid sees me, but I will try to appreciate the effort.

It appears that we current savers/cautious spenders are not expected to change back to rampant consumerism overnight, which is good news to the senior seniors of us, brought up so rigorously in the save-first-spend-later mode that we feel better within it anyway.

Ed Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said consumers usually roar back from recessions with spending that lifts production and fuels hiring, but he thinks that is unlikely during this recovery because Americans have been living beyond their means for too long – borrowing too much and importing more than the country sells abroad.”We need to turn our shopping malls into factories,” Leamer said “Our economy over the next decade is going to have to build more of the stuff we buy.”

Haveman said the painful adjustments now under way should eventually benefit California and the Bay Area, which lead in technology, biotechnology, clean energy and other cutting-edge industries.

“The light at the end of the tunnel is visible, but it’s still a long way off,” he said.

That business about turning shopping malls into factories and living within means — that’s going to please Rev. Billy.

Fundamental economic shift underlies recovery.

Health/Politics & Causes
Posted on

Health Care that Works: Integrated Medicine

by Fran Johns
President Obama speaks at a Portsmouth, NH event on August 11 (Darren McCollester/Getty)
President Obama speaks at a Portsmouth, NH event on August 11 (Darren McCollester/Getty)

Last night’s NewsHour included a segment that gives me hope: a clip of President Obama citing integrated medical systems that are actually working, followed by an excellent in-depth piece on the Billings MT clinic that proves the point. Billings is only one of such examples.

How do they work? By getting everybody under one roof and coordinating patient care. By letting different specialties work together, rather than sending a patient from one to another to another. By compensating doctors with salaries. This last is a sticking point: if you own a piece of the MRI business, for example, you might just be inclined to order more MRIs. Or you’re tied to the work-harder-get-richer principle. But more and more doctors seem interested in having a life, in not being on call 24 hours a day, in earning good money (integrated system compensations compare well with private practices) while focusing on patient care — without over-prescribing and over-ordering to guard against getting sued.

Why does this make such good sense? Because most patients (not all) sing its praises. Because integrated care saves money by keeping people healthier, reducing unnecessary procedures, keeping people out of hospitals… the list goes on.

My oncologist retired a year after a 2006 breast cancer episode. I went to meet my new choice on the 8th floor of Kaiser Medical Center in March, 2008. She looked at lab tests (2nd floor), spotted anemia, said I shouldn’t be anemic, ordered colonoscopy/endoscopy. G.I. doc (2nd floor) found celiac disease in June, connected me to nutritionist (across the street) and to endocrinologist (6th floor) who helped me design diet plus vitamins etc so I’m healthy again. Physical therapist (4th floor) discussed fitness plans. All of these specialists, my surgeon (2nd floor) and my primary care doc (4th floor) are friends. All respond to frequent e-mails within 24 hours, saving multiple calls and appointments. All post test results, etc on my personal web page. Thus, over a 3-year period: one overnight hospitalization for mastectomy, one out-patient procedure, a reasonable number of appointments, healthy patient.

Not everybody loves Kaiser, or the other clinics being studied. But it’s a model that works.

General interest
Posted on

Co-housing: Not Your Grandmother's Commune

by Fran Johns

Somewhat like 60 being the new 40, co-housing is the new yesterday’s small town. Think pioneer groups sharing meals around a campfire… then think post-2000 college grads seeking affordable housing and wanting community; or think 60s communes with wifi and central air conditioning. You’ll get an idea of today’s growing U.S. co-housing movement. (The term is written with or without a hyphen.)

At a recent OWL-sponsored panel discussion, two representatives of different (in some ways vastly different) California cohousing projects outlined some of the reasons this option is attractive to Boomers (downsize into simpler lifestyle, find community) and seniors (anticipate future needs, find community) in particular, but multi-generational others as well. The big key word: community. Cohousing villages are designed and self-managed with intention. They range from west coast to east and in between, from simple to posh, urban to rural. Swan’s Market in downtown Oakland, CA is on the National Register of Historic Places in an area fast morphing from down-and-out to up-and- coming. Mosaic Commons in Berlin, MA west of Boston boasts of green space, green planning, green building. Blue Ridge Commons near Charlottesville, VA touts organic gardens and a renovated 1890s farmhouse, while recently completed Great Oak Cohousing, Ann Arbor MI’s second such venture, lists 30-some households which include “about 65 adults” and “about 37 kids.” Cohousing populations are moving targets.

The common thread is the desire for economically and ecologically viable close-community living. Most cohousing villages have at least two or three shared meals per week with everyone taking turns in the communal kitchen, while the rest of the time residents dine at home. Most share other things like laundry space, recreational space and assorted activities. The same occasional conflicts that probably afflicted cave dwellers arise among today’s cohousing residents, but enthusiasm runs rampant.

And increasing numbers of Americans are considering, or at the very least familiar with, the concept. This reporter appeared to be the only person in an overflow audience who had to ask who the oft-mentioned Chuck and Katie were. (Kathryn McCamant and Charles Durrett; they wrote the book.)

Health/Money
Posted on

Waterfront Condos: More on the housing dilemma

by Fran Johns

Waterfront esplanade, expansive views from a sunny terrace, walk to the ballpark — what’s not to love about this housing choice?

Downsizing from a large, Victorian house filled to overflowing with the accumulations of two very active lives, the Langleys of San Francisco decamped, a few months ago, to a new, easy-care, sun-filled two-bedroom condo in the city’s happening-place Mission Bay neighborhood. They love the convenience, the mix of ages and cultures, the freedom from old-house maintenance worries and some unexpected bonuses like new friends living on houseboats from another era who are within conversation range of their 4th floor deck. “We (the new condo development) block the view they used to have all those years,” Judy Langley says, “but there are a lot of  trade-offs like getting the creek (which leads into San Francisco Bay) cleaned up, and the park over there…” For the newcomers, the young dog-walkers on the esplanade below, the middle-aged Chinese couple doing tai chi on the common lawn, it is an urban idyll.

Urban condos, even those without kayaks at the door and aged houseboats for neighbors, are an increasingly popular answer to the downsizing dilemma. But the dilemma remains huge and answers are seldom easy.

On the day the Langleys were hosting an Open House in their new digs, my sister was packing the last boxes from the high-ceilinged Boston condo that’s been her family’s home for decades. She and her husband are headed for a New York retirement community to which a physician daughter will also relocate from the west coast. Elsewhere this weekend a childhood friend was finalizing plans for a move from Northern Virginia to a coastal community where her husband will be able to live in a Memory Unit while she lives independently nearby.

These choices typify the variety of factors that go into contemporary downsizing decision-making: Is it affordable? Will I (or my parents) have the care that’s needed? Can life still be good (or even get better?)

And any of these families might also have considered co-housing. Yet another option for Boomers and Beyonders as well as for younger families and individuals, co-housing in some ways harkens back to a simpler, long-ago lifestyle and in other ways could only work in the 21st century. It was the topic of an OWL-sponsored panel discussion on Saturday, and will be tomorrow’s Boomers and Beyond topic.

General interest
Posted on

Grassroots Healthcare Reform

by Fran Johns

If we get a health reform bill, it may be thanks in part to a push from the ground up. That belief is leading to a variety of grassroots support endeavors.

At a hospital-sponsored town hall meeting on the issue this week in San Francisco attendees were invited to take the microphone to tell their stories. Probably a bad idea at any meeting, since such an invitation guarantees off-point rambles and rages and this one certainly proved the point — but there were enough horror stories to assure everyone that our current non-system is a train wreck.

A cardboard cut-out of President Obama stood at the back of the room (there was a lot of photo-op going on before things got started) and the promise was that videos of the stories would go straight to Washington to help speed passage of the hoped-for health reform bill.

Participants told of needed care that couldn’t be found, needed drugs that couldn’t be bought and the widespread suffering of the un- or under-insured. A panel of local experts presented aspects of the hoped-for national plan and spoke of San Francisco’s own moderately successful effort to provide health coverage for all.

Speakers were asked to keep their remarks to under three minutes, another dictum doomed to failure, and a few did. My own plea (one minute, forty seconds) was for inclusion of some guarantee/protection of individual choice at the end of life. It stemmed from working for many years (as I still do) with terminally ill adults who seek options including hastening their dying. It was tempered in deference to the hosts, since St. Francis is a member of Catholic Healthcare West and the opposition of the Catholic Church was largely responsible for defeat of a widely popular physician aid-in-dying bill that narrowly failed in California two years ago. And the likelihood of such a controversial issue getting into the massively complex bill we may or may not get is somewhere between slim and none, but what the heck. With Mr. Obama standing there, I couldn’t resist.

At similar gatherings around the country, I suspect the message and the messengers are much the same. Health reform is a national need that translates in millions of heartbreaking individual stories.

My personal favorite message came from panel member Catherine Dodd, PhD, RN, District Chief of Staff for Nancy Pelosi in her pre-Speaker days. Dodd explained the current three-fold status (two in the Senate and one in the House) of the healthcare bill and defended its  probable cost. Then she threw out one new number: 19.7. After everyone had let 19.7 sink in, she told us that is the number of years it has taken this country, every time a health reform bill has been floated, to bring it up again. “We can’t afford another 19.7 years,” she said. I think she’s right.

1 2 3 4