Podcasts about for susan

Rev. Margaret Ernst looks at Jesus' feeding of the 5000 through the lens of mutual aid, and in a cautionary tale about supremacy in the guise of hospitality, unpacks Susan Raffo's essay about how white, Christian women from the North moved on from abolition work to become staffers of Indian boarding schools - becoming arbiters of cultural genocide. For Susan's essay, “the lineages healers have to contend with.... working with ancestors of purpose” see: https://www.susanraffo.com/blog/the-lineages-healers-have-to-contend-with-working-with-ancestors-of-purpose To take action, see resources for churches from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition: https://boardingschoolhealing.org/healing/for-churches/ Transcript available here: https://surj.org/our-work/surj-faith/twir/

On this week's episode of The Waves, a conversation with Atlantic writer, Elizabeth Bruenig.  In the first half of the show, Elizabeth talks about her recent New York Times article, “I Became a Mother at 25, and I'm Not Sorry I Didn't Wait” with Slate's news director Susan Matthews. The two get into why pregnancy is both so personal and yet so public, how society and particularly the job market deals with that, and the randomness of deciding when the right time is. After the break, Susan and Elizabeth delve into the backlash the piece received from the left, and then the backlash that backlash received from the right, and what we can take from that cycle. Elizabeth talks about whether she was trying to be provocative, and only being “happy stupid” on Twitter. In Slate Plus, the women each share a piece of their past that made them feminists. For Susan, it was taking all the classes for a gender studies degree … without getting the degree. And Elizabeth talks about reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in junior high school. Recommendations Susan stans the Tour de France (which she has stanned before in the pages of Slate, but it is once again Tour de France season). If you can't make it to the French countryside anytime soon, watching the cyclists pass by ancient castles may help scratch your travel itch. And for the people who are there, remember to keep your signs out of the way of the cyclists.  Elizabeth missed the TV show House when it first came out, but during the tail end of the pandemic, she's been binge-watching it. She recommends the first few seasons of the medical drama, especially while folding laundry.  Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. And additional production assistance by Rosemary Belson.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this week's episode of The Waves, a conversation with Atlantic writer, Elizabeth Bruenig.  In the first half of the show, Elizabeth talks about her recent New York Times article, “I Became a Mother at 25, and I'm Not Sorry I Didn't Wait” with Slate's news director Susan Matthews. The two get into why pregnancy is both so personal and yet so public, how society and particularly the job market deals with that, and the randomness of deciding when the right time is. After the break, Susan and Elizabeth delve into the backlash the piece received from the left, and then the backlash that backlash received from the right, and what we can take from that cycle. Elizabeth talks about whether she was trying to be provocative, and only being “happy stupid” on Twitter. In Slate Plus, the women each share a piece of their past that made them feminists. For Susan, it was taking all the classes for a gender studies degree … without getting the degree. And Elizabeth talks about reading Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in junior high school. Recommendations Susan stans the Tour de France (which she has stanned before in the pages of Slate, but it is once again Tour de France season). If you can't make it to the French countryside anytime soon, watching the cyclists pass by ancient castles may help scratch your travel itch. And for the people who are there, remember to keep your signs out of the way of the cyclists.  Elizabeth missed the TV show House when it first came out, but during the tail end of the pandemic, she's been binge-watching it. She recommends the first few seasons of the medical drama, especially while folding laundry.  Podcast production by Cheyna Roth with editorial oversight by Susan Matthews and June Thomas. And additional production assistance by Rosemary Belson.  Send your comments and recommendations on what to cover to thewaves@slate.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join your host Andrew Tisser and guest Susan Brooks, Director of Patient Care Services for Catholic Health System at St. Joseph Hospital, as they talk about the many dos and don'ts for physicians who are fresh out of residency. Susan presents us with nothing but proven tips as someone with a broad background in the nursing field.  Susan's points couldn't be more authentic and straightforward, so make sure to take notes!In this episode you will learn:·       The dos and don'ts for new grads.·       How to keep nurses in your corner and how to lose them.·       Many more actionable tips!·       "It's important to think healthcare through." About Susan Brooks:After earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University at Buffalo, as well as her Master's of Science in Executive Leadership and Change from Daemen College, Susan entered the nursing world to explore her passion for caring for the sick, providing a compassionate experience, and creating a better healthcare system. Currently, she works as a Director of Patient Care Services for the Catholic Health System at St. Joseph Hospital, where she's focused on patient safety, satisfaction for both patients and associates, and high-quality care.Susan has spent the last 28 years learning everything there is to know about the healthcare industry – from high reliability to financial sustainment.She's held a number of nursing/healthcare roles from Case Manager to Program Director. Still, her latest challenge has been helping Catholic Health to improve patient satisfaction and creating a safer environment through her contributions as the Director of Patient Care Services.For most people, a nurse leader doesn't sound very interesting. For Susan, developing and nurturing new nurses is a passion she's been chasing for 28 years. We could say that Susan is living the dream.Connect with Susan Brooks on:LinkedIn:            https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-brooks-ms-bsn-rn-nea~bc-4a8b1023/ Connect with Talk2Medoc on:Website:             https://www.andrewtisserdo.com/Linkedin:            https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewtisserdo/Facebook:          https://www.facebook.com/andrew.tisserInstagram:         https://www.instagram.com/talk2medoc_llc/Twitter:               https://twitter.com/Talk2MeDocYouTube:              https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0O_Sf3aYLavYaJ_hg7bM8g FREE four-part video series describing my path from burnout to career satisfaction- https://andrewtisserdo.com/video     

Susan Heinrich began her career as a newspaper journalist and has written about business, travel, and parenting.   Her current favorite topic is midlife! She has had a wanderlust for as long as she can remember and her passion is traveling and helping women in midlife gain the confidence to explore and reap the benefits of traveling!  Susan supports her community with her website, Midlife Globetrotter where you can find inspiring articles for women in midlife and inspiration for that future trip!   Despite the year starting off slow with the ongoing pandemic, we are optimistic that this year we may be able to do more international travel!  Now is the best time for us to be dreaming and researching those dream trips!  Like a lot of women, Susan jumped off the career track when her children were young. Finding it hard to juggle everything she made some hard choices and decided to continue doing some freelance writing.  In her late forties, she felt that something needed to change in her life.  Feeling a bit confused not knowing that next step she refers to this as her “midlife upheaval”.  Susan says that this period of time turned out to be a blessing because she took the time to do some self-exploration and realized that she had put a lot of her own interests and passions aside to focus on her family.  Which isn’t bad but she felt it wasn’t working for her anymore.  Susan started thinking about what she loved to do, what she was interested in, and how she wanted to be spending her days.   It was at that moment that she decided to return to writing. Travel had also always been a passion so she eventually blended the two together!   In 2017 Susan had the opportunity to take a trip to  India with some friends.  Having some hesitation about leaving her family behind for three weeks, she decided to go anyways and was glad she took that first step!  She learned that so often things that are at first glance something we can’t do that for whatever reason turn out to be not true.  The is a way to make these things happen when they are important enough to us.    It was on this trip that Susan was reminded about all the things she had forgotten about herself.  For her, it was an inspiring experience, and wanted to share the opportunity of travel for midlife women.   Starting the website seemed like the next best step!  In the process of setting up the website, she learned that there were going to be a lot of technical things to learn and may present a challenge but the joy of connecting with other midlife women and sharing her passion for travel far outweighed the learning curve associated with the challenges! Susan shares that we often sell ourselves short and we think that it’s too late to learn something new or to pivot into a new direction. We may give up on a dream before we ever start which is a shame. But once a midlife woman decides she is going to do something then anything is possible!   When traveling there is the opportunity of having a sense of more freedom in our lives.  For Susan that comes when she travels solo and she feels that’s because when we travel with our family, our identities and rules are such a part of our daily life that we still carry that with us when we are traveling.  When we are able to have enough physical and mental distance from our lives,  we remember things about ourselves that we have forgotten.  Also, when we travel we are putting ourselves out of our comfort zone and we are forced to try new things and experiences!  The best part of that is that we see that we are capable of more than we thought!  It’s a great way to boost our self-confidence and who doesn’t love that?   Susan shared and I’ve always believed that when we expose ourselves to something new then that helps us to spark that creativity and you feel more alive and in the present moment!  Susan shares that travel can be a bridge back to parts of yourself that you’ve forgotten. Travel can enrich our lives in so many ways!   Susan shares some of her memorable trips she has taken around the world and how she’s done some trips within groups and solo traveling!  She has had some amazing experiences and may inspire you to consider going somewhere you’ve never imagined yourself. Susan is hoping to go to Africa in 2022. During our conversation, Susan shares some tips on getting around solo and the benefits of hiring a local guide to get you acquainted with the area and at the same time develop a relationship with a local! She also shares some tips on how to get over your fear of getting out there solo on your first trip!  A great recommendation is to research a small group tour that specializes in a new interest or current hobby. There are so many options out there now to explore!   There may be people of all ages and from various countries which adds a new dimension to the experience.   Susan shares about the resources on her website and how she is supporting her community.  She certainly covers the topic of travel but also shares some of her own personal experiences so that others can learn and grow once they learn from her lessons.  Susan also provides a monthly newsletter for you to keep in touch.   Connect with Susan here   Connect with Deborah  here  Connect with  Deborah on Facebook and Instagram    

In this episode host, Jason Pereira talks with Susan O'Brien Founder and Author of Net Worth Thinking. They especially talk about decisions and discussions surrounding money with smaller kids.Episode Highlights:01.35: Susan O'Brien talks about “How she guides families through deep, meaningful conversations.”01.57: Susan has seen that people want to be independent and want to take care of their families, especially children and grandchildren.04.00: Susan talks about the importance of educating children about money, like “What is money?” “Where it comes from?” 04.49: As parents or grandparents, we wait too long to discuss money matters with our kids.06.25: The one thing that Susan found in their consumer society is that kids as young as three are a bit stubborn, and they keep demanding things from their parents. This is something that should be talked about in families. 07.32: If you do a quick search in Amazon, there are great fun books about teaching kids the importance of money.08.48: Jason talks about the concept of scarcity and rejuvenation of wealth. 09.26: In order to save money, it is about to develop a feeling of abundance.11.30: Jason enquires as our kid gets older, how does the money talk evolve?13.56: Personally, Susan found it challenging to implement money-saving tactics daily, but some parents were successful.14.22: Jason shares a trick that he uses with his son; whatever amount he saves, Jason gives some interest on that. He also shares how one can encourage their kids to share money in charitable causes. 15.01: For Susan the sharing part starts without the money. Taking care of each other is important.17.47: Jason and Susan talk about what happens when a kid hits a teen or pre-teen.19.51: Susan shares the importance of keeping conversation non-confrontational. 20.46: Kids, when they grow up, are the same person just entrenched in their habits; you are the same as a parent; you need to be consistent about handling them. 20.53: Jason shifts the topic to when a child reaches late teen level; when they go to universities. 23.20: Susan points out the biggest issue with young people-it is the credit card.25.29: Jason points out that there are many people who don't want their kids to suffer as they did. Jason is concerned that it may have an adverse effect and not teach the required respect. 28.10: Susan points out there are so many important things one can teach their kid by not paying their cell phone bills.29.16: Jason says, “You can't re-raise your kids, so it is important to plant the tree of value when they are young.”30.14: It is crucial to think about your legacy? What do you want to achieve? How much money is too much for your kids? How much will hurt them instead help them?3 Key Points:Jason and Susan discuss about the youngest age when coaching a child about money should start. Susan shares instances and tricks from her own experience about “How to encourage your child to save money?”Kids nowadays are smart, and it's important to teach them about the world around them and about the needs of other people as well as themselves.Tweetable Quotes:“It is important to think that how do I teach my kids to be good stewards of money?” - Susan O'Brien“Teachable moments come about in everyday life.” - Susan O'Brien“It takes action to have money, and it also puts a limit to it.” - Jason Pereira“You need to make money and save it; you got to be careful about spending it.” - Susan O'Brien“Starting with the end, prepares you to focus on what's really important for you.” - Susan O'BrienResources MentionedSusan O'Brien: E-mail: informtaion@networththinking.com | WebsiteTranscript See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Join Daniel Nickles and Chris Thompson with their guest Susan Elliott of Flowstate Investing. They talk about what notes are, note investing, performing and non-performing notes, and how notes greatly diversify investing strategies. In this episode, Susan shares how her expertise with kayaking equipped her with skills she was able to transfer to real estate investing. Particularly with notes –a niche that has helped her team discretely provide impact and value to persons and families. Where buyers struggle to pay their mortgage, Flowstate Investing comes in to purchase notes, refinancing strategies, restructure payment plans, etc. For Susan, being a notes investor is almost like being a bank. In this episode you will learn: From river engineering to real estate note investing. How my former role helped me with real estate – on skills and nature. What is a note, and why note investing? The pros and cons of note investing. What to expect when investing in notes. About Susan Elliott: After a decade spent as an international whitewater kayak instructor, Susan discovered the hidden world of Performing and Non-Performing Notes and their incredible wealth-building potential. With Flow State Investing, she helps other investors get more time back and build passive cash flow to pursue their bucket list instead of the next rung in the career ladder. Susan thrives on communicating intimidating and detailed plans to anyone. She accredits this skill to years working as an adventure guide as well as a River Restoration Engineer. From presenting a detailed financial model to leading a team down a remote river canyon, she seeks to connect with individuals in a way that helps them realize their own strengths. Today, she helps connect investors with amplified returns through Note partnerships and investments so that they never have to become a landlord (a role she also currently plays and is strategizing her exit plan). Susan also co-manages a suite of Short Term Rental properties in the epic Columbia River Gorge.   Connect with Susan Elliott on: Website:              https://flowstateinvesting.com/ LinkedIn:             https://www.linkedin.com/company/flow-state-investing/ Facebook:           https://www.facebook.com/flowstateinvesting                                 https://www.facebook.com/smhollings Instagram:          https://www.instagram.com/flow.state.investing/ https://www.instagram.com/sheseeksflow/ Email:       susan@flowstateinvesting.com   Connect with Two Smart Assets on:   Website:              https://twosmartassets.com/ Facebook:           https://www.facebook.com/TwoSmartAssets/ Instagram:          https://www.instagram.com/twosmartassets/ YouTube:             https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5b8x2o3ByaPBcz5Lkev7uw   ✅Check out our free apartment syndication sample deal: https://twosmartassets.com/sample-deal-form  

Alongside her many research and academic commitments, Susan Standring has been the editor-in-chief of Gray’s Anatomy for twenty years and will be stepping down from her role once the 42nd edition is published. For Susan, anatomy is about looking and making sense of what you see - whether at a gross, microscopic or molecular level. In this podcast we discuss ideas about the human body and exchange perspectives from our worlds of anatomy and surgery.

Opening the new year, Susan is joined with podcast guest Katherine Eitel Belt to talk about being a leader in the midst of all the unknowns of 2021! How do we best apply the leadership lessons learned in 2020 to lead into 2021?   Episode Highlights The Lioness Principle Vision Alignment Conversation Transparency with Your Team Purpose of Vision and Values Quotes "Some dentists have been blindsided into leadership roles they were not prepared for, but needed to fill." "Words are SO important in communicating clearly." “Encouragement is a lost word - to pull another person out to be the very best person they can be.” “The Lioness Principle is about how we help people discover that they can be and do more, rather than just give them the answers” “People can't read your mind. People don't know what we are about and where we are going and what we are shooting for, trying to build, unless we lay it out for them so clearly and so inspirationally that they want to follow. That they are inspired to follow.” "What we give people through this is an invitation. We aren't demanding anything. We are inviting them into the future as we see it."  “Great leaders have to communicate two things: clarity and inspiration. One without the other is an incomplete communication.” "Authenticity and transparency in a leader is sexy, not weak!” "It is in battle where leaders are born."   Links & Resources  For Katherine's Help, https://www.lionspeak.net 800-595-7060   For Susan's help, susangunnsolutions.com   888-994-3167   Nobody Told Me That: Fruitcakes and Fraud with Susan Gunn, CFE https://www.ataleoftwohygienists.com/alldpnepisodes/holiday-edition-fruitcakes-and-fraud-with-susan-gunn-cfe/  -- Susan's Website: https://susangunnsolutions.com  Susan's Books: https://susangunnsolutions.com/shop/

Susan Leopold, PhD of Linden, Virginia is an ethnobotanist, plant advocate, and the executive director of United Plant Savers [a non-profit focused on the conservation of medicinal plants]. The theme of this episode is history: a post-civil war connection to Susan's property, her Patawomeck ancestry [including the Pocahontas controversy], and the centuries-old ginseng trade which is currently linked to a shadowy herbal black market. She teaches us about plant conservation, the at-risk tool, sandalwood, osha, and related botanical issues. When it comes to story time, Susan shares her personal experience living in the Amazon jungle where she received a potent ayahuasca message and gathered folklore from the indigenous group she lived with during her ethnobotanical study. Upon returning home she was startled to find similar themes in the folktales of Virginia's Bull Run Mountains. In closing, Susan explains her specially crafted spagyric hemp products grown right here on her property and I recount our synchronistic trip to Carl Jung's lakeside castle, Bollingen Tower, in Switzerland. Check out United Plant Savers on Instagram and become a member to receive the annual Journal of Medicinal Plant Conservation. For a behind-the-scenes look follow the United Plant Savers botanical sanctuary in Ohio. For Susan's CBD hemp products, visit her Paris Apothecary online store. And for more information regarding Virginia's Patawomeck tribe click the link. Follow Our Numinous Nature & my naturalist illustrations on InstagramCheck out my shop of shirts, prints, and books featuring my artContact: herbaceoushuman@gmail.com

In this episode, Susan is closing out 2020 the way she started it, with her friend and colleague, Kate Willeford, CPA. Susan and Kate talk about the current information regarding PPP forgiveness, reviewing your finances and steps you need to take to wrap up 2020!    Episode Highlights 2020 Recap PPP and EIDL Funding Payroll Tax Implications for PPP Recipients Organizing QuickBooks Keeping Your Finances Clean Changes in Payment Forms and Taxes  2021 Planning Quotes "Little did we know the sky really was falling."  "The businesses that were able to survive this closure the best, were those that were able to save emergency cash in prior years."  "I think a lot of people had gotten used to spending 110% of what they made." "PPP Funding forgiveness is not something you need to stress over, unless you are selling your practice right away."  "Congress just didn't think through the details of how the tax laws work." "We are in the middle of a pandemic - things happen." "You have your ducks in a row because you love the people that will have to clean up the mess in your absence." "I love taking really messy quickbooks and making them clean." "Do not wait until the last minute - this is not the year!"   Links & Resources  For Kate's help, thewillefordgroup.com   770-552-8500 For Susan's help, susangunnsolutions.com   888-994-3167 -- Susan's Website: https://susangunnsolutions.com  Susan's Books: https://susangunnsolutions.com/shop/

For Susan, joy comes from the inside and is a state of mind, not something that is determined by outside factors. Susan is the co-owner of Celebration of Art and has been recognized among Scottsdale's Most Dynamic Women. She finds joy in connecting people through art, letting people know she cares, and spreading joy by giving unexpected random gifts to family and friends. For Susan, the embodiment of joy is letting all your worries melt away.

I would venture to accuse today’s artist of being both artsy fartsy AND nerdy wordy. Because Kali Parsons has been on my list of artists to feature here since day one of brainstorming Art Ink, well before even a second of audio was recorded. She was one of the few artists I followed who always wrote a tiny story to share along with her fun and whimsical art, and so if you’re an artist who wants to see great examples of how a splash of story can be used to compliment your art…     [If your podcast app isn’t showing the featured art for this episode above visit https://rebekahnemethy.com/artink17 to check it out.   Castbox and Podcast Addict are both apps I recommend that do show episode specific art.]     Links from the Show at a Glance:   Artist: Kali Parsons Title of Art: Hope Artist’s Website: kaliparsons.com Instagram: @kaliparsonsart   If you connected with this story in any way Michael & Susan would love to hear from you. They can be reached via e-mail at michaeldbreazeale@gmail.com   Art Ink Submission Guidelines: rebekahnemethy.com/artinksubs     Art Ink Podcast Transcript:   [Intro:]   Hey there my artsy fartsy, nerdy wordy friends. Sorrynotsorry, you know if you’re here you’re at least half of that description, if not the whole shebang! Own it already.   I would venture to accuse today’s artist of being both artsy fartsy AND nerdy wordy. Because Kali Parsons has been on my list of artists to feature here since day one of brainstorming Art Ink, well before even a second of audio was recorded. She was one of the few artists I followed who always wrote a tiny story to share along with her fun and whimsical art, and so if you’re an artist who wants to see great examples of how a splash of story can be used to compliment your art, I insist you check out her work at kaliparsons.com.   If you’re new to Art Ink, you should know that it’s Kali’s painting that’s gracing the cover of this episode. And it’s that very painting that inspired the beautiful story you’re about to hear. This is usually the part where I describe the featured artwork for listeners who are unable to look at their devices for whatever reason, but today we’re going to be doing things a bit differently. As Kali wrote to me, “Sometimes the art takes off and creates a story all on its own.” And this painting, named “Hope,” isn’t just the spark that instigated this episode, she’s also a character in the following true story.     I present to you The Synchronicity of Hope.     [Story:]   “Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate.” -GK Chesterton   Most 18-year-old kids get a tattoo to rebel against their parents, but not Sean. No, Sean’s 1st tattoo was an orange and purple, single-word prayer that his mom would survive what life had dealt her, and his dad not only went with him, but got his own, matching ink, the very same day.   “Hope,” the tattoos said. And that’s what Sean and his father, Michael, did. They hoped that Susan could beat the cancer she’d just been diagnosed with. Hodgkin’s Lymphoma was the 2nd critical diagnosis Susan had taken since becoming a wife and a mother, after a 17-year struggle with primary progressive MS, which is a type of MS that doesn’t remit or relapse. It came on fast and it’s progressively gotten worse over the years. Sean had only been a few months old when that news had come; he doesn’t remember the version of his mother who wasn’t reliant on a wheelchair.   Hope had already been a familiar mantra for their family for several years, had become one after they’d attended their first MS Awareness walk together. Susan’s first neurologist was convinced a cure for MS would be developed in our lifetimes, and that was the hope that she had clung to all those years… so you can imagine the devastation when yet another layer of health challenges began to manifest.   This new diagnosis was the catalyst for Sean and Michael to literally inject a healthy dose of hope into their skin. They chose orange ink to stand for MS Awareness; and the purple ink represented Hodgkin’s.   Shortly afterwards, their mantra started to expand into a wall in their home that was dedicated to hope-filled art and design.   Meanwhile… Michael’s childhood friend, Kali, had been following his updates on Facebook. They hadn’t been in touch through more than social media since their 7th grade band broke up, yet Kali was continuously moved by the strength she witnessed in Michael and Susan’s marriage. When the post that detailed this latest blow to their family’s struggle went live, Kali had just finished a painting that would be a perfect fit for them, and it just so happened to be called “Hope.” It was of a serene looking girl outlined in black with her eyes closed, and the word “hope” in one, thin, black line of script hovered above her head, the only pop of color on the black and white canvas was a blue heart that filled the girl’s entire chest.   So Kali had a print made and sent it to Michael. Soon afterwards, much too soon afterwards Kali recalled, she’d gotten a notification that the original painting had sold on her website, and it was Michael who had bought it! There was no way the print had had enough time to make it through the mail, but Kali couldn’t be sure until she asked him.   “Hey, my friend.” Kali sent to Michael via Facebook. “I just have to ask. Received a surprise package I sent you? Just curious if we have some synchronicity going. xo”   “No. When did you send it? Was it USPS? If you sent me a print of “Hope” that would be some kind of next level awesomeness going on. Did you?”   “That’s exactly what it was! I didn’t think it could’ve gotten to you yet. I love you and me!”   “Hang on a moment. I gotta bring Susan up to speed on this…. We are both a little teary-eyed right now. I saw that a few other people had shown interest and then I got pretty busy with work. But just like you, she’s been in my mind all this time. When I saw her again this morning, I didn’t think twice about placing the order. Susan said to tell you ‘thank you.’ So much love for you and so inspired by your beautiful soul.”   So I have to ask you, dear listeners… do you think it might be possible for art to be aware. That just maybe Kali’s painting had it’s own mission to fulfill… that’s it’s possible for “things” to have souls? That they have a kind of consciousness that sends subtle energies into the Universe? Am I losing you with my weirdoism? Well… then let’s get back to the story shall we?   Because “Hope,” the painting, made her way into Michael’s home, but though she served as a constant source of inspiration for him and his family, she was more therapy than cure.   The challenges are real and seemingly never ending, and though Michael knows his marriage is stronger than it’s ever been, he still misses the good old days, before MS, before cancer. When I asked him in an email what their biggest struggle was he replied openly and vulnerably:   “Our biggest struggle. Wow.” He wrote. “Strap in because this is a deep sharing. Physical love & intimacy. Susan was 26 when she was diagnosed and I was 29. Married for three years, new beautiful baby son, young & in love and totally hot for each other. Within two years, spasticity had completely changed her body geometry and bladder incontinence had forced us to get a urostomy.   Chemotherapies we tried to slow down the MS had led to early menopause and muscle contractures & spasticity has caused her arms to cross and they are now locked to her chest. None of this is very sexy or romantic. It’s been over a decade that Susan hasn’t been able to hug me or hold me.   I tell people that love is like a wheel with many spokes. Physical, sex, intimacy, companionship, friendship, community, happiness, joy, spirituality, mental, dialog, honesty, trust, confidence and action; to name a few. True love can handle the removal of several of these spokes and the wheel will continue to roll and do its job. It’s false love that falls apart when you remove just one or a few. But, it’s been difficult to not have the physical aspect of our love and it’s a deep source of depression for me.”   But, alongside Michael and Susan’s greatest struggle, lies some of their most precious memories. The two that they shared with me in that same email, interestingly enough, also came about on the other side of cancer.   “We had limited options in treating her cancer.” Michael explained. “No radiation therapy and only two of the four drugs on the second choice for chemotherapies. Susan did initially respond well to the chemo, but then it stalled. We switched to immunotherapy which actually put her into remission. But, the lymph nodes became active again within six months. This was grim. We had the conversation about how long we might be able to keep the cancer from ending her life and “salvage” therapies. They really need to come up with a better term than that.   A few months later we were at the opening night of the Orange County Fair. It’s a tradition for us to go to the opening night and to share a funnel cake just before we leave. We were sharing our desert and Susan asked me what I thought about renewing our vows on our anniversary. I pondered this for a moment and asked her, “Did you just propose to me over funnel cake at a county fair?” Which I joked was the most white trash thing I could think of. Then of course tearfully, I said yes. That part is my fondest memory of our love story. Susan’s is the actual vow renewal…”   [Vow Renewal Ceremony]   “Dearest family and friends, we are here today to celebrate the story of two hearts named Michael and Susan. Let me tell you how the story goes.   Once upon a time, a dedicated young Marine walked into a hotel lobby where a spirited young lady worked behind the counter. Through the trickery of his cohorts, the young Marine soon found himself riding beside the young lady in a snazzy white convertible. The young Marine did not realize he was about to be taken on the ride of a lifetime! Neither realized they had just met their soulmate.   As these two beautiful hearts became entwined, a promise to love and cherish forever was the natural next step. They were married September 25th 1993. Twenty-two years ago yesterday. That year, a gallon of gas cost $1.11 and a movie ticket was $4.14. It was the year Beanie Babies were introduced. And let’s not forget Milli Vanilli returned their Grammy. Girl, you know it’s true!   Soon after and with plenty of K-I-S-S-I-N-G, the two hearts became further and inextricably entwined. Much like two trees planted next to each other decades ago.   Rings are often exchanged at weddings as a symbol of eternal love. Love is the state in which your partner’s happiness comes above all else. The circle of the ring represents wholeness and perfection, with no beginning and no end. It wraps the finger of the loved one with the constant reminder of love, devotion, and respect. So today, I wrap these two hearts in the circle of this sash which represents their joint, steadfast recommitment to the ties which bind them together.   Michael and Susan, today, with the love and support of your friends and family, you honor each other as beloveds and partners in marriage.   Michael, would you please share your thoughts and promises with Susan?   [Michael’s Vows]   ‘My dearest Susan, as we are here together today, I think back to all the wonderful memories we have shared. There really is no greater feeling than to have your best friend by your side every day. Twenty-two years ago, I promised to love you, no matter what else happened. And though we have had our struggles, that love has been strong enough to persevere through them all.   You have been confident, caring, nurturing, optimistic and supportive; even when the bounds of sickness and health have been tested to their limits. You are my best friend and lover, my partner, my shoulder to cry on and the arms that I cannot imagine being without. I have always loved you. I still love you. I love you as much now as I did twenty-two years ago. And I know that at some time in the future, when we meet again, on beach in the warm sun, destined to be together, that I will love you then.   Today I pledge to be by your side, to be your strength when you are weak, to never leave you, to be understanding and to be the husband you deserve. I love you.’   Susan, would you please share your thoughts and promises with Michael?   [Susan’s Vows]   ‘Michael,   I’ve had a difficult time trying to find the perfect words to tell you just how much you mean to me and how much love I have for you. None the less I’m going to try…   The night we met, I asked who wanted to ride with me and your hand went up and you said I will. I had no idea that we would still be on that ride 23 years later and that hand would hold mine as we made our way through all that life had in store for us.   For better or worse, in sickness and health, for richer or poorer. We have been tested by all the original vows we made. Together we have, not only survived, but triumphed.   Michael, you are my strength. Not only physically but more importantly, emotionally. You make me laugh. You drive me crazy. You frustrate me. You make me proud. And you make me love you more every day.   Today, I am reaffirming my commitment to you and our life together. I promise to be your friend and confidante, your sounding board, and your safe place. I will continue to look towards our future with optimism and excitement.   I love you, Michael.’     As you continue on your journey together, I encourage you to remember that as tides ebb and flow, so too do the fortunes of life. Footprints in the sand are washed away. Driftwood moves on its endless quest for a peaceful harbor. Only a deep and abiding love can withstand the tides of change in two lives.   May you continue to be sensitive to each other’s needs. Be open and understanding with each other. Share your thoughts and feelings out loud in the safe harbor of your relationship. Continue to bring out the best in other.   By the power invested in me, I now pronounce you Spaghetti and Meatballs! Michael, you may kiss your bride.   Friends, family, I now present to you, for the first time ever, Mr. and Mrs. Breazeale version 2.0!”   And yes, in case you’re wondering, their officiant was ordained by the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and she did that specifically for this occasion. It made sense considering the Breazeale’s aren’t unified in their religious beliefs.   “Our family is kind of like a joke.” Michael wrote in another email. “You know, “an Agnostic, a Buddhist and a Christian walk into a bar.” He was writing to answer my final question to him about what Hope means to them. And, just like a prayer, the definition of Hope is shaped by its beholder.    “I like what Desmond Tutu has to say about Hope. ‘I’m not an optimist because that in a sense is something that depends on feeling. More than the actual reality. We feel optimistic, or we feel pessimistic. Now hope is different, in that it is based not on the ephemarality of feelings. But on the firm ground of conviction. I believe with a steadfast faith that there can never be a situation that is utterly, totally hopeless. Hope is deeper and very close to unshakeable. It’s in the pit of your tummy.’    We both agree that Hope is a dynamic feeling and that it changes over time.    For Susan, initially that Hope was mostly defined around her MS. Her first neurologist told her that within his career “...there would be a cure for MS.” Three neurologists later there still isn’t a cure. But in the words of Archbishop Tutu she believes with a steadfast faith that her situation is not totally hopeless. When she was diagnosed with lymphoma, that Hope changed to something maybe a little more desperate. The Hope that the cancer could be cured and not end her life. The Hope that Sean and I would be able to cope with losing her, if that were to happen. The last 1.5 years have been a test for me. Anxiety and depression led me down a path of alcohol addiction. I’m in recovery and we are strong. But, some of those Hopes are now about being successful in recovery and continuing to experience joy in our lives.   My Hopes mirror my Buddhist philosophy. I constantly meditate about being able to choose the right paths, to help reduce her suffering to as little as possible. To choose the paths that will give her love and joy. I’m definitely a believer in reincarnation. I know with that same steadfast Hope that in the future, Susan and I will meet again. Somewhere on a beach, in the warm sun and we will know that we will have both found something special. That Hope and her Love gives me strength to continue living our love story.”     [Conclusion:]   When Kali wrote to me about the synchronicity she’d experienced with “Hope” she concluded her email with some credits, “I thank my art, I thank our open spirits, I thank [Michael’s] beautiful wife [Susan], and I must thank Facebook ... through these four a space was created in the Universe for our friendship to bloom and magic to happen.”   And we also would like to thank Michael and Susan for being so open to sharing their personal journey with us today. Your story has both humbled and inspired us. Last but not least, we thank Kali, for sharing her beautiful work with us here and, of course, for connecting all the dots that led to this show.   Be sure to visit Kali at kaliparsons.com and @kaliparsonsart on Instagram. Links to those places can be found in the show notes, along with a photo of the painting that inspired today’s episode. Sadly, not all podcast apps show the featured artwork the same way, but there’s always a link to where you can see the art included in those show notes.   You’ll also be able to find additional photos Michael sent me in the show notes, including the ‘Hope’ wall, so be sure to dig into that too, when you’re able.   If you connected with this story in any way Michael & Susan would love to hear from you. They can be reached via e-mail at michaeldbreazeale@gmail.com   That’s all we have for you today, thank you all so much for listening. Check back in couple of weeks and you’ll be able to hear me later. TTFN my friends.

In this gripping 2 part episode of All Fired Up, I explore the shadowy world of "Bright Line Eating", a super extreme diet cult which cherry picks neuroscience to convince people that they are 'food addicts', and then sells one of the world's most restrictive (and expensive) diet regimes to keep people hooked on the dream of achieving 'goal weight'. Bright Line Eating is the lucrative brainchild of neuroscientist Susan Peirce Thompson, a charismatic saleswoman who holds nothing back when it comes to the hard sell. Join me as I ask the question, who IS Susan Peirce Thompson - a food addict who has finally found the answer to her addictions, or someone who is still desperately stuck in her eating disorder? We also speak with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt, who literally attended the SAME UNIVERSITY as Susan Peirce Thompson, and has also experienced eating and body issues, but found peace through mindful and intuitive eating and body acceptance rather than continuing to white knuckle the revolving door of weight cycling. Dr Aamodt has very different ideas regarding this whole idea of food 'addiction'. Spoiler alert: Food addiction models = Binge Eating Disorder rebranded!  DO NOT MISS this story, it's a ripper! But CW - these 2 episodes have a lot of talk about weight, details of diet rules, and eating disorders, so take care if you think you might be triggered.     Shownotes     Hello listeners! Remember me? I’m back! What a year we’ve had. I am back from a break where I was taking care of life for a while. Now I’m back and angrier than ever. Today’s episode is a two-parter, and we’ll be keeping the energy and the rants going on a regular basis again. Remember the Crappy Awards earlier this year? One of the nominations has been gnawing away at me. This is from Dr Martina Zangger, who sent us a rant about Bright Line Eating, a program by Susan Peirce Thompson. Bright Line Eating is a severely restrictive diet, and a very expensive program. Martina shares with us that she experienced Orthorexia and was at risk of Anorexia while engaging with the program - she was obsessed with every bite of food that passed her lips, and says she became a ‘not very nice person’ while so hangry and feeling superior to other people. That feeling of being superior and special was encouraged within the program. After two years, Martina was able to move away from the program and regain the weight she lost, and that process was so disheartening. However, two years after leaving that program, Martina is so much more at peace with her body. She’s able to find enjoyment in food, and in sharing food with friends and family. Bright Line Eating  is making Susan Peirce Thompson rich and is such an unethical program from a practitioner who should know better.  I’m still simmering with rage over this Crappy nomination. The impact of programs like this is devastating on people’s lives. Martina lost two years of her life and experienced an eating disorder, and her story of recovery needs to be heard. How are programs like this still happening, and being sold at such enormous profit? After I heard Martina’s story, I’ve been neck-deep in Susan Peirce Thompson and Bright Line Eating. It’s more than a diet, it’s more like a cult. There’s a variety of techniques being used in it to sell problematic ideas and encourage eating disordered behaviour in an apparent attempt to free yourself from ‘disordered behaviour’ - a mindfuck of the next level.  So, I’ve been reading and researching and I’m ready to dive into a two part series - this episode is about Bright Line Eating and Susan Peirce Thompson. We’re going to talk about her story, her book, and more broadly talk about the topic of neuroscience as it applies to body weight, and also dive into food addiction models. In the next episode, we’ll talk more with Martina and her experience with the program, and we’ll round out the deep dive with a closer look at the incredible amount of money Bright Line Eating has made. I really need to preface this episode with a trigger warning, a content warning, about numbers and weight. If that’s particularly triggering for you, maybe these two episodes are ones to avoid. Usually we avoid numbers, and in this instance we’re using them as examples of the harm that diet culture can cause, and as examples of inaccuracies.  We’ll be talking with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt about addiction and regulating body weight. So, the book. I’ve read the whole thing. ‘Bright Line Eating: the Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free” by Susan Peirce Thompson, 2017. To begin with, Susan is a really good storyteller and has a compelling personal story of how she came to this way of living. And that’s the thing with so many of these diet gurus, isn’t it? They’re quite compelling, charismatic, often good writers. Susan is from California and her parents were reformed hippies. She grew up in a house which sounded super ‘healthy’. Her mother was thin and always dieting, and Susan recounts how she was doing diets with her mum when she was 10 years old - “neither of us had weight to lose, it was just about being maximally healthy”. Susan paints herself as a kid who was always interested in food, even addicted, compelled to compulsively eat food. What I get from reading this was that this child grew up in a house with little food choice around, no processed food, quite restrictive. We know from lots of research in this area that kids who grow up in households with little food variety and where ‘bad’ food is banned, those kids are quite likely to grow up as binge-eating adults. And kids who diet early have a higher risk of developing eating disorders. There’s also a genetic component with eating disorders, which makes me wonder about Susan’s mother and her own eating issues.  One thing that stuck out was the vivid descriptions of what restricting her food felt like as a child - powerful, a feeling of being in control. For most of us on a diet, we feel pretty crappy. For some of us, perhaps those with quite a restrictive relationship with food, that experience of restriction is quite elating. They describe that feeling of being in power, being in control, and get hooked on that feeling of not eating. There’s a disturbing description of Susan ‘going off sugar’ at age 12, of feeling empowered. She also related how, even with these feelings of being empowered, she would sneak food and hide food - which she reads as evidence of her ‘addiction’, but I read as being evidence of the severity of her restriction.  By the time Susan was 15, she described herself as ‘overweight’, and feeling ‘enormous’ compared to her thin mum. Again, she unquestioningly accepts that there was something wrong with her body at 15. My non-diet lens tells me that our bodies are changing when we’re 15. It’s perfectly normal to gain weight as you grow, maybe it was just growth? She continued dieting and stumbled into drugs, from ages 14-20, including acid, ecstasy, meth, crack. Quite serious. She talks about the impact on her weight - when you’re on drugs like that, you do reduce your weight. It’s a harrowing story, to be hooked on such terrible drugs for your adolescence. Susan found herself at rock bottom and in a 12 Step program at age 20, and found recovery from drug and alcohol addiction through the 12 Step model. That’s an amazing story! It is not easy to turn your life around like that, and she did it. But in the book, that victory didn’t bring her peace, because her weight increased and she felt terrible about it. She was also still thinking of herself as a food addict, and began attending 12 Step programs for overeating. Episode 30 of All Fired Up is about Overeaters Anonymous - check it out. It looks like Susan did stuff like that for years and years and years without reducing her weight.  It’s clear in the book that Susan is not perceiving herself as someone who has issues with her relationship with food, but as someone with weight to lose who is addicted to food. At times she received diagnoses of Binge Eating Disorder and Bulimia, but she did not receive any eating disorder treatment. In 2003, she joined a more extreme unnamed 12 Step, which I believe may be ‘FA’ or ‘Food Addicts Anonymous’. Like all the other 12 Step programs, they are free support groups to help people who perceive themselves as food addicts - and FA has very strict rules. No sugar, no flour. Three meals a day, absolutely no other food. You have to ‘commit’ your meal plan each night to a buddy, mentor, sponsor in the program for the next day. You weigh out each meal according to a strict meal plan. It’s intense, it’s extreme. There’s a lot of mentorship and buddyship to ‘support’ each other - but I would say it’s more like policing each other, to make sure they don’t eat. Susan was happy about finally losing weight in this strict program.  But she grew to be distressed with the amount of time the program was taking up - about 20 hours a week of planning, talking to mentors and more. She mentions that her husband considered leaving her, and she was annoyed with the lack of science around the food rules in the program. By this point, Susan had gone to university and studied cognitive science and was now a neuroscientist. She decided she was going to write a book and start an online program, combining her knowledge of the brain with the strict program. What she calls ‘bright lines’, I call ‘very strict rules’ or ‘diet prison’.  The ‘online boot camps’ she began offering took off very quickly, and eventually she hired a team and  published her book. The diet in the book is basically the same as the FA diet - but FA is free, and Bright Line Eating is for-profit. Her husband is now the CFO. The bootcamps are very expensive, as are all the add-ons in the program. Every level of support requires payment, and Susan justified charging this much money for the program by saying that it’s not just the FA program, it’s a community and it’s combined with neuroscience, and that her team is going ‘cutting edge research in the field’. So, not only has she monetised a popular 12 Step program, but she’s using ‘neuroscience’ and the cache of her PhD to help her ideas gain cred.  Susan talks a lot about the brain, and seems to understand that body weight is tightly controlled by our brain (particularly the hypothalamus) and understands that only a small percentage of dieters keep weight off long term. She understands that the hypothalamus is like a thermostat that controls body weight, and it’s out of our conscious control. So, she pays lip service to that, and then spends the rest of the book talking about how her neuroscience tips will fix that - as if it’s broken.  What’s being missed here? The science that shows us changes in body weight are countered by these established processes in our brain. She never mentions this - the ‘defended weight range’ - which is pretty fundamental science about how our brains defend body weight. In her whole book, she never mentions it. In a minute we’ll talk more with Dr Aamodt about that. Susan does talk a lot about leptin regulating our body weight. Leptin is a  hormone stored in fat cells, and as fat cells get larger they secrete leptin which tells our brain that we’re comfortable, we’re at the right weight, we don’t need to seek out more food. Susan claims that people in larger bodies have too much leptin that isn’t getting to our brains to tell us to stop eating - she says that larger bodied people are ‘leptin resistant’ and our brains think we’re starving and tell us to eat more. She claims that the cause of leptin resistance is insulin resistance, which is caused directly by processed food. Very sweeping generalisations - in essence she is saying that larger people are insatiably eating because leptin is being blocked by our brainstem, which causes us to mindlessly eat processed food all day. So basically, we are all ‘leptin resistant’ humans, mindless processed food eating machines. I’ve got some issues! Not all large people are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is impacted by an enormous range of factors - genetic, environmental and social. It’s incredibly simplistic to say it’s just due to processed food. For Susan, anyone who is larger is by definition sick or deficient. She continually refers to the ‘right size body’, which is your ‘thin’ body. A complete disregard for body diversity, and lack of data to back up her claims about leptin. She’s also left out the impact of weight loss dieting on leptin. When we try and diet and lose weight, our leptin levels drop. This drop stimulates a huge increase in our appetite and interest in food. So, although she’s concentrating on this idea that larger people are leptin resistant, people may instead have lower leptin levels due to dieting and that’s what is telling our brains that we’re starving. So, leptin drops and interest in food is very well documented in neuroscience - because it’s a very primitive and important danger signal to the brain.  Let’s not forget Susan’s target audience of middle-aged women, who likely have dieted many times before and may have lower leptin levels due to this. She knows this. She even mentions the Biggest Loser study which notes how damaged people’s metabolisms were from strict dieting. She says that during the ‘weight loss’ phase of her bootcamp, your metabolism will slow down something like 80-90%, but in the next breath says that there’s no evidence that this will continue to happen - “we’ve never seen evidence of this in Bright Line Eating, there is no reason for alarm”. This really annoyed me. She has no evidence of it because she’s done no research on it. Simply because you don’t look for harm doesn’t mean there’s no harm.  Another claim from the book is that you can choose your goal weight based on the lowest weight you’ve ever been, and she pretty much guarantees you can reach it. This flies in the face of weight science and our understanding of all the factors outside of our control. There’s no evidence to say that Bright Line Eating is any different from any other weight loss program. Talking about cravings - Susan describes them as a “brain-based bingeing mechanism”, located in the nucleus accumbens which has become ‘overstimulated’ by the plentiful food in our current environment. She uses her own experience as a drug addict to paint this vivid picture, describing her need for higher doses of drugs to get the same high. That is tolerance - it’s well documented in addiction literature, especially for opiate receptors. Sarah says food behaves in the same way - flour and sugar in particular are acting in the same way as heroin in our brain. She doesn't have very much data to support this idea that flour and sugar behave like a drug. She mentions rat studies to back up some of her sugar claims, but even she admits there’s nothing in the research to show flour is addictive. Food addiction was excluded from the category “substance related and addictive disorders” in the DSM-V, due to lack of evidence. We’ll hear more from neuroscientist Dr Aamodt on this. One of the ways Susan is trying to convince us that sugar and flour are toxic poisons is pretty weird. She asks us to google images of flour, sugar and heroin and look at how similar they are. For the record - things that look like drugs are not necessarily drugs. In her view, processing things is what makes them drugs. In Susan’s view, the way sugar is processed makes it a more toxic drug. What about the way we process mint tea? Dried chillies? I think that this Bright Line plan will keep people in a state of deprivation and restriction, which increases those feelings of addiction. The longer we’re deprived, the stronger our desire will become for the forbidden thing. We know that if people are full when they’re doing an experiment where they’re exposed to food stimuli, their reward centres are less activated. When you think about it, you’re never going to be full on Bright Line Eating and you’re going to feel like an addict. And if you then go to a bootcamp or on one of the forums, it’s going to feel more real. Another bugbear - she repeatedly scares people by referring to food in this book as ‘drugs’, ‘toxins’, ‘poisons’. But then later she says it’s fine for children to eat them, because they’re ‘young enough to burn off the calories’. What? This is a woman who is desperately attached to thinness as a measure of self-worth.  If she really believes sugar and flour were toxic poisons, why is she recommending them to children? The rules she’s lifted from FA are full on, and she’s using neuroscience-talk to give them a sense of validation.  “It takes some willpower to set up and then little to none when it becomes automatic”. Susan has science-washed extreme deprivation and disguised it as normal.  Susan likens the automatic level of food behaviours to brushing your teeth - but our bodies and brains aren’t hard-wired to desire tooth-brushing as a survival mechanism, and feel under threat when we haven’t brushed out teeth in a while. Susan knows this. She wouldn’t have to set up such extensive support systems if permanent restriction truly was automatic. Introducing Dr Aamodt, who wrote the book “Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss”. She also has a much-watched Ted Talk about why she stopped dieting and switched to mindful eating, which has been watched by 4.5 million people. Before she was an author, Dr Aamodt was Editor-In--Chief of Nature Neuroscience, a leading scientific journal in the field of brain research. Dr Aamodt was pulled into neuroscience due to personal experience -  as a teenager she remembers her mother commenting that she was “eating like a fat person”. She was not at a higher weight at the time, and looks back at photos of that time and thinks “what was mum doing?”. Dr Aamodt began making complicated food rules for herself, like not being allowed to open the refrigerator herself. It was almost like that comment unlocked disordered eating for her. Sandra then spent about 30 years cycling through diets, and while she never met the definition for an eating disorder she veered very close. Sandra vividly remembers how difficult it was to force herself to move away from dieting. In her early 30’s, Sandra was exposed to some feminist writings about dieting which seemed to unlock some things she’d kind of known for years but hadn’t been paying attention to, such as weight being neurologically controlled. She hadn’t connected the dots that her own body would behave that way. We’re biological animals with physiological regulation, but we’re also social animals living in culture where we’re expected to look and eat a certain way. It’s as if one day someone said to Sandra, “you don’t have to do that”. A blog Sandra credits with some of these early moments of unlearning is ‘Shapely Prose’. The biggest advantage of not dieting for Sandra turned out to be psychological, not physical - the amount of mental space that weight and eating were taking up in her brain turned out to be unbelievable when it stopped. She describes it as like having ringing in your ears for your entire life, then one day someone turns the ringing off. In Susan’s experience, you can’t just tell people ‘don’t diet’ - you have to tell them what to do instead. The message of ‘don’t control your weight’ is too uncomfortable.  Sandra came across mindful eating, which gave some structure to make that transition away from dieting. Sandra initially didn’t know when she was hungry - how could she, after all those years of strictly regulating herself?  There’s a lot of psychological research showing that people who diet frequently are not good at picking up interoception signals from their bodies - such as feeling your heart beating. But even after many years of ignoring your body, you can reconnect and hear those signals again. Sandra is much better at it than she used to be. Unlearning takes time! All those neuroplastic changes can be reversed, if you take the time and energy to do it. For Sandra, moving from dieting to not dieting was a huge upgrade. What is the ‘set point’? Scientists call it the ‘defended range’ which Sandra says is a better term. It’s a small range of weight where your body is comfortable. When you’re within your defended range, weight works the way that random people on the internet think that it works all the time. You can make your lifestyle changes and nudge it a little up or down. It’s the range where your body and your brain are not fighting you. The body is comfortable. Once you get outside that range, in either direction, this is where the brain says ‘this is not right, we’re not regulating properly, we need to fix this’. And this is where calories in, calories out becomes unreliable and the way you process food starts to change in dramatic ways. Metabolism changes to try and get you back into that defended range.  It’s normal to be more hungry when you’re not getting enough food! It does seem as though the responses are asymmetrical - that the body’s compensatory mechanisms become more intense over time if you’re under your defended range, but will become less intense over time if you’re above your defended range. So, your brain is much more relaxed with being at a higher weight than being under your defended range. From an evolutionary perspective, starving is really serious and you should never take it lightly.  How do we know our defended range? It’s genetic to begin with - there are strong genetic influences on it. A number of life experiences can affect it, for instance people who didn’t get enough sleep as children generally have a higher defended range as adults. Also, children who had a lot of stress and/or trauma in their lives have a higher defended range as adults.  If your childhood environment is scary, unpredictable, like something bad will happen at any time - there’s a strong evolutionary argument that it would be okay for your body to store extra energy for future dangerous times. The body makes sense! Your body does its best to survive. There’s a genetic link as well in who is susceptible to constantly being invited to ignore their bodies, and whose bodies have such strong hunger and fullness signals that they seem to be completely immune to those kinds of external messaging.  And then dieting itself - attempting to get under your ‘defended range’. The brain desires that we stay within that defended range and functions 24/7 without a break - and we try to combat this with willpower, which we cannot do 24/7. We can do a lot of these things for a while, but at some point it gets to be like holding your breath.  The food addiction model - the idea that if we remove certain foods from our diet we can permanently change our set point, our weight, and our brains will relax and finally do what diet culture says they should do. What does Sandra think about that? Sandra thinks the food addiction model is basically a rebranding of Binge Eating Disorder. The restriction itself is what produces the sense of being ‘out of control’. The easiest way to see that is in experiments on rodents, who aren’t bombarded with media messages telling them their bodies are unacceptable.  Inducing Binge Eating Disorder in rats is actually done quite reliably - rats are starved to about 70-80% of their starting weight, then given high sugar foods. The rats will eat past fullness - they will ‘stuff’ themselves. If you make this a cycle and repeat several times, you can get rats to the point where they will binge on regular boring rat chow. They don’t even require the food to taste good to overeat it. That sounds familiar, right? We are those rats. We often miss the deprivation with Binge Eating Disorder and focus only on the eating. There are also changes in the brain’s reward system that are associated with that behaviour, but that doesn’t immediately jump out at Sandra as being that the solution is to restrict what we eat. If the restriction causes the disorder, it probably isn’t also the cure. If the rats weren’t starved, would they have this response to high sugar food? No. Rats who aren’t starved and are presented with novel foods will eat until full and then stop. These rats are not trying to diet, they’re not struggling with mixed cultural messages - they’re just having a straightforward biological response to a stimulus that suggests that maybe you should put away some reserves for the future because every so often, somebody comes and takes your food away. It’s quite a simple, elegant, neurobiological response to famine. So, the food addiction model is rebranded deprivation models, or Binge Eating Disorder models. Nobody has come up with evidence that is convincing Sandra that it’s any more than that. The scales that measure food addiction have a lot of overlap with the scales that measure Binge Eating Disorder. A definition of addiction that Sandra likes is ‘when we continue to want things that we do not like” being drawn to repeat behaviours that you don’t actually enjoy. And some people would describe Binge Eating Disorder in that way, but Sandra doesn’t think that implies that the treatment is doing more of what created it in the first place (restriction). Huge thanks to Dr Sandra Aamodt for sharing her experience and  bringing us some logic and more of a whole picture, not just a narrow view. In some ways, Dr Aamodt and Susan Peirce Thompson are quite similar. They both grew up in diet culture, both developed eating issues as a result of trying to control their body weight, and they’re both neuroscientists. However, one has chosen to monetize this in the Bright Line Eating program, and one has chosen to help people find real freedom. The idea of ‘freedom’ in Bright Line Eating is very, very different from the idea of freedom that Dr Aamodt and I (Louise) have. Ours is about laying down our weapons and learning to reconnect.  Next episode we’ll talk with Dr Martina Zangger about her experience with Bright Line Eating, and look at the economic reality of how enormous this machine is. And more dodgy research claims! It’ll be a zinger.  Resources Here's Dr Aamodt's wonderful Ted Talk And her awesome book You can get in touch with Dr Sandra Aamodt at sandra.aamodt@gmail.com and on twitter at @sandra_aamodt

In this gripping 2 part episode of All Fired Up, I explore the shadowy world of "Bright Line Eating", a super extreme diet cult which cherry picks neuroscience to convince people that they are 'food addicts', and then sells one of the world's most restrictive (and expensive) diet regimes to keep people hooked on the dream of achieving 'goal weight'. Bright Line Eating is the lucrative brainchild of neuroscientist Susan Peirce Thompson, a charismatic saleswoman who holds nothing back when it comes to the hard sell. Join me as I ask the question, who IS Susan Peirce Thompson - a food addict who has finally found the answer to her addictions, or someone who is still desperately stuck in her eating disorder? We also speak with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt, who literally attended the SAME UNIVERSITY as Susan Peirce Thompson, and has also experienced eating and body issues, but found peace through mindful and intuitive eating and body acceptance rather than continuing to white knuckle the revolving door of weight cycling. Dr Aamodt has very different ideas regarding this whole idea of food 'addiction'. Spoiler alert: Food addiction models = Binge Eating Disorder rebranded!  DO NOT MISS this story, it's a ripper! But CW - these 2 episodes have a lot of talk about weight, details of diet rules, and eating disorders, so take care if you think you might be triggered.     Shownotes     Hello listeners! Remember me? I’m back! What a year we’ve had. I am back from a break where I was taking care of life for a while. Now I’m back and angrier than ever. Today’s episode is a two-parter, and we’ll be keeping the energy and the rants going on a regular basis again. Remember the Crappy Awards earlier this year? One of the nominations has been gnawing away at me. This is from Dr Martina Zangger, who sent us a rant about Bright Line Eating, a program by Susan Peirce Thompson. Bright Line Eating is a severely restrictive diet, and a very expensive program. Martina shares with us that she experienced Orthorexia and was at risk of Anorexia while engaging with the program - she was obsessed with every bite of food that passed her lips, and says she became a ‘not very nice person’ while so hangry and feeling superior to other people. That feeling of being superior and special was encouraged within the program. After two years, Martina was able to move away from the program and regain the weight she lost, and that process was so disheartening. However, two years after leaving that program, Martina is so much more at peace with her body. She’s able to find enjoyment in food, and in sharing food with friends and family. Bright Line Eating  is making Susan Peirce Thompson rich and is such an unethical program from a practitioner who should know better.  I’m still simmering with rage over this Crappy nomination. The impact of programs like this is devastating on people’s lives. Martina lost two years of her life and experienced an eating disorder, and her story of recovery needs to be heard. How are programs like this still happening, and being sold at such enormous profit? After I heard Martina’s story, I’ve been neck-deep in Susan Peirce Thompson and Bright Line Eating. It’s more than a diet, it’s more like a cult. There’s a variety of techniques being used in it to sell problematic ideas and encourage eating disordered behaviour in an apparent attempt to free yourself from ‘disordered behaviour’ - a mindfuck of the next level.  So, I’ve been reading and researching and I’m ready to dive into a two part series - this episode is about Bright Line Eating and Susan Peirce Thompson. We’re going to talk about her story, her book, and more broadly talk about the topic of neuroscience as it applies to body weight, and also dive into food addiction models. In the next episode, we’ll talk more with Martina and her experience with the program, and we’ll round out the deep dive with a closer look at the incredible amount of money Bright Line Eating has made. I really need to preface this episode with a trigger warning, a content warning, about numbers and weight. If that’s particularly triggering for you, maybe these two episodes are ones to avoid. Usually we avoid numbers, and in this instance we’re using them as examples of the harm that diet culture can cause, and as examples of inaccuracies.  We’ll be talking with neuroscientist Dr Sandra Aamodt about addiction and regulating body weight. So, the book. I’ve read the whole thing. ‘Bright Line Eating: the Science of Living Happy, Thin and Free” by Susan Peirce Thompson, 2017. To begin with, Susan is a really good storyteller and has a compelling personal story of how she came to this way of living. And that’s the thing with so many of these diet gurus, isn’t it? They’re quite compelling, charismatic, often good writers. Susan is from California and her parents were reformed hippies. She grew up in a house which sounded super ‘healthy’. Her mother was thin and always dieting, and Susan recounts how she was doing diets with her mum when she was 10 years old - “neither of us had weight to lose, it was just about being maximally healthy”. Susan paints herself as a kid who was always interested in food, even addicted, compelled to compulsively eat food. What I get from reading this was that this child grew up in a house with little food choice around, no processed food, quite restrictive. We know from lots of research in this area that kids who grow up in households with little food variety and where ‘bad’ food is banned, those kids are quite likely to grow up as binge-eating adults. And kids who diet early have a higher risk of developing eating disorders. There’s also a genetic component with eating disorders, which makes me wonder about Susan’s mother and her own eating issues.  One thing that stuck out was the vivid descriptions of what restricting her food felt like as a child - powerful, a feeling of being in control. For most of us on a diet, we feel pretty crappy. For some of us, perhaps those with quite a restrictive relationship with food, that experience of restriction is quite elating. They describe that feeling of being in power, being in control, and get hooked on that feeling of not eating. There’s a disturbing description of Susan ‘going off sugar’ at age 12, of feeling empowered. She also related how, even with these feelings of being empowered, she would sneak food and hide food - which she reads as evidence of her ‘addiction’, but I read as being evidence of the severity of her restriction.  By the time Susan was 15, she described herself as ‘overweight’, and feeling ‘enormous’ compared to her thin mum. Again, she unquestioningly accepts that there was something wrong with her body at 15. My non-diet lens tells me that our bodies are changing when we’re 15. It’s perfectly normal to gain weight as you grow, maybe it was just growth? She continued dieting and stumbled into drugs, from ages 14-20, including acid, ecstasy, meth, crack. Quite serious. She talks about the impact on her weight - when you’re on drugs like that, you do reduce your weight. It’s a harrowing story, to be hooked on such terrible drugs for your adolescence. Susan found herself at rock bottom and in a 12 Step program at age 20, and found recovery from drug and alcohol addiction through the 12 Step model. That’s an amazing story! It is not easy to turn your life around like that, and she did it. But in the book, that victory didn’t bring her peace, because her weight increased and she felt terrible about it. She was also still thinking of herself as a food addict, and began attending 12 Step programs for overeating. Episode 30 of All Fired Up is about Overeaters Anonymous - check it out. It looks like Susan did stuff like that for years and years and years without reducing her weight.  It’s clear in the book that Susan is not perceiving herself as someone who has issues with her relationship with food, but as someone with weight to lose who is addicted to food. At times she received diagnoses of Binge Eating Disorder and Bulimia, but she did not receive any eating disorder treatment. In 2003, she joined a more extreme unnamed 12 Step, which I believe may be ‘FA’ or ‘Food Addicts Anonymous’. Like all the other 12 Step programs, they are free support groups to help people who perceive themselves as food addicts - and FA has very strict rules. No sugar, no flour. Three meals a day, absolutely no other food. You have to ‘commit’ your meal plan each night to a buddy, mentor, sponsor in the program for the next day. You weigh out each meal according to a strict meal plan. It’s intense, it’s extreme. There’s a lot of mentorship and buddyship to ‘support’ each other - but I would say it’s more like policing each other, to make sure they don’t eat. Susan was happy about finally losing weight in this strict program.  But she grew to be distressed with the amount of time the program was taking up - about 20 hours a week of planning, talking to mentors and more. She mentions that her husband considered leaving her, and she was annoyed with the lack of science around the food rules in the program. By this point, Susan had gone to university and studied cognitive science and was now a neuroscientist. She decided she was going to write a book and start an online program, combining her knowledge of the brain with the strict program. What she calls ‘bright lines’, I call ‘very strict rules’ or ‘diet prison’.  The ‘online boot camps’ she began offering took off very quickly, and eventually she hired a team and  published her book. The diet in the book is basically the same as the FA diet - but FA is free, and Bright Line Eating is for-profit. Her husband is now the CFO. The bootcamps are very expensive, as are all the add-ons in the program. Every level of support requires payment, and Susan justified charging this much money for the program by saying that it’s not just the FA program, it’s a community and it’s combined with neuroscience, and that her team is going ‘cutting edge research in the field’. So, not only has she monetised a popular 12 Step program, but she’s using ‘neuroscience’ and the cache of her PhD to help her ideas gain cred.  Susan talks a lot about the brain, and seems to understand that body weight is tightly controlled by our brain (particularly the hypothalamus) and understands that only a small percentage of dieters keep weight off long term. She understands that the hypothalamus is like a thermostat that controls body weight, and it’s out of our conscious control. So, she pays lip service to that, and then spends the rest of the book talking about how her neuroscience tips will fix that - as if it’s broken.  What’s being missed here? The science that shows us changes in body weight are countered by these established processes in our brain. She never mentions this - the ‘defended weight range’ - which is pretty fundamental science about how our brains defend body weight. In her whole book, she never mentions it. In a minute we’ll talk more with Dr Aamodt about that. Susan does talk a lot about leptin regulating our body weight. Leptin is a  hormone stored in fat cells, and as fat cells get larger they secrete leptin which tells our brain that we’re comfortable, we’re at the right weight, we don’t need to seek out more food. Susan claims that people in larger bodies have too much leptin that isn’t getting to our brains to tell us to stop eating - she says that larger bodied people are ‘leptin resistant’ and our brains think we’re starving and tell us to eat more. She claims that the cause of leptin resistance is insulin resistance, which is caused directly by processed food. Very sweeping generalisations - in essence she is saying that larger people are insatiably eating because leptin is being blocked by our brainstem, which causes us to mindlessly eat processed food all day. So basically, we are all ‘leptin resistant’ humans, mindless processed food eating machines. I’ve got some issues! Not all large people are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is impacted by an enormous range of factors - genetic, environmental and social. It’s incredibly simplistic to say it’s just due to processed food. For Susan, anyone who is larger is by definition sick or deficient. She continually refers to the ‘right size body’, which is your ‘thin’ body. A complete disregard for body diversity, and lack of data to back up her claims about leptin. She’s also left out the impact of weight loss dieting on leptin. When we try and diet and lose weight, our leptin levels drop. This drop stimulates a huge increase in our appetite and interest in food. So, although she’s concentrating on this idea that larger people are leptin resistant, people may instead have lower leptin levels due to dieting and that’s what is telling our brains that we’re starving. So, leptin drops and interest in food is very well documented in neuroscience - because it’s a very primitive and important danger signal to the brain.  Let’s not forget Susan’s target audience of middle-aged women, who likely have dieted many times before and may have lower leptin levels due to this. She knows this. She even mentions the Biggest Loser study which notes how damaged people’s metabolisms were from strict dieting. She says that during the ‘weight loss’ phase of her bootcamp, your metabolism will slow down something like 80-90%, but in the next breath says that there’s no evidence that this will continue to happen - “we’ve never seen evidence of this in Bright Line Eating, there is no reason for alarm”. This really annoyed me. She has no evidence of it because she’s done no research on it. Simply because you don’t look for harm doesn’t mean there’s no harm.  Another claim from the book is that you can choose your goal weight based on the lowest weight you’ve ever been, and she pretty much guarantees you can reach it. This flies in the face of weight science and our understanding of all the factors outside of our control. There’s no evidence to say that Bright Line Eating is any different from any other weight loss program. Talking about cravings - Susan describes them as a “brain-based bingeing mechanism”, located in the nucleus accumbens which has become ‘overstimulated’ by the plentiful food in our current environment. She uses her own experience as a drug addict to paint this vivid picture, describing her need for higher doses of drugs to get the same high. That is tolerance - it’s well documented in addiction literature, especially for opiate receptors. Sarah says food behaves in the same way - flour and sugar in particular are acting in the same way as heroin in our brain. She doesn't have very much data to support this idea that flour and sugar behave like a drug. She mentions rat studies to back up some of her sugar claims, but even she admits there’s nothing in the research to show flour is addictive. Food addiction was excluded from the category “substance related and addictive disorders” in the DSM-V, due to lack of evidence. We’ll hear more from neuroscientist Dr Aamodt on this. One of the ways Susan is trying to convince us that sugar and flour are toxic poisons is pretty weird. She asks us to google images of flour, sugar and heroin and look at how similar they are. For the record - things that look like drugs are not necessarily drugs. In her view, processing things is what makes them drugs. In Susan’s view, the way sugar is processed makes it a more toxic drug. What about the way we process mint tea? Dried chillies? I think that this Bright Line plan will keep people in a state of deprivation and restriction, which increases those feelings of addiction. The longer we’re deprived, the stronger our desire will become for the forbidden thing. We know that if people are full when they’re doing an experiment where they’re exposed to food stimuli, their reward centres are less activated. When you think about it, you’re never going to be full on Bright Line Eating and you’re going to feel like an addict. And if you then go to a bootcamp or on one of the forums, it’s going to feel more real. Another bugbear - she repeatedly scares people by referring to food in this book as ‘drugs’, ‘toxins’, ‘poisons’. But then later she says it’s fine for children to eat them, because they’re ‘young enough to burn off the calories’. What? This is a woman who is desperately attached to thinness as a measure of self-worth.  If she really believes sugar and flour were toxic poisons, why is she recommending them to children? The rules she’s lifted from FA are full on, and she’s using neuroscience-talk to give them a sense of validation.  “It takes some willpower to set up and then little to none when it becomes automatic”. Susan has science-washed extreme deprivation and disguised it as normal.  Susan likens the automatic level of food behaviours to brushing your teeth - but our bodies and brains aren’t hard-wired to desire tooth-brushing as a survival mechanism, and feel under threat when we haven’t brushed out teeth in a while. Susan knows this. She wouldn’t have to set up such extensive support systems if permanent restriction truly was automatic. Introducing Dr Aamodt, who wrote the book “Why Diets Make Us Fat: The Unintended Consequences of Our Obsession with Weight Loss”. She also has a much-watched Ted Talk about why she stopped dieting and switched to mindful eating, which has been watched by 4.5 million people. Before she was an author, Dr Aamodt was Editor-In--Chief of Nature Neuroscience, a leading scientific journal in the field of brain research. Dr Aamodt was pulled into neuroscience due to personal experience -  as a teenager she remembers her mother commenting that she was “eating like a fat person”. She was not at a higher weight at the time, and looks back at photos of that time and thinks “what was mum doing?”. Dr Aamodt began making complicated food rules for herself, like not being allowed to open the refrigerator herself. It was almost like that comment unlocked disordered eating for her. Sandra then spent about 30 years cycling through diets, and while she never met the definition for an eating disorder she veered very close. Sandra vividly remembers how difficult it was to force herself to move away from dieting. In her early 30’s, Sandra was exposed to some feminist writings about dieting which seemed to unlock some things she’d kind of known for years but hadn’t been paying attention to, such as weight being neurologically controlled. She hadn’t connected the dots that her own body would behave that way. We’re biological animals with physiological regulation, but we’re also social animals living in culture where we’re expected to look and eat a certain way. It’s as if one day someone said to Sandra, “you don’t have to do that”. A blog Sandra credits with some of these early moments of unlearning is ‘Shapely Prose’. The biggest advantage of not dieting for Sandra turned out to be psychological, not physical - the amount of mental space that weight and eating were taking up in her brain turned out to be unbelievable when it stopped. She describes it as like having ringing in your ears for your entire life, then one day someone turns the ringing off. In Susan’s experience, you can’t just tell people ‘don’t diet’ - you have to tell them what to do instead. The message of ‘don’t control your weight’ is too uncomfortable.  Sandra came across mindful eating, which gave some structure to make that transition away from dieting. Sandra initially didn’t know when she was hungry - how could she, after all those years of strictly regulating herself?  There’s a lot of psychological research showing that people who diet frequently are not good at picking up interoception signals from their bodies - such as feeling your heart beating. But even after many years of ignoring your body, you can reconnect and hear those signals again. Sandra is much better at it than she used to be. Unlearning takes time! All those neuroplastic changes can be reversed, if you take the time and energy to do it. For Sandra, moving from dieting to not dieting was a huge upgrade. What is the ‘set point’? Scientists call it the ‘defended range’ which Sandra says is a better term. It’s a small range of weight where your body is comfortable. When you’re within your defended range, weight works the way that random people on the internet think that it works all the time. You can make your lifestyle changes and nudge it a little up or down. It’s the range where your body and your brain are not fighting you. The body is comfortable. Once you get outside that range, in either direction, this is where the brain says ‘this is not right, we’re not regulating properly, we need to fix this’. And this is where calories in, calories out becomes unreliable and the way you process food starts to change in dramatic ways. Metabolism changes to try and get you back into that defended range.  It’s normal to be more hungry when you’re not getting enough food! It does seem as though the responses are asymmetrical - that the body’s compensatory mechanisms become more intense over time if you’re under your defended range, but will become less intense over time if you’re above your defended range. So, your brain is much more relaxed with being at a higher weight than being under your defended range. From an evolutionary perspective, starving is really serious and you should never take it lightly.  How do we know our defended range? It’s genetic to begin with - there are strong genetic influences on it. A number of life experiences can affect it, for instance people who didn’t get enough sleep as children generally have a higher defended range as adults. Also, children who had a lot of stress and/or trauma in their lives have a higher defended range as adults.  If your childhood environment is scary, unpredictable, like something bad will happen at any time - there’s a strong evolutionary argument that it would be okay for your body to store extra energy for future dangerous times. The body makes sense! Your body does its best to survive. There’s a genetic link as well in who is susceptible to constantly being invited to ignore their bodies, and whose bodies have such strong hunger and fullness signals that they seem to be completely immune to those kinds of external messaging.  And then dieting itself - attempting to get under your ‘defended range’. The brain desires that we stay within that defended range and functions 24/7 without a break - and we try to combat this with willpower, which we cannot do 24/7. We can do a lot of these things for a while, but at some point it gets to be like holding your breath.  The food addiction model - the idea that if we remove certain foods from our diet we can permanently change our set point, our weight, and our brains will relax and finally do what diet culture says they should do. What does Sandra think about that? Sandra thinks the food addiction model is basically a rebranding of Binge Eating Disorder. The restriction itself is what produces the sense of being ‘out of control’. The easiest way to see that is in experiments on rodents, who aren’t bombarded with media messages telling them their bodies are unacceptable.  Inducing Binge Eating Disorder in rats is actually done quite reliably - rats are starved to about 70-80% of their starting weight, then given high sugar foods. The rats will eat past fullness - they will ‘stuff’ themselves. If you make this a cycle and repeat several times, you can get rats to the point where they will binge on regular boring rat chow. They don’t even require the food to taste good to overeat it. That sounds familiar, right? We are those rats. We often miss the deprivation with Binge Eating Disorder and focus only on the eating. There are also changes in the brain’s reward system that are associated with that behaviour, but that doesn’t immediately jump out at Sandra as being that the solution is to restrict what we eat. If the restriction causes the disorder, it probably isn’t also the cure. If the rats weren’t starved, would they have this response to high sugar food? No. Rats who aren’t starved and are presented with novel foods will eat until full and then stop. These rats are not trying to diet, they’re not struggling with mixed cultural messages - they’re just having a straightforward biological response to a stimulus that suggests that maybe you should put away some reserves for the future because every so often, somebody comes and takes your food away. It’s quite a simple, elegant, neurobiological response to famine. So, the food addiction model is rebranded deprivation models, or Binge Eating Disorder models. Nobody has come up with evidence that is convincing Sandra that it’s any more than that. The scales that measure food addiction have a lot of overlap with the scales that measure Binge Eating Disorder. A definition of addiction that Sandra likes is ‘when we continue to want things that we do not like” being drawn to repeat behaviours that you don’t actually enjoy. And some people would describe Binge Eating Disorder in that way, but Sandra doesn’t think that implies that the treatment is doing more of what created it in the first place (restriction). Huge thanks to Dr Sandra Aamodt for sharing her experience and  bringing us some logic and more of a whole picture, not just a narrow view. In some ways, Dr Aamodt and Susan Peirce Thompson are quite similar. They both grew up in diet culture, both developed eating issues as a result of trying to control their body weight, and they’re both neuroscientists. However, one has chosen to monetize this in the Bright Line Eating program, and one has chosen to help people find real freedom. The idea of ‘freedom’ in Bright Line Eating is very, very different from the idea of freedom that Dr Aamodt and I (Louise) have. Ours is about laying down our weapons and learning to reconnect.  Next episode we’ll talk with Dr Martina Zangger about her experience with Bright Line Eating, and look at the economic reality of how enormous this machine is. And more dodgy research claims! It’ll be a zinger.  Resources Here's Dr Aamodt's wonderful Ted Talk And her awesome book You can get in touch with Dr Sandra Aamodt at sandra.aamodt@gmail.com and on twitter at @sandra_aamodt

Do you remember the childhood question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" For Susan, this was a no-brainer: actress! But life is not always kind to the young dreamers, and after some tribulation, she found herself on the path of becoming a young, successful pharmacist. We have the honor of sharing Susan's story, of what her career trajectory as a pharmacist looked like as she secretly hoped to realize her dream of becoming an actress, and the grit and courage it took for her to take that leap of faith of leaving a stable career to one fueled with passion. She shares with us how she feels "more like herself" as an actress, the struggles of balancing a full time job with her side hustle, the magic and fulfillment of going through a myriad of emotions just by sitting and watching a film, and how she's learned that career pivots into passion require action and a willingness to grow.Watch our highlights for this episode!⟡ Gaining Family's Support to Go After Your Dream | https://youtu.be/-HDFQXBr-MY⟡ A Leap of Faith: From Side Hustle to Full-Fledged Career | https://youtu.be/AKFCE-mvL1oMore about Susan⟡ Instagram: @susancho_⟡ Love, 엄마 (Jubilee Fellowship Film): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyQuP7vWXTkFollow us on Instagram!⟡ @bambooandglass⟡ Da Eun: @daeunkm⟡ Sophia: @sophiasysunSupport the show (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/bambooandglass)

Susan Ascher is a Futurist.  She also happens to be the Founder of The Ascher Group, her executive and business coaching firm. But mostly, she’s a one-women think tank.  She’s been thinking about the nature of work, careers and living a more fulfilling life for as long as she can remember. In this episode Susan shares her Five Ps for thriving in the “Next Normal,” as she calls it, when we finally emerge from our Covid-19 lockdown.    Specifically, we chat about: The importance of self-confidence and why you shouldn’t fear failure What she means by “The Pause That Refreshes” Her mantra, “Read to Lead” Pivotal moments in her career and how she seized the opportunities Why she’s looking beyond the New Normal, to her “Next Normal” Regardless of whether you own your own business, or work within a large corporation, what you need to be doing NOW to win during the Covid-19 pandemic, and  What you need to do NOW to position yourself for the new future of work Her Five “Ps” Her NEW Five “Ps” and, importantly, HOW and WHEN to apply them What you need to do if you are laid off How to handle a business closing Why you need to move from networking to building deep relationships The importance of “give to get” And so much more Corporations, executives and career-minded individuals rely on Susan for thoughtful advice and the frequent reality check. The best business advice she ever received: “Think like a man, work like a dog, and act like a lady.” “It may sound old-fashioned, Susan muses, but the advice still rings true.”    For Susan, the future is NOW. Go out and grab it!   Www.SusanAscher.com   Susan@SusanAscher.com   973-919-8180

"... You've just crossed over into the Twilight Zone..."  Much has changed since Susan & Kate talked last week. This week, many dental practices are being requested to shut down. What are the things they need to consider in shutting down?  In regards to the practice, here are a few things to consider. And as a bonus, here are a few things to consider personally.  Click on the link to download a pdf checklist for both the practice and personal things to consider. Money In, Money Out is available on Amazon. For Kate's help, thewillefordgroup.com   770-552-8500 For Susan's help, susangunnsolutions.com   888-994-3167 Be sure to sign up for my newsletter!  Thanks for listening!   

Doom and gloom. Gloom and doom. Susan launches the Money In, Money Out podcast series in a very unprecedented time. Joined by Guest Kate Willeford, CPA, they both offer some great tips to consider these next few weeks for your practice. Cash flow Financial savings Line of credit Paying employees Federal tax filings Employee travel Stock market Business interruption insurance Remote access to your practice For sanity's sake Money In, Money Out is available on Amazon. For Kate's help, thewillefordgroup.com   770-552-8500 For Susan's help, susangunnsolutions.com   888-994-3167 Be sure to sign up for my newsletter!  Thank you for listening! 

This is the final episode of season 1 and it’s a deeply personal one. Laura and I finally open up about our respective healing journeys and the role that our art has played for both of us on the road to recovery. Please be aware that this episode deals with themes of mental health and childhood trauma that may be triggering for some listeners Listen as we have a rich conversation about: Art as a spiritual medium The power of colour to heal That things are not always as they seem “The thing that I’ve found with art is it’s like an alchemical way for me to transition through really tough times.” Thank you so much for joining us in season 1. We had such a good time recording this show that we are rolling straight into season 2 without skipping a beat. I hope you enjoy the episode. Suse xo People Susan Nethercote: https://www.instagram.com/susan.nethercote/ https://www.facebook.com/susannethercoteart/ https://www.susannethercotestudio.com/ Laura Day: https://www.instagram.com/laurajaneday/ https://www.facebook.com/laura.day.73594 Resources For Susan's free education resources: https://www.susannethercotestudio.com/free For Susan's art website: https://www.susannethercote.com

Susan and Jason Smith faced the unimaginable nine years ago: their two-month-old daughter passed away while recovering from open heart surgery.Born perfect and pink despite a severe congenital heart defect called HLHS, Emerson Rose Smith inspired her parents to serve other families like theirs. For Susan, the first step was donating a closet's worth of diapers and wipes from the nursery her daughter never saw. Within months, the first Emerson Rose Heart Foundation fundraiser supported the Smiths' vision of changing laws, equipping hospitals and supporting CHD families.In the years since, ERHF has brought 30 children to North America from developing countries for life-saving surgeries. Most recently, eight-year-old Genesis came from Mexico to Charleston to repair a hole in her heart; ERHF spearheaded the effort to raise nearly $100,000 for the life-or-death surgery.The Smiths say it's "a joy" to see other children with CHD thrive. On top of their foundation, they also added two beautiful daughters (biologically and via adoption) just five months apart. Their family was made official in court on Emerson's second birthday.To learn more, visit emersonroseheartfoundation.org or @emersonroseheart on Instagram. You can reach Susan via email at contact@emersonrose.org.

In this episode I share my systems for digitally storing your work with some tried and tested tools for making this process easier. Laura and I also talk about naming paintings and collections. I hope you enjoy the episode, Xo Suse. Mentioned in this episode: Lisa Congdon Art Inc Dropbox Prism Imaging Artwork stock photography mock up example Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom Squarespace Fantasie Floral work & Botanical Abstract work People Susan Nethercote: https://www.instagram.com/susan.nethercote/ https://www.facebook.com/susannethercoteart/ Laura Day: https://www.instagram.com/laurajaneday/ https://www.facebook.com/laura.day.73594 For Susan's free education resources: https://www.susannethercotestudio.com/free For Susan's art website: https://www.susannethercote.com

In this episode Laura asks me about where it all began for me on my art journey. I talk about the winding road that led me to being a painter- from art history academic to fashion designer, to creative business consultant and and finally professional artist. We also talk about how to maintain momentum as an artist and how to develop a consistent practice. Laura also asks me about some book recommendations for emerging artists and I talk about three of my favourites. You’ll also learn about my philosophy on the value of a consistent art practice and what that means. We also chat about why being productive is so important to the evolution of your style and the value of allowing art making to also be a healing journey Thanks so much for joining us this episode, to become a Susan Nethercote studio-insider, receive our newsletter and loads of FREE goodies to help you in your art business: www.susannethercotestudio.com/free-resources People Laura Day: laurajaneday.com Instagram Facebook Susan Nethercote: Instagram Facebook susannethercote.com For Susan's free education resources: https://www.susannethercotestudio.com/free For Susan's art website: https://www.susannethercote.com Books Julia Cameron- ‘The Artist’s Way’ Lisa Congdon- ‘Art Inc’ Jo Dispenza ‘Becoming Supernatural’, ‘Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself’ and ‘You are the Placebo’

In this episode, Teri welcomes Scot and Susan Westwater, the co-founders of Pragmatic Digital, a digital consultancy experienced in designing voice experiences. Scot is the Lead Strategist at Pragmatic while Susan serves as the CEO. They started the consultancy to help entrepreneurs and marketers understand the opportunity that voice represents and to help them take advantage of it.Key points from Scot and Susan!Designing voice applications specifically with regards to healthcare.Getting into VoiceThey first heard about voice from Gary Vaynerchuk and they got interested.They did some research and saw voice as a technology that had the potential to blow up just like web, mobile, and social media did.They saw it as an opportunity to do some good in the world and help a lot of people through education.For Susan, what made the selling point for voice is how it makes information accessible.Creating a Good Voice Experience for HealthcareThe first strategic move to make when creating a good voice experience for healthcare is to look at the target audience. In healthcare, there are 3 distinct audiences namely; the payer, provider, and patient.A business or organization must make sure that they clearly understand what they want to accomplish for either one or all of the three audiences.Another thing to consider as an organization is what the desired achievements are with the healthcare experience they want to create.VoiceFirst = PatientFirstThis is an idea that you start with the patient.A lot of healthcare organizations talk about being patient-centric, but Scot has observed that most of them are not as patient-centric as they say they are.Healthcare organizations should start with patients’ needs by ensuring that they are provided with all the information they seek on the healthcare issues they suffer from.They should also have empathy for the healthcare conditions that they deal with by putting themselves in the shoes of the patients suffering from them.How HIPAA Requirements Play Into ThingsPhysicians can be able to get disease information out there in a way that most health organizations cannot, because the organizations have a lot of regulatory and legal concerns to consider.The BarriersScot and Susan just did an informal survey online with the business and healthcare community to try and understand the challenges and barriers that prevent them from creating healthcare experiences.Most of them take a more wait-and-see approach because they don’t understand the regulatory and legal issues they might have to face.The Future of VoiceIn Scot’s mind, voice is going to become the default input for most computing devices.The huge inroads being made by companies like Samsung in TVs, refrigerators, and other appliances, demonstrates how voice will become a ubiquitous technology that we interface with.Scot believes voice technology will follow us everywhere we go through different devices and experiences.Currently, voice is playing a major role in elder care and the potential impact it can have in healthcare is huge. Moving things into a hands-free voice-enabled space can help with everything from physician-patient relationships and how they interact, to patient care and so many other things like symptom tracking.There are numerous potential use cases for voice in healthcare.Their BookThey have a book coming out in November called Voice Strategy: Creating Useful and Usable Voice Experiences.The book will include their combined 20+ years of experience and all the voice knowledge that they have gained over the past couple of years, and it will be geared towards helping people create good voice experiences.Links and Resources in this EpisodeThe Comprehensive Flash Briefing Formula CourseVoice Strategy By Scot and Susan WestwaterPragramatic’s Website (Scot & Susan's Blog)Scot on TwitterSusan on TwitterScot on LinkedinSusan on Linkedin See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, Susan Bratton is back to talk about forgiveness! She's a champion and advocate for all who desire passionate relationships. She's been called the ‘Dear Abby of Sex', having helped millions of lovers of all ages transform sex into passion. A few weeks ago, Susan joined me in the episode ‘Sexual Soulmates'. If you haven't heard it, stop what you're doing and go listen to it! We talked a bit about forgiveness and how important it is in our relationships. I asked Susan to join me again to chat some more about the most important F-word: FORGIVENESS! DOWNLOAD THE RAISE YOUR FREQUENCY MEDITATION NOW If we're holding onto resentment, then it means we're feeling unsafe, which means we're protecting ourselves and not stepping into our fullest vulnerability, where life becomes so sweet. Let's learn to let go, forgive, and find passion in our relationships—hit that play button! In This Podcast Episode... How to heal from emotional wounds and jump into the pool of vulnerability How to move into a place of forgiving ourselves and others Resentment = closing off! Healing family lineage betrayal What you realize when you start to heal emotional pain… . Resources for you: For Susan's free book, visit SexualSoulmatePact.com Get your copy of Relationship Magic book by Susan Bratton Check out Susan's book Sexual Soulmates: The 6 Essentials for Connected Sex Order The Soul Frequency by Shanna Lee at TheSoulFrequency.com/Book, and get your book bonus gifts at TheSoulFrequencyBook.com. Join The Soul Frequency VIP Tribe on Facebook. You can also watch this episode on my YouTube channel. LISTEN TO MORE SOUL FREQUENCY SHOWS! Send me your questions and show topic requests to info@thesoulfrequency.com.  Follow me on Facebook and on Instagram. WANT TO SHARE THE SHOW? –  share this show through iTunes and many other podcast directories. WANT TO LEAVE US A REVIEW? – leave us a review in iTunes!  I would love to hear from you!! As always, my hope for you is that you love big and live abundantly! xo

In this episode, Gail, Catherine and Susan explore how Susan’s process for effective change—personal and organizational—emerged through her journey of personal transformation. At age 48, Susan engineered a major life turn, getting her GED so she could leave a corporate job and move into leadership of nonprofits. Over 12 years, Susan completed numerous college degrees, including a doctorate. Susan does not gloss over the chaotic, painful stage of change; rather, she offers guidance on how to confront it and move to victory. For Susan, that involves leading, teaching, writing, coaching, and motivational speaking. Susan’s story inspires us all to lead a full life built on our passions. “My mission is to ignite energy and creativity and generate ah-ha moments to awaken purpose and potential.”  - Susan Neustrom Ed.D. Connect with Susan Neustrom: Email: sneustrom@gmail.com Website: http://www.susanneustrom.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/susanneustrom Book: The Comfort Zone Illusion, Leaving Your Comfort Zone is Not So Hard After All, 2015, published by Happy About, Cupertino, CA.       Connect with Gail & Catherine: Facebook: facebook.com/womenover70 Instagram: Womenover70 Website:https://womenover70.com Email: info@womenover70.com Show: Women Over 70 – Aging Reimagined Twitter: @womenover70  

Burnout is a normal challenge we all face when running, and it can come in a variety of forms. Sometimes it comes in the form of overindulgence. Think of it as your favorite ice cream that you discovered is served in unlimited amounts on a cruise you’re on. At first, it’s beautiful. The idea of eating soft serve perfection as much you want, whenever you want, is a dream come true. That is, until you simultaneously have a headache, stomachache, and mounds of regret from the dairy and sugar intake. Well, running can be like that. You discover that you enjoy running. You run and run, get faster and faster until you hit a wall. Maybe the injuries start to pile up. Perhaps your body starts doing things that you’ve never experienced before. You are fatigued constantly, or you can’t sleep, or you start to get migraines. That thing that seemed good for you (even better than ice cream??) seems to be making life worse. Other times you come to an emotional or mental block. Every year you fail to qualify for the race of your dreams. You stay optimistic for a while, telling yourself that consistency is the key. “If I just keep running, every week, I will obtain my goal.” But sometimes, you just don’t quite get there. It’s time to pivot. Challenge Accepted Susan Lacke has had her fair share of challenges. Like many of us she sometimes has a hard time calling herself a runner. Being a “middle-or end-of-the-pack runner” can feel like not being a runner at all. You may think, “How can I call myself a runner when I’ve never even run a marathon?” Apart from runner identity struggles, Susan also happens to be deaf. Susan can’t hear, but she can talk. She isn’t quite deaf enough to feel like a member of the deaf community, but she also doesn’t feel like she can quite fit into the non-deaf community. Floating somewhere in between has also been a challenge. But with every challenge comes an opportunity to succeed. That’s the mindset Susan has developed to help her overcome fears and live a fabulous life. She encourages everyone to do the things that scare them. That’s how we discover our potential. “Being scared is good. Being scared is hugely motivational,” she says. And that is exactly what Susan has done this past year. Overcoming Burnout Not qualifying for the Boston Marathon was one the contributors of Susan’s burnout. But Susan loves running. She enjoyed being a runner, but felt like she wasn’t becoming the runner that she wanted to be. What to do? What are our options when we’ve given our all and still don’t succeed? Are we eventually just forced to quit? For Susan, not running was not an option. Over the span of one year, Susan decided to not sign up for any traditional races. No marathons, no run-of-the-mill city 5Ks. She stayed up late one night searching through different races. Quirky ones. Races that you haven’t even thought of. She looked through all of these races, and then, signed up for every single one of them. When burnout strikes, it’s time to change pace. It definitely doesn’t mean that you need to give up on a goal, or give up a passion. You just need to switch it up for a bit. Take a relaxing hiatus, try a new sport, or run without a specific goal. You can even try to do some of the races Susan did: Run to the top of the Empire State Building, run a race through the Grand Canyon, or (brace yourself) run a 5k buck naked. After you do what you need to to shake off the burnout, don’t hesitate to get back after your old goals, maybe altering them some. You may find that the obsessive personal goals you had weren’t really what you wanted to do anyway. There’s Room for Everyone in the Running Community Feeling partially a part of the deaf community, and partially not, Susan has found that there are no strict qualifications for being a part of the running community. If your run, you are a runner. Period. Whether it’s a weekend jog with your dog, a passion for sprinting up flights of stairs, a love for superhero costumes, long runs through nature, or probably literally anything you can think of, you can join the community of runners. There you will be welcome as you are, a runner, and even more than that, You—just the way you are. Resources: Susan’s Website (Book) Running Outside Your Comfort Zone Susan on Twitter Susan on Facebook   Thank you to Bodyhealth, Turbotrack.me, and MetPro for being the wonderful sponsors of this episode of The Running For Real Podcast.   If you are struggling to recover quick enough from your training, my little secret is to use BodyHealth Perfect Amino to get you there. It contains all the essential amino acids, and is very easy for your body to use and begin the repair process. Click the link and use code TINAMUIR10 for 10% off.   I am very pleased to have MetPro as a sponsor for the Running 4 Real podcast. They are not wanting to guess what to do with your metabolism, the experts at MetPro are there for you to help you reach any of goals or the struggles you may be going through. If you listen to the very end of the episode there may be a treat for you from MetPro expert Angelo! Click here to receive a FREE metabolic scan of your body as well as a 30 minute consultation with one of the MetPro experts.   Turbo Track.me is an amazing streaming platform with a wide variety of classes, where you can actually interact with the instructors as well. The classes include meditation, strength training, and stretching classes. It tracks heart rate, resting heart rate, distance, calories, intensity, recovery, and heart rate zones. They are offering a FREE 90 DAY TRIAL with code TINA, and if you go beyond the 90 days you will receive a free forearm heart rate device.   Thanks for Listening! I hope you enjoyed today's episode. To share your thoughts: Leave a note in the comment section below. Join the Running for Real Facebook Group and share your thoughts on the episode (or future guests you would like to hear from) Share this show on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. To help out the show: Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews will really help me climb up the iTunes rankings and I promise, I read every single one. Not sure how to leave a review or subscribe, you can find out here. Thank you to Susan, I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the show.

Susan McPherson is considered a matchmaker for social impact. Over the years, she’s built an incredible network of business leaders and nonprofit professionals who have a mission to do good. This network is something Susan expands with ease and authenticity. After all, companies and organizations are built by people. For Susan, bridging relationships to create an even greater impact in the world is really all that matters. In this episode, we are sharing Susan’s multi-chaptered journey as an effervescent connector, corporate social responsibility expert and the founder and CEO of McPherson Strategies, a communications consultancy focused on the intersection of brands and social impact. McPherson Strategies' clients include The Tiffany & Co. Foundation, Dell, Intel, The Women's Philanthropy Institute and Participant Media. Learn more at www.mcpstrategies.com Follow Sincerely, Hueman on Instagram @sincerelyhueman This show is produced by Hueman Group Media. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sincerelyhueman/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sincerelyhueman/support

For Susan, it all started with a swollen ankle that lasted six months and eventually led to a diagnosis of Stage 3 ovarian cancer. Listen as she recounts her tale of the hurdles she faced during treatment and her mission to became an advocate for future cancer fighters. The I Had Cancer podcast provides personal and truthful conversations with cancer survivors along their journeys. Each episode will feature a different person with their unique perspective on their own fight against cancer. They are sharing their story to help others who might be facing similar challenges and to say they went from “I Have Cancer” to “I Had Cancer.” If you would like to be a guest on a future I Had Cancer Podcast, send an email to IHadCancer@highmarkhealth.org with your name and phone number. The views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not reflect the views or opinions of AHN, its subsidiaries or affiliates. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a qualified healthcare provider. Please consult your healthcare provider with any questions or concerns you may have regarding your condition.

Susan Getty, a Project Manager for the Alliance for Contraception for Cats & Dogs (ACC&D) joins Stacy to discuss diversity (and the lack of diversity) in animal welfare in this episode. Susan has worked in animal welfare for almost a decade, most recently at ACC&D, which you may remember from Stacy’s interviews with their president, Joyce Briggs. If you need to get up to speed on ACC&D and their mission to advance nonsurgical fertility control for, check out CCP Episodes 157 and 253.   In this episode, Stacy and Susan talk about how Susan became interested in animal welfare, and the path she followed to get where she is now. Susan holds a masters degree in Animals in Public Policy from Tufts University. Over the course of her career, she has put a lot of time and energy into self-reflection around the biases she feels have sometimes gotten in her way when trying to put effective programs into action to help animals and people. Susan encourages all of us to examine these biases, including the myths we may encounter around different ethnic groups’ approaches to animals. For Susan, buying into these kinds of myths means just one thing: that we miss out on opportunities to help more animals and more people. She points out that we sometimes are so focused on the animals that we forget the role people play in the work we are trying to do—and therefore we sometimes say things that are exclusionary or offensive.   Susan and Stacy go on to discuss the fact that animal welfare in the U.S. is largely a white movement, and they consider some steps we can all take to find, listen to, and learn from diverse voices. “There’s a lot that… other voices can provide,” Susan tells Stacy, “and I think we should do a better job of seeking those voices out.”   To learn more, Susan encourages people to seek out voices of marginalized communities and to learn from them and their different perspectives. One resource she suggests is the Humane Society of the United States’ Pets for Life program reading list.

Dr. Noelle LoConte, associate professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin, presents two patient cases regarding cancer prevention. TRANSCRIPT Hello. My name is Noelle LoConte. I am a physician and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center in Madison. I am a GI medical oncologist in my clinical practice, and also the principal investigator of my state's Comprehensive Cancer Control program, and an implementation science researcher in cancer prevention and screening.  Today, we will compare two patient cases that relate to cancer prevention. These two cases have similarities yet the recommended treatments may be different. Let's look at our cases.  Patient case number one is Harold. Harold is a 55-year-old man with a history of head and neck cancer treated with curative intent with chemotherapy and radiation, which was completed about six months ago. He is seeing you for a follow-up surveillance visit. He reports he is currently drinking three to four beers per day, most days of the week. He had quit smoking at diagnosis, but prior to diagnosis had a 45 pack-year history. He recently reports that he started vaping or using e-cigarettes.  Our second patient case is Susan. Susan is a 44-year-old woman with node-negative, ER-positive, PR-positive, HER2 neu-negative breast cancer. She has also been treated with curative intent with surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, and has completed her treatments about six months ago. She is seeing you for a routine follow-up visit and reports no new symptoms. She tells you she is drinking two glasses of wine per day, and she denies any history of smoking.  As you can see, both cases are very similar, but there are some differences. How would you counsel each patient about their use of alcohol? And in the case of Harold, about his use of e-cigarettes? Do either of these affect the risk of recurrence for the patient? And what are the alcohol-associated cancers?  For background, the cancer burden attributable to alcohol is significant. In 2012, an estimated 5.6 percent of worldwide cancer deaths were attributable to alcohol-associated cancers. In the United States, alcohol accounted for about 3.5 percent of cancer deaths in 2009. Both of these numbers are increasing over time as alcohol use is becoming more common both in the US and globally.  Upper airway and squamous cell esophageal cancers accounted for the majority of alcohol-attributable deaths among men. Breast cancer accounted for the majority among women. Additional cancers causally linked to alcohol include hepatocellular carcinoma and colorectal cancer. Cancer risk correlates with increasing alcohol consumption for cancers in which alcohol is implicated.  E-cigarettes are currently approved for adults as a way to decrease the harms from combustible tobacco products, but much about their risk remains unknown, particularly for cancer survivors. Although the risk appears to be lessened with e-cigarette use, they are not proven to be safe and can often serve as a gateway product for youth and nonsmokers to more traditional combustible smoking products.  In both cases, each patient has an alcohol-associated cancer. However, it is unclear for all but head and neck cancers and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma if cutting down on alcohol intake after cancer diagnosis reduces the risk of recurrence. E-cigarette use among cancer survivors is an emerging issue for clinicians, who often do not know how to counsel their patients about these products.  For Harold, with his head and neck cancer, there is clear data that supports that patients with that diagnosis who continue to drink do have higher rates of recurrence and also secondary head and neck cancers. Thus, the oncologists should counsel him to stop, or at least cut down on his alcohol drinking.  The current guidelines recommend no more than two servings of alcohol a day for men and no more than one per day for women. As a reminder, a serving of alcohol varies dependent on the product being consumed. It is roughly one 12 ounce bottle of regular beer, five ounces of wine, or 1 1/2 ounces of distilled spirits.  For Susan, who has an estrogen and progesterone receptor-positive breast cancer, the data is less clear. There is a suggestion in some studies that ongoing alcohol use for hormone receptor-positive patients may increase the recurrence rates. However, the data is not definitive. It would be prudent for all health risks related to alcohol to counsel her to stick to the recommended amounts of alcohol use, however. So for her, this would be one drink per day for women.  For e-cigarette use, a 2015 ASCO and AACR statement on ENDS, or electronic nicotine delivery systems, concludes that oncologists should not recommend e-cigarettes to their patients as first-line treatment for quitting smoking. Oncologists should also be aware that more and more cancer survivors are using e-cigarettes and similar products, and they should ask about use at each visit. The unclear health risks of e-cigarettes should be discussed with patients.  Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the ASCO eLearning weekly podcast. For more information on cancer prevention, including additional patient cases and opportunities for self-evaluation, visit the comprehensive eLearning center at elearning.asco.org.  [MUSIC PLAYING]  The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care, and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. 

https://mwge.orgDavid gives a spectacular commentary from the Awakened Mind on the movie "Perfect Sense." Below is the Holy Spirit write-up included in our online Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment. For more enlightening movie reviews, videos, audios, and much more, subscribe at https://mwge.org.This is a powerful film in which the characters go through a shared and accelerated awakening experience. Due to a virus, they lose four out of the body’s five physical senses, one by one. This is extremely shocking to their ego mind. Each loss triggers repressed rage, panic and grief. Each time a sense is lost, there is a desperate attempt to both control the virus and to compensate for the loss by enhancing a sense that still remains intact. This attempt however is futile. As Einstein says, “You can never solve a problem from the level on which it was created.” For Susan and Michael, the collective loss of senses propels them to open up to each other; they begin sharing private thoughts and communicating their feelings. As old memories, concepts and beliefs are released; they experience new levels of intimacy. As we rely less on the body’s senses to tell us who we are, what we are will tell us of Itself. The Spirit is leading us into a present experience that is well beyond the understanding of our body’s senses. In the final hours, all that is left is a profound love and appreciation and a shared urge to reach out to one another to end the dream of fragmentation once and for all!Recorded on January 22, 2019, at Casa Quantico in San Antonio Tlayacapan, Jalisco, Mexico. To learn more about watching movies for enlightenment, visit our online Movie Watchers Guide to Enlightenment (MWGE) at https://mwge.org

Download Episode Here Have a martini with your legal advice today, and step into Molly's past as we welcome her very own sister, Ms. Susan Priest-Richlak. Besides valuable estate planning tips, Susan shares the dirt on growing up with Molly, including the time she almost broke Susan's head. Find out what makes Susan's "Summer Sue Parties" so great and what's really going on in her basement. Listeners can find Susan on LinkedIn or through her law office at susanrichlaklawyermentor.com. And now, please enjoy the recipe for a Best.Martini.Ever. (A Suetini made on the air), as served on this episode: 3 count of raspberry vodka splash of triplesec 3 count of Cosmo mix (or Cranberry juice) Here are some of the links we mentioned in today’s episode: The Facebook live video recorded during this episode is at www.facebook.com/molly.p.gebler/videos/vb.791130482/10160538719915483/?type=2&video_source=user_video_tab Learn more about the Summer Manuscript Workshop at Fireside BookShop with Scott Lax by visiting www.firesidebookshop.com/events-1/ The article Alex wrote about Meg is on the Gertsburg Law Firm blog at www.gertsburglaw.com/blog/human-being/ Unfortunately, the video that Molly took in Susan's basement is no longer available... The photo album by Brian Polk Photography of the Spazmatics Concert with Double D is on Brian Polk's facebook page: www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1874254005964792.1073741952.1595310877192441&type=1&l=d931730005 Learn more about Dr. Cameron Camp's work with the Center for Applied Research in Dementia at www.cen4ard.com [caption id="attachment_1292" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Gifts! A Chamber bag FOR Susan and fun napkins FROM Susan[/caption] [caption id="attachment_1293" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Susan's backyard patio[/caption] SHOW NOTES * 1:16 What happens when John's away, Remodeling stories, LeBron thoughts, Letting the news into our lives * 12:00 Molly and Susan go way back, Susan comes bearing gifts * 18:00 Susan is a hostess extrodinairre, Martinis anyone? * 26:50 Susan's Private Practice in Mentor and Advice on Estate Planning * 37:40 Sibling rivalry, or just good girls? * 51:00 OnPurpose86400.com and the exercise of writing * 1:00:20 Suetinis Round Two and What's happening in Sue's basement * 1:09:00 Lightning Round

Notyer og links på SIVP.dk/77 Dr. Susan Little er kattespecialist og har arbejdet med katte i over 20 år. Hun leder 2 klinikker kun for katte og holder et have af forelæsninger over hele verden. Kun 4 symptomer Susan siger (mest for sjov) at katte kun har 4 symptomer: Anorexi, nedstemthed, opkast og diarre. Derfor kan de være svære at undersøge og lave diagnostik på. Susan fortæller, at vi skal være særligt opmærksom på deltajer i anamnesen, som ejeren ikke selv tænker over. Især kan den sociale balance mellem katte i et hjem betyde meget for heldbredet. Uopdaget diarre giver også en del sygdomme, som kan være svære at spore sig ind på. Paraklinisk undersøgelse For Susan er både blodprøve og urinundersøgelse relevant, men vi skal være omhyggelig med at forklare ejeren at i muligvis ikke finder svaret. Vi kan muligvis finde spore, men ejeren skal på forhånd have realistiske forventninger. Af særlige værdier kan Feline PL (FPL), TLI og Cobalamin være relevant. Det kan være med til at rule in/rule out gastroentestinale lidelser. T4 og blodtryksmåling er også relevant for katte der over 5 år. FIV/FeLV test er også vigtigt, men kan være falsk negativ ved bestemte forhold.

https://mwge.orgIn this recording, David gives a pre-movie talk which lasts 15 minutes and 55 seconds. At this point, we recommend you watch "Perfect Sense" and then resume the audio to listen to the commentary from during and after the movie.Below is the Holy Spirit write-up included in our online Movie Watcher's Guide to Enlightenment. For more enlightening movie reviews, videos, audios, and much more, subscribe at https://mwge.org.Perfect SensePerfect Sense is a powerful film in which the characters go through a shared and accelerated awakening experience. Due to a virus, they lose four out of the body’s five physical senses, one by one. This is extremely shocking to their ego mind. Each loss triggers repressed rage, panic and grief. Each time a sense is lost, there is a desperate attempt to both control the virus and to compensate for the loss by enhancing a sense that still remains intact. This attempt however is futile. As Einstein says, “You can never solve a problem from the level on which it was created.”For Susan and Michael, the collective loss of senses propels them to open up to each other; they begin sharing private thoughts and communicating their feelings. As old memories, concepts and beliefs are released; they experience new levels of intimacy.As we rely less on the body’s senses to tell us who we are, what we are will tell us of Itself. The Spirit is leading us into a present experience that is well beyond the understanding of our body’s senses. In the final hours, all that is left is a profound love and appreciation and a shared urge to reach out to one another to end the dream of fragmentation once and for all!Recorded at La Casa de Milagros, Chapala, Jalisco, Mexico on the 10th of February, 2018.For more enlightening movie reviews, videos, audios, and much more, subscribe athttps://mwge.org