Jack LaLanne was an inspiration to many and if you ever met him he filled the air with vitality and excited anticipation about life!  We’re going to miss that wonderful enthusiasm!  He had a wonderful life and a great family.  They all paid him beautiful tributes on how he touched their lives!

So I’d like to say so long to Jack LaLanne and thank him for being so right!  He had the secret!  Just check this out!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEboAJf9UVc

I was just a little girl when I started to workout with Jack LaLanne! My mom would turn on the TV around 12 o’clock everyday and work out with Jack and since I was too young to go to school I would join in the workouts. There was the chair workout and the leg lifts, and there were all kinds of stretches and repetitions and they were all done to the accompaniment of organ music. I remember when we would finish a sequence of moves, Jack would tell us to take a big breath, he would spread his arms wide and bend forward bringing his arms together and take a deep breath and the organ would make the sound of an upscale followed by a downscale as Jack stood up again to let his breath out. He made it seem so easy, even fun. But recently I found out a secret that Jack Lalanne kept from us.

He hates to work out! No, really, he does, I read about it in the New York Times.

Jack is 95, and he still does a 90 minute workout everyday, with push-ups! In the article he says  it’s not something he enjoys. “I hate it,’’ he said of working out. “But I like the results. Exercise is something you’ve got to do the rest of your life.’’ Man, can you believe that! Jack Lalane hates to work out! So that made me think, “Who the heck am I to whine about working out if Jack LaLanne who is 95 and still does 90 minutes everyday hates it and still does it.

Think about it. Jack is the man who almost single handedly “invented” the TV exercise show. He preached to millions of Americans the virtues of being healthy and in shape. He gave people ideas about how to exercise, where to exercise, what bits of the body to exercise. He served as cheerleader and cajoler all in one, advocating the benefits of workouts. Yet it turns out that he hates it.

Maybe he should have shared that news with us. Think about it, that one piece of advice could actually have helped people! Most of us slog away in the gym wondering why we are doing what we are doing, why we aren’t enjoying it, why even after years and years of doing it we still have to talk ourselves into going most of the time.

Now, if you look at Jack you can see the obvious benefits. He’s in incredible shape. Trim, muscular, vital. He’s living, walking proof of how regular exercise can keep your body and your brain in great shape. It might have been reassuring to know that he really doesn’t get a kick out of going to the gym, anymore than most of the rest of us do. It might help people understand there is nothing wrong with how they feel, in fact, their attitude is perfectly normal and healthy. Knowing that even avid exercisers hate the routine might also help motivate people to stick with it.

The key is ultimately not what you do, it’s the fact that you do it and the way you look and feel as a result. Jack LaLanne has made a living out of preaching the benefits of exercise. And he’s lived what he preaches, getting out there everyday and working out even though he doesn’t like it. I think most of us would agree, that’s a small price to pay for a long, healthy life. And long may he continue to enjoy the benefits. Go Jack!

And thank you Jack LaLanne, so long!

Lately, I’ve been working on a web TV show, www.powersewing.com.  I’ve been very busy and I haven’t been posting as much as I would like, so Kevin has been “taking up the slack”.  He has been posting and also, he has been posting.

He hasn’t ever said to me, “Why aren’t you finding time to post?”  However, I have been feeling guilty.  Well, not really guilty but I have been anticipating that I might “get in trouble” for not posting.

My mind has been having thoughts that I don’t need.  I’m now reminded that the thoughts that we have can cause our emotions to do things we don’t need.

I have forgotten to notice my feelings.  I have forgotten to notice what I am feeling and  what I am saying to myself. I have forgotten that my thoughts are my servants and that I can control them and what I think.  If I choose to allow thoughts that make me feel bad I will feel bad. 

Recently, I was listening to a podcast of Dr. Emmet Miller, M.D., one of the  fathers of Holistic Medicine. He was talking about how our health may be directly related to our feelings.  For instance, perhaps a man goes to the doctor because he has a burning pain in his mid-section.  The doctor finds that the man is suffering from an ulcer in his stomach and he treats it.

Dr. Miller says that many times health care treats the problem and eliminates the symptom but never goes on to find the source.

What if the doctor talked with the man and found out that he takes aspirins everyday.  Why does the man take the aspirin?  It’s because he has headaches.  Why does he have headaches?   Because he drinks whiskey every night.  Why does he drink?  Because he has bad thoughts and feelings.  Why? Because he regrets his past and worries about his future?

We can find the source of this man’s ulcer in the thoughts and feelings he has.  If that’s so we can use our thoughts and feelings to keep ourselves well and  we can imagine ourselves to be healthy.  If we notice what we are feeling we can find out if we are encouraging good health or creating pain in our thoughts and our bodies.  Find the source.  We can choose and control them.

Each time you picture the person you want to be, you become that person, because the thoughts you have will become a reality.  What kind of person do you want to be?  Can you drop the negative thoughts that make you sorry, sad, guilty or miserable?

We are in the season of Joy and Love and many of us do not feel that Joy and Love.  We feel lost and some of us feel lonely or scared.  Scared of the news we hear everyday, scared that our future is not what we want, scared that our money will be gone.

Dr. Miller reminds me that our thoughts are our’s to choose or let go.  Our future isn’t ahead of us, but something we are creating right now.  Our past doesn’t exist and it will never come back.  We are magical beings that have forgotten the magic within, but we don’t have to.

If we say we are too old, we will be too old.  If we say we are losers, we will be losers.  As Dr. Miller says, “If we say life is a  bitch, it will be a bitch.”

So what are you feeling?  I haven’t posted.  I have now. I feel better
Make this holiday season Joyful for those you love….Just love them. Stay Healthy.

We’ve all done it. You have your workout clothes all ready, you have finished work for the day and you are supposed to be heading to the gym. But somehow the idea of jumping on the treadmill, taking an aerobics class, or lifting those weights is not nearly as appealing as going home, flopping on the couch, opening a beer or getting some ice cream, and just vegetating in front of the TV.

Don’t worry. You are not a bad person. You are just human. We can all find reasons why we don’t want to go. The most common excuse is lack of time. Another popular one is that you are too out of shape. Really, that’s true. A study by the American Council on Exercise found 19 percent of people said they were too out of shape to work out. But isn’t that precisely why you should go, so you are not out of shape!

Whatever the reason, if you have run out of good excuses, here are some others you can try when people say “I thought you were going to work out today!”.

I don’t work out because all the exercise programs say that when you start you should wear “loose-fitting clothes” and I don’t have any loose-fitting clothes!

I’ve already had a complete workout at the office because I spent the day jumping to conclusions, pulling out all the stops, bending over backwards, passing the buck, pushing my luck, dragging my heels and climbing the walls. That’s enough exercise for one day.

I checked with my doctor and he told me my heart couldn’t stand the shock of seeing how much exercise equipment or gym membership cost.

My allergies are bothering me. I’m allergic to exercise.

I read a study that said we are all born with a pre-determined number of breaths. Once we use those up we die. So I can’t exercise because it will only make me breathe faster and shorten my life.

Or the flipside of that one. It’s a proven scientific fact that for every mile you run you add one minute to your life. This means that if you keep exercising until you are 85 years old you will get to spend an extra 5 months in a nursing home at $4,500 a month. I can’t afford that.

I’m already in shape. I think round is a great shape.

Exercising is dangerous. My grandmother started a new exercise program where she walks five miles a day. That was two weeks ago. Now we have no idea where the heck she is so I have to go look for her.

I prefer to exercise early in the morning before my brain and my body figure out what’s going on.

I think if God meant me to touch my toes he would have put them further up my body.

I started exercising because I wanted to take up cross-country skiing. Then I realize the US is way too big, there’s no way I’ll ever ski across it, so I stopped.

Last time I exercised it made me spill the ice cubes right out of my glass.

So there are plenty of excuses why you can’t or won’t exercise. But there is only one good reason. Because it’s good for you. Ultimately you have to decide which is the most important.

Yesterday I wrote about how having a cold made me grateful for my normal good health.  That got me thinking more about gratitude and just how important it is in our everyday lives.

First, and most obviously, a sense of gratitude reminds us of the good things in our life; the people we love and who love us; having enough to eat; having a roof over our head; being healthy. These are simple things that most of us have most of the time but often take for granted.

Even if we don’t have all the things we want or would like – if we are overweight for example or have a bad back – we need to remember that we could be so much worse off. That’s not always a great comfort but it does help us put things in perspective.

Secondly, there’s good evidence that gratitude can not only make you feel better about yourself and the world around you, it can make you feel better period.

Jeffrey Froh, Assistant Psychology professor at Hofstra University, did a study in which he measured the physical benefits of being grateful. He found that people who are grateful and who “counted their blessings” were less likely to report headaches, stomach aches, or pain in the body.

Other studies show that, compared to people who don’t have a feeling of gratitude, people who describe themselves as feeling grateful to others have more energy and enthusiasm, are more optimistic, less prone to stress and less likely to suffer from clinical depression.

This does not mean that you walk around thanking everyone for everything. You can be grateful for what you have and still be aware that the world is filled with hate and pain and suffering. The key is not letting that information obscure how fortunate you are or how much goodness there is in the world.

Nor is a sense of gratitude only for those who have a blessed life with a great job, lots of money, friends etc. Many people of limited or even no means can feel grateful for many aspects of their life. It means being aware of your disappointments but thankful for the blessings you have, for the good that has happened to you or simply the chance to be alive.

My mate Dr. Bill Stewart, author of “Deep Medicine” (full disclosure here: Bill and I work at the same hospital but I don’t get any financial benefit from mentioning him here – otherwise I’d be writing about him all the time!) says gratitude is one of the cheapest, most effective medicines you can have.

Bill, who knows something about the power of the mind to heal, says a sense of gratitude can help boost the immune system and help you sleep better.

You don’t need spandex, any equipment or gym membership to exercise it.

And it has no known side effects other than to make the people around you wonder how they can get whatever it is you have.

So tell them what you are doing. They’ll be grateful that you did.

I have met a few truly wise people in my life. Sadly, neither one of them is me. But hey, I’m not dead yet so there’s still time. Anyway, one of them is a chap named Dr. Bill Stewart and the other is Shirley – and I’m not just saying that because I’m scared of her! Even though I am!

Anyway Bill {full disclosure here, I work with Bill in my day job} has written a book called “Deep Medicine” in which the basic message is that every decision we make is about health; if we decide to eat deep fried mars bars instead of a brocolli sandwich that’s a health decision; if we decide to take the elevator instead of the stairs up to the 37th floor, that’s a health decision.

Shirley says that to make something a habit you have to do it 29 times. Once is just a start. Ten times is good. Twenty times is very good. But to make it something you do automatically, you have to do so 29 times. And she’s right. I don’t know about the math (and as any of my old mathematics teachers in school would say “what’s new!”) but that’s pretty much about right.

Anyway, I was thinking about this when I was working out recently and looked around and realized there were a lot of familiar faces. It’s great to suddenly appreciate how many people you see at the gym all the time. Then you realize they are there because they’ve made the decision to make it part of their lives. It’s not something they do when they feel like it, it’s something they do because they do it.

And that’s the key. The more you do it the less you have to think about doing it. It becomes automatic. You go to the gym on a Monday because you always go on a Monday. You go running on Thursday because you always go running on Thursday. After a while you don’t have to think about it or plan it. You may even wake up thinking “oh my god I don’t want to go running”.. then get up and go for a run.

That’s pretty much how I feel about going to the gym on a Monday evening. After all, I’ve just had a fun weekend and had to struggle all day Monday to try and get back into the work groove and the idea of going to the gym is not high on my list of fun things to do.

So I get there and think I’ll just do an easy workout, nothing too strenuous, something to ease me into the week. Then I get on the stairmaster and before I know it I’ve programmed the damn thing to do the same ridiculously taxing routine I always do. And after that I end up doing the same rigorous weight lifting routine I always do.

Why? Because that is what I usually do. It’s a routine. A habit. I do it because I always do it. It doesn’t take the pain out of the routine, but it certainly makes the decision making process a heck of a lot easier. By taking the question about whether you will do something out of the equation, you make it easier to just do it.

And the same applies to how you eat. If you eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables and avoid lots of highly processed, high fat and sugar foods you’ll quickly find yourself not even having to think about what you buy when you go to the supermarket. You just cruise around the areas where the foods you buy are located, and avoid the areas where the foods you don’t buy are.

That doesn’t mean you never eat those foods – after all everyone loves a cookie or a cake from time to time – it just means you dramatically reduce your odds of even having to think about whether you are going to eat one because you don’t have them around the house.

So, if you want to be healthy, don’t think about it, don’t plan it, just make it a habit.

p.s. Welcome new readers from The Real Deal Show Website!

Are you the boss of your body, or is your body the boss of you? No, really, I mean it.

Think about your day and all the things you do, carrying bundles from the grocery store into the house, getting in and out of your car, fitting through turnstiles, walking from the parking lot to your work, bending, lifting, reaching. Think of all the physical movements you make during the day. Now, think about the effort expended doing all these tiny and not so tiny movements. Do you complete each movement with ease without a thought about using your body or do you make compensations for you body. Do you compensate because you have to make up for your girth? Do you change the path you take because your feet hurt or your breathing is too shallow? Be honest, how much are you the boss of your body, and how much is your body the boss of you?

If it’s any comfort to you, you’re not alone. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 61% of all adults in the U.S feel that they are overweight. It’s the moment when you “accept” the idea that you are overweight that changes your attitude about yourself. It’s at this moment that you consciously make a choice – “Yes, I’m overweight and that’s that”…or “I feel like I’m overweight, and I’m going to change”.

You may not think those exact words or you may not even notice the pounds and inches slowly padding out your body. Then, one day you do notice and ask “When did this happen?” Imagine how different things would be if you went to bed one night and the next morning woke up to discover you had put on 30 pounds overnight. I’ll bet you would take immediate action to change things!
But we don’t just gain weight overnight, do we, we pack it on little by little, an ounce at a time, over months and years; and as it slowly adds up we accept these tiny changes until we can’t even imagine how this change of body, change of activities, and change of attitude has taken over our lives. And just as if you woke up 30 pounds heavier and determined to do something about because it happened overnight, you can choose to do something about it right now.

Let’s take our own little survey and find out what you really think about your body. Just accept the first thoughts that come to mind as you complete these sentences.

When I think about my body I …
2) Every time I put on my clothes I feel…

The last time I remember feeling in great shape was…

I can lose weight starting today, if I…

Complete these sentences and write down the answers. Now write down #4 four different ways. Really think about it. What can you do today?

The Surgeon General has declared obesity to be epidemic in the United States, so much so that it is responsible for 300,000 deaths every year, that’s more than 3 fully loaded 747 airplanes crashing every single day with NO Survivors! 300,000 people gone every single year. And the numbers are growing each year. Does it include you? These people are dying from all kinds of health problems brought on by being overweight or obese, and most of them could have done something to stop their untimely deaths.

The good news is that, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, we are all going to live longer lives. Today the average life expectancy for a man is 74.5 years and a woman can live to the age of 79.5! So given that, how will you fare physically when you are in your 70’s? Keeping fit, being able to walk, dance, ride a roller coaster, or just take part in all the activities of daily life is a major step to growing old without depression and isolation. Will you enjoy the life you will be living in the body you have now? Go back to #4. Make a list. Start today.

Who’s the Boss?

Let me know what worked for you. Share your solutions with us and let us know how you got your body back.

Most people think of them as the left brain and the right brain. The left brain is the logical one, the one that deals with linear thinking, like solving math problems or planning a road trip. The left brain thinks analytically, it’s responsible for understanding languages, numbers, words and writing. The right brain thinks in pictures, emotions, sounds and symbols. Due to the right brain’s emotional sense, it can effect not only our psychological but also our physical states of mind. By imagining positive images the right side can make us feel comforted and safe which in turn can create a more relaxed frame of mind and actually lower blood pressure and loosen tense muscles. This is not just a belief, it’s a scientific fact, backed up by many studies; what you imagine can change the chemistry in your body.

Guided Imagery and hypnosis are used to promote a healthier outlook and a sense of well being just by imagining positive outcomes. We spend most of our time in our left brain, the logical thought processes in the conscious state of mind, because in our society that’s how we are educated and rewarded. You get an A if you know all the facts and information. You get into college if you get good grades, etc.

The right brain is where the subconscious mind lives. So focusing your attention on positive results will give your subconscious mind the authority and the go ahead to create a positive reality, just like worry and negative thoughts create an negative reality.

The subconscious mind doesn’t analyze, it doesn’t figure if the outcome is possible or not, it doesn’t judge or compare your thoughts with reality or try to identify exactly how something can or cannot happen, it simply takes your word for it and goes to work to create the goal or outcome you have been focusing on.

So, your thoughts are very powerful, that’s why you must be very careful how you think, what you talk about, and what you say to yourself. You attract whatever you put your attention to. If you focus your thoughts on how unlucky you are, you will be unlucky. If you focus on thoughts that you can’t lose weight, you won’t!

We do it all the time; you know, the thoughts in your head that tell you what might go wrong, or what to judge, or just those thoughts that give you something to worry about. Worry is how most of us experience our imagination, we anticipate problems, we rehearse arguments over things that haven’t even happened yet, we prepare ourselves for failure.

But we can change the pattern of worry by using the imagination to our advantage. We can train our mind to put our subconscious to work FOR us not against us, to create a better outlook. All you have to do is imagine the best. Don’t let the left brain tell you no! Just pretend, imagine, see it, taste it, feel it. As if it has already become reality, and it will.

Okay, all you left brainers out there, just do it for 2 weeks. Notice what you say to yourself and make it a positive statement instead. Meet back here in 2 weeks and tell me what you found out!

Well, I just read an article called “Mid-Life financial check-up” it’s about reassessing all the things you have done over the years with your money and how to re-focus, depending on your needs, in the future. And it got me to thinking – it happens from time to time – that maybe what we all need is a “Mid-Life Self Health Really Honest check-up”.

The financial check-up was very informative because it asks you questions about where you have your money, how much debt you have and have you saved enough for a healthy financial future. So our little “Mid-Life Self Health Really Honest Check-up”, could follow that example and ask you questions about your health, and you answer really honestly in your own private setting with no one listening. Ready?

Q – How long have you been saying, “I’m going to start a regular exercise routine.”

a) 1 month b) 6months c) 1 year d) Over 2 years e) All my damn life or it seems like it.

Be honest, have you walked your talk yet, or is the future still the place where you are “gonna” get into an exercise routine, really.

Q – Are you doing enough to insure a healthy body well into your 80′s?

a) I watch my diet and choose wisely b) I moderate the treats c) I consider allergies, health issues and I don’t expect a pill to be the complete answer.

Hey, we’re living longer that’s why we need more money as we age, but if we only have the money and our health is shot we are just waiting for the end, and it’s not a pretty future.

In a recent New York Times article Dr. Vonda Wright studied people of a certain age who had been in physical competitions like running and found them to be playing the age game and winning. She also studied folks who began an exercise plan in their 40′s or 50′s, even 70′s and the same benefits applied. They were healthier seniors who were defying the stereotype of the elderly. They were not shuffling, doddering old folks, they were vibrant physically fit people who have lived a non-sedentary life. They were healthier! So it’s never too late to start, no matter what age you are.

Q – How long have you been planning to finally break that “bad habit” ? Whether it’s smoking, overeating or just not taking care of yourself or your body?

Be serious here, no one is looking. Really what have you done to free your mind of the guilt you feel, the self hatred that rages through every single cell in your body that is screaming “You are killing me! You are not worthy of living! You are so far gone now that it is just too late! Too late do you hear, you lazy, fast-food chomping….”
Hold it! Stop! I got just a little carried away there, but you get the idea.

Q – How is your unofficial really honest self health test going?

a) right on track!

That’s what I thought. Laura Carstensen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity and foremost scholar on aging, says life gets even better as we age. She is best known for debunking all those nasty stereotypes of aging as frail and surly. She says we have more control than we think. All that’s needed is to get control of our mind, body and our finances. You still have time, start now.

Every day you read about or hear about a new study that could dramatically change the way we treat a disease, or live our lives. But much of the time this week’s studies seem to contradict last week’s studies. One day coffee is good for you, the next it is bad. So how do you make sense of all this?

Well, first of all don’t worry, a lot of medical experts are trying to find the answer to that question too. In 2004 Dr. John Ioannidis published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Ioannidis looked at 45 large studies published in well known medical journals between 1990 and 2003. He found that in approximately one third of the cases, the findings of one study were later completely contradicted, or seriously called into question by later studies.

So if the researchers themselves can’t make their minds up, what are the rest of us to do.

The best place to start is by asking yourself the following questions of every piece of medical research you see.

1) Is this relevant to me? If the study is about a problem you don’t have, a disease or condition you are not being treated for then move on. There’s no point cluttering your head up with information about something you don’t have, particularly as that information might not be correct anyway.

2) Did this study look at people or poultry? If the study was done in mice, rats, fruit flies etc, and you are not also a mouse, rat or fruit fly then move on. It’s not relevant to you. In time they may do the same studies in people. But that could be years away and even then there’s no guarantee that they will find the same results. Why waste time worrying about something that doesn’t concern you when you could just as easily waste that time worrying about who to vote for on American Idol.

3) How many people are involved? When it comes to medical studies, size really does matter, and bigger is almost always better. Unless large numbers of people were involved don’t waste your time on it. Looking at small numbers really only tells you if the drug/treatment etc is safe for those people, at that time, under those conditions. Wait till they test it on thousands of individuals before you start to pay attention.

Also look at the kinds of people the research was done on. Some studies are only carried out in women, some in men. Some focus on people over 65, others on people under 45. Some studies look at particular racial or ethnic groups, such as Alzheimer’s in Japanese Americans living in Hawaii, or breast cancer in Ashkenazi Jewish women. So, a basic rule of thumb is that the less the people in the study look like you, the more reason to look at it with a questioning eye.

4) How was the study done? The gold-standard for medical research is called a double-blind, placebo controlled study. That basically means that neither the patients nor the doctors/researchers know who is getting the real treatment, and who is getting the placebo. That way neither can interfere with the results.

Other methods take a different approach, often because it’s the only practical way to get the information they are looking for. Observational studies for instance compare people who take, for example, vitamin C supplements to those who don’t and see which group gets more heart disease. These studies have to try and exclude all the other factors that could influence their findings such as lifestyle habits, diet, environment etc. In the end they may be able to suggest a link between people who take vitamin C supplements and reduced risk of heart disease, but they can’t prove it. Next year another study may come along and show just the opposite.

5) If the study was a clinical trial, what phase was it? Phase I and II clinical trials are carried out in small groups of people, to determine if the treatment is first safe, and then if there is any sign it actually works. It is only in Phase III trials that a drug is tested in large enough numbers, and compared either against another treatment or a placebo, to determine if it is truly effective.

6) Has the study been published? The best science is usually reported in respected medical journals. If you hear about a new drug or treatment through research presented at a medical meeting, don’t rush out to buy it or take it. Wait until that research has been published. That means the study has been peer-reviewed, a process that usually weeds out weak or badly done scientific work.

7) Who funded and promoted the study? Remember, health care is a multi-billion dollar industry. There is a lot at stake. A study that is favorable to a new drug or treatment can boost sales for that medication, and the stock price of the company that makes it. So check to see who is behind the study.

Remember the diet drug known as phen-fen? Many newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, published favorable reports on the safety and effectiveness of phen-fen based on a 1999 study and accompanying editorial published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It was later learned that both were written by a paid consultant for Wyeth, a company that made one half of the phen-fen combination.
How does this fit in to previous research? A single study rarely offers definitive evidence of the effectiveness of a new treatment. Look at previous research to see if these latest findings match those, or how they differ. Never change your habits based on one study.

9) What is the risk? Even if the research is good, the findings valid, you have to ask yourself what difference does it make? To do this you have to consider two kinds of risk, relative risk and absolute risk. For example, if a study says eating pork increases your risk of cancer of the eyeball by 43 percent, that sounds like a lot, but it is a relative risk. You also have to look at how many people in the study got cancer of the eyeball. If there were 200,000 people in the study and only 500 developed that disease, then the relative risk is 500 in 200,000 or 0.25 percent, roughly 1 in 400. It’s a much smaller number. However, reporters will often give the larger number because it’s more dramatic, or because they just don’t both to do the math.

10) Is the study being hailed as a medical miracle or breakthrough treatment? Be very skeptical of any treatment that promises miracles, cures or breakthroughs. Much as we would like it to be otherwise, science tends to work very slowly. Each study builds on the last one, creating a body of work that eventually, hopefully, tells us what works. Studies that claim to have all the answers, or research that claims that one drug can cure all cancers are usually as reliable as the supermarket tabloids that report on aliens and Elvis being seen in the White House.

Because the way it’s framed is so important.

You may have seen or heard about that study with the screaming headlines “Organic food no healthier than conventional”. It cited what researchers were calling the world’s biggest research project into the issue, saying there are no significant nutritional differences between conventional produce and organic fruits and vegetables.

Now, for anyone who has been touting the health advantages of eating organic the news was something of a bummer. After all, why pay substantially more for an organic peach or cabbage when it’s no better for you than one sprayed with pesticides.

But, if you take a closer look at how the study was done you may not be so quick to chuck away the organics.

The study was done by researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and was paid for by the British Food Standards agency, which wanted to determine if the UK’s organic industry could claim higher health benefits for its produce.

All well and good so far, they’re all fine upstanding folks.

The researchers took 162 scientific papers that compared organic and non-organic produce, they threw out 107 of those studies that they said contained flaws, and focused on 55 papers that they said were of the highest quality.

The researchers then checked those papers to see if they found any differences in  mineral and vitamin content for organic and non-organic fruits and veg. The overall conclusion was that in 20 of 23 nutritional categories there was no substantial difference between the two.

So, debate over, case decided. Thank you very much and goodnight. Right? Well, no. Not quite.

Other experts, who were not part of the study, say the way the research was framed helped predict its findings.

They say many of the 107 studies the researchers threw out were perfectly fine. When those were examined to compare organic and non-organic the difference was apparent. For example organic produce had, on average, 53 percent more beta carotenes and 38 percent more flavanoids than non-organic produce.

Another leading expert, Carlo Leifert, a professor of ecology at Newcastle University, said the study is ignoring lots of other evidence. Leifert is spearheading a four year study funded by the European Union into organic milk. Some initial results published last year found that organic milk contained 60 percent more antioxidants and beneficial fatty acids than regular milk.

Leifert says the way the researchers selected the papers, and the way they decided which ones to exclude, heavily influenced the findings they got.

One thing the FSA study did not take into account was pesticides. The researchers didn’t look at whether the cocktail of pesticides you consume when you eat non-organic food has any long-term health impacts. The researchers said a study like that was beyond their ability.

So, just as a terrific frame can make an ordinary painting look like fine art, the way you frame a study can also heavily shape the way people see it. But that doesn’t make it good science, any more than a frame can make a bad painting good art.