Preparation for a backpacking trip is almost as fun as the trip itself. You need to consider every eventuality, making sure you have the gear you need, and it must be compact, light, and do the job flawlessly. Sometimes the perfect gear is just an old pencil with duct tape wrapped around it. Sometimes that piece of gear is a camp stove that will cook for 5 days on one fuel container but weighs only 5 ounces. But once you get on the trail, the gear just becomes one more thing you lug up the mountain. This year's hike is a short one, but it will be on an unimproved trail. That means it is across country, most of it downfall timber. Four miles over downfall timber is like 12 miles on a flat trail. The physical challenge is one of the highlights of the trip.

The friend I hike with is a great outdoorsman. He runs like a deer, never tires, and is great at finding hidden springs for fresh, pure, ice cold drinking water. We sit around the campfire at night telling old stories; the same ones we told last year, but somehow they're better this year. But one of the things he does best is taking great pictures. He and I can stand next to each other, snap a picture of the same object, and his will look like a painting where mine will look like a mistake. It isn't what you look at in the mountains, or life; it is what you see.

A logger sees a tree as something to cut down. An environmentalist sees a tree as something to drive railroad spikes into so others can't cut it down. A hiker sees a tree as a part of the tapestry of nature's web of life. Everyone has a different perspective, and our perspective is the lens through which we see all of life.

So what is your perspective in life? The accuracy of your perspective will be borne out in the emotions it produces. Are they peaceful, happy, contented, generally desirable emotions? If not, then your perspective needs to be reconsidered. A renewed perspective can turn an old car into an antique, an aging spouse into the light of your life, a pouting child into a long hug and a storybook with an angel on your lap.

Here is one tool that can help you reset your perspective. This exercise will take only about 10 minutes, but it can change your life. Try it.

List your Top 7 Priorities in life. Put them in order of priority. Now, after you have your list, reconcile it by comparing #1 to #2. Is #1 still most important? Now, compare #1 to #3. Is #1 still most important? If not, reorder them and start again. After you have a solid #1, make sure #2 is in the right place by going through the same procedure. Is #2 more important than #3? #2 to #4? Keep going with this until your entire list is solid.

Now, look at the situation you are struggling with. Are you honoring #1 as #1? If not, you will feel stress and not be contented.

For example, let's say your list looks like this:
1. God
2. Health
3. Family
4. Learning
5. Freedom
6. Fun
7. Order

And yet on each Sunday you go to the lake and ride the jet ski, ignoring your church activities, eating typical summer St. Louis food, and drinking too much of your favorite beverage of addictive choice. Are you honoring your priorities? No. Each of these will lead to conflict in life, if you have honestly listed your priorities in order.

Make sure your priorities always remain in the right order. Your life will flow better, you will enjoy greater peace and joy, and your health will always be better.

Happy 4th of July!

Report Details Healthcare Lobbying Spending

WASHINGTON--Massive spending by the healthcare industry is swamping the nation's political process, according to the findings of a new report issued today. It coincides with the premiere of Michael Moore's new documentary "SiCKO," a searing indictment of the U.S. healthcare system which opens nationwide June 29.

The research was compiled by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee's research arm, the Institute for Health and Socio- Economic Policy, based on a comprehensive analysis of publicly available and custom data sets from the Center for Responsive Politics.

CNA/NNOC released the report today as Moore joined nurses and doctors from around the U.S. in a New Hampshire town hall meeting on healthcare with undecided voters. "SiCKO" describes the heartbreaking, systemic denial of care by healthcare industry giants, and links it to escalating profits and the industry's hefty clout in Congress.

"These staggering sums have a crushing impact on policy and are drowning out the voices of patients and other ordinary Americans who can't begin to match the financial clout of the big drug companies, insurers, and other healthcare industry giants," said CNA/NNOC President Deborah Burger, RN.

The avalanche of cash has a direct impact on healthcare policy in Washington and influences positions on healthcare reform taken by candidates for public office, asserts CNA/NNOC.

"That political influence produces huge financial benefits for the healthcare industry," Burger noted. They include blocking bills to protect patients from HMO, hospital, or nursing home abuses, provide greater public oversight of insurers, or permit the re- importation of cheaper prescription medications from Canada or Europe.

Additionally, most healthcare "reform" proposals directly benefit the biggest political spenders, from the insurers to the drug companies to the commercial banks and investment firms now promoting Health Savings Accounts and tax-credits to buy insurance.

In federal lobbying alone, healthcare spending exceeded $2.2 billion the past decade, during which healthcare surpassed all other industry sectors in lobbying expenditures.

Healthcare industry contributions have also become a significant factor in the 2008 presidential contest as well, according to the report.

Political action committees for drug and insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, dentists, and nursing homes are lavishing millions of dollars on both Democratic and Republican candidates, the report found. Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton and Republican Sen. John McCain together received over 40% of healthcare industry contributions among the 18 major party declared candidates.

Overall, healthcare contributions to the 18 currently announced Republican and Democratic presidential candidates total an aggregate $12.8 million since 1989, over $3.7 million of that amount just in the first quarter of 2007 alone.

"No wonder that in the midst of an escalating healthcare crisis, most of the candidates are unwilling to confront the corporate giants and support reform that takes profiteering out of our healthcare system," Burger said.

A breakdown by industry shows that former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the top recipient of pharmaceutical contributions and money from banks and securities and investment firms which are becoming increasingly powerful players in healthcare and political contributions, especially with the rapid growth of Health Savings Accounts and other reform plans that rely on financial institutions. HSAs are typically linked to high deductible health plans and are a main feature of the Massachusetts health plan that Romney promoted while governor.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, whose home state houses corporate offices for many insurance corporations, is the top beneficiary of insurance and HMO donations. Clinton leads among donations from health professionals and lobbyists.

In Congress, the huge sums spent on lobbying have paid huge dividends for the healthcare industry, Burger noted. One example is the April 2007 vote in the Senate, after heavy lobbying by the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, to kill a bill to amend the 2003 Medicare drug benefit law to let Medicare use its bulk purchasing power to lower prescription drug prices for seniors.

During the debate on the original bill, pharmaceutical and insurance companies spent so much that they could hire a different firm to lobby each key member of a critical committee (New York Times, Aug., 2005). Not surprisingly, the final bill requires seniors to go through private insurers to qualify for the drug benefit and barred the government from bargaining discount prices.

As a result, drug prices in the U.S. continue to be 35% or more higher than in other Western nations.

-PR Newswire

Why do so many people continue to suffer from life-
altering, chronic pain long after their injuries have
actually healed?

A Northwestern University researcher has found a
key source of chronic pain appears to be an old
memory trace that essentially gets stuck in the
prefrontal cortex, the site of emotion and learning.
The brain seems to remember the injury as if it were
fresh and can't forget it.

"In some ways, you can think of chronic pain as the
inability to turn off the memory of the pain," Apkarian
said. "What's exciting is that we now may be relieving
what has clinically been the most difficult to treat-the
suffering or the emotional component of pain.

Scientists have always tried to understand pain from
the viewpoint of sensation, Apkarian said. "To control
it, they tried to stop the sensory input to the brain. "We
are saying there's a cognitive memory and emotional
component in the brain that seems abnormal. Easing
that may have a bigger effect on suffering.

Chronic pain is not caused by a single mechanism,
Apkarian noted. Sensory abnormalities in people
with chronic pain probably drive this memory
abnormality.

About 10 percent of the United States population
suffers from chronic pain, of which the majority is
back pain.

In Apkarian's previous study, published in late 2006,
he revealed that chronic back pain appears in a
different part of the brain than the discomfort of
burning your finger, for example. With a functional
MRI, he found that chronic back pain shows up in the
prefrontal cortex. By contrast, the acute sensory pain
of the burned finger appears in the sensory part of
the thalamus.

Apkarian also found that the longer a person has
been suffering from chronic pain, the more activity in
the prefrontal cortex. He was able to predict the years
of their suffering from the MRI.

"It's cumulative memory," he explained. "I can predict
with 90 percent accuracy how many years they have
been living in that pain without even asking them the
question.
Northwestern University

Dr. O's Comment--So, chronic pain is more in the
brain than in the body.
But the body hurts. So how can this be? The body
sends messages to the brain, and the brain has to
interpret the message as a pain signal to decide that
pain should be. There doesn't need to be anything
happening in the body to have pain, only that the
brain decides that pain exists. So most of the time,
chronic pain resides in the brain, not the body.

This is directly in line with what we have found with
acupuncture. Anciently, the Chinese claimed that
emotion is the number one cause of illness and pain.
Acupuncture is uniquely capable of changing the
input to the brain that allows this mechanism of pain
to be furthered. Chronic pain is best relieved by
changing the input to the brain.

Chiropractic is also being shown to have great
impact on the neural plasticity (a fancy word for
saying the way we shape our brain is due to the
information we put into our brain. Since that
information needs to pass through the nerve system,
any subluxations of the spine will cause the brain to
misadapt to our environment and establish the
potential for chronic pain syndromes to be set up.
This process will take years to be caused, and the
remedy will take time.

Remember to focus on the cause, not the effect. We
may want the pain gone now, but we must remember
where it is caused, and correct the cause. Junk in ,
junk out. Fix the spine and the energy balance, and
the brain will change, when that happens the pain
will go away.

So if we tell you that your pain is emotionally based,
join the crowd. So is most other chronic pain.

Did you know that ear infections cause over 90 million visits to the Emergency Room every year?

Did you know that treating ear infections with antibiotics only increases the chance for a relapse?

Did you know that there is a better solution?

Join us either July 11 @ 7PM ~or~ July 14 @ 10AM for a one-hour seminar to find out how nearly all cases of ear infections can be helped without drugs or surgery and with low risk of recurrence.

Where: Olson Chiropractic
1360 Big Bend Square
Manchester, MO 63021

Cost: $10 per person, but call for special rates

Seating is limited, so call Diane or Nicole at 636-225 -2121 to reserve your spot TODAY!

Dr. Olson's gone, and Dr. J wants you to come party with us! Be sure to come in the week of July 30th for some spectacular savings! Each day will have something new in store, so be sure to check it out!

If you come in for an appointment on Monday, July 30th, we assure you that you will not leave empty- handed.

Have children who need their back-to-school physicals? Schedule on July 31st for complimentary physicals!

Wednesday, Aug. 1st is Patient Appreciation Day! Schedule for a complimentary adjustment, or prospective new patients will receive a free consultation that day!

Finally, Friday, Aug. 3rd, be sure to stock up on your products that day because you may just stumble across a great deal!

We look forward to seeing you!

Effective July 1st 2007, Olson Chiropractic will have a routine fee increase.

As cost of living rises, we do our best to keep that from affecting our patients, and we have done so successfully for over 4 years. However, it is now time to adjust our current rate. Adjustment prices will now be $55, and Acupuncture will be $80.

It is always good to remember the value of great Health. We will continue to offer you the best care and most inclusive service for the wise investment you have made in your wellness.

We honor and appreciate your continued commitment to better health and higher quality of life. Thank you!