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The Beat has been reporting over the last few weeks on Ty Templeton’s severe heart attack and I’m pleased to report that he’s home and recovering. In Templeton fashion, he made a comic out of it, but he also revealed the severity of his health issues—he was brought back to life three times and wasn’t expected to survive.

My wife updated the internet about what was going on, so folks knew what was happening, but she kept how bad it was a secret so my kids didn’t know how the real details of it all until I was out of danger.   It seems the staff didn’t expect me to survive more than a day or two, and I ended up earning the nickname “Miracle Man” from some of the doctors there when I woke up from the medially induced coma a little earlier than they saw coming.  That’s kind of cool.  My first professional inking job was in the back of a Miracleman comic from Eclipse, back in the day, so it seems only fitting.

Recovery is slower than I expected.  I have to nap every time I climb a set of stairs, and drawing still isn’t back up to speed (hence the stolen panels in the above Bun Toon), but never fear, I’m getting better slowly, and expect to be putting pencil to paper in a week or so, just as soon as I can go more than an hour awake.  There’s probably another Bun Toon or two in the whole experience (you people need to know what it’s like to be awake for an aortic stent operation, science is COOL!)

I’m going to close with this:  For everyone who needs to think about changing their lifestyle, please use me as the poster boy, and don’t wait until your own wake up call.  I’ll take the hit for everyone if they just learn my lesson.  NO PROCESSED FOODS!  Raw veggies, water and fruits, and no meat until after sundown, and it’s a long life for all of us.  Oh, and walk around a bit, not just back and forth to the fridge.

While thankful for Templeton’s survival. it’s worth heeding his closing thoughts as well. As someone who makes her living sitting down for 12 hours a day I can tell you that is extremely unhealthy and I’m not alone. No sleep deadlines backed up by caffeine and nicotine and performance enhancing energy drinks are an industry norm. It’s a good idea to take care of yourself in some way. A couple of ideas:

I’d like to recommend this book, No Pain: Injury Prevention for Cartoonists by Kriota Wilberg which has important information on how to sit if you’ve got to do it. (And just a few minutes ago we reported on one well known cartoonist’s arm injury, so this is a real thing.)

Everyone wants to lsoe weight but there’s love handles and there’s a serious issue. For those who are thinking “I’ve tried and this is impossible” I’d like to point out this inspiring public post by Action Labs’ Jamal Igle who has instituted a lifestyle change that has yielded incredible results for him:

I’ve recently made some health changes myself, going from a diet that was high in sugar and carbs to cutting out bread and sweets about 95% of the time and reintroducing more weight resistance exercise into my life style. Finding the time for all this is hard, but my discovery was that feeling better makes me MORE productive as opposed to sitting and fretting and chugging more and more coffee as a hedge against time. I have a ways to go, but something is better than nothing.

Reporting on health issues for cartoonists is a once a week feature of this site and others. Some of it is chance, but some of it is preventable. Take a few moments to think about yourself and what changes you can make that are achievable to improve your health—if not for you, for the people you love. They’ll be glad you did and so will you.

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Today’s post comes to us from Caroline Marques, a high school senior and Youth Advisory Board Member who explains how her and her friends watch TV. They do so almost entirely online — as is the case with many Millennials, especially once they... Read the rest of this post

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By Mark Hanson

We are failing to deal with one of the most important issues of our time – in every country we are getting fatter. Although being fat is not automatically linked to illness, it does increase dramatically the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other so-called non-communicable diseases. We are starting to see very high rates of these diseases in some places, sometimes affecting 50% of the population. Even in some of the poorest parts of the developing world, where such disease itself is not yet common, we nonetheless see warning signs of its arrival. There is great concern that it may soon outweigh the burden of communicable disease such as HIV/AIDS. The humanitarian and financial cost of this non-communicable disease in such parts of the world will be unbearable, and made even worse because the risk is passed across generations, so children born today and tomorrow will have a bleak future.

It seems that we don’t know how to tackle this problem, because current attempts are obviously failing and obesity continues to increase. Governments, doctors, and even NGOs seem to have adopted the same strategy – to focus on our sins of “gluttony and sloth” and to transfer the responsibility for slimming down to each of us as individuals. Of course it’s true that we can’t get overweight unless we eat more than we need to, and the wrong types of foods, and get too little physical exercise. Our biology did not evolve to protect us from obesity and its consequences in today’s sedentary world with such easy access to food. But why is it that we find it so hard to lose weight and, if we do shed the kilos, it seems very hard not to put them back on again?

What we are missing is a focus on our early development. We’re just not adopting the right approach to the problem. And it seems that the generals who are leading us in this global war on obesity and disease have adopted the wrong strategy, and they stick resolutely to it as if they were wearing blinkers. They blame us for the failure to win the war, for our greed and laziness; they blame parents for letting their children get fat; they blame the food industry for peddling unhealthy food, and so on. As if we choose to be fat. It’s important to realise just how limited this way of attacking the problem is on a global scale. Does the little girl force-fed before marriage in Mauritania have any choice in her life? Does the 12-year-old child bride in rural India have any choice when she becomes pregnant and drops out of school? Does the little toddler in Detroit have any choice when his mother feeds him French fries? Does the little boy from Tonga whose mother had diabetes in pregnancy have any choice about developing obesity? Does the little girl in Beijing have any choice in being an only child? And yet every one of these scenarios, and many more, sets that little child up to be at greater risk of becoming obese and to have non-communicable disease.

But new research is uncovering many things that will give us new tactics and strategies for the war against obesity and non-communicable disease, and so we’re hopeful. We now know that we will have to give much greater focus to the mother and unborn child. We may well have to give emphasis to the lifestyle of the father as well. And most importantly of all, we’re starting to realise that behaviours such as propensity to exercise, or appetite and taste for certain foods, which we previously thought to be based on individual choice, have a large constitutional component – in part based on inherited genes, in part on epigenetic changes to gene function in response to the developmental environment, and

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The images of spring break that you find in the media aren’t quite accurate. What you see on MTV, Mun2, and even “CSI: Miami”…that represents a small sliver of college students who go in for wild parties and exotic beach holidays... Read the rest of this post

Today’s fast-paced lifestyle seems to compress time and necessary activities.

When I was at university back in the early eighties, life allowed a pause button. That button appears to have disappeared, as one of my characters would say.

I wonder if we as a society will ever allow its reinstatement. The question arises by the simple expedient of our collective expectations concerning time. That has changed, at least for me and most of those I know.

The Pause Button

Back in the day, people could unwind at the end of a day’s work. They could go out to observe happy hour, laugh with friends, play with the kids, enjoy a leisurely meal, etc. That was the norm. There was a friendly competition with friends or family at the bowling alley or popcorn and sodas at the movies where deafness wasn’t an end product.

Sunday drives with the family after church afforded leisure, togetherness, and a mild sense of adventure. For those few hours the rest of the world was allowed to fade away. The mini-vacation was in play.

People’s lives are more complicated than ever before. Each child has one or more after school activities that take up family time, except during the commute to and from said activities. Parents may also have additional evening and weekend activities that don’t include the rest of the family. Everyone scatters and re-assemble at a more convenient time.

I’d hazard a guess that the Sunday drive has been replaced with less restful activity for most people today. There are fewer places anyone can go to get away from the modern world today. The ever-present cell phone has insured a quick response­-even for those who aren’t carrying theirs, one belonging to someone else disrupts one’s thoughts just as easily. Laptops, iPads, etc. intrude even deeper into non-work time. If you’ve managed to forget your own, there’s always one close-by to remind you that you’re not on yours.

NJS

News Junkie Syndrome, as I like to call it, has hit a large segment of the population. I believe the condition began decades ago with CNN availability followed closely by the internet. Most people, I think, know what it’s like to crave a news fix, even if it’s only about one event. Even children get caught up in the passion to know what’s happening elsewhere.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not condemning the media out of hand. In fact, a writer who doesn’t follow some form of media soon runs out of viable writing avenues.

Now Vs. Then

What concerns me is the fact that so many seem to believe they must/should be “plugged in” 24/7. That phrase is a household word anymore.

My question is this: is anyone any happier because they’re plugged in? Would they be less happy now if they’d never had technologies little communications inventions? Would our families be any less scattered?

I suppose we can speculate about the answers to these questions all day. The bottom line is that we create our lives by the importance we place on the things, attitudes, and people we gather into them.

If we use our time wisely and well, we get to enjoy all of the facets of our lives. If we’re not enjoying something make a pause button for yourself. Take the time to study what is missing or what needs more attention. You don’t have to commit to a permanent change. Temporary maneuvering can give you the answer you need without committing to something for the long-term.

Having recently been through a major change in direction for my life, I can offer this experience. Be careful of the approach taken to make a major change. Sometimes the cost can be too high and the effects too permanent. The result may not be what you’re looking for.

And on that note, I’ll leave you to your own thoughts on the subject. I’ve pushed the pause button and get to explore contingencies and repercussions for a while. Good luck with your own explorations and adventures. I intend to appreciate those

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Ed Note: Today's Ypulse Youth Advisory Board post comes from psychology student Camilla Nord who takes a closer look at the way teens are seeking out and synthesizing health information online compared to the general population. I highlighted... Read the rest of this post