September is National Cholesterol Education Month, an annual observance aimed at raising awareness about the importance of managing cholesterol levels. The month is dedicated to educating the public about the heart disease risks associated with high cholesterol and the steps individuals can take to help maintain healthy levels.   It’s the perfect time to meet the animated characters called the “Lipid Lurkers”—a visual representation of an often-unnoticed risk lurking in patients’ artery walls. While they may look small and silly, they represent a very real and dangerous health threat. Fat and cholesterol are types of lipids transported through the blood. Certain types of lipids, particularly LDL-C or “bad” cholesterol, can lead to buildup of plaque in the arteries, increasing the risk of heart disease or stroke.   This campaign was created to help educate and empower the nearly 100 million U.S. adults with high LDL-C—especially those who can’t take statins (medications to lower cholesterol) or who have uncontrolled cholesterol and haven’t reached their target levels despite treatment.   Now, there are solutions that offer an alternative to statins— additional options for lowering LDL cholesterol—while also lowering the risk of heart attacks and heart procedures like stent placement or bypass surgery    On Wednesday, September 10, LeAnne Bloedon, MS, RD, Vice President, Clinical Development at Esperion Therapeutics, will be available to discuss the havoc that too much bad cholesterol can cause inside artery walls—and how to lower your cholesterol.   She’ll also outline:   What high LDL cholesterol really does to your body (and why it’s often silent) Why managing cholesterol matters before your first cardiovascular event How the “Lipid Lurkers” campaign is making heart health more accessible, relatable, and even fun Who’s at risk—and what new options are available beyond traditional statins https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/esperions-lipid-lurkers-campaign-sheds-light-high-ldl-cholesterol-hiding-artery-walls

#septembercholesterol #cholesterol

The post September is National Cholesterol Education Month THE PERFECT TIME TO MEET THE “LIPID LURKERS” Tiny Troublemakers Wreaking Havoc in Your Arteries appeared first on Good News!.

Join us in the Manifest Nirvana Meditation Hall

After a period of deep stillness and reflection following the passing of our beloved teacher, Andrew Cohen, we are now slowly emerging from a three-month pause. This time of silence has been both a mourning and a deep listening—a turning inward to honor the profound impact of Andrew’s life and teaching. Connected to the ongoing movement of evolutionary becoming, we are gently resuming our rhythm.

The weekly silent meditation at Manifest Nirvana will now continue, offering a space to commune in the vastness of the Ground of Being, to rest in the still center of all that is, and to affirm together that the flame of awakened consciousness he so passionately ignited lives on—in us, and through us.

The local start times are:

8am PDT – 9am MDT – 11am EDT – 4pm UK – 5pm CEST – 8:30pm IST

Passcode: 524222

We are looking forward to meeting you in the Meditation Hall of Manifest – Nirvana.

warm regards
Manifest Nirvana Team

Access the Meditation Here (15 minutes before the start time) Code: 524222

My first Nirvana meditation was amazing. Never felt deep presence and emptiness like this before. I thank you and Andrew with all my heart to have opened my eyes to such possibilities.

– SN

Thank you… I was surprised to go into the deep theta state without the support of the group or technical supports I usually have for this.

– BN

If I had any doubts about the power of meditating online, they were completely dispelled by today’s session. No time, no distance, only a deep field of silence, presence and pure being.

– MP

The post Tomorrow, Saturday 21st June , Weekly Silent Meditation appeared first on Good News!.

UnderstandOP.com

Osteoporosis is a common disease among postmenopausal women and those who have it may suffer a fracture in their lifetime.4 Yet, the majority of those with osteoporosis do not know they have it. Often referred to as a “silent disease,” there are typically no symptoms of osteoporosis until a fracture occurs.5

Additionally, many postmenopausal women who have been diagnosed with osteoporosis do not fully understand the risks associated with it. A fracture is associated with serious consequences and can be a life altering event – and postmenopausal osteoporosis will get progressively worse if not treated.2,6 Meanwhile, research shows that many women decline treatment that can help reduce the risk of fracture.7

Osteoporosis is a chronic disease affecting 10 million U.S. adults.3,8 It occurs when an individual’s bone mineral density decreases, leading to a reduction in bone strength which can increase the risk of fractures, or broken bones.5 This is especially common in women because hormone changes associated with menopause can lead to a rapid reduction in bone density – putting them at risk for fracture.4

Kristi Tough DeSapri, M.D.— owner of Bone & Body Women’s Health, a midlife women’s health medical practice — will discuss the need for women to understand their risk factors for osteoporosis and find strategies to maintain bone strength and reduce the risk for falls and fractures.

Dr. Tough DeSapri will discuss the risk factors for osteoporosis as well as explain why, after menopause, women should take an osteoporosis diagnosis seriously – and how they can be proactive in reducing their risk of fractures.

Courtesy: Amgen

#drkristitoughdesapri #menopause #osteoporosis #patients #futurefracture #risk #disease

The post OSTEOPOROSIS CAUSES MORE THAN 8 MILLION FRACTURES WORLDWIDE ANNUALLY In Osteoporosis Patients A Fracture is Associated with an 86% Increased Risk of Future Fracture appeared first on Good News!.

For the kind of person who has spent the past few years increasingly alarmed about climate, it might be strange to think of anything as looming larger than warming, which in recent decades has seemed to subsume not only all other ecological crises in the collective cultural imagination but also the existential fate of the species and the planet. The United Nations’ 15th international biodiversity conference just concluded in Montreal, and it received only a fraction of the press coverage lavished on the COP27 climate conference recently held in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt. That imbalance may seem intuitive, given one of the core principles of climate action in the post-Paris-agreement era: that decarbonization should be the environmental goal above all others, and might even offer a silver bullet to solve (or at least alleviate) all sorts of other problems, from mass extinction and insect collapse to air pollution and global inequality.

For the cause of climate, this notion has been an undeniable boon, growing the movement by somewhat sidelining legacy concerns about conservation and forging alliances instead with forces that embrace technology, development and even “eco-modernism.” These years have also seen the rise of “degrowth,” and in recent intramural fights over permitting reform, climate centrists have argued that one major roadblock is sentimental old-guard activism, which amounts to a kind of climate NIMBYism. But in the long sweep of environmentalist history, the opposite story is more striking: “green” groups growing less attached to the natural world for its own sake and more invested in efforts to limit temperature rise for the sake of human flourishing.

One result has been genuine climate progress, and a rising hope that decarbonization, while still too slow, might unfold fast enough to at least avoid worst-case climate outcomes. But another is that the principles that gave rise to modern environmentalism 50 years ago are much less central to what goes by the name today: “Climate” has displaced “nature” as the primary locus of activist concern, pushing biodiversity somewhat farther from the policy center as well and affirming that the two causes are related but distinct. Among other things, this suggests the possibility that, however vital the work of cutting emissions, “addressing climate change will not ‘save the planet’” — as a headline of a recent piece in The Intercept, by Christopher Ketcham, put it.

That’s not because decarbonization requires catastrophic environmental harm. Though radically new infrastructure is necessary — new power lines, new building codes, new transportation systems — much of it would supplement or replace what exists today. While there are big questions about how to carry out the mining that will be necessary to produce a global green-energy boom, it would contribute only a modest increase to today’s mining sector and could even decrease overall mining.

The problem is that warming is just one of the many ways that human civilization is stripping the planet of its biological complexity. In fact, last December, in a commentary published in Conservation Letters, a group of biologists called climate change a “myopic lens” through which to view the biological decline of the planet and called warming far from “the most important horseman of the biodiversity apocalypse” — indeed more of a “mule,” powerful but slow. “The current perception that climate change is the principal threat to biodiversity is at best premature,” the authors wrote. “Although highly relevant, it detracts focus and effort from the primary threats: habitat destruction and overexploitation.”

Because we all live in the world as it is today, regarding both its dimly remembered past and its uncertain future from the relatively stable-seeming vantage of the present, it can be hard to understand the scope of even recent loss. But according to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, which looks at studies of some 32,000 species worldwide, vertebrate populations have declined on average by 69 percent since just 1970; since I was born in 1982, the decline has been more than 50 percent. In some ecosystems, the collapse of vertebrates has been even more drastic: In Latin America and the Caribbean, for instance, the studied populations have fallen on average by 94 percent since 1970, while among freshwater species that live in the world’s rivers and lakes, the estimated decline has been 83 percent.

As many as a million animal and plant species currently face the threat of extinction, according to the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (I.P.B.E.S.), a figure that translates to about 13 percent of bird species, 25 percent of mammals and 31 percent of sharks and rays. Insects are dying off, too — possibly more than 50 percent of them since 1970.

And while there are some success stories and local marks of ecological progress, today even the low estimates of global extinction rates suggest that overall, those rates are 100 times higher than would be expected without human activity; the less conservative estimates suggest extinction is happening thousands of times faster. Already 62 percent of global mammal biomass is livestock — animals raised by humans for our consumption. Four percent is wild. Taken together, humans and their food represent 96 percent of all mammal life on Earth.

One recent paper, published in Frontiers in Forests and Global Change, suggests that only 3 percent of global ecosystems remain intact. Other global tabulations are less bleak, but not by much. According to the I.P.B.E.S. — think of it as the biodiversity equivalent of the climate-change I.P.C.C. body — three-quarters of all land environments have been degraded by human activity and about two-thirds of all marine environments have. And while climate skeptics have spent a lot of energy arguing that warming is actually “greening” the world because CO₂ is plant food, a wide-ranging new study found the opposite: The planet as a whole, which was most likely greening just a few decades ago, is now probably browning instead.

Almost certainly, all this will get somewhat worse before it gets even somewhat better. The needs of the energy transition are significant, if not world-breaking, as are the growth demands of the world’s billion poorest. There are signs of progress on “decoupling” growth from both carbon and resource intensity, but the gains to this point have been only relative. And while there are signs of policy progress on conservation as well, including a growing awareness among the world’s leading policymakers of the importance of protecting the world’s ecological patrimony, the predominant mood in Montreal was lament: that a dozen years after some less-ambitious biodiversity targets were set for 2020, none of them have been met.

We’ve been here before, with climate, before the Paris agreement — an imperfect protocol, which has rallied the world’s governments to the task of decarbonization. Those accords didn’t just point toward a new policy consensus; they helped usher in a cultural transformation as well, because among the things that the new generation’s climate alarm has produced is a far more widespread understanding that warming risks devastation to humans and human society, not just animals and ecosystems.

There does not seem to be a similar shift coming for biodiversity, whose story remains largely the one we know already from “Silent Spring” to “The Lorax,” from “The Sixth Extinction” to “The End of Nature.” Even the most ambitious proposals — preserving 30 percent of the planet’s surface, protecting the Amazon from further deforestation — seem to point to a future defined as much by normalization as by conservation. We may well look around at that denuded world a generation from now and blithely conclude that “everything is fine.” But we’ll still probably marvel in wondrous disbelief that the planet was ever as full of life as it was in 2023.

The post Has Climate Change Blinded Us to the Biodiversity Crisis? appeared first on Good News!.

United Voices 4 Peace,
Veronica Sabbag, Founder & Chair submitted this story. They launched their first virtual event and digital program in December 2020, during the Covid Pandemic.

The program consisted of a series of documentary screenings, concerts and interviews aimed to address the current systemic social inequalities, with a special focus on gender, age and religion-based discrimination.

It also adressed the topic of the Holocaust and the fight against antisemitism, echoing the voice of a funny, endearing and engaging protagonist, Inge Ginsberg.

Inge, Holocaust survivor, whose life story is detailed in a short documentary film created by Leah Galant for nytimes, https://youtu.be/mQZ_7C2oaLM , found an unlikely avenue to raise her voice through heavy metal music in her 90’s – against all odds – in a way that allowed engagement of younger generations.

She was able to flee Austria and survive life in a refugee camp in Switzerland. After the war, she moved to Hollywood, California and built a new life as a composer for Nat King Cole, Doris Day and others.

In an assertion of her presence on earth, she started a heavy metal band at the age of 93. Inge & the TritoneKings, had major TV appearances, made the front page in newspapers across the globe. She caught the eye and ear of the metal world after her appearance on Switzerland’s Got Talent and in the Eurovision Song Contest.

The first documentary screening and live concert of this series was streamed from Barcelona on December 17th, in partnership with Manhattan Camerata, Amics UNESCO Bcn, Mozaika BCN & LICRA. This first event featured the “Death Metal Grandma” documentary, followed by a live concert performed by her versatil band. Coinciding with Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, it brought an impactful message of peace, hope, union and inclusiveness, creating a fertile ground for social change. Watch here: https://www.facebook.com/UV4Peace/videos/298226618274630/

Once more, the metal world was captivated by her journey. Read https://www.themetalcircus.com/reportajes/death-metal-grandma-inge-ginsberg/

The event was preceded by a pre-screening session at Amics de la Unesco also in Barcelona : https://youtu.be/pMON-7fkvK8

This never before disclosed video, showcasing the 99 years old DMG was recorded in May 2021, on the occasion of UV4PEACE Founder & Chair, Veronica Sabbag’s visit to a care home in Zurich.

It served as the basis of a later Zoom virtual session on June 5th, in the context of “the Voice of the Silence” – Samantha Rodriguez and “Diario Judio de Mexico” – Isaac Ajzen, missions to raise awareness on the Holocaust. https://www.facebook.com/thevoiceofthesilenceproject/videos/870387663576049/

Veronica promised Inge she will visit her as soon as the Covid pandemic restrictions would be lifted. This visit and interview was an attempt to immortilize her legacy. At the end her visit Inge promised to visit Veronica in Barcelona. She passed a month later.

A new documentary screening took place in New York, on January 27th at the Anita Shapolsky Gallery in Soho. Inge, would have been 100 years on that date, coinciding with the Holocaust Remembrance Day.

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CZRJUXelU4a/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

https://www.instagram.com/p/CZiliaVODQA/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

To honor her memory and continue her legacy, UV4PEACE dropped on that occasion a 5-piece “Death Metal Grandma NFT Collection” in OpenSea : https://opensea.io/collection/deathmetalgrandma, in partnership with Tritoneking & ManhattanCamerata.

“The Nazis said that their Third Reich would last 1000 years. It didn’t. But Inge lived to 99. Now she will live forever in the blockchain. There is no tribute more fitting for such an inspiring and modern woman. It’s poetic justice”.

HELP US to further develop our program in other locations by donating thought our website : www.uv4peace.org.

#ingeginsberg #heavymetalgrandma #austria #nazi #deanmartin #covid #holocaust #hanukkah #switzerlandsgottalent #singer #songcontest #voiceofthesilent #metalgrandma

The post DEATH METAL GRANDMA – An unconventional call for social justice, WATCH THIS VIDEO PLEASE appeared first on Good News!.

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You and a guest are cordially invited to a private brunch
showcasing the latest models from Ferrari &
Maserati along with exclusive luxury brands.

Hors d’oeuvres & Signature Cocktails will be served

Private Estate, Southampton, NY
(address upon confirmation)

Saturday, August 5th, 2017 11:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Silent Auction to benefit Every Mother Counts

Experience Luxury, Performance and Design
**Test drive the Maserati GT or Ferrari California
T with your own personalized test drive.
Limited test drives will be available to qualified buyers.

The post Ran Luxury appeared first on Good News!.

See the Faces and Listen to the Stories of Our Society’s Most Overlooked Outcasts:

The Mentally Ill and Homeless http://www.robertokinmd.com

From L.A. to Philly to Miami, they’re out there—pushing their carts, digging through garbage, sleeping on park benches, sometimes ranting about nonsense to no one. They often look and sound crazy, smell bad, and make us uneasy, so we avoid them. We know better intellectually, yet most of us shun people suffering from homelessness and mental illness because we view them as deeply flawed—somehow less human than the rest of us.

As part of his career devoted to the mentally disabled, Dr. Robert Okin decided to use a powerful artistic medium to advocate for these people. In SILENT VOICES: People with Mental Disorders on the Street (Golden Pine Press, October 2014), Dr. Okin invites all of us to get to know the people society treats like pariahs, people who, beneath their symptoms and rags, struggle with feelings and needs similar to those of the rest of us. He shares the striking and evocative photographs and stories—most often, in their own words—of more than 40 mentally ill people he met on the streets of San Francisco. “I wrote this book,” Dr. Okin reflects, “to contribute to making these people known as human beings.”

SILENT VOICES offers a glimpse of the dark pasts—marked by abuse, violation, tragedies, crime, drugs, and addiction—and everyday challenges of homeless men and women suffering from bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and other serious mental disabilities.

Based on his interviews, research, and decades of professional experience, Dr. Okin discusses:

 Staggering facts on how the mentally ill are neglected, mistreated, and discriminated against. In America today, over 200,000 people with mental disorders are abandoned in the streets and another 250,000 are locked up in jails and prisons.

 Measures needed to reduce the widespread, escalating problem of the homeless mentally ill, including increased government funding for affordable housing, partnerships between the public and private sector to provide job training, and legal reform.

 The critical need for well-trained, dedicated professional clinical case managers. “Without excellent clinical case managers, a mental health system will tend to be mechanistic, inaccessible, and exclusively focused on the management of symptoms with medication, rather than also on clients’ human development and rehabilitation,” Dr. Okin asserts.

 What everyone can do to overcome the stigma of mental illness and prevent homelessness, with the goal of not just social acceptance for people with mental illness but genuine inclusion in society. “Treatment cannot occur first and inclusion second,” stresses Dr. Okin.

Robert L. Okin, MD, served as chief of psychiatry at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of clinical psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, for 17 years. He is also a former state commissioner of mental health for both Vermont and Massachusetts. Throughout his career, he developed crucial services and clinical case management programs to enable mentally ill people to live with dignity in the community. A member of the board of advisors of Disabilities Rights International (DRI), he has provided psychiatric advocacy and consultation for missions to Mexico and Turkey, among many other countries, to investigate human rights violations in mental institutions. He lives in San Francisco.

I hope you will be moved, uplifted, and outraged by the stories in SILENT VOICES.

Dr. Robert Okin, Author of SILENT VOICES

1. You’ve forged relationships with the homeless, but you’re a trained psychiatrist. What can the average person do to help a homeless person they see on the street?

It is true that I was able to forge such relationships, but I don’t think this primarily resulted from any particular skill I had as a psychiatrist. It was more the result of my openness and expressed interest in the people I met. This may sound corny, but saying a simple “Hello, I hope you have a good day” or “I wish you well” is probably the best and easiest thing to do. It won’t change the actual living conditions of the homeless people, but at least it will make them feel that they’re not invisible. It would be great if you could follow up with an e-mail to your city supervisors and congressperson about the need for supportive housing for homeless people. And if you really want to move this project forward, get your friends to send e-mails as well.

2. What is the root of society’s fear and stigmatization of mental illness?

Some of society’s fear comes from the strangeness and unpredictability people associate, sometimes correctly, with mental illness. Because mentally ill people seem strange, it’s hard for us to empathize with them and to remember that they were once children with hopes and dreams like our own. At a deeper level, people have always projected the most feared and hated parts of themselves onto those who have mental illness. Mentally ill people become the living representation of the most disavowed parts of ourselves and thus become stigmatized. Not wanting to be reminded of these parts of ourselves, we, as a society, have burned these people, drowned them, isolated them in mental hospitals, and put them away in jails where we can’t see them. But those who become homeless and aren’t put out of sight evoke in us responses that cause us to avoid them in other ways: basically, we close our eyes to them.

3. Did you have any preconceived ideas about the homeless? What was your biggest misconception about them?

I expected to be dismissed and rejected when I reached out to them. I was a stranger, so I assumed they wouldn’t want to talk with me. I also assumed that if they did, they wouldn’t reveal their feelings. I was wrong on all counts. Most of the people I met genuinely welcomed my overtures and quickly warmed up to me. I was repeatedly surprised at how much grief these people were carrying just under the surface and how willing they were to reveal it to me. More than anything else, I was reminded of just how human and vulnerable these people are. I easily identified with and felt close to them. At the end of a day of talking with them, I felt sad, wrung out, and anxious about my grip on my own financial and emotional security.

4. How did your own opinions change after meeting and getting to know some of them?

I developed an abiding admiration for many of them—I respected how they were willing to continue living, despite the brutal conditions they were dealing with day after day. I often wondered if I would have the grit and the courage to stick it out if I were in their position. I don’t know if I could stand living their lives and dealing with the hopelessness most of them feel.

5. What percentage of the homeless suffer from mental illness?

Approximately 25 percent primarily have severe and chronic mental illness and another 15 percent have significant drug abuse disorders.

6. What can city and state governments do to help the homeless mentally ill integrate back into society?

First, these people need supportive, supervised housing and a sufficient income that allows them to escape the deprivations of poverty. Without housing, any other intervention is ineffective. Second, they need case management from a social worker with a relatively small caseload who has the time to meet them where they live, provide a loving human connection with them, help them with their daily tasks (laundry, shopping, budgeting), help them reduce their drug intake, and when indicated, help them to be evaluated by a psychiatrist to get them on psychiatric medications. These social workers also have to play a major advocacy role in helping their clients rejoin society. And third, the homeless mentally ill need something productive to do during the day—some sort of job.

The post Dr. Robert Okin appeared first on Good News!.

Danny Aiello, the Academy Award nominated actor and singer whose performances in more than 80 films have endeared him to audiences worldwide is releasing a holiday CD of traditional favorites entitled My Christmas Song for You. This is the second studio recording for the critically acclaimed entertainer who The New York Times says “has the bounce of his idols Bobby Darin, Frank Sinatra and Louis Prima, and the throaty lyricism of another idol, Tony Bennett.”

My Christmas Song for You introduces some holiday classics with new flair including “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, “The Christmas Song” and “Winter Wonderland” alongside some of Danny’s favorites including “The Bells of St. Mary’s”, “Pocketful of Miracles” and “Silent Night”. The 15 song CD also includes Danny’s own personal “Night before Christmas” story and a very poignant tribute to his son Danny III who tragically lost his life to pancreatic cancer earlier this year.

Produced by Joe Geary and Danny Aiello, and mixed by Geary and Mike Ferretti, this is Aiello’s third release. He made his recording debut in 2004 with I Just Wanted to Hear the Words, a collection of traditional standards. That album charted #4 on the Billboard Traditional Jazz Chart and received high marks from critics coast to coast including the Los Angeles Times; “His voice warm and amiable, his phrasing easygoing and conversational, his singing revealed influences from his numerous idols-Bobby Darin in particular…but as with his acting, Aiello’s singing at its core was far more than an accumulation of influences. It was a pure manifestation, instead of his own rich persona, of the abundant life experience he brings to his art.”

Aiello always said he wanted the opportunity to work in the studio with talented musicians on songs he loves. And after having the opportunity to do that in 2004, he took his show and eight piece band he affectionately calls Joe Geary and the Guys on the road.

The post Danny Aiello, shares his Good News at the 57th Annual New York Emmy Awards Gala, appeared first on Good News!.