The week of April 20 and so much you can do!
MIGRAINE, anytime, urgent: Contact your senators and urge them to sponsor S 660, the National Pain Care Policy Act of 2009, to improve “research, education, training, access, outreach and care” for all painful conditions, including migraine. It’s fast and easy to send an e-mail to your senators through the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy. (more…)
The White House garden planting, 4/9/09
Michelle, Michelle, our country’s belle,
How does your garden grow?
No pesticides, no herbicides,
Just healthy children in a row!
If you’ve missed the buzz (and I’m not referring to the healthy sound of insects) over the First Lady’s organic garden, there are still plenty of places to catch up and a petition to sign if you’d like to support organic.
The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA), wasn’t too pleased that the White House garden would be organic; and in fact, two representatives of the association who “shuddered at the thought” wrote the First Lady a letter, published and discussed here on La Vida Locavore, encouraging her to consider using “crop protection products.”
You can read a perspective from the agricultural industry and call to action for MACA members here.
My mother has fun telling about the ‘crop protection method’ used in their Michigan farm garden while she was growing up. SHE pulled the weeds and hand-picked fat, juicy bugs from the plants. We had fun doing that with our children in our gardens, too, although I’m sure they picked (and ate) more fresh garden goodies than bugs off those plants every time!
Speaking of advocacy… to all of you who wrote to your representatives via Headache on the Hill efforts last month, here’s a big fat THANK YOU from Teri Robert, the Alliance for Headache Disorders Advocacy (AHDA) and me.
If you didn’t participate last month, you can always be an advocate for migraine and headache disorder research and understanding. You can send e-mails to your representatives at any time and ask them to help increase awareness and research funding for migraine disease and all headache disorders.
Let’s have some real cheese action with our w(h)ine!
By the time your baby’s eyes open to see the world for the first time, he or she is already contaminated with up to 300 potentially toxic chemicals. This month we learn from the CDC that many brands of baby formula contain a chemical used in rocket fuel, perchlorate. When mixed with water containing the same chemical, this formula becomes a more potent toxic cocktail for our babies in their first precious months of life!
If there is no other issue that makes you cry like a baby, have a tantrum over this one.
Read the report with things you can do, documentation and a perchlorate timeline; it will make you sick, particularly if you live in California or Texas.
We don’t yet know all the ways these chemicals impact human beings — autism, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cancer, ADD, ADHD, learning deficits, infertility, or the disease that too often invades my mind – migraine?!? We are poisoning our environment and ourselves.
In California, we’re fortunate to have Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rep. Henry Waxman working to advance the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act. Where do your representatives and senators stand on it? Most have Web sites with phone numbers or easy forms for you to contact them, find out and tell them what you think.
Please read, research, be aware, call or write to your local, state, and federal representatives, vote, join activist organizations, and be heard. We try to save or protect the whales, the dolphins, the wolves, the wilderness… how about trying to protect our babies — and in turn, save the humans?
I wanted to publish a book of written and visual art, creative expressions of people who live with migraine, to help promote awareness and understanding of it. The book is done. Now I want to talk about it, feature some of the work, writers and artists, and provide a place for anyone with an interest in the book, migraine, other chronic pain issues, art, poetry, essays, photography, publishing, health and advocacy issues, and maybe even a sprinkling of current events and politics, to connect. Welcome to this migraine and life journey!
