As we leave winter and enter spring, I am making some needed reapportioning of my time and I ask for your understanding. I have decided to make my Nikken business my main focus for this year, while putting on the back burner my radio broadcasting, book publishing, and professional speaking efforts. The ICS Updates like this one will necessarily become more occasional as I focus on building my Nikken distributor organization. Please read more below. 

  

Then, see new information about family meals. We need them! Read on.

  

Finally, ignore those TV drug ads and don't let them scare you into overdiagnosis and overtreatment. See more below.

I have decided to make my Nikken business my main focus for this year, while putting on the back burner my radio broadcasting efforts, my publishing efforts, and my professional speaking efforts.





Know your target audience. Who are your most important customers, clients or prospects, and why? Know what is important to them and address their needs in your newsletter each month. Include a photo to make your newsletter even more appealing.

  

Insert a "read on" link at the bottom of your article to drive traffic to your website. Links are tracked, allowing you to see which articles create the most interest for your readers.

  

And do listen to the 90 or so fantastic interviews I have done with contemporary luminaries in all fields touching on healthy, happy family life. All the shows are on my website at http://www.randyrolfe.com. Listen to these interviews again an again, just like a good book that bears re-reading.

 If you have been reading this my weekly newsletter any time since I began it about two years ago, you know that I am always seeking to learn more about how humans can live together peacefully and happily and I am always about sharing what I have learned with you and with as many people as possible.

  

  

With spring and more outdoor activities and kids' busy athletic schedules starting up, don't let Easter be your only family dinner together!

  

A study last year published in Child Development of kindergartners through eighth grade concluded that family dinners were just one of many factors helping kids with mental health and good behavior. But the popular press picked up the idea that the study meant it didn't matter if families ate together as far as the well-being of the kids was concerned.

  

But a recent study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that sharing regular meals with parents was a direct indicator of how the adolescents fared emotionally, behaviorally and in school.

  

According to the USA Today report, the author of the previous study said that this new study "adds to our knowledge by suggesting that parent-adolescent communication accounts for some of the relationship between family meals and adolescent mental health."

  

Studies like these often make me wonder. Do we need a study to know that taking time to break bread and share with our teens each night is probably a good thing? Oh well, these researchers need their grants. And at least these kinds of studies keep the public dialogue about these basic parenting strategies going.

  

Other researchers have pointed out that the family ritual of dinner together has a beneficial effect in that it gives a sense of stability and belonging. Likewise, the fewer distractions at the table, with TV and mobile devices, the better for salutary communication at the table.

  

Co-author of the study of adolescents, Frank Elgar, associate professor of psychiatry at McGill university, found it especially interesting that, "The effect doesn't plateau after three or four dinners a week. The more dinners a week the better." Elgar acknowledged that while they hadn't proven cause and effect, the correlation was undeniable.  

  

So go ahead and be old fashioned. Insist that cell phones don't come to the family table and turn off the kitchen or family room TV. Set an attractive table and ask family members to help with preparation and table setting. Insist on at least 15 minutes together and at least a few meaningful words from each family member. It takes 15 minutes anyhow for the body to feel it has had enough to eat, so if you stay at the table, everyone is less likely to go off and snack on useless junk. 

  

The easiest thing is to start this family dinner habit early on. But if you haven't got it going until now, remember, you are the parent and you can change the program as you discover new ways to improve your family's well-being.   

A new study of the impact of TV advertising on drug diagnosis and treatment has demonstrated that these ads are not helpful and may even be harmful.

  

Only the United States and New Zealand of all the developed countries allows TV broadcasting of prescription drugs directly to the viewers.

  

Prescription drug use is up more that 40% since the US started allowing such ads on TV. And if they do not mention what they are for, but instead just show wonderful videos of people leading wonderful lives, they don't even have to list the unwanted side effects.

  

In this study of the diagnosis and prescription of statins for cholesterol lowering, the researchers found that those who said they had seeing statin ads on TV were 15 to 20% more likely to be diagnosed with high cholesterol and to be using a statin prescription than those who reported not seeing the ads.

  

But according to the study, those who were influenced were the least likely to have cardiovascular risk factors. Those with the most risk factors were not influenced by the ads. In other words, among those who did have high risk factors, the ads made little difference. Perhaps they were already listening to their doctors and were not letting the ads increase their worries.

  

To quote an article describing the study at http://www.mercola.com:

"To determine the relationship between estimated exposure to direct-to-consumer advertising for statin drugs and two clinical variables: diagnosis with high cholesterol and statin use, the featured study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine,² used logistic regression to analyze repeated cross-sectional surveys of more than 106,000 Americans, merged with data on the frequency of ads appearing on national, cable, and local television, between 2001 and 2007."

  

The researchers concluded that the prevalence of drug ads on TV was a driving factor in the overdiagnosis of excessive cholesterol and the overprescription of the statins.

  

Fear of cholesterol, like salt, and saturated fat, has been over sold. All of these are essential to our health and have been vilified largely by food processors who can sell cheaper ingredients which mimic these foods in taste and texture but NOT in nutritional value and usability.

  

Cholesterol is essential for brain power, the immune system, and the digestive system as well as other functions. Our livers make more than we eat, no matter what our diet, every day. Back in the early '50's I learned in my nutrition classes that the bad cholesterol takes over when the diet is flooded with refined carbohydrates and the body metabolism and detoxification systems get out of balance. The cholesterol gets oxidized and sticky and harder to turn over and eliminate in the daily processes of life.

  

As many as half of heart disease victims have low cholesterol rather than high. And no study has proven that there are less cardiovascular incidents with artificially lowered cholesterol. Whatever is unbalancing the cholesterol in the blood continues on even if statins are lowering the blood cholesterol.

  

There are easy natural ways to keep the fat/cholesterol system working properly. Severely reduce your refined carbohydrates for 2 weeks and your cholesterol will start moving to normal, which is around 200.

  

Also, there are dietary factors which help. Your daily vitamins help your liver do its job and vitamins, minerals, and good quality protein help keep your blood balanced, with the help of good quality drinking water.

  

Healthy stress management and regular good sleep also help the body stay healthy.

  

And finally there is an age old fruit which has the ability to assist with healthy fat and cholesterol metabolism. That's bergamot, an exotic bitter orange. Nikken has developed a propriety extract which has been shown in independent studies to improve cholesterol, triglyceride, and blood pressure balance, all naturally, as our bodies intended. Check out Bergisterol at http://www.nikken.com/randyrolfe. Or call me and come learn more. 

  

Meanwhile, choose your health adviser carefully, one who is healthy and eager to answer your questions as well as one who has respectable credentials and experience. And skip over the TV ads. As Dr. Mercola points out, American pharmaceutical companies spend twice as much money on advertising as they do on R & D, and we spend twice as much for the same drugs as patients in other countries.

Thank you so much for letting me serve you by sharing helpful news about things impacting families around the world. Please stay in touch as I move into a momentous phase to bring healthier lifestyles to many more of the world's families. Stay tuned for our occasional or monthly update.

  

Sincerely,

  
Randy