Editor’s Note: The following article contains material that is a bit graphic, but is a common medical issue among heterosexual couples.

For couples who struggle with infertility, the emotional pain and the hopelessness can sometimes appear unbearable. The last thing a husband and wife who are having trouble conceiving want to hear is advice from someone who has children.

It can even get to the point of annoying to hear the words, “Everything will be all right. I know what you are going through.” How could a person who has received his or her godly gift (of children) dare to try to console someone who has yet to feel that joy?

The resentment is a legitimate emotion for those who desperately want children but have encountered difficulties along the way. Bitterness, anger, discouragement and even jealousy are not uncommon, either. There are days when you simply don’t believe you’re going to make it through.

So, with two beautiful, healthy children of my own, how I am qualified to comfort and advise those going through the pain of infertility? It’s a subject that is near to and dear to both mine and my wife Patty’s hearts. She and I endured more than three years of the despair and anguish that surrounds it.

Like many other couples, we did not want to hear it from anyone—family or friends—who were parents. “It’s all in God’s will,” some would say. “Let go and let God,” others chimed in. For Patty and I, they just didn’t understand.

Granted, neither one of us were “spring chickens” through all of this. When we got married, I was 31 and she was 35. Plus, we waited a year to even start trying because we were in the process of building a house. Along with our highly stressful jobs, that’s a lot to put on yourselves.

After the first year, we began to try. Weeks turned into months, and months turned into a year. Discouraged but not deterred, we continued to pray about it and believe (although I’m not sure just how strong our faith was at that time). After seeking God in prayer, we decided to see an infertility specialist.

The specialist suggested that we try something called intrauterine insemination (IUI), defined by the American Pregnancy Association as a “a fertility treatment that uses a catheter to place a number of washed sperm directly into the uterus. The goal of IUI is to increase the number of sperm that reach the fallopian tubes and subsequently increase the chance of fertilization.” 

As you might imagine, the process was quite involved, and quite invasive, at least for Patty. She took pills and gave herself shots to boost her fertility chances. Indeed, she was a trooper.

It was only a minor inconvenience for me, yet still it proved aggravating. Both of us had to go through a process each month before Patty’s “cycle,” and we had to be at the clinic sometimes at the most inconvenient times.

And, with me working for NASCAR at the time, I was, at times, on the road at the most inopportune moments. I was forced to cut short my weekends at the track in the name of trying to have a baby.

Fortunately, most of this was covered by our insurance, so the cost was minimal. Praise God.

After another year or so, joy came, or so we thought, when Patty became pregnant. It all turned out to be worth it. However, after seven weeks, we went in to try to get the baby’s heartbeat. Nothing. We came back the next week. Nothing. The despair in Patty’s eyes was more than unbearable.

“Why God?” we wondered. “Why would you give us the promise of a child, and then take it away from us? How can a loving God put us through all of this?” Angry at God? You bet we were.

But then we realized, of course, we aren’t the only ones who had been through a miscarriage. We even knew some that had been through more than one.

Having miscarried, the next step was a D&C (dilation and curettage). We couldn’t start trying again for another two months afterward, but we went back to the routine. Another few months passed by, and nothing happened. The option of in vitro fertilization was presented to us—an option at $10,000 a pop. Uh, next.

We began to attend an “infertility support group,” which didn’t do much for my psyche. The desperation in that room could be cut with a knife. There were some couples who had been trying for more than five years and had spent nearly $100,000 on in vitro. I always left those meetings feeling worse than I had when I went in.

We began to think about adoption as well, but knew it would be a long, drawn-out process. Finally, in what we should have done in the first place, we simply went back to God in prayer and laid the problem at His feet. We had done that before, but we had taken it back from Him, and nothing came to fruition.

We told ourselves, this time, we simply were going to give it to Him and never take it back. We didn’t allow ourselves to get stressed over the situation, and whatever happened was going to happen. We went to the Word and found Psalm 113:9 that says, “I will make the barren to keep house as a joyful mother of children.” We put that Scripture on the bathroom mirror for both of us to see and confess every day, along with Mark 11:23, which says “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.”

How could God promise those things and not come through? We simply began to confess and believe. And, it happened.

In a matter of two months, Patty was pregnant again. Ever cautious, we didn’t tell anyone for a few weeks. Patty had some early complications, but we believed that the Lord would bless our child and see her through the pregnancy.

While we had some adventures at the end, we did have a baby girl, “our miracle child,” in 2002. Rachel is now 12, and she’s grown up to be a beautiful young girl.

Two years later, Joshua came along. This time, it didn’t take so long because we did “let go and let God.” Joshua is now 10 and he is an incredible joy for both Patty and me.

I honestly believe that God waited—obviously in His timing—to allow us to become parents. He wanted our hearts to be right and to really be prepared. Perhaps that wasn’t the case in the beginning.

I read an article recently in which a study said one in six couples in America face infertility. That rate, according to the study, is rising. Some of the factors involved are the possible effects of environmental toxins, and that women are waiting longer to try to have children and thus reducing their chances.

For those faced with the issue of infertility, I want to say to you: Don’t give up. Don’t let your worries and fears make you question God. Remember, with God, all things are possible.

But also, however, pray in earnest before you begin any infertility treatments and investigate the process by studying up on it. Allow God to show you in your heart the right path to take. He put doctors on this earth for a reason, and let Him guide you to where you need to be and which ones you need to see.

If it is your desire to have children, believe it and receive your blessing in the name of Jesus. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Don’t doubt God’s Word for one second. Thank Him every day for keeping His promises. He will not disappoint you.

If this is something that you and your spouse are struggling through, know that you’re not alone. Please share your comments with us, or with me at @. I will be happy to listen and perhaps refer you to a local support group.

Shawn A. Akers is the managing editor of Ministry Today magazine for Charisma Media.

Nearly 40 percent of Israeli women are still unsure which party they are going to vote for, leaving the coming election results still rather open, a poll released by Saloona, a women’s website, revealed on Monday.

Still, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of the women polled said they had definite plans to cast ballots in the upcoming elections, reflecting Israel’s relatively high voter turnout in comparison to other Western nations. Only 3 percent said they were definitely not voting.

Of those women who are opting to relinquish their electoral privileges, the highest percentage (25 percent) said it was because there was no party convincing enough for which to vote. Other reasons for staying away from the polls included the notion that all the parties were more or less the same (21 percent) and not knowing which party to choose (17 percent).

Of the 34 parties running for the Knesset in the elections on Jan. 22, the right-wing Strong Israel Party, haredi Am Shalem Party and Tzipi Livnis’ Hatnuah Party are yielding the greatest deliberation among voters. Fifty percent of the women voting for these parties were still on the fence about whether or not they had solidified their loyalty.

The haredi Shas Party, Labor and Meretz had the strongest loyalty among women voters, with 14 percent of Shas voters saying they were secure in their choice, and 18 percent of voters for the last two parties pledging allegiance.

Still, if the elections were to take place tomorrow, Likud-Beytenu would take a strong lead with 34 Knesset seats, followed by Labor (18 seats), national-religious Habayit Hayehudi (14 seats) and Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party (11 seats). Arab rights party Balad, the anti-corruption Eretz Chadasha and Am Shalem all took the fewest amount of seats to pass the threshold at two apiece.

As for the Right and Center-Left blocs, according to the Saloona poll the former would garner 63 seats, while the latter would get 57 seats.

Close to one in six U.S. couples don’t get pregnant despite a year of trying—after which doctors typically recommend evaluation for infertility, according to a new study.

Those data are based on a nationally-representative survey of more than 7,600 women— including 288 who were trying to become pregnant—but don’t provide an explanation for what may be causing the couples’ infertility.

Researchers analyzed information from in-person and computer interviews conducted across the country in 2002 with women ages 15 through 44.

Germaine Buck Louis, from the National Institutes of Health in Rockville, Maryland, and her colleagues estimated infertility rates in two different ways.

First, they calculated the number of infertile couples as a fraction of all pairs that could or could not have become pregnant, based on their sexual behavior—resulting in a rate of seven percent.

Then they looked specifically at women trying to get pregnant, not including those who were using contraception or had very recently given birth, for example. That strategy showed 15 to 16 percent of couples couldn’t get pregnant after at least a year of unprotected sex.

The finding is similar to smaller studies showing between 12 and 18 percent of women may have trouble getting pregnant, the researchers wrote in the journal Fertility and Sterility.

According to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, women received close to 150,000 cycles of in vitro fertilization (IVF) in 2010, with male factor infertility and diminished ovarian reserve being the most frequent infertility-related diagnoses.

Dr. John Collins, a professor emeritus at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, who has studied infertility, said there is a need for accurate measures of how widespread it is – but also that the rate may have risen in the last decade since this data was collected.

According to the Canadian census, he told Reuters Health in an email, the rate of infertility there rose from 8.5 percent in 1992 to 15 percent in 2009-2010.

Infertility specialist Dr. Sacha Krieg from the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City agreed that infertility rates may be on the rise—possibly due to women waiting longer to try to have children or, more controversially, to the possible effects of environmental toxins.

“What this study showed, I felt, was a little bit higher infertility rate than we typically quote patients,” Krieg, who wasn’t involved in the new research, told Reuters Health.

“Many in the field feel like the rate of infertility is increasing, and (this finding) seems like a more accurate reflection of the actual infertility rate,” she added.

Krieg said some couples who have been trying unsuccessfully to get pregnant for a while may still go on to conceive on their own, without the help of IVF.

Each cycle of IVF runs for about $15,000, and may or may not be covered by insurance.

Krieg recommended that people get checked out after a year of trying—or six months, for women over 35—to make sure there aren’t underlying problems, such as a blocked fallopian tube or low sperm count, preventing them from conceiving.

So what’s so great about raising teenagers?  Supposedly, all you get from them are blank stares and mumbles. They might not jump all over what you’re offering now, but in the future, they will be grateful. To get you started, below are listed ten keys to raising great teens:

1. Under all the scowls and frowns, there’s your child. As Dad, they need your attention and acknowledgement. Spend time doing things they enjoy, and support them in their hobbies. Take your teen to see their favorite team compete. Spend time getting to know your teenager. Teens need to feel they have a dad who is crazy about them.

2. Let your love show. Don’t be alarmed when your child becomes a teenager – they’re not monsters! All the love and affection they needed when they were younger, they still need now. Loving your kid  means you need to find ways to express your love through your actions and words. Don’t leave your teen wondering where you stand on them.

3. Reinforce their faith.Young people need the rock-solid guidance of their faith to help them navigate our amoral culture. Remind them that they are God’s, and God is their’s, and to always live accordingly.

4. Don’t talk at your teens. With regards to correction, your teenagers don’t always need lectures.  There is a time for lectures, but when disciplining your teens, talk to them as adults. The end-goal is a two-way conversation.

5. Remember to listen. This statement ties in with the one above. When you listen to your teen, they feel empowered. They feel that they have a voice. Dads, that glazed look your teenager is giving you as you continue with your argument may mean that he doesn’t think you’ll ever listen to him. Surprise him.

6. Reinforce a standard within teens. Children aren’t born knowing what’s right. As they get older, teens are placed under more and more pressure to abandon the standards and morals given to them in their younger years. As a dad, part of your responsibility is to remind them what they were taught in their younger years.  Reward them when they do good things, and discipline them when they have overstepped the boundaries.

7. Get to know their friends. Even if you don’t prefer some of your teens’ friends, avoid saying how you don’t like so and so. Even if they look suspicious, try asking your teenager what they like about that person. Teens want to choose their friends; they will look for friends that like what they like. Also, share with your teenager the characteristics you do like about their friends and get to know their friends’ parents before you weigh in on the crowd your kids hang with.

8. Offer your wisdom. Being a dad, you automatically have a gift of wisdom because you lived just a bit longer than your teenagers. Though they may never admit that you were right or that they don’t know everything, they do need your help, and more importantly they need your wisdom. You are a source of wisdom in their lives.

9. Help them stay focused. Translation: “Keep your teens looking ahead.” Help them find a balance between enjoying the immediate and looking towards the future. It’s easy to forget the consequences of current choices made now. Teach them the joy of delayed gratification. Everything isn’t about the Friday night football games or Senior Prom.

10. Challenge them. The best way to wipe the bored look off your teenagers’ face is to do something that takes them out of their comfort zone. Take them to a high ropes course and cheer them on, or complete the course with them.  Go camping.  Whitewater rafting. Taking them out of their comfort zone will really increase their horizon and their bond with you.

All Pro Dad is Family First’s innovative and unique program for every father. Their aim is to interlock the hearts of the fathers with their children and as a byproduct the hearts of the children with their dads. At , dads in any stage of fatherhood can find helpful resources to aid in their parenting. Resources include: daily emails, blogs, Top 10 Lists, articles, printable tools, videos and eBooks. From fathers can join the highly engaged All Pro Dad social media communities on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.

Benjamin Netanyahu just called me up on the phone! I couldn’t believe it! He asked me to vote for him and told me what a good job he has done the last four years. However, when I tried to talk, he just kept talking … like I wasn’t there. Shelly Yacomovich (Labor Party) called me last night! She too, just wanted to talk and not listen.

I am not special. Israelis are getting recorded phone calls like this from various characters, from ultra-religious extremists to left wing doves who still think Hamas just wants peace. They all want our votes. Yes, election time is here.

I realize that most of my readers are in the U.S., where there are only two major parties, and therefore can’t fully appreciate how crazy the Israeli political system is. With elections coming on January 22, I figured I would try, in as fewest words as possible (14 points), to give you a understanding. Here we go…

1. Israel uses a parliamentary system of government. That means simply that you vote for your party (or the one you dislike the least), not the candidate. Of course calling them parties is a bit confusing, because there is no fun, no music, no cake—just adults acting like children, fighting for position.

2. The party with the most seats is asked by the Israeli president (The president has no authority like in the U.S.—but is more like the Queen—ehh, no, strike that—it is a procedural position) to work with other parties to form a coalition.

3. There are 120 seats, and no party ever wins a clear majority, so they must compromise, promise, give-in to black mail, forcing them to work with people they wouldn’t even carpool with, in order to garner enough partners to present a coalition of at least 61 members.

4. A rare exception would be, as we saw in the last election, when the leading party cannot muster up enough partners to form a coalition. (Like being the kid with all the toys, but still no one will play with you, because frankly, they can’t stand you.) In this case, the president would turn to the party that he deems most viable of forming a collation. Four years ago, Tzipi Livni’s Kadima (Move Forward) party had the most seats, but no one wanted to play with Tzipi (and they still don’t). So, the president turned to Netanyahu’s Likud party to form a coalition.

5. In the forming of the coalition, agreements are made, cabinet posts are promised and smaller parties, such as the orthodox parties exact a price. In the end, the orthodox parties typically control immigration, ‘who is a Jew’, and who can get married in Israel. Once, because the Labor party came in second, their leader ended up with the Defense ministry post, despite the fact that he was a life-long union leader and knew virtually nothing about defense, he found himself leading the most advanced army in the Middle East. His incompetence was highlighted during a photo op, when he looked through a pair of binoculars with the caps still on. In our most recent government, a fellow who is better suited to be a Russian crime syndicate boss, found himself in the delicate position of Foreign Minister, where you can’t just threaten to break the legs of an opposing Foreign Minister as starting point for negotiations. Oh, he just had to resign because he is being indicted for corruption. (Are you starting to feel better about your own government?)

6. Because of all these backroom deals, we end up with a ridiculous number of cabinet ministers in our government (30 ministers and 9 deputies). Switzerland, a country of comparable size has only seven ministers. Or, in the U.S., this would be like having about 1,300 cabinet positions!!! We have two Vice Prime Ministers, a position created a few years ago, if memory serves me correctly, when one of the Likud ministers had to give up the foreign ministry. He cried, and so they created a position for him.

7. There are at least 15 parties vying for 120 seats in the upcoming elections.

8. Unlike in the U.S., where the two parties have large platforms and take opposing sides (i.e. Pro-abortion/Prolife; Big Government/Small Government; Higher Taxes/Lower Taxes; Pro-Justin Beiber/Would rather die a slow painful torturous death than listen to JBieb), Israel has parties that will focus on single issues. A few years ago, we had a party called the Pensioners whose sole purpose was to fight for the rights of seniors. Most parties are broader than this, but can still be very narrow in their concerns.

9. The primary issues in this upcoming campaign are:

• Iran/Security
• The Peace Process (or lack thereof)
• The economy—However, the economy is taking shape as the number one issue and this is making Likud and Netanyahu vulnerable, as security/Iran has been their primary issue. And let me add, not since Winston Churchill stood up against Hitler or Reagan against the USSR, has a leader made the world take notice of a major threat to world get-along-ness [world peace was stretch])

10. The Shas Party, who are ultra-orthodox, is merely there to vote according to what their rabbis tell them. There tri-leader, Arieh Deri (They have three leaders, so no one gets offended. Despite being religious their egos are every bit as big as the other politicians) someone who is beloved by the masses, but thought of by others as corrupt (he spent three years in jail, after being convicted of taking $155,000 in bribes in 2000) says, “Shas is not Right or Left. We ask rabbis what to do and we go by what they say.” Sadly, this is a horrible form of democracy, putting all of the control in the hands of the rabbis—and yet people will still vote for them.

11. The ultra religious parties and the Arab parties (Yes, we have Arab parties! Does Egypt or Syria have a Jewish party?)still attract virtually all of the ultra orthodox and Arab vote, but fortunately, not much beyond that.

12. Yair Lapid, a former popular news anchor, talk show host, novelist and just outright handsome dude, has started his own party, championing the middle class called Yesh Atid (There is a future). He is anti-Religious and pro-economic reform.

13. Tzipi Livni, who quit the Kadima party when she lost her number one position, took her marbles and has formed a new party called, simply Hatanua (The Movement). (I am resisting my deep desire to make a joke about the name of her party.) She nobly wants all the center-left parties to unite—however, even more nobly, she wants them to united under her (according to Lapid and Labor leader Shelly Yakomovich). Lapid’s Yesh Atid and the Labor party said, “thanks, but no thanks.”

14. Stunning most of the talking heads in Israel has been the emergence of (my neighbor) Naphtali Bennett and his party, Bayit Yehudi (The Jewish Home), who stands to become the third largest party, growing from three to 14. While I personally was not crazy about him (primarily because the media presents him as an extremist) this article by the Guardian has endeared me to him. He is for breaking the monopolies over the Israeli economy (You can often find Israeli products overseas, cheaper than in Israel!) and he is a realist when it comes to making peace with Islamists. It’s “insoluble.” Amazingly, he is attracting many young voters who would typically vote center-left, with his no-nonsense plan for the Palestinians which can be see here. He comes across as humble, confident, religious, but not extremist. And best of all, he is my neighbor and has promised me 31^st cabinet position, the newly created Minister of Hummus and Pita, if I vote for him.

Who do Believers Endorse?

I can’t really answer that. I know many believers who love Likud for it’s bold stance on security, others are attracted to newcomer Lapid, as they are tired of the limited possibilities for the Middle Class. They want to be able to get a mortgage and buy a house, something almost impossible today without at least $100,000 U.S. in cash. Still others see Naphtali Bennett’s combination of both security and economic reforms as a breath of fresh air.

One thing we all agree on is that politics is not our savior. More than anything else we dream of a spiritual awakening in this country. Will you dream with us?

Ron Cantor is the director of Messiah’s Mandate Int’l in Israel, a Messianic Ministry dedicated to taking the message of Jesus from Israel to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Ron also travels internationally teaching on the Jewish Roots of the New Testament. He serves on the pastoral team of Tiferet Yeshua, a Hebrew-speaking congregation in Tel Aviv. His newest book, Identity Theft, will be released on April 16th. Follow him at @RonSCantor on Twitter.

Out of all the videos viewed on CBN News’ website last year, the most popular by far showed how coconut oil helps some Alzheimer’s patients. More than 5 million people watched it.

Some heavy hitters within the Alzheimer’s medical establishment are also taking notice. The video told the story of Steve Newport, whose Alzheimer’s symptoms reversed after he started taking coconut oil.

His wife, Dr. Mary Newport, a Florida neonatologist, documented her husband’s astounding progress in her book, Alzheimer’s Disease: What If There Was A Cure?

The Alzheimer’s clock test illustrated Steve’s dramatic improvement. The clock he drew before taking coconut oil barely even resembled a clock. Two weeks into the treatment he drew a clock, which was noticeably better, and after just five weeks the improvement continued.

First Human Study

Steve’s story spread like wildfire. His wife has since been busy gathering the reaction.

“Some of these responses have been quite dramatic,” Dr. Newport said. “I do have a collection now of almost 220 reports, mostly from caregivers and some from the person themselves, reporting that they saw improvement after they started taking coconut oil.”

All these testimonials are turning the Alzheimer’s community on its ear. For example, at the world-renowned Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute, people can’t stop talking about them.

“When a patient or a family member comes in with a patient, and they’re interviewing with the physicians, they always have a question, ‘I’ve heard about coconut oil. What’s going on with that?’” Dr. David Morgan, chief executive officer for the Institute, said.

“And at least up until this time all we can say is there’s anecdotal information, that it may be beneficial, but there hasn’t been any kind of research study that’s ever been done.”

That’s about to change with the Institute’s first study of how coconut oil affects human beings with Alzheimer’s. If the study finds evidence that coconut oil helps, doctors will finally have the proof they need to begin recommending it to their patients.

“I think they feel uncomfortable making a recommendation for something that they don’t feel justified by the science behind it,” Morgan said. “And that’s part of the reason we’re going to do the study, to determine can we then provide that justification.”

How It Works

Here’s how it appears the coconut oil works. In patients with Alzheimer’s, insulin resistance prevents their brain cells from accepting glucose, their primary fuel. Without it, the cells die.

But there is an alternate fuel known as ketones, which cells easily accept. Ketones are metabolized in the liver after eating coconut oil.

In the 1960s, Dr. George Cahill, along with his colleagues, was first to show that the brain could use ketone bodies.

This discovery became the basis for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease with ketones a subject in which he took an active interest. Cahill died at age 85 in Peterborough, N.H., July 30, 2012, while singing the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s Messiah with two of his daughters: Rhett and Eva.

Insulin resistance doesn’t just affect people with Alzheimer’s, but also folks with dementia, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Parkinson’s, ALS, even autism.

So can coconut oil help these people, too? It appears so, at least some of them.

For example, doctors diagnosed Sam Stout with Parkinson’s disease seven years ago. He soon began losing the ability to perform many functions.

But five months ago he started taking coconut oil and his life changed again.

“I can now write. I’ve written letters, which I haven’t done in three years,” he said. “I can swirl a wine glass; I can beat an egg; I can grate cheese. All these things I couldn’t do. And I think I have better balance.”

He also noticed mental and emotional improvement.

“I think I’m clear-headed, more clear-headed,” he said. “People have said to me, ‘You look great this year,’ and I can only attribute it to the coconut oil because that’s the only thing that’s changed.”

Testimonies Aplenty

Then there’s Butch Machlan, an American living in Mexico City, who has suffered with ALS for almost five years. He said his symptoms have reversed thanks to coconut oil.

Machlan demonstrated his success by picking up a snow globe.

“I can pick (this) up, and there was a time when I had difficulty with that,” he explained. “Not just picking it up, but holding on to it, getting my fingers to go around it, and that’s gone.”

While Machlan isn’t walking perfectly, his legs are stronger and about to get even better.

“I have bad knees from the past,” he said. “But I’ve improved enough that the doctors have said that I qualify for a new knee in my left leg.”

So while not everyone has experienced great results with coconut oil, there are plenty who have, enough that the medical community will spend time and money learning exactly who it helps and why.

Coconut Oil Concentrate

As if coconut oil were not good enough, there is a super-concentrated form of coconut oil, called “ketone ester” that packs an even greater punch than regular coconut oil. It was developed by Dr. Richard Veech and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Heath.

That means it could be even better for people with diseases ranging from Alzheimer’s to autism.

A newly released medical report documents a study of mice with Alzheimer’s disease who were fed ketone ester in their diet compared to the mice who did not receive the ester. The mice, who were fed the ester, experienced less amyloid and tau proteins, two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease.

Researchers also saw improvements in the mice’s learning and memory performance as well as decreased anxiety. 

While that study is encouraging, there is a problem. Before the ketone ester can be made available to the general public, it must first be studied on human beings. Unfortunately, the funding is severely lacking to make enough ketone ester to do this testing.

The National Institutes of Health has been committed to funding the production of the ester up until now. But that funding is set to run out, thwarting the human study and thus depriving the general population of the healing benefits of the ketone ester.

Age-ism in Funding Choices

Experts within the Alzheimer’s community say the government dollars appropriated for the funding for Alzheimer’s Disease research is disproportionately small.

“The amount of funding that we have for Alzheimer’s disease is ridiculously low,” Dr. Morgan said. “For cancer, 4 percent of medical care costs are spent on research; in heart disease it’s 2 percent; in Alzheimer’s it’s .3 percent (three-tenths of one percent). For AIDS, it’s 20 percent.”

He added that $3 billion in government funding is spent on AIDS research while one million Americans has AIDS. Yet he said only $500 million is spent on Alzheimer’s research, while five million people suffer with Alzheimer’s.

Morgan lamented that the Obama administration agreed to put $80 million into Alzheimer’s research in the form of The National Alzheimer’s Project Act, but two NIH bills have come before Congress and neither contained even a mention of the act.

Why is there such a discrepancy between research funding for Alzheimer’s and other diseases?

“It’s age-ism at the legislative level,” he explained. “They say, ‘That’s old-timers. Who really cares about these old folks?’”

Morgan said people should contact their state and federal representatives and demand more money be spent on Alzheimer’s research. He said if that doesn’t happen, the end result will hurt us all.

“We need to spend more money on research or this disease will decimate Medicare,” he warned. “It won’t survive until 2030 unless we do something that really slows the progression of the disease or treat it so people can live dignified lives.”

Helpful Hint

There is a new coconut oil product now available online in which many will be interested. This is a creamy, very tasty liquid food called Fuel for Thought. It’s what Sam Stout, (mentioned above) takes daily and it is also what will be used in the Byrd Alzheimer’s Institute’s human study. It can be purchased here.

This product was formerly called “cocomul” and was mentioned in the book, Alzheimer’s Disease: What If There Was A Cure?

The liquid is packaged in one-ounce bottles, which are especially helpful for people in assisted living and for people living on their own with memory impairment.

It is very easy to take “as is,” which eliminates the need to come up with creative ways to include coconut oil in other foods. It also contains concentrated MCT oil, the active ingredient in coconut oil.

Fight Alzheimer’s Disease With Coconut Oil

In Sunday’s cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rebuffed criticism from his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, who accused Netanyahu of spending NIS 11 billion on preparations for a strike on Iran that never materialized.

“This weekend,” he said, “somebody criticized my government over the investments we made in security. Indeed, in contrast to governments that invested billions in the disengagement, we invested billions in building up our strength so as to ensure the security of Israel’s citizens.

“We will continue to invest in Iron Dome, which stopped the missiles; in the security fence in the south, which stopped the infiltrators; in cyber-security and in the offensive and defensive capabilities of the IDF, Mossad and ISA. It is no coincidence the security situation in the country is the best it has been in years and this is in the face of the great security upheaval around us and in our region.”

Netanyahu then commended the ministers who had backed important operations to ensure the security of Israel’s citizens.

He added praise for the Israel Police and the IDF for their operation to evacuate the Arab outpost in the area between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim on Saturday night.

Pushups and pullups have long been considered the two best exercises you can do to train your upper body. The reason for that is these two exercises target every major muscle group of your upper body.

You’d be surprised as to how good of shape you can get into when you only perform these two exercises. Ask anyone who has gone through ‘boot camp’ and see what kind of shape they are in? Ask them what exercises they did?  

When you do pushups or any type of pushing movement like a bench press. you target your chest, shoulders and tricep muscles…half your upper body. Pullups, or any type of pulling motion, targets different muscles. The pulling motion targets your back, biceps and forearm muscles…the other major muscle groups of your upper body. 

The problem for most people, especially those who train at home is that most women can’t do pull-ups and a lot of men who have added a few pounds or years can’t do but a few pull-ups either. We’ll talk about how to overcome that in a minute.

There are three good reasons why it is important to do both movements and exercises.

1. Saves time—These two exercises are compound movements, meaning they target more than one muscle at a time. These two exercises allow you to train all the major muscle groups of your upper body. This is extremely helpful if time is a factor in your busy schedule.
2. Promotes muscle balance and reduces injury—My background in sports medicine has shown me that muscle imbalance can be a major contributor to upper back and neck pain. This is important because a lot of people tend to do more pushups or pushing exercises than pullups. This leads to muscular imbalance and both men and women are equally guilty of training their ‘pretty’ muscles…their pectorils more than their back. When you train your pushing and pulling muscles equally you reduce the muscular imbalance and lessen the chance of aches and pain. 
3. You don’t have to go to a gym—Almost everyone can do pushup or a modified pushup. You can also find pull-up bars at your local park or purchase pullup bars that you can attach to your doorway.  Unfortunately, it is estimated that less than 15 percent of the population (fit males under the age of 40) can do 10 pullups.

The Solution to the Pullup Problem

The fact that roughly 85 percent of the population can’t do pullups lead to the creation of a new fitness product called the Work Horse™.  It is specifically designed to allow the user to do both pushing and pulling motions. More importantly, the Work Horse allows you to do modified pull-ups with your own body weight. This allows both men and women to finally be able to target their back, bicep and forearm muscles that commonly get neglected if you’re not doing pullups.  

With the Work Horse you “off-load” a third of your body weight. Your feet are flat on the ground, which takes some of the weight off and instead of pulling up 180 pounds, you ‘off-loaded’ a third of your bodyweight and only have to pull up 120 pounds. This modified pull-up finally makes this exercise do-able!

This type of exercise or movement is commonly done in a gym, but not everyone trains in a gym or has a squat rack or Smith machine in their house. The Work Horse™ lets you get a complete upper body workout in less than ten minutes.  It’s lightweight, portable and can easily be stored and has received the endorsement from fitness professionals, trainers and doctors as one of the best new fitness products for 2010.  Best of all you don’t have to worry about bolting screws into your doorway…and who wants to train in their closet!

Elastic bands are another way of targeting those neglected muscles, and I am a fan of them, but for a lot of people the resistance throughout the full range of motion isn’t there. As the retired trainer of the Dallas Mavericks said, that is one of the simplest and best ideas I have seen.

Dr. Len Lopez is a nutrition and fitness expert and author of To Burn or Not to Burn—Fat is the Question, and “Five STEPS Closer…” and the creator of The Work Horse. His approach to health and wellness is to treat the cause—not the symptom. For more information on how to overcome fatigue and weight gain or to get Dr. Lopez special report on The Stress Connection, send an e-mail to Dr. Len. You can also use his online health quizzes to identify where your health problems are coming from.

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of articles called Uprising from Kenny Luck, where God’s men seek to reject the material world and embrace God’s world. This series will be featured weekly in ’s New Man during January.

After doing men’s ministry for the last 25 years, I discovered some interesting things.

Men are searching for spirituality. They are asking: What’s my role in the world?

Men—both here in America and globally—are asking questions with growing frequency and urgency because of the gnawing anxiety that stems from undo suffering in the world caused by broken male culture. They know something is wrong. And they want to get involved and do something positive to change things—both at home in their families and in the global arena.

This broken male culture starts with our acceptance and adoption of an outside control: a cultural vision of masculinity that plays upon our desire to be great; to do something great, and our deep need to contribute and to be significant. The world offers us a vision and pathway to achieve this, but it’s a corruption of the vision God offers us—a spiritual vision.

The cultural world vision that we hope will save us from insignificance fails us.   

Boys grow up in families. If they are not validated by their father, and given a positive identity that goes with the identity of their father, then they turn to outside forces: friends and other carnal world powers to see what is significant. Why?  Because God gave us a free will. He gave us a thirst for significance.

That identity we hope is going to save us from insignificance usually follows a culturally generated “ism,” like hedonism, materialism, accumulation, or worshipping at the altar of greed or self-indulgence. THAT will give me significance… for a time it will at least give us instant happiness.    

But two thousand years ago, Jesus fired one shot across the bow of greed, saying you can’t attach worldly visions to manhood.  

In John 15:19, Jesus talks about this genesis of the broken male culture, beginning in the world and talking meaningfully with His men, saying you don’t need to go there. That is not the vision of what I have created you for.

John 15:19 NLT, says: “The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”

Jesus claims you as his son. He’s your father. He wants to protect you.

The carnal vision of manhood is adversarial, because the material is committed to death, while the spiritual is committed to life. Jesus is saying to His guys, ‘I chose you. I rescued you from that broken vision of manhood, so you are not of the world.’  You belong to me, Jesus says. You are my son. My offspring. You are mine.

You can’t blend the two, warns Jesus. Blending your life with the cultural version of manhood does not mark the follower of Jesus Christ. You cannot align yourself with the culture and claim spiritual. There’s no compromise here.

So what happens when we do? We see the dreadful fruits of this unholy blending everywhere in modern society.

Feminism: A Reaction to Broken Male Culture

Consider Feminism.

It started in the 1960s. Feminism was a reaction to the broken male culture. It was the beginning of a movement—a revolution, an uprising— in American modern culture, where women were fed up with the broken male culture, and wanted to replace it with their own vision ofrighteous society. Political activism was a reaction on the gender front to a broken male culture.

Feminism was a social intervention by and for the people that we hurt. In part, it was halfway houses and rehabilitation programs for women who suffered from the broken male culture. Billions of dollars poured into this. 

How do the men react?

Defensively. 

I was reading in an article in Men’s Health that explained that once a target has been put on us, we will defend.

No one likes the blame. Do you like the blame? I don’t like the blame in my marriage. But see, that is the burden of leadership. We are called to a position of right leadership under our Father, modeled by His Son, and empowered by the Holy Spirit making us more like Him.

God’s men are responding around the world with our own Uprising! Men are turning away from the carnal world and embracing the spiritual world. There is a spiritual “Uprising.”

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Kenny Luck is the men’s pastor at Saddleback Church and is the founder of Every Man Ministries. His 20th book–Sleeping Giant: No Movement of God without Men of God— is a blueprint for men’s ministries, and was recently released through Broadman & Holman Books. Follow Every Man Ministries on Facebook and Twitter.

A day after an exhaustive national report on cancer found the United States is making only slow progress against the disease, one of the country’s most iconic—and iconoclastic—scientists weighed in on “the war against cancer.” And he does not like what he sees.

James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, lit into targets large and small. On government officials who oversee cancer research, he wrote in a paper published on Tuesday in the journal Open Biology, “We now have no general of influence, much less power … leading our country’s War on Cancer.”

On the $100 million U.S. project to determine the DNA changes that drive nine forms of cancer: It is “not likely to produce the truly breakthrough drugs that we now so desperately need,” Watson argued. On the idea that antioxidants such as those in colorful berries fight cancer: “The time has come to seriously ask whether antioxidant use much more likely causes than prevents cancer.”

That Watson’s impassioned plea came on the heels of the annual cancer report was coincidental. He worked on the paper for months, and it represents the culmination of decades of thinking about the subject. Watson, 84, taught a course on cancer at Harvard University in 1959, three years before he shared the Nobel Prize in medicine for his role in discovering the double helix, which opened the door to understanding the role of genetics in disease.

Other cancer luminaries gave Watson’s paper mixed reviews.

“There are a lot of interesting ideas in it, some of them sustainable by existing evidence, others that simply conflict with well-documented findings,” said one eminent cancer biologist who asked not to be identified so as not to offend Watson. “As is often the case, he’s stirring the pot, most likely in a very productive way.”

There is wide agreement, however, that current approaches are not yielding the progress they promised. Much of the decline in cancer mortality in the United States, for instance, reflects the fact that fewer people are smoking, not the benefits of clever new therapies.

Genetic Hopes

“The great hope of the modern targeted approach was that with DNA sequencing we would be able to find what specific genes, when mutated, caused each cancer,” said molecular biologist Mark Ptashne of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The next step was to design a drug to block the runaway proliferation the mutation caused.

But almost none of the resulting treatments cures cancer. “These new therapies work for just a few months,” Watson told Reuters in a rare interview. “And we have nothing for major cancers such as the lung, colon and breast that have become metastatic.”

The main reason drugs that target genetic glitches are not cures is that cancer cells have a work-around. If one biochemical pathway to growth and proliferation is blocked by a drug such as AstraZeneca’s Iressa or Genentech’s Tarceva for non-small-cell lung cancer, said cancer biologist Robert Weinberg of MIT, the cancer cells activate a different, equally effective pathway.

That is why Watson advocates a different approach: targeting features that all cancer cells, especially those in metastatic cancers, have in common.

One such commonality is oxygen radicals. Those forms of oxygen rip apart other components of cells, such as DNA. That is why antioxidants, which have become near-ubiquitous additives in grocery foods from snack bars to soda, are thought to be healthful: they mop up damaging oxygen radicals.

That simple picture becomes more complicated, however, once cancer is present. Radiation therapy and many chemotherapies kill cancer cells by generating oxygen radicals, which trigger cell suicide. If a cancer patient is binging on berries and other antioxidants, it can actually keep therapies from working, Watson proposed.

“Everyone thought antioxidants were great,” he said. “But I’m saying they can prevent us from killing cancer cells.”

Anti-Oxidant Myth

Research backs him up. A number of studies have shown that taking antioxidants such as vitamin E do not reduce the risk of cancer but can actually increase it, and can even shorten life. But drugs that block antioxidants—“anti-antioxidants”—might make even existing cancer drugs more effective.

Anything that keeps cancer cells full of oxygen radicals “is likely an important component of any effective treatment,” said cancer biologist Robert Benezra of Sloan-Kettering.

Watson’s anti-antioxidant stance includes one historical irony. The first high-profile proponent of eating lots of antioxidants (specifically, vitamin C) was biochemist Linus Pauling, who died in 1994 at age 93. Watson and his lab mate, Francis Crick, famously beat Pauling to the discovery of the double helix in 1953.

One elusive but promising target, Watson said, is a protein in cells called Myc. It controls more than 1,000 other molecules inside cells, including many involved in cancer. Studies suggest that turning off Myc causes cancer cells to self-destruct in a process called apoptosis.

“The notion that targeting Myc will cure cancer has been around for a long time,” said cancer biologist Hans-Guido Wendel of Sloan-Kettering. “Blocking production of Myc is an interesting line of investigation. I think there’s promise in that.”

Targeting Myc, however, has been a backwater of drug development. “Personalized medicine” that targets a patient’s specific cancer-causing mutation attracts the lion’s share of research dollars.

“The biggest obstacle” to a true war against cancer, Watson wrote, may be “the inherently conservative nature of today’s cancer research establishments.” As long as that’s so, “curing cancer will always be 10 or 20 years away.”