Overview About Life Insurance

From: http://www.ins.state.ny.us

Before You Buy Insurance

The purchase of life insurance is an important decision for both you and your family. There are many reasons why life insurance is purchased, but these reasons should be based upon your needs or wants. Your marital status, number of dependents, family size, income, and wealth all play a role in determining the amount of life insurance that is right for you. The first step is to determine your current need for life insurance and how much you can afford to spend. It is a good idea to consider future needs too, because unlike most purchases, you can’t always buy life insurance when you need it; you have to be in reasonably good health to purchase most types of life insurance products.

Remember if one kind of life insurance does not seem to fit your needs, ask about other plans. Be sure to read your new policy carefully, and ask the agent or company for an explanation of anything you do not understand. Take full advantage of the free look provisions that are provided on the policy cover page. New York requires a minimum free look period of 10 days and a maximum of 30 days. A 30-day free look period is required for any policy offered through the mail. "Free look" provisions allow you to cancel a policy without penalty within a set time period. Whatever you decide, it is important to review your life insurance program every few years to keep up with your changing financial and family circumstances and responsibilities.

The Purpose Of Life Insurance

Your need for life insurance will vary with your age and responsibilities. The amount of insurance you buy should depend on the standard of living you wish to assure your dependents. You should consider the amount of assets and sources of income available to your dependents when you pass away. Social security benefits, available cash and other sources of income and investments may not provide the standard of living you have in mind. Life insurance helps bridge the gap between the financial needs of your dependents and the amount available from other sources, is the amount to be provided by life insurance. Your agent or other financial advisor can help you with these calculations. The Internet, as well as many financial magazines, books and articles are available to help you as well.

Analyze Your Need For Life Insurance

One approach to determine how much life insurance one should carry is to analyze the various needs of the family in the event of the death of a wage earner. Life insurance satisfies a number of these needs by providing a fund that can be used to:

• Pay off an individual’s last debts such as medical bills and funeral expenses

• Meet estate taxes and other expenses in settling an estate

• Provide life income for the spouse

• Pay off a mortgage

• Pay for the children’s education

• Provide funds for retirement

• Provide an income for the policyholder’s spouse to give the family time to readjust to a new standard of living

• Draw interest to provide funds for some special purpose

• Provide a monthly income until the children are grown and out of school

How The Cost Of Life Insurance Is Determined

The premium rate for a life insurance policy is based on two underlying concepts: mortality and interest. A third variable is the expense factor which is the amount the company adds to the cost of the policy to cover operating costs of selling insurance, investing the premiums, and paying claims.

Mortality – Life insurance is based on the sharing of the risk of death by a large group of people. The amount at risk must be known to predict the cost to each member of the group. Mortality tables are used to give the company a basic estimate of how much money it will need to pay for death claims each year. By using a mortality table a life insurer can determine the average life expectancy for each age group.

Interest – The second factor used in calculating the premium is interest earnings. Companies invest your premiums in bonds, stocks, mortgages, real estate, etc., and assume they will earn a certain rate of interest on these invested funds.

Expense – The third consideration is the expenses of operating the company. The company estimates such expenses as salaries, agents’ compensation, rent, legal fees, postage, etc. The amount charged to cover each policy’s share of expenses of operation is called the expense loading. This is a cost area that can vary from company to company based on its operations and efficiency.

The Weekender Diet Plan

The Weekender Diet was created with the working dieter in mind.

Yeah, we know how it is - you hit the bricks Monday through Friday and once the work week is over you just don't feel like dieting. You're tired, out of energy - and become a human with few desires. A little tv, some video games, a bit of shopping and dining out - oooh, fast food sounds good. And yes, perhaps even a little swinging in the old hammock.

Unfortunately, the majority of diet plans are a bit like our jobs - they don't allow time off except on the weekends, those two days which become more precious than a car that gets fifty miles to the gallon. Okay, perhaps not that precious, but I'm sure you get our drift. With that said, if the work force allows a two-day reprieve, then why not a diet? After all, the boss expects the workers to return on Monday - fresh, sharp and rested. They don't fear that the worker will wallow in relaxation so deep that they won't appear on Monday morning.

But for some reason, we can't apply the same reasoning to dieting because the greatest fear of a two-day Diet Reprieve is that the dieter will forget all about the diet and skip off into the Land of Milk and Honey Buns, never to appear for Diet Duty again. If this thought sounds tempting to you, then the Weekender Diet may not be for you.

On the other Diet Hand, if you feel strong in your desire to lose weight and to keep it off forever, then you may love our Weekender Diet. And as always, Diet Bites recommends that you get your doctor's thumbs up before going on any weight loss plan.

The Weekender Diet Plan is based on the Food Pyramid and contains about 1,350 daily calories. If you are in need of losing more than fifty pounds, you may wish to increase your minimum daily calorie intake to 1,500 calories.

Physical Activity - Before we get to the menus, let's address activity. On Monday through Friday make an effort to walk at least one mile. A pedometer can be purchased for about three bucks at your local Wal-Mart, sport's center or dollar store. Strap the pedometer on before heading out in the morning.

As a note, the best form of walking occurs when we do our walking all in one timeframe. However, in our experience exercise appears to be a chief reason that people quit their weight loss plan. In addition, individuals who have a lot of weight to lose just can't break out in heavy exercise. By the way, if you have a lot of weight to lose, work up to that one mile slowly rather than trying to get there all at once.

If by the end of the day you haven't walked a mile, then finish up your mile before the day is out (once you are comfortable walking the one mile). Be sure to walk when it's cool and avoid the heat. And be sure to take along some water to hydrate.

For an even faster rate of weight loss, work up to two miles per day, then three.

Mental Activity - During Monday through Friday we want you to take up a hobby that you really enjoy. Whether it's putting together puzzles, playing on the net, quilting, sewing, painting, reading, watching tv - whatever you enjoy doing! This will keep your mind off the refrigerator and focused on the thing(s) that you like to do. If you must have a snack, then save your snacks for the day and enjoy them during your Mental Activity time.

Fluids & Beverages - Be certain to incorporate adequate fluids into your diet throughout the day - about 8 cups of water, more if you are fighting a heat wave. Enjoy diet sodas as you please OR water with lemon and no calorie sweetener OR tea sweetened with no calorie sweetener OR Crystal Light - OR any diet-wise drinks throughout your day containing 20 calories or less per serving, although water should be your chief source of fluid intake.

Additives - Use scants amount of sugar when sweetening if you don't like sugar substitutes. Same applies to butter. Catsup, mustard, horseradish, peppers and low calorie sauces can also be used to add oomph to your meals. The key is not to go A-I-P and to use additives with minimal calories.

The Weekend - And finally we must address the weekend. To achieve weight loss you obviously can't run amuck on the weekends but you don't have to count every fat gram, carb and calorie. Simply enjoy three meals and two snacks per day. Stick to single servings and avoid those all you can eat joints. Avoid over-stuffing your tummy but do eat until you are full. You don't want to gain back the weight that you've worked so hard on ditching throughout the week. On Monday, report for Diet Duty refreshed, sharp and renewed.

Cheap, Safe Drug Kills Most Cancers

From: New Scientist Print Edition.

What makes cancer cells different - and how to kill them

New Scientist has received an unprecedented amount of interest in this story from readers. If you would like up-to-date information on any plans for clinical trials of DCA in patients with cancer, or would like to donate towards a fund for such trials, please visit the site set up by the University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board. We will also follow events closely and will report any progress as it happens.

It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.

Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis’s experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020).

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump don’t get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become “immortal”, outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.

“The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play:

they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy,” says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.

The phenomenon might also explain how secondary cancers form. Glycolysis generates lactic acid, which can break down the collagen matrix holding cells together. This means abnormal cells can be released and float to other parts of the body, where they seed new tumours.

DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to

be effective against all cancers. The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they can’t make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.

Paul Clarke, a cancer cell biologist at the University of Dundee in the UK, says the findings challenge the current assumption that mutations, not metabolism, spark off cancers. “The question is: which comes first?” he says.

Quick Start Diet Guide For Celiac Disease

From http://www.celiac.org

Here is a quick and simple view of the Gluten-free (GF) diet. Not all areas of the diet are as clear-cut as portrayed by this Guide. This is intended to be used as a safe and temporary survival tool until the newly diagnosed celiac can gather additional information. Understanding these dietary requirements will enable the person newly diagnosed to read labels of food products and determine if a product is GF or not GF.

Celiac Disease (CD) is a lifelong digestive disorder found in individuals who are genetically susceptible. Damage to the small intestine is caused by an immunologically toxic reaction to the ingestion of gluten. This does not allow foods to beproperly absorbed. Even small amounts of gluten in foods may affect those with celiac disease and cause health problems. Damage can occur to the small bowel even in the absence of symptoms.

Gluten is the generic name for certain types of proteins contained in the common cereal grains wheat, barley, rye and their common derivatives.

Allowed:

Rice, corn, soy, potato, tapioca, beans, garfava, sorghum, quinoa, millet, buckwheat, arrowroot, amaranth, teff, Montina®, and nut flours.

Not Allowed in any form:

Wheat (durum, graham, kamut, semolina, spelt), rye, barley, and triticale.

Labels

The key to understanding the GF diet is to become a good ingredient label reader. The following ingredients should not be consumed. They are derived from prohibited grains:

• Barley
• Malt or malt flavoring (can be made from barley)
• Malt vinegar (made from barley)
• Rye
• Triticale
• Wheat (durum, graham, kamut, semolina, spelt)

Frequently overlooked foods that may contain gluten:

Breading, Coating mixes, Panko

Broth, Soup bases

Brown rice syrup

Candy

Croutons

Flour or cereal products

Imitation bacon

Imitation seafood

Marinades

Pastas

Processed luncheon meats

Sauces, Gravies

Self-basting poultry

Soy sauce or soy sauce solids

Stuffing, Dressing

Thickeners (Roux)

Communion wafers

Herbal supplements

Drugs & Over-the-Counter Medications

Nutritional Supplements

Vitamins & Mineral Supplements

Playdough: A potential problem if hands are put on or in the mouth while playing with playdough or are not washed after use.

Recent research shows that pure, uncontaminated oats used in moderation (1 cup cooked) are safe for most persons with celiac disease. Consult your dietitian or physician if you want to include oats in your diet.

Distilled alcoholic beverages and vinegars are gluten-free. Distilled products do not contain any harmful gluten peptides. Research indicates that the gluten peptide is too large to carry over in the distillation process. This leaves the resultant liquid gluten-free. Wines are gluten-free. Beers, ales, lagers, and malt vinegar are made from gluten-containing grains and are not distilled, therefore they are not gluten-free.

Labels

A label that declares a complete list of ingredients is safest. If you are unsure about a products ingredients, avoid it or find a comparable product that is gluten free. Labels must be read every time you purchase food. Manufacturers can change ingredients at any time. Some products remain GF for years while others do not. You may verify ingredients by calling or writing a food manufacturer and specifying the ingredient and lot number of the food in question. State your needs clearly – be patient, persistent and polite.

If In Doubt Go Without!

If unable to verify ingredients or the ingredient list is unavailable – DO NOT EAT IT. Regardless of the amount eaten, it is not worth triggering your immune system and the damage to the small intestine that occurs every time gluten is consumed, whether symptoms are present or not. Individuals may have sensitivity reactions to foods other than gluten.

Wheat-Free Is Not Gluten-Free.

Products labeled Wheat-Free are not necessarily gluten-free. They may still contain rye, barley-based ingredients that are not GF.

Contamination in Food Preparation: When preparing gluten-free foods they must not come into contact with food containing gluten. Contamination can occur if foods are prepared on common surfaces, or with utensils that are not thoroughly cleaned after preparing gluten-containing foods. Using a common toaster for gluten-free bread and regular bread is a major source of contamination. Flour sifters should not be shared with gluten-containing flours. Deep fried foods cooked in oil shared with breaded products should not be consumed. Spreadable condiments in shared containers may be a source of contamination. When a person dips into a condiment a second time, with the knife (used for spreading), the condiment becomes contaminated with crumbs (e.g. mustard, mayonnaise, jam, peanut butter, and margarine).

Wheat flour can stay airborne for many hours in a bakery (or at home) and contaminate exposed preparation surfaces and utensils or uncovered gluten-free products. Likewise, foods not produced in a gluten-free environment have the potential to be contaminated with gluten. This may occur when machinery or equipment is inadequately cleaned after producing gluten-containing foods. Food manufacturers are required to abide by Good Manufacturing Practices outlined in the FDA’s Code of Federal Regulations, to reduce the risk of contamination in manufacturing. Let common sense be your guide.

Not All Adverse Reactions Are Due To Celiac Disease: Lactose intolerance, food sensitivities or allergies to soy, corn, or other foods or even the stomach flu, are common causes of symptoms similar to Celiac Disease. Newly diagnosed celiacs may have trouble digesting certain foods, especially fatty foods, until the small intestine has had a chance to heal and start absorbing normally. If necessary, keep a diary of foods eaten. Read labels, remember what you ate, and listen to your body.

Attitude is Everything

Like anything new, it takes time to adjust to the GF diet. It is natural to mourn old food habits for a short time. Stay focused on all the foods you can eat. Fresh fruits and vegetables are delicious and healthy. Fresh poultry, fish, meat and legumes provide protein and are naturally GF. Most dairy foods can also still be enjoyed providing you are not lactose intolerant. GF substitutes for foods commonly made with wheat are available at health food stores and from GF food manufacturers. Try GF waffles for breakfast; a sandwich on GF bread for lunch; and rice, corn, or quinoa pasta for dinner. Your new way of eating is very satisfying!

The GF diet is a lifelong commitment and should not be started before being properly diagnosed with CD/DH. Starting the diet without complete testing is not recommended and makes diagnosis difficult. Tests to confirm CD could be inaccurate if a person were on a GF diet for a long period of time. For a valid diagnosis gluten needs to be reintroduced. Celiac disease is an inherited autoimmune disease. Screening of family members is recommended. Consult your doctor for testing.