Andrew Weil MD www.drweil.com got the Flint Center crowd doing some heavy breathing last night at Dick Henning's celebrity forum. What a guy! Looks more jolly Santa than health and fitness guru, but boy did he have some good advice and most of the audience was straining forward and hanging on his every word.

The future of healthcare in the US is so desperate, he said, the disaster may sink our economy. As our population ages, it will place a larger and larger burden on our workers. Scary stuff! A strong advocate of integrated medecine, he riles against the "anti-aging" approach reminding us that aging is a natural process. Instead, our goal should be staying healthy for longer and to do that, he encourages us to make good lifestyle choices . The usual suspects: good diet, exercise, adequate rest and sleep. But some cool green ideas.

He recommends: plenty wild salmon (omega 3 is brilliant for our blood and has been linked to lower levels of depression); fruits and veggies with strong pigments (esp. berries - strong antioxidants); turmeric and jasmine tea.

Weil also  reminded us that we should  revere and include our older friends and relatives in our lives more, just like they do in Okinawa, Japan (a place with legendary longivity www.okinawa.com). He suggested laughter as a stress buster www.laughteryoga.org and then led us in some heavy breathing. Wow: it felt good to switch off for a few minutes; breathe in for 4, hold for 4, then breathe out for 6 ...with about two thousand other people. Conspire means to breathe together, so we had one big CONSPIRACY SESSION. I love these simple GREEN solutions to world problems.

Many thanks to Dr. Weil, you've inspired me to go back to basics. Now it's time to get moving... must check out the wild salmon counter at Safeway, grab some "rainbow" fruit and veg... and call my mother!