Ornish and the American Working Class: Reflections on Heart Disease

A week of mild chest pain sent me to the bookstore to look up Dean Ornish MD.

When a patient broke my ribs and damaged my lung and back a couple years ago, a CT of the affected area revealed that I have moderate to severe Coronary Artery Disease (CAD). The test revealed calcification of those ever important arteries that keeps the heart alive. After getting the diagnosis, I did all the things you are supposed to do: I got a stress test. I had already gotten my cholesterol under control and have had dramatic improvement in those important numbers. I take a statin. I take Niacin and Fish Oil, Cinnamon, Vitamin D, Calcium, Magnesium. These items have brought my cholesterol down and my HDL/LDL ratio to dramatically improve. The numbers say I am at a low risk; I know better than that.

For those who don't know, Dr. Dean Ornish is the guru of diet, exercise and stress reduction to treat heart disease. His program is revolutionary in that he actually proved that CAD can be reversed. In his latest book, Spectrum, he tries to change his image from the No Fat Ascetic that he used to be, to a more reasonable, "everything in moderation" sort of guy. His whole approach now is to lean to the Spectrum of good health behaviors and diet, according to the desired result of the patient. The sicker you are, the more to the good side you should spend most of your time. It is a Spectrum.

When Ornish originally introduced his program, it was very effective. The problem was that the lifestyle changes required were not sustainable for most people. It was too severe.

What Ornish and his colleagues have also discovered is that you can treat Prostate Cancer with the same approach and have documented evidence of slowing and stopping the progression of Prostate Cancer by using his techniques.

Well, I have both conditions. Coronary Artery Disease and an elevated PSA that resulted in a negative biopsy last Spring. I will never, ever have another biopsy, no matter what my PSA numbers elevate to, because the one I did have got infected and I felt extremely ill for almost two months after it. The procedure is painful and often leads to infection. I'll take my chances on cancer.

So how's the chest pain? I started back on a blood pressure medication that I had run out of  and that seems to have taken care of it. But with CAD, you know it is there, lurking like a shark, waiting to attack.

I have a very sedentary new lifestyle. I love this new job, but driving from 7 am to 7 pm takes a toll. I drive to drop Kylie off in the morning, then drive to an appointment and then sit and talk; drive to the next one and sit and talk; drive to the next one and sit and talk. It is not unusual for me to drive over 200 miles a day. My territory is huge from Oroville to Corning; Los Molinas to Willows; Orland and Chico to Magalia. My territory is as large as some New England States. That's a lot of sitting.

I joined a gym but have been increasingly fatigued while trying to muster the energy to run on the treadmill. I walk now--when I can fit a visit in. My new life of getting up so damned early, not getting enough sleep, 16 hour days, a job that requires lots of home time charting, and endless travel have taken a toll.

Since nothing can really change in my life (I need this job to survive with all the travel, long hours and sedentariness)---the only thing that can really change (and needs to change) is the way I eat. Ornish is right about this.

But there is something that just makes me feel very unsettled about these health Gurus like Ornish and Andy Weil. What I find so unsettling about both of them is the way they advocate a certain amount of personal piety but do not ever examine the larger picture that creates the need for the personal piety.

Ornish acknowledges his friends in the back of the book: it reads like a Whose
Who from Bono to Bill Clinton. Tony Robbins is even in there---and if there was ever a Guru of personal self indulgence with no hint of social responsibility it would be Tony Robbins. The impression is that this lifestyle is for the elite; and in fact, it is mostly the middle to upper classes who have the economic privilege to be able to spend the time and energy it takes to become healthy. You don't see many low wage workers from McDonald's entering Ornish's program at the Cleveland Clinic. Alternative heart disease treatment is for the well educated monied class. The rest of us take a pill and go back to work with the endless hours, low pay and fast food drive-thrus.

It is too easy to sit back and blame the lazy American for being fat and not caring about his/her health. Screw that: the American Working Class are working too hard to provide for their families to pay attention to taking care of themselves. And the choices offered are easy, unhealthy but time saving. And time is the one thing the American Working Class does not have.

And so that leads me to this question: What is more important for the health of a population: an Active Government that is interested in the health of its citizens (think Norway or Cuba) or the Personal Piety of the democratic masses (think Ornish and Weil)? I would argue that the Government is more important.

Something to think about. In the meantime, time to start eating oatmeal and broccoli.

Thanksgiving Day Heroes...

Thanksgiving 2014.

It is a quiet one with just Joni, Kylie and me home to celebrate it. Of course, I'm still kind of getting used to this idea of having a normal 9 to 5, weekends-and-holidays-off job. It is abnormal for me to have such a normal life. So many take if for granted to have weekends and holidays off. Just like so many take it for granted to go to bed at night and not have to work a job that makes you stay awake all night, being alert while the rest of creation slumbers.

In one sense, that makes me a recovering nurse. Recovering from the weird schedules, endless hours and major holidays worked. All of that takes a toll on one's health. And on one's family.

And so I think of all those public servants who work taking care of others on the holidays, weekends and nights. They sacrifice a whole lot just so that the rest of us are taken care of. Bless them. They are heroes. My friend, Jaime O'Neill had a column recently that said much the same thing. As usual, he is right.

Joni was lauded by the CNR as a hero for her courage and pluck when she took on the Big Oil people in court. If life ever imitated a Frank Kapra movie, Joni doing her own legal research and having the guts to petition in court against million dollar lawyers certainly would qualify. She deserves all of the praise she has received for this brave act.

I watched her go through the whole process. She spent hours in the law library. She just said, after the Big Oil lawyers intimidated Butte County into withdrawing the petition, "Enough!" Although she was unsuccessful getting it on the ballot this election cycle, it will be on the ballot for the next election. Big Oil doesn't always win. We'll get to prove that in 2016.

The Holiday Season: Beauty and Joy...

Okay, enough of the elections. On to less controversial subjects---like, religion. You can't avoid it this time of the year. Christmas combines Christianity, Paganism and the Secular Religion of Consumerism---all thrown together like a bad stew.

I'm old school so the Holiday Season really shouldn't start until the leftovers from Thanksgiving have been fully consumed. When the stuffing is gone and the turkey is stored away in the freezer, then it is time to break out the Christmas Music. My favorite being John Denver's Christmas Album.

That's when we get our tree. We thin some of the pines around here and find, generally, an anemic tree that is packed too close together with other trees. And since we have an 18 foot high ceiling, we can get a tall one. It is a fine pagan tradition---which, of course, comprise most of the Holiday traditions.

This time of the year, you need a celebration to make it through the, literal, northern hemisphere darkness.

Of all the holidays we celebrate in the US, Thanksgiving seems to be the least adulterated. I think all of us can get behind the rather simple notion of being thankful for the harvest. Okay, so nowadays we celebrate the harvest of mostly GMO crops while eating a bird that was blown up with growth hormones and anti-biotics while the poor gobbler more than likely never got to see the sun or breathe fresh air. We celebrate the ideal while ignoring the real way things are done.

So yes, we splurge and buy a fresh, organic, happy turkey. It costs forty dollars more but it is more than worth it. Another tradition out here on the Left Coast, and maybe a bit more Foodily Correct is the practice of eating Dungeness Crab on Thanksgiving. The Crab opener often coincides with Thanksgiving. Dungeness Crab is a success story the way it is sustainably harvested. No guilt while eating Crab. And it is delicious.

But I meant to write about Religion in this post. That's the direction I was headed when thinking about the Christmas Season. And the point I wanted to make? Religion is best when reduced to being about Beauty and Joy. Beauty and Joy are sufficient mystery enough to complete any catechism. We need not worry about Transubstantiation or Virgin Births or Magi or Heaven or Hell or Cartesian Arguments for the Existence of God or Baptism or Circumcision or Original Sin or Communion or Confession or Sermons or Rosaries or Stations of the Cross or an After Life. Beauty and Joy are sufficient mystery for me.

And a corollary is true too: Beauty and Joy should comprise the basic tenets of our political ideology. We need a politics of Joy and Beauty as our response to creating the world we live in.

The Local Dems and Jerry Brown's Dog...

At Costco the other day, I ran into a Chico City Council candidate who had some pretty choice words for me regarding this blog and my reaction to the Slate Mailer Scandal. I had written that I hoped the Chico City Council Democrats lost the election due to their use of deceptive Slate Mailers. "You got your wish", this Candidate said---going on to say that their loss (the Dem. City Council Candidates) was my fault. And then this Candidate attempted to guilt me with the "We need to stick together come hell or high water" argument.

It was a good conversation. This poor Candidate had paid $500 to put a name on something that took him/her by surprise. The amount of exposure the mailing would give the Candidate was just too tempting. It was obvious that this scandal had shook him/her to the core. "My reputation means everything to me and now I've been slimed".

And then there was the story of the door hangers. The door hangers had President Clinton's face on it. This Candidate wanted to celebrate Obama and complained. So President Clinton's face was taken off the door hanger and guess whose face replaced him? Jerry Brown's dog. Yes, you read that right: The consultants for the local Dems thought that Jerry Brown's dog was more popular than President Obama.

Was I wrong for being so hard on this Candidate? No. This decent person got caught up in Machiavellian politics and this was way beneath him/her. Tactics matter. They matter in every campaign. Especially if you are the minority party or if you are attempting to defend turf---which was true in this Chico City Election.

At a meeting last night of the Paradise Democratic Club, the whole issue of the Slate Mailers, the Door Hangers and the Democratic Party's endorsement of the Cannabis Industry was pretty much ignored. It seems everyone wants to forget about this past election. We forget at our peril.

And so there will be a meeting on December 7 for a post mortem of the Butte County Democratic Party's behavior in the last election. I plan on attending. Should these things be ignored, I fully intend to drop my registration in the Democratic Party.

Why Isn't Butte County Blue?

In 2008, Barack Obama won Butte County. He turned Butte County blue. In 2012, he nearly did it again, losing to Mitt Romney by just a two thousand votes and two percentage points. In 2010, Jim Reed, the candidate for the Dems against Republican U.S. House Representative Wally Herger actually took Butte County. And in 2012,  Democrat Jim Reed lost to Doug LaMalfa by two points in Doug LaMalfa's home county.

In 2004, Kerry got walloped by George Bush in Butte County. In 2000, Al Gore did even worse than John Kerry.

But there has been a trend: Gore did awful (Nader took 6 percent of the vote that year, probably the entire listenership of KZFR turned out to vote for him); Kerry did less awful in 2004; Obama won in 2008 and nearly pulled it off a second time in 2012.

The trend over the first 12 years of this century was that the Democrats made significant progress in Butte County. And that makes sense because Chico continues to grow and lots of retirees from more Liberal areas of California have settled into the very affordable retirement communities of Paradise and Magalia. Yes, the Dems should have continued to do well. Yet, in 2014, the election's numbers looked more like they did in 2000. Why? Why did the progress towards Blueness stop?

Of course, much of it is about turnout. In 2008, the turnout was an astounding 87 percent! Even in off year elections, turnout in Butte County has been good---usually around 66 percent. In Presidential elections, Butte County votes in the 80 percent range. Butte County citizens like to vote; they turnout in droves.

And it looks like the turnout this year was better than expected: 52.5 percent. That's well above the average in California. So how did the Dems do in a low turnout year? Heidi Hall was the Democrat running against Doug LaMalfa this year. She turned out to be an excellent candidate. Sharp. A good campaigner. She did great in the debates. But she got beat by Doug LaMalfa 56% to 44% in Butte County. Jerry Brown nearly took Butte County, but not quite. Of course, in Chico, the Democratic candidates for city counsel all got pummeled.

So why the loss of ground by the Democrats in 2014? Especially since Democrats have been gaining ground every year since 2000. Turnout is obviously part of it. If the turnout had been more in the normal range, the Dems obviously would have done better. The fact that turnout was low even in Butte County compared to the past five or six elections is, in itself, a statement. People just didn't have a reason to go to the polls. They have become disenfranchised.

And then there is the fact that the Democratic Central Committee endorsed a very unpopular Cannabis Measure that was written by the rowdy Cannabis Industry. Half the population in Butte County lives in the unincorporated areas. In these areas that have witnessed the problems caused by the influx of Pot Growers from all across the country, Measure B (written by the Cannabis Industry) was very unpopular. The Growers got walloped despite spending a couple hundred thousand dollars and owning the television airwaves with their "it will hurt the patients" commercials. Aligning themselves with the scruffy Cannabis Industry was a major mistake. It seemed the Urban Democrats did everything possible to screw up this election: they played dirty tricks with mailers, they ignored their neighbors in the unincorporated areas that said the Cannabis Industry was out of control. The Urban Democrats chose Hipster Culture over listening to real life problems.

Which is probably why the turnout was so low this year. Nobody in the major parties is listening to the real problems that people have. It was an election of airy fairy issues and slogans. The Urban Democrats felt that regulating an industry that is/was out of control was "prohibition". They got their shirts handed to them.

The Chico Democrats thought they could trick their way into retaining power. It didn't work.

What's the solution? Start to listen. Develop a rural program that addresses the needs of rural and urban people. And don't wear ideological blinders that skews your analysis as to the real consequences of Hipster Values. The Democrats certainly misread the anger against the Cannabis Industry. All it would have taken for these Dems to change their minds was to go knock on a few doors out in the country (if you can get past the pitbulls and the armed citizenry). Rural Butte County has changed over the last few years. Endorsing Measures that will cause more problems was not a popular, nor a smart, strategy.

So what will happen in 2016? The Democrats will only turn this county blue if they start to listen to what the needs of the people are. There is no rural program in the Democratic Party. Until they develop one, the people will continue to vote for the party that actually seems to listen to them. Right now the Dems just seem to want to bark at them. To pontificate. Or to obfuscate. That doesn't work. This year proved that assertion quite well.

Fallout...

Gotta learn to stick to my guns. On June 5, 2014, I wrote:

"Cannabis Advocates like Andrew Merkel, with their hundreds of thousands of dollars and an army of stoned volunteers, might not have such an easy time of it in Butte County this Fall. They won two years ago with a ballot measure that was difficult to comprehend what you were voting for, or against. This time the lines will be better defined and we are beginning to understand the social and environmental costs of a massive Cannabis Economy. I think the Chico ER under-estimates the backlash against the Cannabis Industry. I think the vote will be very close this Fall."

Of course, it wasn't close. The advocates of having a commercial cannabis industry got handed quite a loss. And turnout looks like it was better than at first suggested. Some 15,000 uncounted ballots brings the turnout up to over 50%. All of these will come from the Mail In ballots that just got handed in at the polls, plus some Provisional ballots. About half these ballots have now been counted and there hasn't been much of a change in the numbers in any of the races. The Democrats still got trounced in Chico. Measure A wins with a huge majority; Measure B loses with an even bigger vote against it.

Fall out. Turns out that many Democrats felt the same way as me about the dirty campaign tactics and the endorsement of the illegal Cannabis Industry. A letter to the editor in the Chico ER called for a protest against the party by changing your registration from Democrat to Independent. At a meeting of rural Democrats yesterday, there was universal condemnation of the endorsement and the Democratic Central Committee. There will be a party post mortem in December that might be very interesting to attend.

What these rural Democrats really wanted to know was how much money the Chico Democratic  Candidates and the Central Committee received from the Cannabis Industry. We know that it was at the very least, $1,000. Some think it might be much higher than that. When the campaigns make their final reports we should be able to trace the final dollar amounts.

In the meantime, the county is trying to figure out how to enforce the new codes. It does look like these codes will be enforced aggressively and the primary mechanism will be through fines. There will be levies assessed of $500 a day against the property owner until the garden is removed or brought into a legal size.

The people have spoken: they do not want to have a commercial cannabis industry in our county. At least, not the way it is presently done without licensure of the production, distribution and sale of cannabis.

The Butte County Democrat's (and Environmentalist's) Big Mistake....

All three Democratic city council candidates that endorsed Measure B lost.

It was not much of a surprise to me that the Democrats lost the Senate. They sort of deserved to lose as they scrambled to run away from their President; one candidate from Kentucky wouldn't even admit to voting for Obama. Not that Obama is any great bastion of Progressiveness---however, there was no reason for the beating the Dems took last night. They should have flaunted health care, jobs, the debt going down and raised a platform of things to vote for that would move this country forward. They did neither. So they lost. Deservingly. Timid fearful little rodents that they are.

You have to give the people a reason to vote. The Democrats didn't do that.

Locally, the Democrats did even worse. In a county that should be purple, the Dems lost handedly. The turnout was low, only 40 percent, in a county that has 80 percent turnout in Presidential years and 60 percent in Midterm years.

In the Chico city council race that I spent the last two posts ranting about the horrid tactics of the Democrats---the three who backed the pro-Cannabis Industry lost. The Liberals lost the Chico city council. All three conservatives won. Why?

The liberal city council mishandled scads of money. There were budget problems. They did some good things, like a plastic bag ban, but for the most part, they didn't manage the city well.

And then it came down to tactics. The Chico Democrats endorsed Measure B (a cannabis ordinance written by the pot growers) which turned out to be a hugely unattractive Measure. The Conservative Chico ER, the Paradise Post, The Oroville MR, and the liberal Chico News and Review, uniting the entire political spectrum, all endorsed a No vote on Measure B. The Democrats were stupid to endorse this Measure and to take the money from the Pot Growers. Measure B lost 68% to 32%. That's 36 points. A wipeout.

Measure A, which severely limits the size of Cannabis gardens and essentially eliminates a commercial Cannabis Industry in Butte County, won 61 percent to 37 percent. It comes down to people being sick of the social and environmental costs of pot growing. Drifters galore come here for the bud and trimming jobs. They come here to get rich. They come here to get high. And they are everywhere. Every street corner has a beggar with a dog, usually a youngish male, looking for money to do god only knows what. The Democrats didn't have a solution to the problem. In fact, they endorsed what causes the problem: an of control Cannabis Industry that has no regulations and no license required to grow the stuff.

This was all part of a little noticed backlash against the Cannabis Industry in the rural areas of California. Shasta county voted to do away with outdoor grows; Nevada County voted down a Measure put forth by the pot growers to liberalize their laws; Lake County voted down two ordinances written by the Cannabis Industry. The rural people have spoken. The way we are going about this Cannabis thing is not working.

Eighteen years after legalizing medical marijuana this should have been a cake walk for the industry. They should have won the hearts and minds of rural people by now. They haven't.

California picked the wrong model. When anybody can grow commercially without getting a license to do so, the criminal element quickly moves in to make a buck. That's what we've experienced all through out rural California. Until we license the production, distribution and sale of Cannabis, we will not solve the social and ecological costs of Cannabis production.

The Foothills have spoken. The Democrats should listen.

So what should the local Democrats do now? Give back the money they received from the Cannabis Industry. Apologize to the voters for not listening to their concerns. Start talking about the social and the environmental costs of cannabis production in Butte County. But mostly, they need to get the ideas out of their heads that regulation of the Cannabis Industry is prohibition. REGULATION IS NOT PROHIBITION.

And what of the Prius driving Enviros? The Butte Environmental Council (BEC) was pathetic around the whole debate. They were too timid to engage in it. The biggest threat to Butte County's watershed and wildlife is the current method of production of cannabis. Yet they said and did nothing. I went to the BEC dinner where Joni received an award and not a word was spoken about this problem. The blinders were on. And I'm fairly certain that writing this won't make me popular with either the Enviros or the Democrats.

And so, this time around, the Conservative voter turned out to be the best Environmentalist. We should give them an award at the next BEC dinner. The Butte County Voter was the Environmentalist of the year! And the Chico Conservation Voter? They turned out to be the worst enemy of the environment.