The photo above is looking south, near to sunset, at the Atlantic shore in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The horizon looked so serene, as the cold winds of the north were moving in this past weekend.

  

How do parents handle the question of teen drinking? Read on to hear some suggestions as the holidays approach.

  

Are we being brain-washed into illness? See the information below.

  

What makes Thanksgiving special for you? Hear our personal wishes. 

  

  

  

With the holidays coming, kids are home and many are planning parties with their friends. Others just get bored. Many are tempted to experiment with alcohol. What is a parent to do?

  

Advice ranges all over the map, from the "European way" of having them drink at home with the family from what we Americans consider an early age, to strict prohibition with consequences until legal age. In between are requests that if they do drink  they call a parent to pick them up, or discussions about the impact of alcohol, or even bribery - if you don't drink until 21, you get a wad of money.

  

Each parent must find their own way here. Success will ultimately depend not so much on what you demand with respect to alcohol but rather on the overall quality of your relationship and the model you personally set.

  

If you have built a relationship of communication, respect, and trust from the younger years, your child will be more likely to heed your advice on this issue too and to follow your model. If your suggestions and guidance have been proven generally helpful in the past, this behavior of alcohol drinking will likely follow the same pattern.

  

If your relationship needs work, it is never too late. But don't make the to drink or not to drink issue the main arena in which to do the work. Choose less volatile and culturally burdened areas in which to build communication, respect, and trust.

  

Information is key here too. Help you child interpret the model you are setting by sharing with her or him why you behave the way you do. For example, mention that you are not going to have your usual beer Saturday afternoon because you are going out in the evening. Or say that you will close the bar at your on party at 10 since your friends will be driving home at 11. Share stories from your own childhood about drinking and how you feel about them now and what you learned from them and what you would like your child to learn from your experience.

  

Try to find a common ground for your approach with the other parent. Discuss your common goals and differences in private, and before the question actually arises with your child.

  

Even with a good relationship and good modeling, your teen might be in a rebellious stage. Children's job is to press and test the envelope. But they are universally glad, consciously or unconsciously, when the parent sets limits based on the parent's love and instinct to protect the child. Arbitrariness and reactive approaches, in contrast, will encourage more rebellion.

  

Acknowledging the teen's desire to be "grown up" and to make their own decisions is an important first step in any discussion of her or his behavior. Then lay out your caring, your beliefs, the known facts about the effects of alcohol, and the importance of self-awareness for avoiding impaired function and also chemical addiction.

  

If you want to know more of the facts, do some research. My favorite books on the issue of addiction and the effects of alcohol are Wrong Diagnosis, Wrong Treatment, by Joseph Beasley, M.D, and Alcoholism: The Nutritional Approach, by Roger Williams.

  

Our teen's physical safety is our number one priority as parents, and their emotional and mental health is second. It is our responsibility to instruct them with respect to risks they are not mature enough to fully appreciate. Alcohol is one of those. Give them the facts in a caring way, chat with them about the issue when it comes up on TV or in a movie or news item long before it is an immediate issue, and be sure always to express your caring, your confidence that your child can exercise good judgment,  and your desire to grow together in mutual trust and love as your child grows up.

  

  

  

Have you noticed lately the amazing number of advertisements on network TV for medicinal drugs? It's enough to make you stop watching the networks, or enough to make you think you are missing the boat if you are not on at least one of the mentioned medications!

  

We have known about the power of suggestion throughout history. For example, the placebo effect has long been recognized as a major factor in healing. When a trusted authority tells you a remedy will make you feel better, it will tend to do s,o even if it has no inherent value. Recent studies find that up to 40% of healing can be attributed to the placebo effect, which many believe is actually a powerful demonstration of the power of the mind over the body. If we are in fear of feeling worse, we do, and if we are reassured that things are getting better, they will.

  

Science has also found that there is what some call a "nocebo effect." That is, if we are told things will get worse, they do. Some marvel at the wisdom of a doctor who declares a patient will be dead in two months when the patient actually does die in two months. But others are concerned that the doctor stimulated the nocebo effect. The patient believed death was coming in two months and the body obliged.

  

New research into what is called epigenetics is demonstrating that our state of mind actually has a biological impact on which genes are activated. It was a great discovery in the mid-twentieth century that genes were the blue print for bodily functions. But now we know it is far more complicated. The state of the whole body, whether it is stress, toxins, lifestyle, or beliefs, affect which genes are expressed in any given situation. Our bodies react differently when we are worried, for example, than when we are joyful.

  

So what is going on with all these adds for medications? Are we being manipulated by the power of suggestion?

  

Reports demonstrate that 40% more prescriptions are being filled today than before medications were allowed to be advertised directly to the public on television. Can we believe that this was all because these folks needed these meds and weren't getting them because they didn't know about them? Surely their doctors knew about them, and if they went to their doctors with symptoms, surely their doctor recommended the medication indicated.

  

It seems more likely that we are being brain-washed to believe that every passing symptom needs a drug, and that if we don't have any symptoms then certainly we will have some soon.

  

We are hearing more and more about preventive drugging. Especially for "higher than normal" cholesterol readings or borderline diabetes. Changes have been made recently in medical recommendations for both "conditions," changing what is considered healthy and what is considered predictive of trouble so that more people fall into the range which can be medicated.

  

And what about the warnings which are read at the end of each ad? Are we to believe that we are the ones who can take that pain medication without side effects while only other people are suffering from the listed side-effects suppressed immune system, suicidal thoughts, or death?

  

Are we becoming comfortable with the idea that it is worth taking the risk of death in order to reduce inflammation or chronic allergies or infections? Or get rid of pimples?

  

People often forget that doctors are required for prescriptions because the medications are by their nature toxic. The study of medications is called toxicology for a reason. The idea is that certain poisons have specific effects and in certain diseased conditions those toxins, in the appropriate doses, can have a good effect which outweighs the inevitable toxic effects of the prescribed substance. We rely on the fact that doctors are supposed to have studied the pros and cons and relative doses of these toxins and can give us good advice. But they don't know all the non-medical, harmless things we ourselves can do to make ourselves feel better and be healthier. That isn't their study or their job.

  

Yet these advertisements seem to be convincing us as a nation that our bodies are bound to break down and that only drugs, surgery, and prosthetics can keep us going. We are somehow by-passing the lifestyle factors which contribute to over 70% of what ails us.  

  

In the book The American Health Care Paradox, authors Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor explain how Americans have been lulled into delegating responsibility for their health to the medical industry, even though we spend more per capita on health care than any other developed nation and we are nevertheless among the sickest. The authors show how in other countries, responsibility for health rests with the individual and health care providers emphasize lifestyle factors for preserving and regaining health rather than medical interventions.

  

Next time you see an ad on TV or in a magazine or down the right side of your screen for some medication, see if for a moment you don't wonder if you might have that featured condition or risk factor. Become aware of the negative propaganda you and your family are exposed to almost constantly and arrange to get countervailing input.

  

Pray for continuing health, feel grateful for your evolving good health, meditate on the healing power of your body, read books or watch videos about natural living and natural health, and talk about all the happy healthy things in your life that encourage your healthy balancing genes to express rather than the stressed and panicked ones.

  

Statistics show that over a thousand Americans died in the last decade from accidental overdoses of the most common painkillers. Few people realize that the doses for Tylenol and other acetaminphens are critical. Just a few more tablets in a day can mean the difference between life and death. Warnings have not been sufficient, and most people don't even read the warnings for these common pain drugs. Children have died at the hands of their well meaning parents who didn't want to see them in pain and gave them a bit too much.

  

Pain is the body's way of telling us that something must change. It is such a basic protective mechanism and yet we are ignoring it more and more. We want to get back to work, we want to get back on the playing field, we want to not hurt. But pain means we need rest, water, nutrition, positive encouragement, faith, massage, a vacation, a swim, clean air and water, gentle exercise, maybe stretching out with a good book.

  

As a society we need to honor our bodies and ignore propaganda telling us our bodies aren't going to do what we want them to do. We are in a dangerous trend to identify everything that we don't want as an opportunity to push drugs. Pain, obesity, depression, and more have recently been tagged as medicatable conditions. The pharmaceutical companies are having a field day at our expense. Even when major drugs are recalled and settlements are made in law suits for damages done to patients, the payments and costs are always less than the money already made from the rollout of the drug.

  

Let's get wise and listen to our bodies and take care of them, so they will last us a hundred or more years without much complaint.   

  

  

  

  

  

We wish you a happy Thanksgiving! There is so much to be thankful for! Thank you to my readers, my business associates and colleagues, and all the people in my life. I am so grateful for having such a dear family. I am grateful for being born here and living in this country. I am grateful for my freedom and my ability to think and feel and pray. I love learning, exploring, and spending time with friends and family, and for all this I am grateful. I am in wonder at the beauty and glory of the universe and am grateful I am here to appreciate it and share it with others.

  

This day is a great reminder to us to see the good side of things, and people, and to appreciate all that has gone before and the power of the glorious things our future can hold.

  

It is a time to look back at tradition, explore history, and make new traditions and new history. The native Americans had their thanksgivings and people around the world have long given thanks for a bountiful harvest. The first European settlers in Virginia were believing people and gave thanks when good fortune came their way. Later the Pilgrim settlers to the north gave us many of the traditions we enjoy today.

  

No matter what means this Day Thanksgiving to you, sports, turkey, yams, cranberries, parades, four days off, Santa on the way, or hugs from family or friends, please enjoy it to the fullest.

  

  

Sincerely,

  

Randy