FROM THE BELLY!
Breathing Exercises
Deep abdominal breathing, or belly breathing, helps establish a state of physical calm and can neutralize the negative effects of stress. Here is a step by step lesson:
1. Lie on your back and place a book on your belly. Relax your stomach muscles and inhale deeply into your abdomen so that the book rises. When you exhale, the book should fall. You’ll still be bringing air into your upper chest, but now you’re also bringing air down into the lower portion of your lungs and expanding your entire chest cavity.
2. Sit up and place your right hand on your abdomen and your left hand on your chest. Breathe deeply so that your right “abdominal” hand rises and falls with your breath, while your left “chest” hand stays relatively still. Breathe in through your nose and out through your nose or mouth, and enjoy the sensation of abdominal breathing.
3. Place a clock with a second hand in view. Breathe in slowly, filling your abdomen, for five seconds. Then breathe out slowly to the same count of five. Perform deep abdominal breathing throughout the day; for example, when you awaken, before you go to sleep, and in any stressful situation.
Carol Krucoff and Mitchell Krucoff. M.D., Healing Moves: How to Cure, Relieve and Prevent Common Ailments With Exercise (Harmony Books)
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SOMETHING YOU CAN DO TO HELP
Subject: HEPC INFO: ORGAN DONORS
date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 16:20:29 -0400
Under the current system, there aren't enough donor organs for everyone on the transplant waiting list.
The sad truth is, at least 15 people die "waiting"
Everyday. According to the government (http://www.organdonor.gov/ ):
"EACH DAY about 60 people receive an organ transplant, but
another 15 people on the waiting list die because not enough organs are available."
How great is the need for organs to harvest? According to Dr. Phil Berry, a liver transplant recipient himself,
"6,000 people would say it's very great because they died
last year on that list waiting for an organ that never came."
“Every year, we’re falling farther and farther behind, because the transplant waiting list is growing
by 15 percent per year, but the number of donors has
increased by just 5 percent per year.”
The problem is that not enough people are filling out organ donor cards. There ARE enough organs. There are MORE than enough organs. Unfortunately they just don't get donated. (Our cemeteries are full of them.) If everyone who died (accidents, car wrecks, etc.) was an organ donor----there would be no such thing as a "waiting list".
Can you imagine? No waiting and waiting and waiting, while your condition gets worse. So, what can we do about it?
Let's do what other countries (Belgium, France, Austria, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Singapore) are already doing!
It's called "Presumed Consent". Here's the definition of "Presumed Consent" according to UNOS:
"Public policy based on presumed consent would offer every adult the opportunity to express and have recorded by publicly accountable authorities his or her refusal to be a donor of solid organs and tissues. A clinically and legally indicated candidate for cadaver organ and tissue recovery is
presumed to have consented to organ and tissue recovery if he or she had not registered a refusal."
In other words, everyone would be a donor, unless they fill out a card saying that they don't want to be one. You can read more about this at:
http://www.presumedconsent.org/
and
http://www.unos.org/resources/bioethics_whitepapers_presumedconsent.htm
Let's do what we can to save some lives! You can do your part by spending a few minutes writing to these email addresses, and telling them that you are in favor of
"Presumed Consent":
send an email to Health and Human Services: hhsmail@os.dhhs.gov
send an email to Div. of Transplantation: RLaeng@hrsa.gov
send an email to Mary Ganikos, Chief, Education branch, Div. of Transplantation: MGanikos@hrsa.gov
Tell them that you would like to see "Presumed Consent" become ENOS policy. Write to everyone you can think of about this idea. The more noise we can make about this, the sooner things will change.
Please do what you can to help. Send this to everyone in your address book and make some phone calls too if you can.
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