AlternativesMagazine

John and Halee Wepking have come a long way from their lives in New York City. They draw their excitement now from the 60 acres of land they work in western Wisconsin. The livestock, the grain and the beauty of the place are elements that fuel a youthful trend on the farm these days. The Department of Agriculture has found that for only the second time in the last century, the number of farmers under 35 years of age is increasing. The Wepkings live and work on Paul Bickford's 700-acre spread, blending entrepreneurship with environmental awareness in a deal to one day take over the Bickford Farm. Read CBS NEWS January 23, 2018

Living in cities designed for cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists is one of the reasons given for the drop in life expectancy. "We are seeing an alarming increase in deaths from substance abuse and despair," said Steven Woolf at Virginia Commonwealth University, a co-author of the latest report. The idea of the "American Dream" is increasingly out of reach as social mobility declines and fewer children face a better future than their parents, he said. The report found Americans have poorer health than other nations in many areas, including birth outcomes, injuries, homicides, adolescent pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Americans also engage in unhealthy or risky behaviors — such as high calorie intake, drug abuse and firearm ownership — live in cities designed for cars rather than pedestrians or cyclists, have weaker social welfare supports and lack universal health insurance.  Read complete article HERE USATODAY 2-08-1

Your brain needs a significant supply of oxygen to function properly, which helps explain why what is good for your heart and cardiovascular system is also good for your brain. The increased blood flow that results from exercise allows your brain to almost immediately function better. As a result, you tend to feel more focused after a workout, which can improve your productivity at work and at home. By Dr. Mercola Researchers have suggested that exercise is "the best preventive drug" for many common ailments, from psychiatric disorders to heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Even your risk for age-related hearing loss is reduced through exercise. Physical fitness has also been linked to brain health, and is an important adjunct strategy to prevent dementia. In fact, compelling evidence shows that physical exercise helps build a brain that not only resists shrinkage, but increases cognitive abilities and creativity. Researchers at Stanford University found that walking can in

There is more proof about the harmful effects of soda than any other food or drink, but statistics shows that Americans drink more of it than ever before. They account for more than 25 percent of all drinks consumed in the United States. More than 15 billion gallons were sold in 2000 — about one 12-ounce can per day for every man, woman, and child.  It's simply liquid sugar.   But here’s some information on the effects of soda on the body that may keep you away from opening the can:  Read >>

This is an excellent article by  Sara Burrows . It describes exactly what our  Break Away, Live Small  website is all about and why, if left unchecked, depression can destroy your life. It also provides ideas for a cure through exercise, social connections and  self-sustaining communal living.  “We were never designed for the sedentary, indoor, socially isolated, fast-food-laden, sleep-deprived frenzied pace of modern life.” I hope you read the entire article and follow the links to similar articles. Then read it again. By:  Sara Burrows Depression is a global epidemic. It is the main driver behind suicide, which now claims more than a million lives per year worldwide. One in four Americans will suffer from clinical depression within their lifetimes, and the rate is increasing with every generation. It robs people of sleep, energy, focus, memory, sex drive and their basic ability to experience the pleasures of life, says author of  The Depression Cure  Stephen Ildari. It can

— things said or done; things left unsaid or undone. Paths that weren’t followed; opportunities missed due to fear or insecurity. The list is long, but one of the biggest regrets in life reported by a large number of people is not being there for someone at the end of life.  In other words, being too busy with “life” to tend to those near death.  Interestingly, while a regret can be phrased either as an action or as an inaction (“I wish I had not quit high school,” versus “I wish I had stayed in high school”), regrets framed as actions tend to be more emotionally intense than regrets about inactions, but inactions tend to be longer lasting Emma Freud, a columnist for  The Guardian , recently explored themes of regret on social media, covering everything from relationships, work-life balance and personal passions, to addiction, illness and death.  Top Five Regrets of the Dying According to Bronnie Ware, a former palliative care nurse who ended up writing a book,  “The Top Five Reg

By Andrea Donsky What happens when you have a product that gets a lot of bad press, and is associated with significant health issues? You change its name so people are “fooled” into thinking the old product is gone. That is what happened with high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS). It should be avoided at all costs because it can lead to insulin resistance, obesity, and heart disease. In fact, a recent report from an international team of experts noted that “fructose-containing added sugars, such as sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup, have been experimentally, epidemiologically, and clinically shown to be involved in the current epidemics of obesity and diabetes.” So what I’m about to tell you makes HFCS a bit scarier. The Food and Drug Administration is allowing food makers to change the name of HFCS to something that sounds safe: “natural sweetener.” So now when you read a food label and no longer see "high-fructose corn syrup" listed in the ingredients, you mi

Every city has this issue, but Austin’s is certainly among the top among surveys that measure congestion and related issues. They’re among the worst. Not only do they have a problem; they knew their problem was growing faster than they could keep up with. With an estimated 450,000 people using city roads daily, transit is an enormous challenge. Austin officials, understandably, have been working on solutions.  Things started coming together when Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colo.-based think tank on energy and transportation, began looking for a place to put its vision for transformational mobility change into practice. After a search that began in 2014 with 1,000 potential cities, RMI choose Austin as its proving ground. RMI’s legion of out-of-the-box thinkers are at the helm of a mobility revolution in a city where individual vehicles have ruled the road. By shifting from transportation based on fossil-fueled personal vehicles to a system with options — shared, electrified a

The cross-country road trip is as American as apple pie. Which is why it’s so ironic that the latest motorhome innovation comes from overseas in Germany, where a new, electric motorhome has been unveiled by RV company Dethleffs . This motorhome is built for the open road, with a sleek design and head-to-toe solar panels so you never have to worry about finding the next charging station. That's right: The open road is officially calling. Where we’re going, we don’t need charging stations. The transportation industry is being flipped on its head by taking two of the most basic essentials—the driving experience and fuel—out of the equation entirely. Self-driving vehicles and rechargeable technology is changing the landscape of driving. That market has been expanding beyond everyday vehicles with advances in things like electric-powered semi trucks . And we’ve seen the rise ( and possible peak ) of the tiny home market, where solar panels and other green technology is often

 . . . . live in a what? I know that sounds little tongue in cheekish, but most people live their lives in the same place their entire life -- same town, same neighborhood, same house. Once in while they take the typical "2 week" vacation, but hurry back to tell their friends what a great time had they had -- at DisneyLand and to mow the grass. They never really break away, or do anything completely off the chart. This lifestyle is obviously not for everybody. And some have already quit reading. But many are breaking away from their so-called "normal" life, downsizing and finding out what it's really like to be free. And it's not just young people with a trust fund waiting, but older, retired people who aren't ready to be wired up for oxygen. But why a Van? READ >> Some people spend 14 years of their lives like this. Some life.

Recent studies continue to shed light on how everyday cycling is not only good for our cardiovascular health but also a way to save billions in health care costs. While everyday cycling is starting to be recognized as a low-impact form of exercise there remains resistance to accepting riding a bike as a form of preventive health care across North America. Clearly, biking is advantageous for one’s physical health. It’s widely known that cycling is a low-impact form of exercise that’s good for the cardiovascular system, a way to control weight gain, and benefits our immune system. In addition, daily bicycling can have positive effects on our mental well-being. In June 2013, the American Medical Association voted in favor of recognizing obesity as a disease; the Food and Drug Administration already does. This newly-labeled disease is predicted to affect more than 44 percent of all Americans by 2030 if no action is taken. Canada is not exempt from this health crisis: in 2010, Statistics

That shot of expresso you have every morning? It might just be making you live longer and reducing your risk of getting cancer, diabetes, liver disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Type 2 diabetes. According to the research as reported in Science Daily: “Drinking coffee was associated with lower risk of death due to heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. People who consumed a cup of coffee a day were 12 percent less likely to die compared to those who didn’t drink coffee.” And, it did not seem to matter whether you drank caffeinated or decaffeinated coffee which suggests that the effect is not related to caffeine. Even better news… when you drink 2-3 cups a day, the association becomes stronger– an 18 precent reduced chance of death as opposed to 12 percent. Researchers do not know what it is in coffee that creates this association to a long life, however, according to Veronica W. Setiawan, lead author of the study and an associate professor of preventive medicine

WASHINGTON — Industry has made more than 9.1 billion tons of plastic since 1950 and there's enough left over to bury Manhattan under more than two miles of trash, according to a new cradle-to-grave global study. Plastics don't break down like other man-made materials, so three-quarters of the stuff ends up as waste in landfills, littered on land and floating in oceans, lakes and rivers, according to the research reported in Wednesday's journal Science Advances . "At the current rate, we are really heading toward a plastic planet," said study lead author Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. "It is something we need to pay attention to." The plastics boom started after World War II, and now plastics are everywhere. They are used in packaging like plastic bottles and consumer goods like cellphones and refrigerators. They are in pipes and other construction material. They are in cars and clothing, usually a