eat, drink... be healthy?

wow, it's been a while since my last post. i haven't been slacking though! no, no, i've been busy collecting helpful hints and living the glamorous chronic lifestyle. with the new year and the popularity of resolutions, comes a renewed vigor on the part of the advice givers and the well wishers. they'll tell you that now's the time time to eat right and get healthy! the problem is, there are a lot of different opinions out there as far as what, when, how and how much we should eat. i know that most people feel confused these days as to what they should and shouldn't eat. is wine ok? how about coffee? butter? please, let butter be ok! when you you have a chronic illness, the pressure to figure out your diet becomes very intense. there's a lot riding on that glass of soymilk, don't ya know. here is a very small sampling from the buffet of best habits:

ouch! that's gotta hurt

here's one for those of us who have been in pain for so long that anything offering up a bit of relief—especially something that has a half hour infomercial and airs late at night when we are particularly susceptible—starts to look promising and we are tempted to take the bait.

the folks over at q-ray must be feeling some pain: they lost big time today in court. using such words as "blather," "techno babble" and the seriously condemning "poppycock," a u.s. circuit judge upheld a 2005 judgment against the makers of the miracle q-ray ionized bracelet. their claims of pain relief (and the later non-specific claims of "greatly increased well-being") were just too much for the federal trade commission. in the second judgment against them, the company has been ordered to pay back a whopping $87 million in refunds to customers and hand over $16 million dollars in profits to the ftc. here's a quote from the unimpressed and highly creative judge:

"Defendants might as well have said: Beneficent creatures from the 17th Dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief, and whisk them off to their homeworld every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science."
-U.S. Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook

now, that's a judge after my own snarky heart!

if you're still a believer in the bracelet or the 17th dimension, don't worry, you can still buy the little chunk of metal that could over at q-ray.com and q-ray.ca where they will help you "optimize your own bio-energy" and enable you to "enjoy a healthy and enhanced lifestyle."