Awareness Week for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse & Exploitation

Proclamation No. 731, signed by President Fidel Ramos in 1996, declared the second week of February of every year as “National Awareness Week for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation”. It called for all sectors and organization of government, as well as local government units, the Barangay Council for the Protection of Children – to join hands with public sector, civil society organizations (child and youth organizations, people’s organizations, media, women, and business corporations to:

1. Promote awareness on the problem of child sexual abuse and exploitation;
2. Participate in the nationwide campaign to prevent child sexual abuse and exploitation;
3. Instil in the general public respect for laws and ordinances related to the welfare of children, and surveillance and report of suspected cases to DSWD or law enforcement agencies;
4. Integrate in school curriculum topics on child abuse and exploitation; and,
5. Provide orientation to all sectors on Republic Act 7610 and other laws and on the problem of child abuse and exploitation.

Coherent with the 4th  objective of the Presidential Proclamation No. 731,  the country  marks  this year’s  NAWPCSAE  by formally launching  the Department of Education’s Order No. 45, mandating the institutionalization of the Personal Safety Lessons (PSL) in both elementary and secondary schools nationwide. 

What is Personal Safety Lesson (PSL)?

• Personal Safety Lessons is a  violence prevention program  that empowers children to take part in their own protection  by giving information and skills within their own culture and religion.   
• Personal safety is lessons designed to protect children from any form of manipulation. This includes bullying from friends and abuse by adults, specifically sexual abuse
• Personal Safety empowers children to take part in their own protection by giving them information, skills,   and self esteem within their own culture and religion
•  Personal Safety teaches children that their body belongs only to them and nobody has the right to touch them in a way they do not like or understand
• Personal Safety aims at preventing today’s children from being tomorrow’s offenders

HOPE worldwide Philippines, Inc.

DHA is a Building Block of Tissue in the Brain and Retina of the Eye

EPA/DHA is an essential fatty acid which stands for docosahexaenoic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid. This essential fatty acid is an Omega 3 fat, which is found in cold water fish. EPA DHA are highly unsaturated fat because of they contain 6 and 5 double bond s on their long structural chain. These polyunsaturated fats play a very important role with the function of our bodies.

EPA and DHA are vital nutrients and may be taken to maintain healthy function of the following: Brain and Retina- DHA is a building block of tissue in the brain and retina of the eye. It helps with forming neural transmitters, such as phosphatidylserine, which is important for brain function. DHA is found in the retina of the eye and taking DHA may be necessary for maintaining healthy levels of DHA for normal eye function.

Cardiovascular system - EPA and DHA are converted into hormone like substances called prostaglandins, and they regulate cell activity and healthy cardiovascular function.

Human growth and intellectual development - DHA plays a very important role during fetal development, early infancy, and old age. High concentrations of DHA are found in the brain and increases 300-500% in and infant's brain during the last trimester of pregnancy. Adding DHA to a pregnant mothers diet may be beneficial for the fetus's brain development. Elderly people should also take EPA DHA, because as we get older, our bodies form less DHA and EPA, which may cause less mental focus and cognitive function. Taking EPA DHA may also help with mental abnormalities, such as Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia.

There are other benefits to taking EPA and DHA because it also plays as a source of energy, it insulates the body against heat loss, prevents skin from drying and flaking, and cushions tissues and organs.

BIOMEGA III PLUS™

• Offers purity—virtually free of harmful contaminants
• Contains natural lemon oil that reduces fishy aftertaste

WHY BIOMEGA III PLUS™?

In spite of clear benefits, health authorities have warned us to limit our intake of certain species of fish due to concern about potential contaminants. USANA’s BiOmega III Plus™ is virtually free of contaminants, which are eliminated through a double-molecular distillation process that ensures purity. Through this process, heavy metals, PCBs, pesticides, and organic residues are effectively eliminated. Also free of transfatty acids, each capsule contains 2 mg of mixed natural tocopherols to minimise oxidation of the omega-3 fatty acids and maintain product quality during storage. In short, BiOmega III Plus™ is one of the purest, highest quality products available on the market today. Supplementation with BiOmega III Plus™ is an excellent way to ensure that your diet includes a concentrated balance of safe, healthful EPA and DHA in two convenient capsules per day. And with added natural lemon oil, it reduces fishy aftertaste.

What are the health and fitness trends for the new year?

Here's what the Winnipeg Free Press reported, November 22, 2010   To look great and lose weight.

Tabata Training - recreational exercisers are swapping hour-long endurance training sessions for quick, efficient bursts of activity invented from Japan's speed skating team.

MMA - Mixed Martial Arts.  The trend is towards what is fun.  Variety attracts many to these arts.

More Qualified Personal Trainers - Doctors are referring patients to qualified trainers who address particular health needs and goals.  (I know some personal trainers in the person of Sammy Guzman and Butch Yniesta)

Fun Fitness - Classes where the instructor is entertaining, positive and encouraging.

Sodium Reduction - People aren't adding salt to every meal and they are reading labels carefully for sodium levels.

Super Foods - items packed with unusually high amounts of nutrients are back "in vogue".   (This is where the low glycemic Nutrimeal shakes by Usana Health Sciences come in.  They are packed with nutrients and give the right balance of carbs, proteins and Omega 3 oils.)

Active Gaming - (physical) movement based video games systems that help users get fit.

Cycling as Transportation - More people are biking to work, which is forcing cities to plan specialized bike lanes and cycling paths.  This is great for families too.

So choose what works best for you and your family.  The goal is to keep fit and healthy, every day, for life.

Questions?

What's your fitness plan?

How will you achieve it? 

Contact USANA Philippines 

Jose Jolly R. Villaviza

Independent Distributor

jjdrvillaviza@yahoo.com 

Deanna Waters  posted this on http://usefulhealthdiscoveries.blogspot.com/

Surviving Abuse

Cut from http://www.child-abuse-effects.com

--- testimony of an abused child who has already grown

It takes time...

 It takes time. That's the only thing I can say about everything I've learned from healing. I'm thankful I've never been sexually abused, but I was physically and emotionally abused. I came from an incredibly broken and controlling family and used to get hit as a lot as a kid. I even had cans thrown at me (like cans of green beans and other assorted foods).

That's why I went into therapy

One day I had finally had enough of the unhappiness and craziness and I somehow found the frame of mind to enroll in therapy as a young man. I went in there just wanting to be happy again. I'd been suffering from a lot of depression brought on by a lack of solid social support as well as a chaotic home life. By this time, there wasn't nearly as much hitting only because I had grown strong enough to defend myself.

And that was the start of a long and winding road...

I began learning how to trust again. I slowly started peeling away the layers of anger and began freeing myself from the psychological chains that had kept me down for so long. It's still sometimes tough talking about it after all this time.

But it does get better

Eventually I made some great friends along the way, and that's brought me a long way. I feel much happier. And I realized that while the pain recedes, the abuse is a part of your life. It's an experience that stays with you and shapes you to a certain extent.

It surprises me as I write this but...

While there's a part of me that wonders what it might be like not to have been abused, I accept it and have moved on with my life. In my mind, the best thing you can do as a survivor is to live the best possible life you can.

That's what I've tried to do

And I'm still learning. I've done volunteer work in the court system to assist in cases of child abuse.

It takes time

I'm getting there. And so can any abuse survivor.

The Importance of Nutrition for Human Health

from The Science of Supplementation of USANA

The importance of nutrition for human health has long been recognized. Prior to 1960, interest in this field focused primarily on the etiology and prevention of acute nutrient deficiency diseases, such as scurvy, rickets, and pellagra. Some 50 essential nutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, cofactors, essential amino acids, essential fatty acids) were identified, and recommended daily intakes for those essential nutrients were developed. These recommendations, in turn, proved valuable in eradicating acute nutrient deficiency diseases. 

During the past 20 years, attention has shifted to the role of diet and nutrition in the pathogenesis of chronic degenerative diseases. Heart disease, some cancers, osteoporosis, type II diabetes, and macular degeneration are well-known examples of diseases with dietary risk factors, and research is currently underway on many more nutrient-disease interactions. Unfortunately, these associations are difficult to study, in part because of the time frames involved. Chronic degenerative diseases develop over decades (or lifetimes), and it is extremely difficult to conduct research programs spanning more than several years in length. Nevertheless, advances in epidemiological and clinical research have uncovered a great deal of information about the impact of diet and nutrient intakes on long-term health. 

USANA's "Health Benefits of Nutritional Supplements" document is an enumerative bibliography of peer-reviewed research examining possible health benefits of nutritional supplements and functional foods. Papers have been selected on the basis of scientific merit and relevance to the field, regardless of whether positive or negative results were obtained. Our objective in compiling this list is to provide readers with a good cross-section of recent scientific literature, with hopes of contributing to a better understanding of the current state of nutritional research.

What you should know about Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

The Filipino Child is a person (girl or boy) who is: (1) below eighteen (18) years of age or (2) over eighteen (18) but is unable to fully take care of or protect her or himself from abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation, all other forms of degrading and or dehumanizing treatment be it psychological or physical, and discrimination because of a physical or mental disability or condition. [Republic Act 7610]

Child Sexual Abuse is a form of child abuse that refers to any act on a child by an adult, older person or anyone in a position of power or control over the child for the sexual stimulation or gratification of the adult or the other person. Among others, these actions include, an adult indecently exposes their genitalia to a child, asks or pressures a child to engage in sexual activities, displays pornography to a child, or uses a child to produce child pornography.

Sexual Exploitation is the participation by a person in prostitution or the production of pornographic materials as a result of being subjected to a threat, deception, coercion, and abduction, and force, abuse of authority, debt bondage, and fraud or through abuse of a victim’s vulnerability. Child Pornography is any representation, whether visual, audio or written combination thereof, by electronic, mechanical, digital, optical, magnetic or any other means, of a child engaged or involved in real or simulated explicit sexual activities. (RA 9775)

Sexual abuse, physical and psychological violence, and sexual harassment are forms of violence against children which occur in all settings. These happen in: homes and families; schools and educational settings; care and justice institutions; places of work; community; and, cyberspace. [UN Study on Violence Against Children]

Child Sexual Abuse is one of the profound violations of the rights of children. While it is the most underreported form of abuse due to its sensitive nature, cases of sexual abuse of girls and boys continue to be noted. From 2004 to 2008, DSWD served a total of 13,658 girls and boys due to this. While in the same period, 1,024 girls and boys were victims of sexual exploitation.

Among the 2007-2008 cases of girls served by an NGO, it was noted that, 20 or 36% involved more than one male figure in the nuclear and extended family as abusers; 30 cases involved more than one girl victim among the female siblings or relatives; and, Report took place only when an older sister saw the abuse already happening to a younger sibling.

The 15 cases filed in court by the PNP – Women and Children Protection Center since January to May 2008 revealed that sexual abuse of children happen not only at home but in areas within the community, farm, and workplaces, in school grounds and in places of worship all over the country

Do we need nutritional supplements?

(from USANA's Ask the Scientists page)

For more than 50 years, the general public has been led to believe that RDA nutrient levels are adequate...

...but adequate for what? Adequate to prevent clinically obvious nutritional deficiencies like scurvy, beriberi, rickets, and pellagra?

According to the Food and Nutrition Board (under the umbrella of the National Institutes of Health):

"The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is the average daily dietary intake level that is sufficient to meet the requirement of nearly all apparently healthy individuals in a particular life stage and gender group."

The Food and Nutrition Board further defines "requirement" as:

"...the lowest continuing intake level of a nutrient that, for a specified indicator of adequacy, will maintain a defined level of nutriture in an individual."

Basically, the RDA is - by definition - the lowest level of nutrient intake necessary to prevent deficiencies. This is clearly important for helping individuals avoid acute deficiency diseases, but it fails to address the issue of optimal nutrition.

It is wonderful that the RDAs have been so successful in reducing blatant deficient diseases (including scurvy, pellagra, rickets and beriberi) to their lowest levels in recorded history. It is also good that products based on RDA amounts help combat deficiency diseases by providing minimal amounts of important vitamins and minerals.

However, as more and more of the general population is able to meet minimal nutrient requirements, new questions arise. For example, are RDA levels of vitamins and minerals enough to help prevent other degenerative diseases? What about providing protection from oxidative damage?

At USANA, we believe there are more benefits to nutritional supplementation than merely preventing increasingly rare deficiency diseases.

USANA's products are formulated with the most up-to-date nutritional research in mind, which may or may not have relevance to the RDAs. Rather than just looking to prevent total vitamin deficiencies, we are concerned with the vast majority of people who are "apparently" healthy. Many degenerative diseases and chronic illnesses develop over a lifetime, striking otherwise healthy individuals when they least expect it. For the millions of "apparently" healthy individuals in the world, minimal nutrient intakes may not be adequate to address modern health challenges.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), much of the illness, disability, and death associated with chronic disease is avoidable through known prevention measures. Furthermore, recent studies examining the potential economic benefits of vitamin supplementation have concluded that substantial cost reductions can be associated with the use of vitamin supplements, based on principles of preventative nutrition.

One question that commonly arises is, "if I eat a healthy diet, do I still need to take supplements?" Let it be clearly stated that a healthy diet is a necessary foundation for any program of optimal nutrition, and there is no substitute for eating well. In this context, USANA's nutritional supplements are designed to complement a healthy diet, not replace it. USANA supplements are designed to provide advanced levels of vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants that are difficult to obtain from diet alone - levels that individuals can use every day to promote a lifetime of good health.

USANA researchers are certainly not the only group convinced of the health benefits of nutritional supplements. In June 2002, the Journal of the American Medical Association published two articles by health researchers at Harvard University. The articles were entitled "Vitamins for Chronic Disease Prevention in Adults". Through their research, these independent researchers concluded:

"...suboptimal intake of some vitamins, above levels causing classic vitamin deficiency, is a risk factor for chronic diseases and common in the general population, especially the elderly. Suboptimal folic acid levels, along with suboptimal levels of vitamins B6 and B12, are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, neural tube defects, and colon and breast cancer; low levels of vitamin D contribute to osteopenia and fractures; and low levels of the antioxidant vitamins (vitamins A, E and C) may increase risk for several chronic diseases."

The scientific evidence supporting health benefits of nutritional supplements is solid and growing daily, and more health care professionals than ever before are now siding with these conclusions.

At USANA, we believe there has never been a better time to put the science of nutrition to work in promoting your health.