Health
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Each year at this event, civic and business leaders who work in the Washington, D.C. area cook recipes for culinary experts to judge.
Jan Thompson was a co-chair of the event in 2005 and each year, Mike and Jane enter a recipe. This year, they entered the cook-off with their recipe for Shrimp Ceviche. The judges awarded them “Healthiest Dish.”
Mike & Jan Thompson’s Shrimp Ceviche
1 pound medium shrimp
3 limes, juiced
3 lemons, juiced
1 orange, juiced
½ cup seeded tomatoes cut into ½ inch dice
½ cup red onion cut into ¼ inch dice
1 bunch cilantro, stemmed and chopped
1 Serrano chili, roughly chopped
1 large Hass avocado, peeled, seeded and cut into ½ inch dice
1 large cucumber peeled and cut into ½ inch dice
1 ripe mango peeled and diced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
Tortilla chips
In a large pot of boiling water, add the shrimp and simmer until cooked through, about five minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the shrimp to a bowl of ice water to chill.
Drain the shrimp, cut into ¾ inch pieces and transfer to a bowl. Add the lime, lemon and orange juice, stir to combine and refrigerate for at least four hours. Stir the tomato, onion, cilantro, salt, and chili into shrimp mixture and let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes.
Prior to serving, stir in the avocado, cucumber and mango. Drizzle the olive oil over the mixture, stir gently, and serve with tortilla chips.
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After a two-week stay in the hospital where he was prescribed the powerful painkiller OxyContin, Simons continued to use the drug against his doctors' orders, secretly obtaining a steady supply.
Within a year of first being prescribed the painkiller, he found himself in drug rehab. Simons was only 21 years old.
An alumni of The Pat Moore Foundation, Simons (whose real name is withheld to protect his identity) explains he was taking OxyContin everyday and by himself. His life revolved around the getting and using of this powerful painkiller.
Simons is not alone, he falls into a group - patients prescribed drugs who later become addicted - who are most susceptible to abusing painkillers. The other group is people, including the young, who begin using painkillers for recreational, and not medical, reasons.
An estimated 5.2 million people used prescription pain relievers in 2006 for non-medical reasons, up from 4.7 million in 2005, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. That's more than twice the 2.4 million people DHHS estimates use cocaine nationwide.
According to statistics compiled by the Partnership for a Drug Free America, nearly one in five teens, or a staggering 4.5 million kids age 12-19, reportedly abused prescription medications to get high last year. Despite an overall downward trend in drug use among teenagers, painkiller abuse is up, according to a White House report released late 2007.
"Opiates, a type of opioids, are a group of drugs which are medically used to relieve pain. OxyContin and Vicodin are both opiates and it is their pain relieving quality that also makes them so highly addictive," explains Phil Allen, CEO of The Pat Moore Foundation, a non-profit drug detox and treatment center in Orange County, CA, that specializes in opiate detox.
Opioids are chemicals that attach to certain receptors in the brain. They both prevent pain and stimulate the pleasure center in the brain. Those drugs that are the most effective in terms of attaching to those receptors give the most relief from pain as well as the most pleasure.
Allen explains that opiates serve a purpose and that's to deal with short-term pain. There are physicians who prescribe drugs chronically and after a while patients become habituated. Patients need more medicine to have an effect, but the pain doesn't get any better. They become dependent and if they try to stop withdrawal symptoms set in.
Having helped recovering addicts for over 12 years, Allen knows from experience that some people are more susceptible to painkiller addictions. People who are depressed, prone to anxiety or alcoholics are more likely to develop an addiction to prescription drugs like OxyContin. In fact, one of the more common conditions that lead to pain killer addiction is lower back injuries. People start using OxyContin from a prescription to relieve the pain and then they can't get off the drug.
"What makes painkillers so life shattering is that, unlike other drugs, the physical effects of addiction may not be as apparent, even to friends and family. But, the power of addiction is just as strong as any abused drug. The life of a painkiller addict is consumed with getting the drug. That becomes their entire life purpose, to the detriment of everything ... even their own lives."
The Pat Moore Foundation is a non-profit alcohol and drug rehabilitation center based in Orange County.
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Members of the influential Assembly Health Committee voted 12-4 to support Berg’s AB 2842, which would prohibit agents from using bait-and-switch techniques or other come-ons to sell policies and products to Medicare recipients.
“Believe me, seniors like myself get all sorts of solicitations from insurance agents for various insurance products,” said Berg, D-Eureka. “Seniors must have rights when they are dealing with Medicare and other insurance products. We have a lot of people out there trying to get at their money.”
Under the bill, insurance agents have to be up-front about their desire to sell something. They have to identify themselves as agents, and they can’t make an appointment to talk about Medicare Part D coverage and then use the time to sell other insurance products or services, unless those other products were mentioned when the appointment is made.
This is in keeping with other California law that requires agents to give seniors advance notice of a sales call so that seniors aren’t caught off guard without time to consult with family or other advisors.
Many seniors have come to rely on the help of insurance agents to help them through the maze-like system of Medicare law. Advising seniors on Medicare products is a growing industry. Berg’s bill takes aim at agents using tactics that take advantage of seniors and their pocketbooks by enrolling them in inappropriate plans.
“There are serious consequences for seniors who end up enrolled in the wrong plan,” said Berg. “Creating parameters for insurance agents will help seniors make informed choices regarding one of their most precious resources, their health care.”
In most cases, once seniors enroll in unneeded Medicare plans, they can not back out until the next annual open enrollment period. Being on fixed incomes to begin with, unwanted premiums can put a severe strain on a senior’s budget.
The bill is similar to a Maine law passed last year, and California will be the second state to institute this type of reform.
Berg, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Aging and Long-Term Care, is considered the Assembly’s key policy advocate on senior issues. This year, she has introduced a trio of bills that seek to regulate insurance agents and financial advisors.
AB 2842 now goes to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Visit Berg's Web site at http://democrats.assembly.ca.gov/members/a01/.
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Assembly Bill 2887, by Berg, D-Eureka, requires an existing state-funded health program called Every Woman Counts to provide digital mammograms. Current law requires the program only to pay for analog images of the common breast cancer test.
The Assembly Health Committee approved the bill late Tuesday on a 12-3 vote.
“Early detection is the key to survival,” said Berg. “As a breast cancer survivor, I can personally testify that quality screening is absolutely vital.”
To qualify for the Every Woman Counts program, a woman must be 40 or older, a California resident, and meet income eligibility requirements.
“The state needs to pay for new mammogram technology,” said Berg. “As always, the law needs to catch up with new technology.”
Breast cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers among American women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2004, the CDC reported that 182,772 women were diagnosed with breast cancer and 40,954 women died from the disease.
The Susan G. Komen For the Cure is the sponsor of this bill. The bill is one of their legislative priorities for this year.
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