The Silent Killer: High Blood Pressure 101

About two years ago, my doctor saw a pattern in my blood pressure readings that indicated a problem. The readings were consistently higher than previous readings in the past. I wasn’t worried because I’d always had low blood pressure, so I figured that my readings had moved in the right direction. How uninformed I was. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The American Medical Association (AMA) recommends checking your blood pressure every two years. A reading of 140/90 is categorized as hypertension ( a systolic pressure — the top number — of 140 or above or a diastolic pressure — the bottom number — of 90 or above). Since HBP is a problem for many African Americans, get your own blood pressure monitor and check you pressure at WalMart, drug stores and other outlets that have the necessary equipment.

Read More

What's Up With the Right Wing? Meet the Journalists

Stanford University economist Thomas Sowell argues that that the Right is made up of many different elements that have almost nothing to do with each other besides opposition to the Left:

What is called "the right" are simply the various and disparate opponents of the left. These opponents of the left may share no particular principle, much less a common agenda, and they can range from free-market libertarians to advocates of monarchy, theocracy, military dictatorship or innumerable other principles, systems and agendas.

Read More

Save Your Money: Never Buy These Again

Remember the lines from the musical theme to the old television show  "Good Times..."easy credit rip-off, Good Times"?  We may think that ease and convenience make for "good times", but most of us have more time than money. Need some money saving food tips? Cross these items off your grocery store list—whether they're rip-offs, fakes, drastically unhealthy, or just plan gross, here are some foods you should never buy again.

Read More

Could the New Pope Be A Black Man?

Pope Benedict XVI's resignation opens the possibility of the fourth Black Pope in the Catholic Church. Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria and Cardinal Peter Kodwo of Ghana have been mentioned as possibilities.

Read More

Pope Benedict XVI Resigns

 

Pope Benedict XVI said Monday he lacks the strength to fulfill his duties and on Feb. 28 will become the first pontiff in 600 years to resign. The announcement sets the stage for a conclave in March to elect a new leader for world’s 1 billion Catholics. The announcement took the Vatican — and the rest of the world — by surprise.

Benedict emphasized that carrying out the duties of being pope — the leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics worldwide — requires “both strength of mind and body.”

“After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths due to an advanced age are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” he told the cardinals.

The move allows the Vatican to hold a conclave before Easter to elect a new pope.
The last pope to resign was Pope Gregory XII, who stepped down in 1415 in a deal to end the Great Western Schism among competing papal claimants. The most famous resignation was Pope Celestine V in 1294; Dante placed him in hell for it.

When Benedict was elected at age 78, he was the oldest pope chosen in nearly 300 years. At the time, he has already been planning to retire as the Vatican’s chief orthodoxy watchdog to spend his final years writing in the “peace and quiet” of his native Bavaria.

 

Read More