BY Brad Slazinski
Staff Reporter

For the second year running, the Brooksie Way took place on October 4^th. I decided to run it again, despite training very little in comparison to last year.

I decided to do the race again because I’ve enjoyed running for a long time and it would be a quick way to get back in shape again even though I ran infrequently in the last few months.

The Brooksie Way is a half-marathon which is 13.1 miles. The course is set in Rochester and Rochester Hills. The day of the race came and I woke up at 6 in the morning. With the race starting in two hours, I dressed, grabbed a bagel, and left my house. It is interesting  how empty the roads can be on an early Sunday morning. I arrived to Oakland University in 10 minutes instead of the usual 15-20 minutes it takes me.

After an hour of waiting, the race started at 8:15. My mindset for the race was to take it easy because of my lack of training. I had run distances over 10 miles recently but had not run them enough.

The first part of the race wasn’t too bad for me. It was enjoyable and I was in a good mood. I did like the fact that the first five miles was downhill.

After the race went through Paint Creek, the worst part  came. From miles six to 10, a good portion of the course is uphill. The downhill parts are scarce and when  there are some, they are very brief. The only thing in my head was finishing the race and getting home. Passing through the 10 mile mark, I did witness something amusing. During the race refreshment stands are situated throughout the course to give runners water or Gatorade. One stand was giving out beer for the heck of it. I laughed at the idea and kept running.

After the worst part of the race, things got much better. Everything else was primarily downhill. I started picking up speed going down Adams. It got easier as the finish line became closer.  As I approached the finish line, I ran faster, to a point that if I went any faster I would trip, and I passed several people in the process, a feeling that I’ve enjoy because you gain confidence as the race goes on. It gives you a belief that you can keep going and finish the race.

Overall, I didn’t do as well as I did last year, but I still managed to finish the race. I plan on running the Brooksie Way next year if they hold it again.

Apple Computer recently released a major update to its Macintosh operating system. Mac OS 10.6, better known as Snow Leopard, is a recommended upgrade for Apple Computer users who are currently running the older Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard).

For the most part, Snow Leopard is an “under the hood” upgrade. The casual Mac user will most likely not notice a whole lot of difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard. Apple says Snow Leopard is not a major upgrade to the OS. Instead, the upgrade is considered to be a fine tuning of Apple’s previous Leopard OS.

One major thing to point out is that once Snow Leopard is installed, most users will see 5-10 gigabytes of hard drive space free up. Snow Leopard runs using less hard drive space than Leopard.

Apple claims the Snow Leopard install process is faster than Leopard. During my install experience, the Snow Leopard process took about an hour, which is how long it took me to install Leopard.

If you’re considering upgrading to Snow Leopard, make sure any hardware that’s connected to your Mac such as a keyboard, mouse, or printer is compatible with Snow Leopard. If you upgrade and the hardware isn’t compatible, the hardware won’t work. Check with the manufacturer of your hardware to see if they have a Snow Leopard update for the drivers used to make your hardware work with your Mac. If an update isn’t available, you may want to consider postponing the upgrade to Snow Leopard until an update for your hardware is available.

Also, if you do decide to upgrade to Snow Leopard, make sure to install any system updates that have come out since Apple released the original software. Apple has already released update 10.6.1 which will fix some of the bugs that came with the original 10.6 software. It’s important to install this as well as any future system updates when they become available to keep your computer running as smooth as possible.

Snow Leopard is available now for purchase from any major retailer or online shopping site. The software is $29 for a single-user license or $49 for a family pack which is good for up to five computers.

Erik Anderson blogs about technology related topics for oaklandpostonline.com. He can be seen throughout the month hosting “Best Tech” on OUTV, and can be heard Mondays from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. on 88.3 FM and wxou.org.

Guest blogger

Do you ever notice that women at the gym tend to use the cardio machines like the treadmill and the elliptical, and that men are usually in the weight room? That’s because somewhere along the line women got the idea that lifting weights would “bulk them up.” I am here to dispel that myth. Ladies, have no fear, that’s not true — you CAN lift weights! In fact, you should be lifting weights because the key to burning fat is gaining muscle.

By lifting heavy weights you can improve your resting metabolism, which means you will be burning more calories than you normally would when you are just hanging out. According to Chalene Johnson, the creator of workout systems Turbo Jam and ChaLEAN Extreme, “Muscle is the fountain of youth. It’s what makes you look younger, it’s what makes you feel younger and it’s what makes you leaner.” When women reach their 30s it’s natural for their muscle strength and their metabolism to decline. To stop this decline you just need to add muscle to your body.

According to Fitness Magazine, “Since muscle burns an estimated three times more calories than fat, adding two to four pounds of muscle can translate into an extra 100 calories burned each day. A high-intensity strength routine has been shown to bump metabolism by 20 percent for several hours post-workout.”

There are many other great benefits to adding strength training to your cardio routine. According to Fitness Magazine, “Some of the benefits, like improving muscle tone, bone density, athletic performance and strength (about 30 to 50 percent more after three to six months of training), are obvious. But there are a few surprises: Resistance training helps women fight the aging process by maintaining lean muscle tissue. Women who regularly lift weights have better self-esteem and get sick less often. Others have found weight training improves the way the body processes sugar, reducing the risk of diabetes.”

So why won’t women get bulky muscles like men? Because men and women are different! Women do not have the same kind of testosterone to get big muscles like men do. Men will get bigger and stronger muscles while women become stronger and leaner.

Next time you are at the gym pick up a weight or two and try adding strength training to your routine. And don’t be shy about using the machines either, ask a trainer for help on how to use them, that’s what they are there for. Remember, the key to burning fat is gaining muscle.

]]> http://oaklandpostonline.com/2009/09/04/blog-archives/health-and-wellness/gaining-muscle-is-key-to-burning-fat/feed/ 0 http://oaklandpostonline.com/2009/08/24/blog-archives/editorial-board/newsroom-ethics-for-writing-about-a-heroin-addict-student/ http://oaklandpostonline.com/2009/08/24/blog-archives/editorial-board/newsroom-ethics-for-writing-about-a-heroin-addict-student/#comments Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:16:19 +0000 webeditor http://oaklandpostonline.com/blog.php?p=155 By MASUDUR RAHMAN
Senior Reporter

“Have you ever seen anyone do heroin?” he asked me as soon as I entered his bedroom.

“Not in person,” I said, thinking of all the movies and the documentary I’ve seen of people shooting up.

“Would it help your article if you saw it in person?” he asked me. If this 21-year-old Oakland University student was exhibiting any emotions, I couldn’t tell, especially underneath his facial hair.

“It might… But I don’t want anyone to shoot up just so I can see it,” I said, almost looking around, wondering if he’s having an addict friend come over.

“Well,” he said, sitting down in the chair near the computer table, which I now notice has a spoon, a small baggie and a bag of needles. His computer screen’s desktop picture is a large ‘Above the Influence’ logo. “I’m in the middle of a relapse, so I was going to do it anyway even if you weren’t here.”

“Oh.” This is unexpected. From our previous communication, I thought that he’s had relapses but that now he’s clean. I guess I misunderstood.

“Are you… going to be able to talk afterward?” I asked him, with mixed feelings. I’m concerned about getting coherent responses in my interview for the article I’m writing for my university’s student newspaper.

“Yeah, I’ll still be myself; I’ll just be in a better mood,” he said. “Unless it’s going to make you feel uncomfortable.”

“It’s not going to make me feel uncomfortable if you’re okay with it,” I said.

He put a small amount of heroin in the spoon and started heating it.

“Do you mind if I take some pictures?” I ask him. “I won’t show your face.”

“Sure. I’m up for anything.”

With control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, you would think that the Democrats could do almost anything. But the fight to produce meaningful health care reform is being pitted against powerful interests. Among other things, these interests are trying to derail the plan for a strong public option to compete with private insurance plans.

The Washington Post reports that the health care industry is spending $1.4 million per day to defeat health care reform – their aim:  to minimize damage while maximizing the money-making potential of 46 million uninsured Americans mandated by the plan to purchase insurance from them.

The health care industry is throwing money at democratic legislators like the Blue Dogs in the House and senators like Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance committee, who can influence the debate and have opposed President Obama on the public option.

A group of six senators, three Republicans and three Democrats  from the Finance committee, lead by Baucus, is working on legislation which, it is rumored, will not contain a public option, in spite of the fact that Obama said that a public option is necessary to compete with private plans and “keep them honest.”

The health care industry also has a seat at the table in negotiations about health care reform with the White House. Recently it was revealed in the L.A. Times and confirmed by the White House that they had committed to a “behind-the-scenes” deal with the pharmaceutical industry whereby  the requirement  to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices and to import cheaper drugs from Canada would be dropped from the health care reform bill coming out of the Finance Committee in exchange for a promise from  the pharmaceutical industry to decrease costs by $80 billion over 10 years to help pay for health care reform.

In an article by Norman Solomon at The Huffington Post, John Geyman, professor emeritus for family medicine at the University of Washington, said, “Under pressure from industry and their lobbyists, the public plan has been watered down to a small and ineffectual option at best, if it ever survives to being enacted.”

Republicans in Congress see the fight against health care reform as a chance to take down the Obama presidency.

Senator Jim DeMint, R-S.C., in a phone call for “tea party” participants organized by Conservatives for Patients Rights, a $20 million dollar operation created by Richard Scott, former CEO of Hospital Corporation of America, to campaign against the public option, said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

(In 1997, by the way, three HCA executives were indicted for Medicare fraud. In 2000, HCA pleaded guilty to at least 14 felonies and over the next two years paid $1.7 billion in criminal and civil fines.)

House Republican Leader John Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter issued a joint statement saying that the House Democratic health care legislation promoted euthanasia for seniors and Congresswoman Virginia Scott, R-N.C., said on the House floor that the bill would “force seniors to be put to death by their government.”

In August, while Congress is in recess and legislators return to their home districts to discuss health care reform with constituents, anti-health reform forces are fomenting (and backing) Astroturf (phony grassroots) disruptions at town hall meetings to prevent legislators who support health care reform from being heard. (You can see video here of Astroturf disruptions and Keith Olbermann discussing mob mentality with Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell).

It has been suggested that Obama, remembering what happened to the Clintons when they tried to introduce health care reform, decided to allow Congress to come up with health care legislation while he remained more or less on the sidelines. He has called for a bipartisan bill but in trying to get a bill that will allow a few Republicans to come on board, for the sake of being able to say it is bipartisan, he may weaken the legislation to the extent that it will not produce meaningful change in a system that is essentially broken and crying for reform.

Recent polling shows Obama’s approval rate dropping.  A Quinnipiac Poll from August 6 found 52 percent disapproved of his handling of health care while only 39 percent approved. Not surprising when polling, here and here, also reveals that a majority of Americans want health care reform.

Obama could to put a stop to all of this by stating loudly and clearly exactly what he believes.

Specifically, that health care reform without a public option is not an option.

Hopefully that is what he believes. Unfortunately, in recent speeches he has refrained from insisting that the public option must be part of health care reform.

Columnist Frank Rich asked in Sunday’s New York Times opinion piece, “Is Obama Punking us?”

Hopefully he isn’t.

At his news conference July 22, Obama said that health insurance reform is central to rebuilding the economy. He pointed out that 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every single day. One of the reasons Americans lose their health care is because the insurance industry doesn’t want to pay for it.

For example, take the practice of rescission. When a customer — a paying customer, someone who has been paying his premiums all along — gets sick and makes a claim, health insurance companies employ people (or computers) to search their records and see if there are any pre-existing conditions that could disqualify the customer from coverage. The pre-existing condition could be something as simple as a teenage bout with acne, which has nothing to do with say, cancer, but oops, you neglected to tell them about it? You and your cancer treatment are on your own.

This LA Times article documents how Blue Cross of California encouraged its employees to cancel the health insurance policies of customers with expensive illnesses.

Former Cigna executive Wendell Potter testified before the Senate Commerce committee in June and said that insurance companies try to “confuse their customers and dump the sick so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors with big profits.”

Potter told the senators on the committee, including several Democratic senators who are opposing a public optionthat could compete with the private insurance companies and keep them honest, as Obama has put it:

“I know from personal experience that members of Congress and the public have good reason to question the honesty and trustworthiness of the insurance industry. Insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and they make it nearly impossible to understand–or even to obtain–information we need. As you hold hearings and discuss legislative proposals over the coming weeks, I encourage you to look very closely at the role for-profit insurance companies play in making our health care system both the most expensive and one of the most dysfunctional in the world.” (You can read the transcript of his testimony here.)

You can also watch this video of CEOs from Well Point, Inc., United Health Group and Assurant “refusing to stop screwing their customers” while testifying before Congress (H/T blogger dday at dailykos).

The United States now devotes one-sixth of its economy to health care. Health insurance costs are on average about $15,000 per year for a family of four, about $6,500 more than in other advanced countries, according to The New York Times, and yet we are ranked 37 by the World Health Organization for health care outcomes.

A CBS News/New York Times Poll indicates that 72 percent of Americans want a government-sponsored health care plan to compete with private insurance. According to that poll most believe that the government would do a better job than private insurance in keeping costs down.

At the press conference Wednesday, Obama said this about the need for health care reform:

This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance. Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick, or lose their job, or change their job. It’s about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. And it’s about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

Yet surprisingly, members of his own party are opposing him on health care.

The Democrats took single-payer health care off the table from the beginning. Max Baucus, D-Mont., the powerful chairman of the Senate Finance committee, one of two Senate committees charged with producing a health care bill, said he now regrets taking single payer off the table, but that it is too late to do anything about it.

Baucus has been lobbied heavily by the health care industry and has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions “from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage” according to an article in The Washington Post. According to one Senate aide, “It’s a parade of lobbyists going in and out of that office every day.”

And Democrats — not just Republicans, in both the House and the Senate are coming out in opposition to even a public option, in spite of the fact that they ran in 2008 on a party platform of “guaranteed” access to affordable health care.

Single payer would go a long way toward solving the problem of high health care costs. But the health insurance industry is pouring millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of conservative Democrats who think it’s more important to protect their interests than the interests of the American people.

Congressman John Conyers, speaking at the National Press Club July 24 said this about a single-payer option:

“We are the richest country in the world and our doctors and medical facilities are the envy of our neighbors. Yet, our broken private insurance system burdens our business community and allows many of our fellow citizens to suffer or die unnecessarily. Two-thirds of our nation’s personal bankruptcies can be attributed directly to medical expenses. A single-payer system will allow us to cover everyone without spending any more money than we do now.

Conyers has been a long-time advocate of single-payer national health insurance reform and his bill (H.R.676) has 80 co-sponsors. You read about HR676 at www.johnconyers.com/hr676faq .