Ward Off Alzheimers With Sunshine

I lost my Dad to Alzheimers in March of this year. Genetics would dictate that I will most likely suffer this disease as well.

I’ve always leaned toward a more natural approach to healing; and am not a pharmaceutical fan.. I truly believe that if we made an effort to preserve and protect the “garden of eden” and nourished our bodies as God intended.. (including lots of sunshine), we would not have diseases such as Alzheimers or Cancer to deal with.

Try as I might, I could not get my Dad (or my Mom) to pursue a hobby, regular exercise or a healthy diet, much less organics or sunshine.  Instead.. his last few years were sendentary and he wasted away before our very eyes.

My uncle on the other hand.. (Dad’s brother), who also suffers from Alzheimers is living in a assisted living facility.  He stays busy.. with social gatherings and daily activities provided at the center.  He enjoys regular outings with the family and he even has his beloved pet with him.

Granted.. he was diagnosed later than Dad was; but Alzheimers seems to be progressing much slower with him,  than it did with my dad.  The main difference has been his quality of life and activity level.  So.. I do not find this report hard to believe. It only convinces me further that we could have had Dad with us much longer if we could have just kept  him busier.. and gotten him out in the sun more.
He loved golf!  But when he started experiencing the confusion and it effected his game; he quit playing.  He blamed a sun allergy and a bad knee; but we all knew it was because he felt embarrassed and afraid that he would be lost or confused on the green.  He was very considerate of other players..

My son took this photo while golfing with Dad, when home on leave from Germany.. 2008.

I wish there was some way I could have forced Daddy to play or to take regular walks, something.. anything!  It’s all spilt milk now.  At least I know he is playing  his best game ever in heaven.

From:  NHD “Health Watch”

Cut Alzheimer’s Risk by 394 Percent

Anybody who has experienced Alzheimer’s will know the helplessness that comes with this devastating disease. Anybody who has seen it in a friend or family member will know the pain that comes from seeing your loved one deteriorate.

A powerful leader accustomed to driving multiple operations will gradually lose command. A dedicated grandmother may forget the names of the grandchildren she loves.

When I read one woman’s story about how she came to accept that she had Alzheimer’s, my heart broke a little. She says:

“I think there comes a point in everyone’s life when we pause to reflect on the past, realize the present and look to the future. That happened for me at the age of 46. I’d been married for over 20 years. Our son was in his freshman year of college. I was happy in my job and my husband was looking forward to retirement.

“In the fall of that year I started to become forgetful – which was not like me at all. I had an almost photographic memory. I had a stressful job and worked long hours, so I blamed that for my forgetfulness. I couldn’t remember things like my home phone number, my associates’ names, or on bad days, how to get home.

“I remember that many times I would stop at a gas station. After filling my tank [I wouldn’t] know whether I was going to work or coming home. I tried desperately to hide it and became pretty good at it! But one day in December, my husband and I were out shopping. He went to a different department in the store. The next thing I knew was that I couldn’t remember where I was or how I got there. It was time to fess up…”
Kris, from Georgia

Alzheimer’s can be a debilitating disease that can dramatically transform your life. It’s an insidious disease that can rock your confidence and rob you of your yesterdays. As one sufferer says, “I feel that I am robbed of any future because while I will live in it, I will be unlikely to remember it.”

It’s a brutal reality to have to accept. But scientists are offering hope in fighting the disease.  Over 4,000 scientists attended the recent International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease. And amidst a flurry of presentations, they reported that simple vitamin D may be your best defense against Alzheimer’s. “Sunshine” Vitamin Boosts Brain Function

Sounds too good to be true? Not according to a new study revealed at the conference. The study says that vitamin D deficiency raises your risk of mental decline by up to 394 percent.

The study is just the latest to show that the “sunshine vitamin” is essential to good brain health. It was conducted by the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, England. It reviewed participants as they completed a series of tests and exams.

Tests included memory, time and space orientation, and attention-focusing exercises. Vitamin D levels were measured from blood samples and compared with test performances.

“There are some fantastic findings this year,” said Professor William Thies, the chief medical and scientific officer of the Alzheimer’s Association. He said these findings “are some of the first reports of this type in Alzheimer’s” and “have the “potential to move the field forward.”

Study results showed that the risk of cognitive impairment was 42 percent higher in people deficient in vitamin D. Impairment was 394 percent higher in those who were severely deficient in it.

“The odds of cognitive impairment increase as vitamin D levels go down,” says study author David Llewellyn. “Given that both vitamin D deficiency and dementia are common throughout the world, this is a major public health concern.”

The Peninsula Medical School also worked on an earlier related study. It too offered evidence supporting this simple truth: seniors who get their daily dose of “sunshine” maintain stronger cognitive functioning.

Critical research, based on tests conducted on almost 2,000 U.K. senior citizens, showed a clear correlation between the presence of the “sunshine vitamin” and healthy mental function.

Sunshine is an important source of vitamin D. UVB rays initiate the production of the vitamin in human skin. Vitamin D also helps maintain strong bones (through the absorption of calcium and phosphorus) and a healthy immune system.

According to study author Dr. Iain Lang, the results indicate that individuals with the lowest levels of Vitamin D were 50 percent more likely to suffer impaired mental faculties. In other words, as vitamin D levels in seniors decreases, mental impairment increases.

“Getting enough vitamin D can be a real problem,” said Dr. Lang. “Particularly for older people, who absorb less vitamin D from sunlight. One way to address this might be to provide older adults with vitamin D supplements.”

Older people lose their capacity to absorb Vitamin D from sunlight as the body ages. That means they must seek other sources of the “sunshine vitamin.”

Sources of “Sunshine”

According to Rebecca Wood, chief executive of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust, Vitamin D can also be found in foods such as oily fish and eggs. She adds that these foods are key sources of vitamin B12, which studies have shown to also help in protecting the brain.

Maggie Ward – nutrition director at The UltraWellness Center in Lennox, MA – says the best animal source is liver, especially from cod, herring, and sardines.

“That’s why those living in dark climates have these fish as a staple in the diet,” she says. “Nature always knows best.”

But she believes the best source of vitamin D is simple, old-fashioned sunlight.

“This is one of the many reasons I love summer,” she says. “I get my vitamin D from the sun and have one less supplement to take.”

Supplement Your Sunshine

The Vitamin D Council offers several good tips to ensure you get just the right amount of “sunshine.”  Check out these four ideas:

1. Have your doctor check your vitamin D levels.  This will give you a good idea of how much vitamin D you need to supplement.
2. Make sure you’re getting vitamin D3 in your diet. Smart options are capsules or drops. To improve absorption, take it with food containing fat. Fat makes it more soluble.
3. Have your levels rechecked every three months.  Vitamin D is a hormone, so it fluctuates for everyone. Seasonal changes also affect it.
4. People with dark skin need at least 5 to 10 times more sunlight than light-skinned people.

“Vitamin D supplements have proven to be a safe, inexpensive, and effective way to treat deficiency,” says Llewellyn. “However, few foods contain vitamin D and levels of supplementation in the U.S. are currently inadequate.”  To find out how the “sunshine vitamin” offers a whole host of health benefits, check out Your Best Health Under the Sun.

To your health,

Ian Robinson,
Managing Editor
NHD “Health Watch”

_________________________________

As for me,  I intend to take Ian’s advice and ward off Alzheimers with Sunshine. I got my walk in; and I’m headed off to the  sunny side of the pool, with a good book and my eyes shaded under the brim of Daddy’s favorite golf hat. 

Are You Advertising Your USP?

This is an awesome Article from one of my favorite copywriters, Bob Bly.. Explaining USP.  I don’t believe I have ever seen USP better explained.  I especially love the quote from Rosser Reeves.. Describing Advertising as “the art of getting a USP into the heads of the most people at the lowest possible cost.”   A PERFECT Explanation!

The 3-Part Formula for a Winning USP

Bob Bly

July 26th, 2010 by Bob Bly

In 1961, Rosser Reeves published his classic book Reality in Advertising in which he introduced the notion of the Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

Today the book is out of print and difficult to get. As a result, most practicing direct marketers don’t know the original definition of a USP. Their lack of knowledge often produces USPs that are weak and ineffective.

According to Reeves, there are three requirements for a USP (and I am quoting, in the italics, from Reality in Advertising directly):

1. Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Each must say, “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.”

Your headline must contain a benefit – a promise to the reader.

2. The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer.

Here’s where the “unique” in Unique Selling Proposition comes in. It is not enough merely to offer a benefit. You must also differentiate your product.

3. The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product.

The differentiation cannot be trivial. It must be a difference that is very important to the reader.

In general advertising for packaged goods, marketers achieve differentiation by building a strong brand at a cost of millions or even billions of dollars.

Coca Cola has an advantage because of its brand. If you want a cola, you can get it from a dozen soda makers. But if you want a Coke, you can only get it from Coca Cola.

Intel has achieved a similar brand dominance, at an extraordinary cost, with its Pentium line of semiconductors.

Most direct marketers are too small, and have too strong a need to generate an immediate positive ROI from their marketing, to engage in this kind of expensive brand building. So we use other means to achieve the differentiation in our USP.

One popular method is to differentiate your product or service from the competition based on a feature that your product or service has and they don’t.

The easiest situation in which to create a strong USP is when your product has a unique feature – one that competitors lack – that delivers a strong benefit.

This must be an advantage the customer really cares about. Not one that, though a difference, is trivial.

But what if such a proprietary advantage does not exist? What if your product is basically the same as the competition, with no special features?

Reeves has the answer here too. He said the uniqueness can either stem from a strong brand (already discussed as an option 95% of marketers can’t use) or from “a claim not otherwise made in that particular form of advertising” – that is, other products may have this feature too, but advertisers haven’t told consumers about it.

An example from packaged goods advertising: “M&Ms melt in your mouth, not in your hand.”

Once M&M established this claim as their USP, what could the competition do? Run an ad that said, “We also melt in your mouth, not in your hand!”?

One more point: As direct marketers, we – unlike most general advertisers today – are compelled to create advertising that generates net revenues in excess of its cost.

Reeves believed all advertising had to do this. He defined advertising as “the art of getting a USP into the heads of the most people at the lowest possible cost.”

Are You Advertising Your USP?

Dr. Weil has some excellent products ..  and I thoroughly enjoy his newsletter for information and healthy recipes.

Vitamin E and Alzheimer’s
Vitamin E may help you keep your wits about you as you get older. That’s the conclusion of a new study from Sweden that looked at vitamin E levels in a group of 232 men and women all of whom were above the age of 80. Investigators measured blood levels of all eight components of natural vitamin E in each volunteer at the beginning of the study. None of the participants showed any sign of dementia at the time, but after six years, 57 of them had developed Alzheimer’s. When the researchers checked vitamin E levels they found that those with the higher levels of all vitamin E components had a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s compared to those with lower levels. Study leader Francesca Mangialasche, M.D., said that the protective effect seems to be related to the combination of the different forms of vitamin E and suggested that “the balanced presence of different vitamin E forms can have an important neuroprotective effect.” The study was published in the July 2010 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

What’s In Your Vitamin E?
Natural vitamin E (in the form of mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols) provides the full range of benefits to support optimum health, while synthetic vitamin E is typically limited to alpha tocopherol. Dr. Weil recommends avoiding synthetic or single compound varieties, and instead opting for products that provide the complete vitamin E complex. Learn more – visit Dr. Weil’s Vitamin Advisor and if you decide to purchase our supplements, save up to 25%.

You just joined a new program, and signed up as a new affiliate. You are all excited and ready to get started.

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That is all wonderful.. especially if you are a new affiliate; or new to online marketing. You can at least get started right away.

The bad news.. is all of the copy they have in the back office has already been used, sometimes for months or
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Not only that.. but every new affiliate that signed up around the same time you did, is copying and pasting all the same stuff and working off of the very same list of resources.

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Your goal is to recoup your start up costs quickly and start generating profits.  Correct?

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Oops.. Did you say too much?
When it comes to advertising copy, more can rest on what you don’t say, than on how much.  The word or character count should not be your main focus when writing advertising copy, for print or email marketing.

It is easy to say too much in almost any circumstance, especially in advertising.

Naturally, you want to say as much as you can to intrigue your prospect.  But it is easy to turn a person off or lose his/ her interest when you go on and on. Worse yet, saying too much.. remove the need to “think” on the part of your reader.. and you may end up talking down to your prospect.  Not good.

Always aim for the simplest way to make your point.. but keep the stimulation factor. By stimulation.. I mean to allow your prospect to draw conclusions from what you say about your product or service. The act of processing information is stimulating; and copy that adds a little suspence.. can be engaging, even intriguing.

Studies have shown that different parts of the human brain perform different functions. Further research indicates that humans experience more pleasure when all of these parts of
the brain are engaged. That’s what they would call “whole-brain” copy.

Copy that merely grabs attention, will tend to fizzle in it’s appeal more quickly than “whole-brain” copy.  So leave a little room for your reader to use his/ her own intuition, or thought. Allow them to draw conclusions.

A good example would be the following paragraph from a print ad:
….
The Seiko chronograph alarm sells for $300.  The watch costs jewelers $150.  And jewelers love the item, not only because of the excellent reputation of the Seiko brand, but because it’s probably America’s best-selling new expensive digital watch. And Seiko can’t supply enough of them to dealers.
….

In this example it’s what wasn’t said is obvious; but still provokes some thought.. The conclusion is at the least interesting, especially if you are a retailer or jeweler.

By not saying too much:

*you aren’t insulting by talking down to your prospect..

*you are engaging your prospect, intriguing them..

*and hopefully leaving enough unsaid to motivate your prospect to click thru to your sales page and take the required action to move forward in the sales process.

Oops.. Have I said too much?

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Video advertising is the fastest growing advertising format online,

so says a new survey from BrightRoll—one of the largest online video advertising networks.  The pace of growth for online video ad spending is expected to remain around 40% for 2010—the same rate of growth as 2009.

Now you can take advantage of the video craze when you purchase an Ezine Solo that reaches 3000000 Ezine Subscribers, in over 100 different ezines.

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Nice…  but hurry..  This won’t last forever.

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 March was a happy month for me.. getting to go to California and be with my new grandson… But my trip was interrupted with devastating news that EMS crews were at the home of my father; and he wasn’t breathing.  

In Loving Memory of My Dad..   1936 – March 26th, 2010

Those who knew dad during our teen years and even 20 – 15 years ago.. know that he was the “lion of his den”.  He ruled his kingdom with a loving, caring but firm hand.  In these last several years.. stricken with Alzheimers, he became more of a sweet and vulnerable kitten.    …  I loved them both.

He was a man who whistled while he worked; and sang when he showered and shaved. When I was a kid..  “You Are My Sunshine” would resonate from the bathroom mixed with the smell of his shaving cream and after shave cologne. You didn’t come or go; or even pass in the hallway without a quick kiss, a pat or a hug.  He didn’t reserve that affection for just us.. Throughout his life, he pretty much hugged and kissed anyone who would let him.  (As most of the women who attend their church will testify.)

He was a simple man.. and did things because it was the right thing to do. He always found a way to share his life’s wisdom with us growing up.  As a teen..  I probably referred to them as lectures. As an adult, I’ve come to appreciate those little talks as “golden nuggets”.

One of those golden nuggets was that when you get older.. if you can hold up more than 1 or 2 fingers to count your truly good friends… then you are a blessed person.

After 30 years with American Airlines; Dad enjoyed a few good years of retirement driving a school bus and golfing as much as he could, until the alzheimers got in the way.

I believe that if he could leave us with another golden nugget.. It would be to make absolutely sure that those you love_ know it, follow the instructions Jesus gave us and love your fellow man, help those you can; and do everything in your power to turn your “someday” into today.  

Daddy…  You are my still my sunshine..