It is easily portable, just 7 inch, designed to bring how-to titles to life.   It revolutionizes traditional cookbooks, travel guides, parenting primers, and home improvement books by bringing them to life with video clips, images, and sound. It’s never been easier or more fun to master the things you’ve dreamed of doing.

miBook has various titles such as Cooking, Decorate Garden, Build and Repair, Fun and Healthy Pregnancy, new born babies, travel, etc.

miBook Parenting Titles walk new Fathers through everyday tasks, such as changing a diaper and warming a bottle, with easy to follow visual instructions.

Cooking titles guide the viewer in planning a menu and fixing a complete meal, stopping after 3 minute vignettes in order to let the viewer keep up, perfect for new cooks.   It helps to move through recipes in a step-by-step, seeing exactly how your craeation should look every step of the way.

Don’t just read it – see it!

Hundreds of projects come alive with video clips, images & sound.  Move through each project step-by-step, seeing how it should look at every turn. miBook stops automatically after each step, letting you work with expert skill & confidence. Push play to move on whenever you’re ready. With a few button taps, you’re onto a world of possibilities. Pick a project & work like a pro!

Includes 2 home titles: Home Projects – 150 everyday projects – install light fixtures, TV’s, dimmers, PC networks, thermostats & more: refinish floors & organize. Home Repairs – 150 everyday repairs – - leaky faucets, wall cracks, lamps and much more.

Available in More Titles: Cooking, Decorating, Gardening, Parenting, Travel, Repair, Fun and Healthy Pregnancy & more.

Share your digital photos: You can also use miBook as a digital photo frame. You’ll be able to show off hundreds of photos at the touch of a button. The beautiful 7” LCD display makes your photos and videos look great-no matter the format. Control the show with the included remote or let photos run automatically in a slideshow.

Enjoy your favorite MP3 tunes through the two built-in speakers or the headphone jack. With just a couple of simple clicks, you can even put your slideshows to music.

You can keep track of time with the built-in calendar and clock. It adjusts brightness, contrast and color with ease. And switch between standard 4:3 and 16:9 widescreen display modes. These are some of the cool features of miBook

You can play home videos or videos you download from the internet. To enjoy your favorite images, simply plug in your camera’s memory card (SD/MS/MCC/XD).  If you want to transfer photos music and videos from your computer, use the USB cable which is provided with miBook. AC adapter and rechargeable lithium-ion battery pack included.

Its suggested retail price is $129.99 for a package with two titles, $19.99 for each additional title.  It is available at Bed Bath & Beyond, Linens-n-Things and at more than 800 The Source locations across
Canada.

Bruce
C.E.O.,
Photoco Inc.

Bruce Teicher -  A biography

Mr. Teicher is a graduate of Amherst College, Columbia Law School, and Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. After school, he worked briefly as an attorney, then founded a consumer magazine about law to help people with their everyday legal problems.

He joined CBS, where he helped fight for media access to courtrooms. He then moved to Viacom, where he structured television production deals with networks, actors, producers, and writers. After Viacom, he returned to his writing roots and worked as a television writer for numerous network TV shows.  Most recently, he’s worked as C.E.O. at Photoco, a consumer products company that specializes in consumer electronics.

About miBook:

miBook, a portable multimedia book designed for playing “how-to” titles. It’s 7 inches and launching with titles from Parents.tv (parenting titles cater to new dads and dads with toddlers), HGTV, Food Network and DIY Network. The titles take the viewer through a series of easy-to-follow steps and since the device is so small, it’s easy to tote from task to task.

It’s time for everyone to have wholesome foods, which contains all nutrition and become healthy. Functional foods supply more than nutrition alone, they also offer health benefits beyond nutrition alone.

Omega Smart Bar is one such product. Omega combines all nutrition and offers it in bar format so that people can have it easily. It does not put artificial preservatives in their bars so the shelf life is shorter than other bars on the market today. Omega feels that it’s a small price to pay to be able to offer you a truly health promoting bar.

Leading health experts have recognized and promote Omega Smart Bars.

• It is wholesome, organic, whole-food balanced nutrition!
• Ideal balance of complex carbohydrates non-isolated proteins and Essential Fats.
• It is a snack bar, an energy booster, or a quick meal replacement

All Omega Smart bars are easily digested, help to manage blood sugar, contain over 2,000 mg. of Omega-3′s and offer an ideal ratio of complex carbohydrates, proteins, and healthy-fats.

Omega wouldn’t think of using any artificial flavors, colors, additives, chemicals, or preservatives – and they bake their bars just long enough at a low temperature to achieve signature texture.

Omega Smart Bars comes in 10 different flavours. Our Youth In A Bar offerings represent cutting-edge science, with ingredients selected for their anti-aging, antioxidant, metabolism boosting, and collagen promoting properties. Each bar in this line represents what some might consider fanatical attention to detail regarding ingredient research and selection. Frankly, Omega thinks that’s great and actually wouldn’t want it any other way! Omega is currently working on Health Bars. To know more about Omega Smart products, click here.

If you are keen to know about the healthy ingredients, visit http://www.omegasmartbar.com/store/ingredients.html

• 100% All-Natural, Whole-Grain Ingredient: Omega Smart sources only the highest quality whole-grain flaxseed, carefully selected from the cool, clean environments of the northern prairies.
• 20% Omega-3s: Omega Smarts whole-grain flaxseed represents one of nature’s richest sources of omega-3 essential fatty acids . Humans convert the omega-3s in flaxseed into the same long-chain omega-3s (EPA and DHA) otherwise obtained from fish and algae. It takes only 1.3g of flaxseed per reference serving size to claim a product to be a “high, rich, or excellent” source of omega-3s, according to the Food & Drug Administration.
• 25%-plus Dietary Fiber: Whole and ground flaxseed offer rich sources of both soluble and insoluble dietary fibers in support of health and well-being. Flaxseed’s soluble fibers also contribute beneficial pre-biotic qualities to foods.
• Rich source of Antioxidants: Antioxidants play very important roles in helping to support cellular and metabolic integrity. 100% whole-grain flaxseed ingredients provide a rich source of dietary antioxidants.
• Rich in Lignans: Lignans are especially powerful polyphenolic antioxidants that also play an important role in health and nutrition.
• Good Source of Protein: Flaxseed contains 20 – 25% protein by weight, making it a rich source of protein comparable to meat, poultry or fish.
• Low-Glycemic (or Net) Carbs: Virtually all of the carbohydrate in flaxseed is dietary fiber, only 3% is in the form of digestible carbohydrates. This makes flaxseed an especially low-glycemic (or “net” carb) ingredient.
• Good Flavor, Good Taste: good nutrition is great, but you need to make a product taste good in order to make people want to eat it! Flaxseed’s good taste and good flavor make it an especially appropriate ingredient for good nutrition, health and well being.

So, Enjoy a bar…and eat to your health!

Virginia Jawidzik
President
Omega Smart Inc

Virginia Jawidzik – A biography

At the age of 20, Ginny began her career as a restaurateur opening numerous restaurants; catering businesses as well as a fine European Bakery over a span of 20 years.

Ginny enjoyed her work. However, her husbands diabetic condition fuelled her determination to find the answers. She had concerning foods ability to cause such debilitating diseases and also foods ability to heal such diseases.

Ginny is devoted to researching the function of foods and disease and formulating the right combination of nutritious ingredients into a health promoting food bar to help those suffering from numerous ailments.

About Omega Smart:

Omega Smart, Inc is a NH company dedicated to formulating nutritious whole food bars that address numerous health issues such as diabetes, autistic spectrum disorder, celiac disease, heart health and weight management to name a few. Omega Smart, Inc is an entrepreneurial NH company at the cutting edge of a growing nutraceutical market intersecting food and medicine.

The target for the company’s product is a consumer interested in maintaining or regaining their health through lifestyle interventions, including refocusing on healthful eating. The company’s mission is to practice evidence-based formulation where scientific and health literature is monitored and evaluated to assure the most wholesome and healthful ingredients to the consumer. The bars are formulated to be the high in omega-3 fatty acids, fiber and phytonutrients (plant based nutrients) and are label-certified organic.

Integrative Medicine refers to healthcare services and education not often found in traditional Western medical centers. The OSU Center for Integrative Medicine incorporates the art and science of caring for the whole person – body, mind and spirit – to treat and prevent disease, encouraging patients to create a condition of optimal health.

Located in Columbus, Ohio, The Ohio State University Medical Center is one of the largest and most diverse academic medical centers in the country and the only academic medical center in central Ohio.

The Center, located at 2000 Kenny Road, provides an evidence-based, patient-centered approach to holistic health care.  Some of the services include:

• Traditional Western Medicine
• Whole Alternative Medical Systems
• Mind-Body Medicine
• Biologically-Based Practices
• Manipulative and Body-Based Practices
• Energy Medicine

Driven by the mission to improve people’s lives through innovation in research, OSMUC saves lives and improves the quality of life by rapidly translating the latest discoveries from the research lab to the bedside. It educates a large percentage of the region’s physicians and provide advanced training and continuing education for clinicians.

Here are some vital statistics and information on “how our nutritional errors affect our health (both mind and body).  This is a known fact and nobody can ignore these. This has been shared by Dr. Glen Aukerman, MD, who is the Medical Director of OSMUC.  Worth reading it.

“It’s not just a matter of following food pyramid guidelines anymore, not plain and simple.”   The 1992 food pyramid originated in 1991 by the USDA based on the 1980’s general knowledge about nutrition but highly influenced by agribusiness interest groups.

The 2005 pyramid embodies the 1980s nutritional errors with little adjustments of food groups, but did add an exercise base to the pyramid from the fitness interest groups, but does not fix the negative nutritional impacts of today’s available foods on our human immune system of:

• Gluten imbedded as filler in most manufactured or processed foods
• Soy imbedded from prenatal lattes, to infant nutrition, to fitness and health promotion companies
• Flax which worsens the toxic omega-6 levels (is only, 0.2% converted as an omega-3)
• Latex-like proteins in foods out of season/out of region due to ethylene gas ripening process
• Deficiencies for 6 nutrients documented by the USDA food data base (published Dec 2004)
• Loss of Magnesium and Calcium from water supply, city, bottled, soft and reverse osmosis

Today’s food pyramids do not account for nutrition impacts of 5 new fields of knowledge:

• Human Genomic Project provides understanding of the power of nutrition on health
• Pharmacogenomics which looks at the impacts on genes of foods(grapefruit juice) on drugs
• Nutrigenomics which studies the impacts of nutrition on the gene and organ functions since food must provide complete nutrients for genes to manifest as healthy functions phenotypically
• Nutrigenetics (USDA)which restores food base crops to their full 1950 nutritional content
• Integrative Medicine, integrating Genomic Nutrition into Health, Prevention and medical treatments by understanding that the underlying cause of most chronic modern diseases begin in the immune system from the Nutrient-gene mismatch of the Food pyramid eating and our ‘casual grazing’ brought about by hurried lifestyles and the agribusiness fast-food marketing

Top opportunities and ways to help us live longer and manage stressful lives:

• Realize that the real cause of most modern chronic illnesses, including stress and fatique, begins with our food’s nutrient gene mismatch affecting the immune system,
• Consult an Integrative Medicine specialist for a Personalized Genomic Nutrition Intake and Evaluation which addresses and corrects the negative nutritional impacts of today’s available foods on our human immune system by correcting the;

o    Gluten imbedded as filler in most manufactured or processed foods
o    Soy imbedded from prenatal lattes, to infant nutrition, to fitness and health promotion companies
o    Flax which worsens the toxic omega-6 levels (is only , 0.2% converted as an omega-3)
o    Latex-like proteins in foods out of season/out of region due to ethylene gas ripening process
o    Deficiencies for 6 nutrients documented by the USDA food data base (published Dec 2004)
o    Loss of Magnesium and Calcium from water supply, city, bottled, soft and reverse osmosis
o    Addition of missing nutrients per USDA food database analysis(calcium, vit C, phosphorus

Reduction of the 20-30 times excess of omega-6 plant oils in the western diet by reducing:

• Poultry and farm-fed fish, due to being corn-fed
• Nuts and nut based products like nut butters
• Chips prepared with omega-6 plant oils from seeds like canola, sunflower etc
• Excessive Corn Products, tortillas, nachos, breads
• Flax, Soy, Trail-mix, grain-based snack products and bars, granola-like
• Garbanzo bean, hummus

Visit http://www.medicalcenter.osu.edu/go/integrative for class schedule and information for restoring your immune system.

From our upcoming workbook, Getting to Your Genomic Diet Plan

For the many who visit the OSU CIM, Integrative Medicine represents the hope for regaining their health. Many believe it stopped their ravages of premature aging, disease and death. Many patients ask me daily at their office visits, on reporting-in phone calls, at our community education lecture series, at the grocery stores, in restaurants, health food stores and even in the parking lot, “Doctor, Why am I not well?   What is wrong with me?  When / how did I get sick?  How can I ever regain the health I had as a child?”

This collection, in addition to the OSU CIM CORE Series of lectures and daily personalized-care research help each of us by “Getting to Your Genomic Diet, Where Everyone has Health” Glen Aukerman, MD

“Why I Am Not Well” is all about the silent food nutrient deterioration, and its Nutritional Impact.

In the beginning with Creation or over time with Evolution (depending on one’s belief system) the very narrowly fixed nutritional requirements of our human genome, its DNA, RNA, and the metabolic enzyme systems were set by foods of those times, leaving little variability in nutritional content of diet (monthly or annually) if one is to be truly healthy, disease free and fully functional today, tomorrow and beyond.

While over the last 10,000 years since our modern human genome is believe to have become fixed,  there have been major shifts in the agriculture and the foods available to our ancestors, it now appears that the most devastating changes have occurred in the last 500 years since the Western hemisphere-based foods began to be introduced to the Eastern hemisphere-based sub-populations (European, Mediterranean,  Asian, African, etc.) for whom corn, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, and coffee had no genomic experience. Similar nutritional genetic chaos began with the introduction of foods from those Eastern hemisphere regions (wheat, barley, rye and condiments) to the native sub-populations of the Western hemisphere for which they have no genomic experience. While the prior minor sub-continental food exchanges are likely to have occurred many times over the preceding thousands of years, most were likely mere samplings of new-to-the-genome foods and unlikely to have been consumed in amounts large enough on a continuous enough basis to produce the devastating genomic metabolic illness or impacts evidenced in modern day.

Onset of the industrial revolution, agribusiness and expanded commercial shipping, the genomes of the entire planet became exposed to increased dietary complexity issues, toxicity of latex in foods, and the fabulous fakes of the food industry (MSG, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, colorings, and flavorings). Starting in about 1909, the food industry began to incorporate ever increasing amounts of omega-6 plant oils (soybean oil at first, then a cascade of other plant oils) into the increasingly complex food base. Only recently have we known that the three essential oils need to be in a 1:1:1 ratio for optimal health, omega (n)-3 from animals (fish, lard, and butter), omega (n)-6 from plants (canola, soybean, corn, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, and coconut) and omega (n)-9 from trees (olive oil). Alterations from this ratio are known to lead to most modern chronic diseases such as heart disease, hypertension, obesity, depression, etc. and even acute conditions such as panic disorder, pain, fatigue, cancers, diabetes, etc.

Loss of Magnesium in Food and Water since the late 1950 as we shifted from the use of animal-based magnesium / trace minerals-rich fertilizers from the manure of animals eating grass for food-crops to mineral deficient commercial fertilizers. This loss of natural magnesium in the soils has led to an increasing deficit of magnesium in the current grocery-based food supply, compounded by shift of western populations’ food sources from the magnesium-rich home garden to become dependent on grocery-based magnesium deficient produce and fruits. Concurrently, western societies have moved away from the magnesium, potassium and calcium rich well-water to magnesium, potassium and calcium depleted city, softened and bottled water which appears to be a major contributing cause for conditions such as osteopenia, osteoporosis, gastroesophageal reflux disorder, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, hypertension, headaches, insomnia, arthritis, constipation, fatigue, and enhanced pain disorders.

The USDA reports declines since 1950 in Nutrient Content of All 43 US Garden Fruits / Vegetables

• Protein – 6%, leading to protein calorie malnutrition,
• Calcium – 16% / Phosphorus – 9% leading to osteoporosis, osteopenia and muscle bone weakness
• Iron – 15%, leading to anemia,
• Riboflavin decreased by 38%, leading to beriberi symptom complex known at chronic fatigue, irritability, memory problems, insomnia, fatigue, depression, nausea, dermatitis, muscular pains, sleep disturbances, impaired coordination, naso-lateral seborrhea (rosacea), glossitis, pellagra with diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, growth failure, cheilosis, angular stomatitis, beriberi, polyneuritis, and Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome,
• Vitamin C – 15%, leading to immune deficiency disorders / lowered resistance to infections.

These deficits in nutrient content are due to changes in cultivated varieties between 1950-1999, a trade-off of greater yield for less nutrient content, leading to large percentages of the world’s population suffering from deficiency disorders with symptoms of B vitamin deficiency that are devastating to quality of life.

Since Geneticists estimate that we take 10,000 years to adapt our genome to new food introductions.

Here are seven steps to Improved Health and Longevity – by eating more like our ancestors ate:

1. Answer is to move toward those original foods available when the genome became fixed which allowed our ancestors to be healthy enough to survive, flourish, and become our ancestors.
2. Select Original foods match the foods that were responsible for our specific genome surviving, the foods fit for our genome, allowing our DNA and mRNA to work optimally for health and longevity.
3. Avoiding the fabulous fakes of the food industry such as MSG, preservatives, artificial sweeteners, colorings, and flavors we have less to be detoxified by our liver.
4. Limiting foods entering the food system in the last 500 years (corn, tomatoes, peppers, peanuts, wheat, barley, rye, condiments and coffee).  Reduce gluten, soy and avoid flax products completely.
5. Avoiding and limit extracted omega-6 plant oils of the last 100 years, such as canola, soybean, corn, cottonseed, safflower, sunflower, coconut oils.
6. Avoid and limit  foods that accumulate omega-6 corn oil (chicken, turkey and farm-fed fish)
7. Avoid fruits / vegetables (picked early out of season / out of region) = Latex exposed to ethylene gas =  increased latex-like injury protein in our fruits and vegetables, even by organic suppliers >1959

Dr. Glen Aukerman M.D.
Medical Director
Ohio State University Center for Integrative Medicine

Glen Aukerman – A biography

Dr. Aukerman, M.D. is a tenured Professor of Family Medicine in the Department of Family Medicine at The Ohio State University and Medical Director for the University’s Center for Integrative Medicine.

Glen Aukerman has served as a professor in the OSU School of Medicine’s Department of Family Medicine since 1995 and as chair of the department from 1995-1998. He was one of four OSU Family Medicine practitioners named to Best Doctors in America in 2003-2004. He also serves as interim medical director for The Ohio State University Managed Health Care System.

Among other positions, he has also served as chief medical officer at the National Practitioner Data Bank and as deputy director and chief medical officer in the Division of Quality Assurance for the Bureau of Health Professions of the Health Resources and Services Administration in Rockville, Md.

Dr. Aukerman’s other areas of expertise include managed care and medical quality assurance. He served in 1993 on the White House Health Reform Task Force Speakers Panel and is a past president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He has served on many steering and development committees addressing managed care issues.

Related articles

• US replaces food pyramid with “healthy plate” (beinghealthyhomeandaway.blogspot.com)

While stressful situations may be inevitable, the damage and side-effects of stress are not. There is a way to stop stress from affecting your body and mind. Fortunately nature has equipped our bodies with the perfect antidote to stress. It’s called the relaxation response.

Early on, Helicor decided to focus on creating a personal, affordable medical device. Typical medical-grade biofeedback systems cost thousands of dollars and require a person to be attached to a computer. Helicor team chose to create a unit that would be self-contained, portable and had no external wires or leads to attach. It is intended to be used for relaxation, relaxation training, and stress reduction.

After 4 1/2 years of design development, prototyping, testing, programming, and user feedback, the StressEraser was launched at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association in August 2005. First customer shipments began in October 2005.

Biofeedback and Heart Rate Variability

The StressEraser provides a daily points-based system that allows each user to tailor the relaxation training to his schedule. The points-based system also allows the therapist to tailor the relaxation training homework to the individual treatment needs of the client.

The StressEraser personal biofeedback device is intended to be used solely for stress reduction, relaxation, and relaxation training. The device has not been clinically tested for the treatment of any psychological or physical medical conditions such as insomnia, hypertension, anxiety disorders, chronic pain, etc. The product is not intended to be used for the treatment or diagnosis of any medical condition.

The Science of the StressEraser — how it works

Your Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) controls functions in the body that normally occur unconsciously, such as heart rate, respiration rate and digestion. This system is responsible for keeping your body in a regulated, balanced state. This balance is created by the constant back and forth nature of the two primary branches of your ANS: the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) and the Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS).

Your SNS is involved in mobilization responses that enable “fight or flight” behaviors known as the stress response. Your PNS is involved in “rest and renew” behaviors that enable growth and restoration and are known as the relaxation response. Parasympathetic activity is regulated by your vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in your body, extending from the brain stem to the base of the spine and to several organs and your heart. When the vagus nerve activates, the relaxation response is turned on. When the vagus nerve is inactive, the relaxation response is also inactive.

Your “fight or flight” or stress response can become activated by both major and minor stressors. Even states of excitement and emotions such as anger and fear activate the SNS. The primary pacifying nerve in your body, the vagus nerve, mediates the activity of the “rest and renew” or relaxation response. Overall, activation of the PNS promotes calming so you can recuperate from day-to-day stress, keeping the ANS in balance. To know more about SNS and PNS, click here.

Ideally, the SNS and PNS operate in an evenly balanced manner, keeping your body in a state of physiological homeostasis. Although there are exceptions, in general when SNS activity increases, PNS activity decreases. In particular, when SNS activity increases, the activity of the vagus nerve decreases. SNS changes in your body are all extremely important, particularly if you are in a life threatening situation in which you have to fight or escape. When the stressful moment has passed, the PNS response kicks in to relax your body and return it to a balanced state.

Our nervous systems have not yet adapted to the type of ongoing stress we face today. Ongoing minor stresses such as traffic jams, work demands, problems at home, or financial concerns tend to build up. Emotions such as anger, fear and anxiety will cause your SNS to activate. As stress accumulates, your stress response remains active for longer than your body can handle. Your relaxation response, therefore, is less active, which throws your ANS out of balance. Over time, repeated stressors and negative emotions have a cumulative wear and tear on the body that can lead to significant health problems. This is called “allostatic load.” When you are healthy, your nervous system returns to normal functioning after a stressed situation by increasing vagus nerve activity. This helps the system to recover.

When you are faced with stress on a daily basis, however, your stress response fails to shut off in a timely manner. Allostatic load leads to reduced activity of your vagus nerve. As a result, your system becomes hyperactive or begins to burn out. Hyperactive stress responses cause your system to remain in fight-or-flight mode for an extended period of time. Burn-out inhibits both your SNS and PNS from activating. In both cases, your body becomes out of balance, making your system less flexible and less able to effectively adapt to external demands. Over time, allosatic load can cause significant health problems. There is now a large literature on the relationship to stress and disease. According to the American Institute of Stress, “it is hard to think of any disease in which stress cannot play an aggravating role.” In fact, the Institute reports that up to 90% of doctors visits are stress related.

Perhaps the two most important methods of actively triggering your relaxation response are:

1. learning to change your breathing and
2. learning to change your focus. By changing your breathing and your focus, you can increase the vagal influence on your heart—and therefore relax your body.

There is growing literature on the effects of these relaxation exercises on stress-related illnesses and performance. In particular, breathing slowly can activate the vagus nerve to help enhance autonomic control. However, slow breathing without physiological biofeedback—which provides the cues that you are doing it correctly—can actually be counter-productive because you are not breathing in sync with your nervous system.

The StressEraser is a tangible biofeedback device that was specifically designed to help you find the unique breathing pattern that maximizes RSA, maintains your focus, and most efficiently triggers increased vagal influences on your heart.

Greater variability, especially due to larger rhythmic changes associated with breathing, leads to a higher amplitude RSA wave – and therefore more parasympathetic (relaxation) activity. When there is greater parasympathetic tone, it supports health, growth, and restoration.

As you learn to find this breathing pattern, the StressEraser simultaneously guides you to focus your attention, a key aspect of proper physiological relaxation. The goal of this strategy is transform a heart rate pattern characterized by short, jagged RSA waves into one characterized by large, smooth RSA waves. The StressEraser is the only portable HRV/RSA biofeedback device that allows you to follow and manipulate your RSA wave in real time. When used properly, it enhances the state of your nervous system, while inducing feelings of calm and relaxation.

The StressEraser measures your real-time beat-to-beat heart rate via an infrared finger sensor. The finger sensor has a built-in photoplethysmograph to identify the pulsation associated with each heart beat. The StressEraser accurately identifies the time of each pulse and calculates heart rate based on the time that has elapsed between the two most recent pulses. The StressEraser plots the up and down, wavelike movement and displays the pulse rate wave on the LCD screen.

By observing the RSA wave derived from your beat-to-beat pulse rate, the StressEraser provides a window into the activity of your vagus nerve.

The StressEraser then breaks down the RSA waves to analyze the frequency of each individual wave.

Once the frequency of the wave is computed, you receive immediate feedback on whether the wave was sufficiently long and smooth to receive credit. If you are breathing in your unique optimal pattern – and have a calm, neutral mind – you score 1 point for a large smooth wave, as marked by three vertical squares. The goal is to achieve this type of wave continuously. If the wave is long enough to indicate sufficient, but not optimal RSA, the user receives 1/2 point as marked by two vertical squares. If the wave is too short, the user receives no points, as marked by one square. (Note: Seniors and beginners can set a goal for continuous two-square waves.)

The minimum suggested session is 30 points (about 5-7 minutes) with a goal of 100 points per day (approximately 20 minutes).

To achieve continuous three-square waves, you are instructed to inhale until your heart rate peaks. This point is marked by a triangle. The triangle indicates the moment that a natural burst of vagal activity is about to begin, indicating your parasympathetic response. When the triangle appears, begin your exhale and shift your thoughts to a calming focus phrase (such as counting your exhale). Then, extend your exhale until the wave begins to rise again. At the end of your exhale, inhale until the next triangle appears.

The slow breathing rate required to create this wave varies from person to person, but is usually somewhere between 4.5 and 7 breaths per minute. Your unique pattern is called your “resonant frequency.” When you attain your own resonant frequency pattern, there is a perfect phase relationship between your breathing rhythms and your heart rhythms. That is, they are in perfect sync with one another.

Breathing and heart rhythms are the two most important mechanisms involved in the neuroregulation of the heart. As with your breathing, you can consciously alter your natural heart rhythm (known as the “baroreflex”) to a certain extent. When they are in perfect sync, studies show that it helps strengthen and balance the autonomic nervous system. Once you learn to find your resonant frequency pattern, you will notice it induces feelings of mind-body relaxation.

One of the most useful features of the StressEraser is that it does not give credit if there is a disruption or “break” in the flow of a wave because of withdrawal of vagus nerve activity. These breaks might be caused by a variety of factors, including:

• Extending the exhale for too long
• Strained or improper breathing
• Excessive emotion
• Being highly distracted
• Fever or illness
• Specific medications blocking vagal regulation
• Or irregular heartbeats

The StressEraser recognizes these breaks and informs you that a disruption occurred. Since the StressEraser’s feedback is in real-time, you can immediately correct the behavior that caused the wave break. Typically, a wave break is your cue to re-focus on your breathing.

In summary, the StressEraser is a tangible biofeedback device that was specifically designed to help you find the unique breathing pattern that maximizes RSA, maintains your focus, and most efficiently triggers increased vagal influences on your heart. Therefore, the StressEraser promotes health and calmness. It can be used to reduce stress for those who have issues dealing with constant stress, brief stressors (i.e., deadlines, public speaking) or to simply enhance health, performance and overall feelings of calmness.

How to Use the StressEraser

There are two primary goals of each StressEraser session – to relax your body and to calm your mind.

1. Your first goal is to relax your body by making tall, wide, smooth waves. Because breathing directly affects your HRV, the most effective way to relax is to dramatically slow your breathing. When your waves are tall, wide, and smooth, you have engaged the natural relaxation response in your body. Repeating for 10-15 minutes at a time has a lasting effect.
2. Your second goal is to calm your mind by reducing negative emotions and thoughts. Even when you are breathing properly, negative emotions will cause your waves to get shorter or to become jagged. You can reduce negative thoughts by focusing on your waves and by counting during your exhale. This exercise will clear your mind.

Practice Slow Breathing. Before you start your first StressEraser session, it is important that you practice breathing slowly. This will give you a feel for the type of breathing you will be doing with the StressEraser. To practice, inhale for 4 seconds and then exhale for 5 seconds. Feel free to follow your watch or to simply count slowly to yourself. Continue breathing at the 4-second/5-second pace for about 2 minutes. Remember, your goal is to learn to breathe slowly – not deeply. As long as you are breathing slowly, depth will come. Your breathing should always feel relaxed, not strained. Creating a wave pattern similar to the pictures below may take a while. So take your time and do the best you can.

Your First Session

1. Press the POWER button on the right side panel (not one of the buttons on the front).
2. When prompted, insert your left index finger into the clip. Wait 5 seconds for the sensor to adjust to your pulse rate.
3. As soon as your wave appears on the screen, press the BREATHE button.
4. Whenever you are ready, inhale slowly and gently. When a new triangle appears above the wave, exhale slowly and gently. During your exhale, slowly count 1.2.3.4.5.
5. When your wave begins to rise, start your next inhale.

Note: While triangles cue your exhale, there is no cue for the inhale. If you like, you can use the squares as an approximate cue. Begin your inhale when you see the squares appear under the previous wave. Alternatively, you can count 1 second after your wave has started to rise – whichever works best for you.

Score your waves. Your goal is to consistently score 2 and 3-squares under each wave. You get no credit for 1-square waves. Each 2-square wave is worth 1/2 point. Each 3-square wave is worth 1 point. To get 2 squares, follow the instructions to create waves that are tall, wide, and smooth. Keep exhaling at the triangle and counting your exhale.

Your optimal exhale count. If 5 is an uncomfortable count for you – or if you’re not scoring 2 and 3-square waves – try exhaling for a count of 4 or 6. You can try even faster or slower, depending on your comfort level. Once you have found an exhale count that is comfortable and consistently results in 2 and 3-square waves, you have found your optimal exhale count. Continue with that count until you have scored at least 5points. (Your points accumulate in the top-left corner of the screen.)

Breathing Tips:

1. Don’t lean. For best results, find a comfortable place to sit or recline. Don’t lean forward – make sure your sitting position enables you to keep your air passages and abdominal muscles free. Breathe in and out through your nose or mouth, whichever is more comfortable for you.
2. Pursed lips. If you are having trouble breathing slowly, try pursing your lips. To do this, pucker or “purse” your lips as if you are going to whistle. This will release less air as you exhale and will help slow down your breathing.
3. Always comfortable. Remember, your breathing should always be gentle, quiet, smooth and comfortable. You should not be straining, taking long inhales, holding your breath, or doing anything that is at all uncomfortable.
4. Slow not deep. StressEraser breathing is NOT “deep” breathing. Depth will come as long as you are breathing slowly. Breathing deeply too quickly can cause you to feel dizzy or lightheaded. StressEraser breathing is like normal breathing, except it is a little slower. And of course it is synchronized with the activity of your nervous system.
5. Extend your exhale. Once you are familiar with the StressEraser and are consistently scoring 3 squares, extend your exhale as long as you can until your wave starts to rise again – then begin your inhale. Remember, you benefit from making your exhales longer and longer, as long as your breathing remains comfortable and relaxed. The idea is to extend your exhale for as long as your nervous system can handle.

If you are not able to make out the above instructions, you can watch the video to understand more.

Results may vary

The indicated use of the StressEraser is for relaxation, relaxation training and stress reduction. The StressEraser is currently being tested in numerous controlled clinical trials at leading academic institutions for stress-related issues such as Anxiety, Asthma, Depression, Insomnia, Migraine Headaches, Performance (occupational & sports), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD, Stress levels in physicians and pregnant women, etc

Several StressEraser studies have been completed and overall results indicate users both prefer and find the StressEraser more helpful than other relaxation techniques. Immediately after using the device, users report significant reductions in feelings of stress related anxiety, increases in feelings of calmness and relaxation, increases in cognitive performance and decreases in heart rate. Moreover, results indicate that the more efficient someone is at using the device, the more they report improvement in stress related symptoms of anxiety.

Studies reveal that the StressEraser reduces feelings of stress-related anxiety and anger, increases objective indicators of work performance, and increases heart rate variability. You can access more published work here.

Fred Muench
Stress Eraser

Fred Muench – A biography

Frederick Muench has a PhD in Clinical Psychology and is currently serving as the Director of Clinical Research and Development, Helicor, New York, NY where he is responsible for new project development, clinical trials and professional education and consulting for the StressEraser biofeedback medical device. He is also an adjunct Professor in the Department of Applied Psychology at New York University in New York, NY.

About Stress Eraser

StressEraser is an award-winning small portable medical device, that relaxes the body and calms the mind in 15 minutes. The StressEraser can be used to quiet the mind before sleeping, rapidly relieve intense stress, and even to stay calm during highly stressful situations.

From beat to beat, your heart rate reflects the activity of your stimulating and pacifying nerves. The StressEraser displays these tiny changes as a wave. By watching your wave characteristics in realtime, you learn to adjust your breathing and mental focus. This decreases the activity of the stimulating nerves (thereby decreasing stress) and increases the activity of the pacifying nerves (thereby increasing relaxation).

The StressEraser is classified by the FDA as a Class II 510(k) exempt medical device. The indicated use is for relaxation, relaxation training and stress reduction. The StressEraser is available for $299 from the StressEraser web site at http://stresseraser.com. The StressEraser is currently available to U.S. residents only.

Cover via Amazon

We all know that human body is complicated and consists of 90% of water content. It’s a great challenge for all of us to be in better health. Dr. Mark Hyman shares some insights on better health without having any medicine and how we can achieve these.

He strongly feels that our eating habits determine our health. It’s the root cause of all health problems. He talks about how we changed our eating habits over a period of time. Basically, he strongly condemns the food factory and medical doctors. He suggests that a simple food plan over 2-4 weeks can change your health and if you continue to follow these, you will feel better and healthy and get rid of aging.

UltraWellness is a new approach pioneered by Mark Hyman, M.D., that shows you how to work with the fundamental underlying laws by which your body operates to create optimal health. This is 21st-century medicine is finally available to everyone.

This new approach is based on the cutting edge science of systems biology and functional medicine. If put it simply, this means that UltraWellness works with your body as an integrated whole to achieve what conventional medicine cannot.

Here are the 7 keys to your UltraWellness. Try it and you will be amazed with its powers.

1. How Your Environment Affects Your Health
2. The Hidden Threat of Inflammation
3. How to Balance Your Hormones to Control Your Mood, Weight and Health
4. Why Your Digestive System is the Core of Good Health
5. How to Rid Your Body of Deadly Poisions by Optimizing Your Detoxification System
6. How to Boost Your Energy By Optimizing Your Mitochondria
7. How to Improve Your Health by Optimizing your Body-Mind Connection

The process is relatively simple:

• first, identify which of your seven key underlying systems isn’t working correctly;
• second, remove the sources that are causing problems with each one of those keys; and
• third, nourish each of these systems with what it needs to function optimally. Then, your body’s natural intelligence takes over and automatically fixes your remaining problems.

Dr. Hyman has written several books (UltraMetabolism, The Ultra Thyroid Solution, The UltraMetabolism Cookbook, The Ultra Simple Diet, UltraPrevention) and many audio video programs. You can also visit http://www.ultrawellness.com/store to know about these.

UltraMetabolism is a simple plan of 8 week program for automatic weight reduction and optimal health. It consists of mix of recipes and natural way of achieving this. You can also search more UltraMetabolism recipes or join the community for more details.

UltraPrevention is a 6-week plan that will make you Healthy for life. In this book he talks about how to eliminate the five forces, which makes us sick. Also, talking about the principles for restoring and maintaining health. He speaks about underlying causes of sickness.

Some information and facts mentioned by Dr. Hyman are written below to raise your awareness and consciousness.

According to Dr. Hyman:

“The fact is that the human body is complicated. It has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. There is no one magic bullet that will shoot down all your health issues.”

“I believe, however, that once you stop falling for the myths of modern medicine and once you begin adopting the recommendations of Ultraprevention you will be on your way to a future of better health.”

“Ultraprevention, is a new paradigm of well-being and a system of thought, evaluation, and treatment derived from the scientific study of health. This system is based on remarkable truths uncovered by researchers over the last few years. These truths provide tremendous insights into our health and give us a framework that not only explains but unites the processes of health and illness.”

The five forces of illness are:

1. Malnutrition or sludge
2. Impaired Metabolism or burnout
3. Inflammation or heat
4. Impaired detoxification or waste
5. Oxidative stress or rust

“I believe that every person who pays attention to these forces will enjoy better health. My program is not just about getting better when you feel ill – it is about staying better so you don’t have to feel ill at all.”

“Many doctors talk about early detection as the cornerstone of prevention. But true prevention has to start long before detection can occur. Why? Patients are not an ambulatory collection of separate organs and various conditions – everything in the body is related. Imbalances or dysfunctions in one system lead to added stresses in the other systems. When these stresses and imbalances tax the organ reserve symptoms and illness result. Remember the old children’s song – the Thighbone is connected to the hipbone… No organism can exist in isolation, and neither can a body system. Most doctors don’t try to put the clues together to form a big pictures – we do!”

Consider the person who has a heart attack — The heart attack didn’t occur out of the blue. It was preceded by decades of plaque buildup caused by oxidation (rusting) of fats in the bloodstream, which became deposited in the wall of the artery, followed by activation of the immune system leading to inflammation (heat) in the wall of the artery and this was aggravated by malnutrition (sludge) and tipped over by the resulting stress on the detoxification (waste) system which finally made one of those plaques break open and rupture causing a clot to form that in turn caused your heart attack. There is a similar chain of events with all common illnesses. The beginnings of all these diseases are like the first in a long line of dominoes to fall in a reaction that may take years to complete eventually ending with the diagnosis of a preventable illness. We look for the very first domino and pick it up before it has a chance to fall. The human body can right itself, if given the chance to do so.

You can identify the illness if you conduct the test as per below parameters. Here are some answers to your queries if you have the above illness.

Test for Malnutrition:

• Homocysteine — Blood test. The Ideal level is less than 9
• Essential Fatty Acids — Blood test. Measured in the red blood cells (Test for Omega 3, 6, and other fatty acids directly)
• Red Blood cell mineral levels — Blood test. Test for the levels of Magnesium, Selenium, Iodine, Zinc and Copper.
• Methylmalonic Acid — Blood or Urine Test. High levels indicate a B12 deficiency.
• Stool analysis — determines digestion and absorption. This will identify if foods are not being broken down and digested properly, or not being absorbed.

Test for Impaired Metabolism:

• Urinary Organic Acids — By measuring acidic compounds in the urine provides a rich amount of information about nutritional aspects of cellular energy production.
• Cardiometabolic stress testing: Measuring oxygen consumption during exercise (VO2 Max) tests for your mitochondria’s metabolic capacity.
• Insulin response test: Normal insulin values at two hours are less than 25 and a normal glucose level is less than 140.
• Lipid profile: Total cholesterol (LDL, HDL, triglycerides) A triglyceride level over 150 or a triglyceride to HDL ratio greater than 4.3 are highly suggestive of insulin resistance as is an HDL level of less than 40.
• TSH or Thyroid Stimulating Hormone — Blood Test. Normal Level is 0.3 to 3.5 with the optimal being 1.0-2.0.
• Free T3 and Free T4: Direct measurement of thyroid hormone in the blood in conjunction with the TSH level provides helpful information regarding thyroid function.
• Thyroid antibodies: This test can detect people at risk of developing hypothyroidism because these antibodies attack the thyroid gland.
• Resting metabolic rate. Clues us into the presence of an underactive thyroid gland.

Test for Inflammation:

• C-reactive protein – The high-sensitivity CRP (Normal levels 0.7 or less)
• Sedimentation rate (SED rate) High SED rates indicated inflammation (Normal values <20)
• Fibrinogen level — Blood Test: Fibrinogen is one of the chief constituents involved in clotting and is made by the liver. It rises in response to inflammation.
• Food Allergy blood tests: I measure the levels of antibodies (IgG, IgE) in the blood to a battery of different foods, potentially reactive foods.
• Gluten/Celiac disease — Blood Test: Specific tests check for gluten allergy and include the anti-gliadin antibody test and the tissue transglutaminase assay.
• Tests for Infections: Antibody tests (H. Pylori and Lyme disease), PCR tests and Cultures.

Test for Impaired Detoxification:

• Detoxification challenge test (Blood and Urine Test) Delayed or impaired detoxification in a specific area can point to nutritional deficiencies involved in detoxification or weak enzyme systems in the liver.
• Blood reduced Glutathione
• Hair analysis: A screening test for heavy metal toxicity (mercury, arsenic, lead, and cadmium)
• Urinary organic acids: Provides information about the body’s ability to detoxify certain solvents as well as hormones and carcinogens.

Test for Oxidative stress:

• Lipid peroxides — Blood or Urine. Measuring the level provides and index of the body’s antioxidant status.
• Superoxide dismutase (SOD), Gluathione peroxidase (GSHPx) and catalase. These are three of the most important natural anti-oxidant enzymes.
• Glutathione — Blood Test
• Urinary hydroxyl markers: Levels of free radicals such as catechol and 2,3-dihydroxybenzoate.
• Blood anti-oxidant levels. Vitamin A, Vitamin E, Co-enzyme Q10 and Beta Carotene

Why do we test for these?

Most doctors don’t pay attention to any of these forces because they operated under this method — if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. The problem as I see it is that “it” may well be broken already. But most Doctors don’t realize this because they wait until something is damaged almost beyond repair before they act.

Knowledge provide by these tests gives us the advantage over other Doctors — they give us lead time to prevent them from occurring.

It is up to you. One of the greatest changes taking place in our medical system is the empowerment of the patient. Everyone needs to become their own health advocate.

Dr. Mark Hyman M.D
Author of UltraPrevention and UltraMetabolism

Dr. Mark Hayman – A biography

Mark Hyman, M.D., is author of the New York Times bestseller The UltraSimple Diet, co-author of the New York Times bestseller Ultraprevention (Scribner), which won a Books for a Better Life Award, creator of The Detox Box, and author of The Five Forces of Wellness. There are nearly 1 million copies of Dr. Hyman’s books in print in the U.S. His New York Times bestseller, UltraMetabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss, published in more than 12 languages, also hit The Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestseller lists and was the #1 health book on Amazon the year it was published. He is Editor-in-Chief of “Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine” and the Medical Editor of “Natural Solutions.”

He has appeared on Weekend Today, Good Morning America Weekend, The Early Show, The View, and CNN, FOX, PBS, and NPR, as well as in leading consumer magazines including Body & Soul, Elle, Family Circle, Fitness, Glamour, Health, Men’s Health, Natural Health, Parade, Self, Shape, Town & Country, and Woman’s World. Hyman’s website, www.ultrawellness.com, empowers health care consumers by enabling them to take advantage of the medicine of the future, today.

Here is one company called Maximized Living and a Chiropractitioner by Dr. Chris Niedzinski.  Maximized Living concept was founded by Dr. Ben Lerner and Dr. Greg Loman.   These simple tools have been practiced by many people and have been benefiting them immensely.

The main objective of Maximized Living is living fully for better health and wellness.  It is not just the concept—but also your ability to achieve that level of excellence.  The Maximized Living Health Center is a place, where people can go and receive the best care for removing the obstacles to optimal health and to achieve balance in their body and in their lives.  The goal is to demystify health and create one place you can go and not just get “better” but more importantly–get well.

In today’s world, people are more stressed or depressed due to some thing or the other.  Here are some factors that contribute stress:

• Chemical toxicity (medications, environmental, heavy metals, biotoxins, nutrition).  These all directly alter organ function and hormone production.  Most antidepressant medications significantly INCREASE depression and stress.
• Physical nerve stress will damage the nervous system directly and limits the control of organ function leading to decrease in hormones that reduce stress
• There is a deficiency of nutrition which accumulates stress on body and our internal system
• Limited exercise and movement.  This limits the oxygen ability of body, leading to cellular dysfunction and disease. It is no doubt that exercise alone can drastically reduce stress.
• Relationship and workplace stress.  Marital problems, job difficulties, etc. all create physiologic change.  Skin, heart rate, digestion, hormone, energy change with emotions.
• Improper time management skills (one of the biggest factors)—we are living in a rushed, emergency-centered world.  We are busier than we are successful.

If you look at the above causes, then it’ll only add stress and you’ll be more depressed.  So, we need to heal our brain in a systematic way to eliminate stress.  You can never eliminate stress, but can learn new techniques to build peace.

Fixing the above points one by one will not solve the problem, we require an internal biostructural changes. Maximized Living involves a unique biostructural alignment approach, and also promotes natural, drug free living and optimal nutrition for your body, allowing it to perform at optimal levels.   When your body is in this state of wellness, it becomes self-regulating. It will actually heal itself in most cases, and all you have to do is not interfere with it. That entails avoiding harmful foods and substances that will get in the way of your body’s natural processes. It also means taking care of your body, staying active and keeping fit.

Using the Five Essentials, Maximized Living helps to remove the obstacles to wellness, and restore your body to the balance it naturally seeks:

1. Minimize your exposure to toxins (Eg: medications & refined foods)
2. Maximize nerve supply.  All life and function revolves around this—all else is negligible.
3. Maximize the quality of your nutrition. Not diet, but making better choices of nontoxic fuel.
4. Maximize oxygen and lean muscle As little as 12 minutes per week! (www.12minutemakeover.com)
5. Maximize peace and relationships.  Anger Management, Peace Management, Reprogramming Perceptions (the art of overcoming, moving from pain to purpose), and Effective Time Management

Literally thousands of people across the country have transformed their lives (and stress) with these easy principles.  If you would like more information please click here.

Dr. Chris Niedzinski DC
Maximized Living Mentor

Dr. Chris Niedzinski – A biography

Dr. Chris Niedzinski is a Maximized Living Mentor in Farmington Hills, MI.  He has one of the most successful Chiropractic practices in Metro Detroit, seeing hundreds of patients each week.  He has trained with Drs Ben Lerner and Greg Loman-founders of Maximized Living.  These Doctors have written NY Times Best-Selling Books based on Stress Management, Time Management, Nutrition, Exercise, and Chiropractic (Body by God, One-Minute Wellness).  Dr. Chris is an expert on stress management and has helped many people transform their lives through the Maximized Living principles.

Maximized Living Inc. was established in 1999 and is located in Celebration, Florida, USA.    The company was founded by Dr. Ben Lerner and Dr. Greg Loman. Dr. Ben is a world-renown chiropractor, two-time New York Times best-selling author, and two-time U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team physician. Dr. Greg is a world-renown chiropractor, New York Times best-selling author, and host of the radio & television show “Ultimate Health.”

The highly skilled team consists of 12 coaches and 6 staff members with over 150 years combined industry experience. The diversity of team, and affiliation with the leading experts & companies in industry, enable them to provide you with the best training & resources to help you achieve your goals.

The mission is to maximize the lives of millions of people so that they can achieve their God-given potential through their health centers, chiropractic coaching, wellness programs, wellness products, and ministry foundation.  Over the past decade, Maximized Living has assisted hundreds of chiropractors in building successful practices and assisted thousands of people in living healthy lives.

They are committed to helping you live life to the max!

She feels that some of the causes of low productivity in a small business are as follows:

• Burnout / Stress- According to the American Institute of Stress, 40% of workers reported their job was very or extremely stressful, and 26 percent of those workers said they were “often or very often burned out or stressed by their work.”
• Poor/rigid working conditions
• Management Style
• Employee Motivation

NTM / Sherean counteracts these low productivity triggers by creating an environment that is flexible, supportive, and creative.  NTM understand that businesses have a tremendous impact on their environment. They believe it’s their responsibility to minimize that impact and practice good green policies. Technology also plays a major part…

Environment: creating an environment that is dynamic and flexible to her employees’ lifestyle, but still receptive to the business needs.”   NTM is not any less competitive, and everyone is just as serious about their work as if they were still at their super corporate jobs.  NTM is focused on Work-Life Balance. NTM is a kid friendly environment.

Non-toxic cleaning: They have selected a janitorial services company that uses only non-toxic, green-friendly cleaning supplies.

Creativity- NTM injects creativity into its modus operandi, especially when dealing with employees. It is important to have employees with hybrid skill sets. For example, during slower months such as the summer, the NTM team is always engaged because they all share equal responsibility in a project- they do not operate in a silo.

Flexibility- Employees are a business’ lifeblood.  Creating flexible work options such as Telecommuting and Job Sharing fosters an environment that addresses individual needs/concerns, celebrates team work, increases productivity and even enforces social responsibility.  All of NTM employees telecommute at least part of the time.  They’ve found this to be not just good environmental policy, but good business.  NTM employees are happier and more productive by incorporating telecommuting in their actions.

Recycle/Reduce: In addition to recycling paper, NTM strive to manage all accounts electronically so we don’t use much paper in the first place.  Their book keepings are happening online and the book keeper only comes for meeting.

Commercial Printers: While NTM use a variety of printers, the one they contract with most often uses vegetable-based inks (primarily soy), paper that is produced from 60% recovered paper, and paper that is milled without harmful dioxin.

You can take advantage of today’s technology.  Equip your employees with the right tools.  Webinars and podcasts are excellent for business development and meetings with clients.  Social networking is excellent for recruiting and initiating strategic alliances.  Embrace the new tools created to increase productivity for your industry.

Some example of great tools include:

Social Media Productivity- Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.  Another productivity tools is Joomla.  Both are Free software packages.

Clearspace- Clearspace is enterprise collaboration software built from the ground up for teams, companies, and communities looking for an easy and productive way to work with each other — without time or location limitations. Eliminate redundant conversations, meetings, emails, and ideas by opening doors to new co-workers, partners, and customers.

Webinars / Podcasts are great for business development and meetings.  Software such as Adobe Connect or Webex make the transition to virtual meetings dynamic and easy to create.

Linkedin- is great for recruiting and networking and building strategic alliances.

GroupHub or Basecamp are excellent tools for project management.  Basecamp is a web-based tool that lets you manage and track projects (or simply ideas) and quickly create client/project extranets.  Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.  GroupHub is a creative design community. A collection of individuals and businesses drawn together by a desire to create, design and innovate.

You can plan your meetings and events at  Open Table or Cvent.  OpenTable is the leading supplier of reservation, table management and guest management software for restaurants. This is an ideal place for lunch meetings.  Cvent provides Online Software for Event Management, Web Surveys, Email Marketing, Reservations, listings and ticket sales.

ACT CRM is the #1 selling contact and customer manager that helps you organize contact information, manage daily responsibilities, and communicate more effectively to improve your productivity.  With over 2.7 million users and 41,000 corporate customers, ACT! is renowned for being easy to learn and use, and is an effective solution for anyone who regularly works with contacts.

Constant Contact is an Email marketing software that makes it easy to create professional HTML email campaigns with no tech skills.  Whether you’re looking to send an email newsletter, a high-impact email promotion, an email event invitation, an online survey, or build your email list, try Constant Contact.

Productivity remains at an all time high at NTM.  It’s super-low churn rate

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen
President
New Thought Marketing, Inc

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen -  A biography

Sherean Malekzadeh Allen, internationally recognized advertising, sales and marketing expert, is Founder and President of New Thought Marketing, Inc.  She is one of the early internet marketing pioneers, award-winning writer and television producer. Media and world-class companies including FOX, PC Magazine, CNN International, Jones Lang LaSalle, IBM, CBS and MTV have featured Sherean’s work and continually seek her expertise for real-world solutions to maximize market opportunities; integrate new media and digital marketing strategies.

About New Thought Marketing:

New Thought Marketing was founded as Sherean Malekzadeh’s way of sharing smart people with companies she believes in.

The consultants give clients the marketing and sales tools to grow.  They really love working with second-stage entrepreneurs: successful companies beyond the start up phase who now want more. NTM graduate them to the next level, and then train them to stay on course with their own people.

NTM do it while balancing life and work.  Since founding the company in 2001, Sherean has collected senior level marketing, advertising, sales and creative folks who simply want to adjust their work schedules to make room for family or themselves. So instead of being tied to one company, or out of the workforce entirely, they work for the clients.

I’ve been a Livescribe Pen fan for a couple of years now and use one myself all the time. I’ve recommended them to friends and acquaintances as they make note taking extremely simple and effective.

A quick note to let you know that I’ve received a new Livescribe Echo Pen for evaluation from them. I’ll let you know about the new features, and we’ll probably have them on the radio show.  I’m really looking forward to this one.

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• Livescribe Echo Smart Pen Even Cleverer than Predecessor (fastcompany.com)

Congratulations to Brian S. of Manchester and Todd E. of Nashua, our winners of the Klipsch S4 in-ear speakers. These high-end in-ear speakers will allow them to have a private concert experience anytime they listen. Thank you to Klipsch for providing these give-aways to our listeners.

Just visit BookSwim.com and search your favourite book and order. They will ship the book to you at your doorstep. You can read at your own pace at your home or vacation for a low monthly subscription. Not only this, if you find the book interesting, you can keep it by paying a discounted rate. So, what do you think about this interesting idea?

BookSwim offers gift cards for Father’s Day. Give your Dad total choice of what books he wants to read. BookSwim gift cards can be purchased with no minimum amount online. Monthly rental plans start at $14.99 for upwards of two books per month. BookSwim is offering a special Father’s Day promo code on its site that will provide $5 off a $30 gift card purchase (or higher) and $15 off a $90 (or higher) gift card purchase. The promo code is “FATHERSDAY1.”

About 20 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used in the production of books sold in the U.S. alone. Renting a book instead of purchasing means that less paper is consumed and, ultimately, fewer trees are cut down.

Below is BookSwim’s Rental Plans. Also, check out for other subscription plans such as yearly plans and gift membership.

$14.99/mo – 2 Books At-A-Time (return 2 at a time, hold 0)
$19.99/mo – 3 Books At-A-Time (return 2 at a time, hold 1)
$23.99/mo – 5 Books At-A-Time (return 3 at a time, hold 2)
$27.99/mo – 7 Books At-A-Time (return 3 at a time, hold 4)
$31.99/mo – 9 Books At-A-Time (return 3 at a time, hold 6)
$35.99/mo – 11 Books At-A-Time (return 4 at a time, hold 7)

Subscription includes fee shipping both ways. There is no contract and you can cancel at any time. BookSwim will not charge and due dates and delays. You can opt for any of the three plans – yourself, an account, or gift membership.

During any given week, the average bestseller costs more than $20. Read three of these in a month and you’re spending over $60! What you’re paying for is the right to own the book.

If you fall in love with a book and want to keep it? No problem! You can pay for it online and then immediately receive another book from your list. It’s that easy! This is a unique feature of BookSwim.

So, happy reading with low cost ever.

George Burke
Co-Founder and CMO
Bookswim

George Burke – A biography

George got his start as lead web designer for the Aviation Department of the Port Authority of NY & NJ, charged with the maintenance of websites for John F. Kennedy Int’l Airport, LaGuardia Airport and Newark Liberty Int’l Airport. In addition to developing websites for Teterboro Airport and Downtown Manhattan Heliport, George developed and maintained an Air Cargo website. You can thank him for that time your luggage didn’t end up on the other side of the country.

He later utilized his web experience as the Director of Internet Marketing for online graphic design school, Sessions.edu. There, George developed his passion for search engine optimization, managing advertising accounts and developing new market initiatives.

Before co-founding BookSwim, George started the new media design company, Circular Orb, LLC, becoming a leader in the growing market of Artisan e-commerce. Under Circular Orb, he personally managed projects for over 40 of clients before selling the company in 2006.

George holds a BS in Information Technology, with a Multimedia Concentration, and a Minor in Management from New Jersey Institute of Technology, where he spent many an evening reading at his local bookstore due to the utterly inequitable lack of girls on campus. An avid musician and songwriter, George brings his guitar to work every day.

About Bookswim:

BookSwim.com, is a Netflix for books, offering unlimited rentals per month on a monthly subscription plan. BookSwim is the first online book rental library club lending you paperbacks and hardcovers netflix-style directly to your house without the need to purchase! Whether it’s New Releases, Bestsellers, or Classics, they have got over 200,000 titles to choose from, with free shipping both ways! Read your books as long as you want. — no late fees! Even choose to purchase and keep the titles you love!

So, let’s look at some ideas that you can use to overcome these obstacles / challenges during these summer.

• Biggest challenge is working around other people’s vacation schedules to get things done
• Work with web designer for improvement and keep update the contents
• Need to be very persistent and methodical in following up with people in order to keep projects moving along and meet deadlines
• Keeping the blog alive during this summer
• Adding a podcast features or add more podcasts on the site
• Incorporating RSS or widget capability to your website
• Summer is a great time for innovation due to the larger blocks of uninterrupted time!
• You can also do some marketing activities since it will give some leads once you end the summer
• Plan ahead for the coming months
• Summer is a great time to network – you can talk to others about how they are incorporating new technologies
• Summer is a great time to attend an industry trade show and see how technology advances are changing your industry
• Summer is a good time to implement changes that affect limited number of individuals in your company (e.g. – a new electronic filing system for business cards that only an Administrative Assistant would use).
• Hold off on implementing changes that involve training everyone in your company (e.g. – new computer system, new video e-mail software) until everyone’s back from vacation => minimizes potential confusion/disruption
• Also, you can work on new product development

Scott Swaney
CEO
Swaney Sports Consulting

Scott Swanay – A biography

Scott Swanay is a fully qualified statistical wizard and sports guru. He graduated from Harvard in 1987 with a degree in Applied Math & Computer Science, and worked as an actuary for the next 17 years, holding a series of positions with increasing levels of responsibility. He completed a series of ten rigorous exams to become a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS) in 1998.

In 2004, Scott decided to combine his great knowledge of sports with his statistical and analytical expertise, leaving his previous field to pursue his dream full-time.  He spent the next two years developing the database that led to the creation of Fantasy Baseball Sherpa, a sports projecting web-site that stands out in the many, because Scott, the statistical expert, has figured out how to include unique elements into the player predictions.

About Swaney Sports Consulting:

Swanay Sports Consulting, located in New York, NY.  Swanay Sports Consulting’s line of business is business consulting services.

Fantasy Baseball Sherpa offers customized baseball player rankings for fantasy baseball team owners.   New Fantasy Baseball Sherpa product forecasts players’ performance for the rest of the season – it’s the first product of its kind!  He is also developing a Fantasy Football Sherpa website – will be launched later this summer.

• Find a Pro – this service helps small businesses outsource specific parts of their business operations and activities.  Small business owners can be more productive by outsourcing specific tasks, which are mundane or regular in nature to someone and focus on what they love to do. Try Find a Pro service.

• Selling a Business – More business sellers are choosing BizTrader.com because it is the most effective and affordable business selling solution in the world.  BizTrader.com’s massive distribution service lets sellers place one ad that gets distributed to dozens of other websites, keeping your time short (in just 5 mins) and reach wide for marketing a business for sale.

Implement a summer schedule allowing employees to leave early on Fridays to spend time with family or to start the weekend early.   Having a few extra hours to commute to weekend destinations will encourage employees to get some much needed R&R and will contribute to their overall well-being – and keep them more productive in the long run.

Hire a summer intern — Many college students are looking for summer experience to boost their resume and to test out different fields.  This is a great opportunity for your business to hire someone eager to work who can help out with extra tasks, especially the administrative ones, which may often be placed on back burner during vacation season.

You can also offer on-site child care services or discounts so employees do not have to spend as much time and money on summer day-care.

Take advantage of available technology and offer solutions to allow employees to telecommute on days when office presence is not imperative.

On the flip side – make sure employees ARE unplugging as much as possible during vacation time so they can relax and come back to work relaxed and recharged.

Make sure working environment is comfortable for employees, especially if you’re in a hot climate.  Be sure to keep air conditioning in working order and encourage employees to take frequent breaks and to drink plenty of water when outdoors during high heat.

Colby Sambrotto
President and CEO
BizTrader.com

Colby Sambrotto – A biography

Colby Sambrotto founded BizTrader.com in 2007 and is directly responsible for leading the company’s growth and operation.

With a track record of founding, growing, managing and selling a series of successful web-based businesses including ForSaleByOwner.com, the internet’s leading resource for buying and selling real estate without a commission, Colby was inspired to start BizTrader.com to meet the needs of entrepreneurs and investors.

BizTrader.com is a global business resource – it is designed to connect business owners and operators with prospective buyers, lenders and investors.  BizTrader.com is a multilingual one-stop-shop for the small business owner who is looking to expand internationally, get a loan or be acquired.

Since BizTrader.com’s beta launch in 2008, the site has listed tens of thousands of businesses for sale and Colby has successfully brokered business partnerships with companies including Experian, and Microsoft subsidiary Franchise Gator to give the small business owners or investors the tools and resources needed to conduct business in today’s a global marketplace.

Prior to founding BizTrader.com, Colby was chief operating officer of ForSaleByOwner.com for seven years, where he directed the day-to-day operations of the company and was responsible for overseeing all operational aspects of the company including business development, web development, strategic planning and human resources.  Under his strategic leadership, ForSaleByOwner.com was acquired by Tribune Company in 2006.

Colby has provided his views and commentary on a range of business topics in hundreds of media outlets including The Today Show, Wall Street Journal, 20/20 and Businessweek.

Filled with unique tools for both buyers and sellers and led by a seasoned, successful management team, BizTrader is compiling an extensive network of business owners, brokers, and lenders to make this the most comprehensive site for buying and selling a business.

All content on BizTrader.com, including customer postings, articles and software programs, is available in English, Spanish and Mandarin.

If you are business owner and would like to:

• Sell a business, asset, or commercial property
• Value a business
• Coordinate a barter arrangement
• Find a lender, investor or potential buyer
• Multi-lingual translation
• Find a professional – from lawyers and insurance carriers to painters and computer repair

If you are an investor and buyer and would like to :

• Multi-lingual translation
• Check a company’s credit
• Buy a business
• Value a business
• Find a franchise

Pain-Free, Hair-Free is the next-generation of laser hair removal. It’s an effective and permanent hair reduction solution that is simple and easy. It uses cutting-edge medical laser technology and combines it with the comfort and convenience.

Pain-Free, Hair-Free breaks the mold of previous laser hair removal systems. The system’s unique IN-Motion™ technology, along with the sweeping motion of the laser, safely and gently heats the targeted area under your skin while you stay comfortable.

Most people find Pain-Free, Hair-Free treatments very comfortable.  While pain tolerance is subjective, many patients often describe the sensation as soothing as a “hot stone massage.”

The treatment works by using pulses of infrared diode laser energy to gradually heat the hair follicles in the subdermal layer of skin until they can no longer produce new hair. Using unique, IN-Motion™ technology and a patented DualChill™ treatment tip, the surface of your skin stays cool and comfortable. The sweeping motion also eliminates any skipped or missed spots common to other types of laser hair removal.

It’s safe for all skin types, hair types and most hair colors.  It can even be used on tanned skin. The bottom line is – if you have hair where you wish you didn’t, Pain-Free, Hair-Free is for you.   The body hair removal process is permanent, predictable, and virtually pain-free.

The Pain-Free, Hair-Free treatment performed with the Soprano device by Alma Lasers is the next-generation of laser hair removal.  It’s effective and offers long-term hair removal with NO PAIN (the first of its kind).

The Pain-Free, Hair-Free is great for busy dads as it requires no down time or recovery time.  You can have a treatment and return to work immediately.

Compared with a lifetime of shaving, waxing or plucking, help your dad in both time and money-savings with the Pain-Free, Hair-Free treatment.

You can locate a doctor near you.   To know about the after effects of hair removal, click here.

Dr. Douglas Senderoff
Plastic Surgeon
Pain Free- Hair Free

Dr. Douglas Senderoff -  A biography

Dr. Senderoff is experienced in the latest techniques in cosmetic and reconstructive plastic surgery including tumescent liposuction and endoscopic surgery. He specializes in body contouring procedures including breast enlargement and liposuction, as well as face and eyelid surgery and rhinoplasty.
Dr. Douglas Senderoff completed his undergraduate degree in Biology at Emory University and his master’s degree in Human Nutrition, at Columbia University. After he received his medical degree from State University of New York Health Science Center, Brooklyn, New York, Dr. Senderoff trained in general surgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City.

Dr. Senderoff completed his residency in plastic surgery and a Microsurgery Research Fellowship at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. He is the author of numerous publications relating to wound healing and has received local and national recognition for his research in the field of microsurgery. Dr. Senderoff has lectured both nationally and internationally on the various areas of his expertise. Dr. Senderoff is certified by the American Board of Plastic Surgery and the National Board of Medical Examiners.

He is a Clinical Instructor of Surgery at Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

About Pain-Free-Hair Free:

A revolution is underway, for body hair removal that is virtually painless. The Pain-Free, Hair-Free treatment, offered by spas and physicians around the world, can now free you from daily shaving, painful plucking and expensive waxing to give you silky smooth and beautifully bare skin.

Pain-Free, Hair-Free is the next-generation of laser hair removal. It’s an effective and permanent hair reduction solution that is simple and easy. It takes cutting-edge medical laser technology and combines it with the comfort and convenience of a trip to the spa. In fact, Pain-Free, Hair-Free uses new breakthrough technology that has been described as one of the most comfortable laser hair removal options available.

There are now Space Camp programs for Children, Adults and even for Corporate events. Children will learn more about space, space shuttle, robotics, mars etc in these camp programs. These programs enhance teamwork, self-confidence and communication and these will be achieved through state-of-the-art simulations, missions, rocket building and robotics.  For scholarship, photo gallery, international camps, and more information about these camps, visit http://www.spacecamp.com/category.php?cat=Space

Participants will have three fields of specialized study (or track options) to choose from: Aviation, Space, and Robotics tracks.

Aviation Track

Kids will learn flight dynamics, wilderness survival, teamwork, and spend time in high-performance jet fighter simulators. They learn all the skills that an American fighter pilots use to rule the skies.

What makes an airplane fly? It’ll teach them the principles of flight, not in the classroom, but standing next to an F-16 or F-14 planes!

Space Track

In addition to a Shuttle Mission, space track campers go through extensive Mars training to prepare for interplanetary travel. They will learn about the planet, its soil, geology, climate and atmosphere. They will also receive crew assignments, and set ready to go!

Settle into your new home – Mars Outpost – Alpha Station. Explore the surface of Mars. Conduct experiments on the soil and rocks collected, as well as keeping everything on board the Mars Outpost running smoothly. Once the mission is complete, it is time to head home to Earth.

Robotics Track

Kids will learn how to rescue astronauts from the International Space Station! 10 hours of designing and programming a robot using LEGO Mindstorm software and materials.

Kids form team of four to five and create the ultimate robotic rover, using an unlimited array of gears, pulleys, sensors, and other parts. Then they program the robot to perform tasks at the ISS using the latest computer software. They test their creations and compete with other groups to save stranded astronauts and deliver supplies to the space station.

There are 10 space programs to choose depending on your age. All the below mentioned programs follow the above three tracks.

Space Camp program duration is 3 – 6 days. It uses space to excite and educate children ages 9-11 in the fields of math, science and technology. In space camp, everything you will learn about Space Shuttle Systems and life aboard the Orbiter and Space Station. Kids can try out space food, learn to sleep in space and even how to go to the bathroom in space! To know more about the program, click here.

Space Academy is an increased intensity program of astronaut and mission training and academics. Simulated missions to a space station and crew rotation highlight the week. Trainees who want to be Astronauts must learn to think like astronauts and our Space Academy Programs are designed to do just that! This program is kids aged 12 – 14 and length of this program is 6-day and 8-day. Trainees will participate in Shuttle Missions, Space Simulators, build & launch rockets and sample space food. To know more about the program, click here. Participants will go through Team-Building skills, Space Simulators Training and Space Shuttle Mission Training activities which are part of this program.

Advanced Space Academy is for ages 15 – 18 and offers programs for 6-day and 8-day. During this week-long program, trainees get hands-on training, as well as learn about the mental, emotional and physical demands astronauts must face. Fields of study include Engineering, Space Technology and Aerospace Science. The Advanced Space Academy program is a college-accredited program through the University of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH). All Advanced Space Academy participants will earn one hour of Freshman-level general science credit from UAH. For details on activities and tracks, click here. Choose your path of study from one of the racks listed below.

• Pilot Track Trainees will take command of an orbiter on its mission to the International Space Station. A pilot will follow the checklist procedures of a mission and be required to make emergency decisions while monitoring and commanding the crew.
• Pilot SCUBA Track Trainees will continue to command or pilot an orbiter and learn Aerospace Science as their core basis for training, but instead of flying the Flight Simulators at Aviation Challenge, they will SCUBA dive in the UAT SCUBA tank.
• Mission Specialist Track Trainees will be instructed in the engineering and design of the shuttle and space station. Repairs to either will be conducted in the UAT SCUBA Tank creating and accurate environment for the space walk.

Parent / Child program is designed to give both of you an overview of space exploration, while experience very real space simulations. Parent Child Space Camp is a weekend for just the two of you, providing the opportunity to become partners in learning. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and lift off! Watch the rocket that you and your child built together soar. Share the pride that your child will feel while manoeuvring the orbiter through space. What better way to build a lasting relationship than through Parent Child Space Camp?

Get ready for a weekend of non-stop activities. Together, you and your child will explore the history – present and future – of space flight. You will also experience the excitement of being there while watching an IMAX movie! See Shuttle astronauts perform missions in space, ride along as Aviators throttle up, or explore the surface of mars.

Participants also get a packet of exciting activities to explore scientific concepts at home. Click here for details on Parent/Child Program activities.

Adult Programs will put your skills, abilities and talents to the test in training simulators and simulated missions. Experience four G’s of force when you blast off 140 feet on SPACE SHOT. Feel what it’s like to walk on the moon in the 1/6th Gravity Trainer, then experience a simulated tumble in space in the Multi-Axis Trainer. You’ll also alternate roles in mission control and shuttle crew during two different Space Shuttle missions.

Witness space exploration almost firsthand in a giant-screen IMAX Spacedome theater presentation. You will also spend time in our world class Space Museum containing America’s largest collection of space artifacts.

Special Programs are for blind and visually impaired and the deaf and hard of hearing, these programs offer all the excitement of Space Camp & Aviation Challenge.

The Space Camp and Aviation Challenge programs specifically designed for blind, visually-impaired, deaf and/or hard-of-hearing attendees have attracted students from across the United States and around the world.

Over the years, we have worked closely with several organizations, including the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind, the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, and most recently, the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, to develop a meaningful, inspirational experience for these students.

Program highlights may include a presentation by blind and/or deaf NASA professionals on career choices and working in the space industry. Enlarged print, sign language interpreters, attention to mobility hazards and other special considerations are extended to put trainees at ease.

Blind students also benefit from the latest technology in the field, including tactile Braille displays and synthetic speech for computers.

Day Camps offer exciting opportunities for learning, friendship and adventure. It has split into two groups, 7-8 year old and 9-11 year olds. You can choose from any of the three programs – Expedition camp, Space Camp and Aviation Challenge sessions. For more details about this day camps, click here

Educator program offer professional development opportunities for both formal and informal educators, as well as a variety of programs for students.

Corporate program take corporate development training and incentive programs to a whole new level… letting you jump into a flight suit and take on the role of an astronaut or fighter pilot!

For scholarship, photo gallery, international camps, and more information about these camps, visit http://www.spacecamp.com/category.php?cat=Space

Camp is the best demonstration of moral and spiritual order—democracy is the core purpose. Children learn life skills that become habits of the heart. It is tough to be a kid these days. It is tough to be a parent. In a society where the nature of the family, the work place, and the community have changed dramatically, we can no longer assume that the natural process of growing up will provide children the experiences and the resources they need to become successful, contributing adults.

The American Camp Association, New England is dedicated to enriching the lives of children and families through quality camp experiences.

The American Camp Association, New England is a community of camp professionals who, for more than one hundred years, have joined together to share knowledge and experience and to ensure the quality of camp programs. ACA New England accredits nearly 350 day and overnight summer camps in the six New England states.

ACA conducts camps for all ages and offers various types of camps.

Day camp can begin as early as age three and is geared to children who get to experience camp and still return home each evening! They have the best of both worlds—the camp community which is built exclusively for kids and their own home which provides the security they need at a tender age. Day camp focuses on “what is right” than “what is wrong.” Day Camps typically serve children ages 3-15 during daytime only. For more information, click here.

Camp provides one of the very few links with a world larger than the consumer culture we inhabit—and day camp is one important choice in a quiver of options. The camp experience helps children and youth develop an appreciation of their place and their responsibility in a much larger universe. A preschooler—or even an older child who might be reluctant to go to overnight camp—can join a community that is created especially for her to practice growing up.

Specialty Camps offer a program for every interest. It can be found at day or resident camps and offer opportunities to concentrate on certain program areas such as horseback riding, the arts, travel, sports or computers, among others. Imagine a place where you get to be totally immersed in the thing you love to do (or want to try) the most . . . from being wrist-deep in cake batter or filming a movie to jamming all day with rock stars or learning to drive a race car. Specialty camps offer just that type of fantasy-come-true experience – from fine arts, performing arts, and chef camp, to learning a foreign language, science, engineering, motor sports . . . and much, much more. These camps have very focused programs, they typically have more intensive and professional-level instruction, and often include guest speakers, such as artists, musicians, and those who’ve made a career of that particular activity.

Many specialty camps have informal, hands-on, or immersion approaches to various academic subjects, such as math, science, or language, which may help children who struggle in a traditional classroom to learn material and develop confidence for the upcoming school year. For example, at Camp Motorsport, a race car driving specialty camp for kids ages ten to sixteen, campers participate in racing-related activities that convert abstract math and science concepts into hands-on applications—such as figuring out how resistance and drag impact making the car go faster.

Overnight / Resident / Sleepaway Camps usually serve children ages 6-17 for one to eight weeks at a time; children sleep at camp.

General Camps offer a range of activities. Many provide opportunities to focus on one or two activities while allowing campers to try a variety of others. General camps sometimes offer the opportunity to specialize in an activity.

Trip & Travel programs are often camp-based. Most involve adventure and wilderness. Campers spend most of their time traveling away from base camp.

Camps for Special Populations serve specific clientele such as children with particular medical conditions or diseases or individuals with special needs.

Space Car Camp deal more with real experience of space shuttle and its working.

Going Green and preserving environment:

ACA also encourages Children to go green. Camps across the country are encouraging children to put on their plates only what they will eat, then camps teach children about recycling by converting the leftovers into compost. The compost is then used to fertilize the fields that create food for the campers!

Many camps implement an environmental awareness program entitled, “Leave No Trace.” This program teaches and encourages children to clean up after themselves in nature, so as to not pollute the environment.

Camps create educational programs with local wildlife agencies or even the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

A Camp for Every Budget

While it’s hard to put a price tag on your child’s learning and growth, you certainly have your family’s budget to think about when you consider camp. The good news is that there is a camp program to fit nearly every budget.

For more information about fee, click here

Here are some benefits of ACA Camps:

• Every child deserves a camp experience.

The unique power of a camp experience complements and reinforces what children are taught at school, at home and at extracurricular activities — rounding out children’s development in optimal ways. Camps specialize in providing physical activity, time spent in the out-of-doors and experiences in teambuilding, athletics and the arts — activities that have been eliminated or are at risk of elimination for more and more school systems.

• Childhood is compromised without a camp experience.

Camp is vital! Camps have the capacity to change children’s lives — influencing, even transforming, their choices and chances and their characters and capabilities.

• Campers learn life lessons.

Camp memories often stay alive in people’s hearts and minds well into adulthood. Lessons include: becoming a responsible member of a group and community, personal and group decision-making, the art of compromise, resilience, how to bust out of one’s own comfort zone to try something new and many more. Campers are often attracted by a specific activity or two; they usually get an added bonus and learn something new and important about themselves at camp.

• Camp gives kids a world of good.

Expect camper growth in independence, self-esteem, leadership ability, peer relationship skills, spirituality, environmental awareness and decision-making when children attend day or resident camp. The largest study of camper outcomes in the U.S., conducted by Philiber Research Associates and ACA, confirmed these benefits of the camp experience — that camp gives kids a world of good!

ACA also offers volunteering and employment opportunities for adults.

Bette S. Bussel
Executive Director
American Camp Association, New England

Bette S. Bussel – A biography

“I had no idea when I went to summer camp at age 4 that one day I’d be in charge of thousands of campers who are looking for a positive summer camp experience, just like I was. Life is truly one big circle.”

Bette has been involved with camps since age 4, where she began as a day camper. She evolved to an overnight camper, Counselor-in-Training (CIT), Counselor, Program Director, Camp Director and is now the Executive Director of ACA New England. Bette brings a rare blend of organizational and interpersonal skills to this position, which she has held for more than 17 years. She has established herself as a person with professional competence, strong commitment and the ability to build on the established strengths and esteemed history of the regional nonprofit organization she leads.

Bette received a Bachelor of Science in Recreation Management from Ithaca College and a Master of Science in Recreation Management from the University of Maryland.

Prior to coming to ACA New England, she served as the Program Director, Teen Director, Group Services Director and Day Camp Director for the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven. In those roles she received a special citation from the Kovod Society of the JCC, and a Women in Leadership award from the YWCA.

Since taking over as ACA New England’s Executive Director in 1990, Bette has been honored with the New England AIC Award (1994), National AIC Award (1996), ACA National Service Award (1999), and ACA Special Recognition Award (2004).

Bette is a well-informed resource on legislative issues that impact camps throughout New England. She has been effective establishing positive relationships with legislative and regulatory bodies that monitor camps and has worked to strengthen respect of and input by camp professionals in legislative matters.

Bette serves as a member of the national ACA’s Technology Task Force, which advises all 24 regional offices of the association on the use of technology. Currently, Bette plays a leadership role on a committee which is reinventing ACA’s online camp search tool—the Find A Camp Tool.