Tags: Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep, movie
Iron Lady Posted on January 31st, 2012
Everyone should see the movie Iron lady. Not just people who admire actress Meryl Streep but people who know remember former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – Iron Lady. In the seventies, I faintly remember the state of chaos in Britain, the precursor for Margaret Thatcher’s arrival at number 10 Downing Street. Labor unions were demanding unrealistic wage increases, more people than necessary were engaged in performing menial jobs and tea-breaks and feather bedding was the order of the day. Margaret Thatcher was a shop-keeper’s daughter. She knew from an early age that you could only spend as much as you earned. Margaret Thatcher’s political career has been one of the most remarkable of modern times. Born in October 1925 at Grantham, a small town in eastern England, she rose to become the first (and for two decades the only) woman to lead a major Western democracy. She won three successive General Elections and served as British Prime Minister for more than eleven years, a record unmatched in the twentieth century. Let’s hear it for woman power!
With dogged determination, during her term of office Thatcher reshaped almost every aspect of British politics, reviving the economy, reforming outdated institutions, and reinvigorating the nation’s foreign policy. One of few women in the British House of Commons, she challenged and did much to overturn the psychology of decline which had become rooted in the country since the Second World War, pursuing national recovery with striking energy and determination.
Margaret Thatcher became one of the worlds’ most influential and respected political leaders, as well as one of the most controversial, dynamic, and plain-spoken, a reference point for friends and enemies alike. The Iron Lady is the subject of a controversial new film starring Meryl Streep. The film, is shown through the lens of an elderly and nostalgic Margaret Thatcher, and tells the story of her rise and fall in British parliament through a series of flash-backs. Streep’s performance is so compelling, that you almost believe, that you are witnessing the actual Margaret Thatcher on the screen. Lady Thatcher, now age 87, increasingly frail and forgetful after suffering a series of minor strokes, lives out her declining years in her elegant home in London’s Belgravia district. I wonder what she would think of the film?
Tags: Charlie Abrams, epilepsy, fat, ketogenic, ketosis, Meryl Streep
Fat is a Miracle Posted on December 10th, 2010
When New York Times author Fred Vogelstein’s son Sam suffered more than 100 epileptic seizures a day, the situation called for desperate measures. Who would have thought that a low-carb, high-fat diet would be the prayed-for answer? Who knew that bacon could be good for you? Vogelstein’s research led him to Elizabeth Theile, Head of the Pediatric Epilepsy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children. The regimen that 9-year-old Sam follows, known as the ketogenic diet is offered in more than 100 hospitals in the US, Canada and other countries. Following this diet consisting of high fat, high protein foods, Sam’s seizures have dropped dramatically where anti-seizure drugs offered little help. Imagine a diet of eggs, heavy cream, bacon, macadamia nuts, butter and coconut oil? Keeping the body in a state of ketosis has an antiepileptic effect. The diet is complex to administer and must be calculated with the help of a dietician to determine the correct caloric intake plus a variety of adjunct supplements. The ketogenic diet is not new. It was popularized by Dr. Atkins and has been useful in treating heart disease, diabetes, obesity, Parkinson’s disease and cancer. Keeping carbs low has many benefits and now it is being used to help Sam, whose seizures have dropped from 100 daily to just 6. The short video clip below shows a compelling speech given by epileptic patient Charlie Abrams. Charlie’s success on the ketogenic diet was documented in a film starring Meryl Streep.