Let's Talk Wyoming
A podcast about Wyoming and everything we talk about including the weather, politics, energy & agriculture, sports & everything else effecting our state.
Let's Talk Wyoming
Let's Talk Wyoming - Windy Warnings, Eye-Opening Health Insights, Online Dating Dangers, and Cowboys' Challenging Season
Ever wondered how Wyoming’s unpredictable weather could impact your weekend plans or even the local football team’s performance? Tune in as we uncover the latest updates on the hot and windy conditions raising fire dangers across the state. We'll keep you informed about the upcoming Apple Fest at Circle J camp and what to expect weather-wise in the Bighorns. Plus, we’ll break down the Wyoming Cowboys football team's rough start to the season at 0-4 and their upcoming clash with the Air Force Academy. Our health segment dives into eye-opening insights from experts like Dr. Casey Means and Jillian Michaels, shedding light on the real dangers of processed foods, excessive sugar, and harmful food dyes in the U.S., and how they compare to other countries. We also raise concerns about the quality of school lunches and their potential effects on children's health and behavior.
Marcy joins us to discuss crucial safety tips for anyone navigating the world of online dating. Learn why it's vital to inform trusted friends or family about your plans, the importance of meeting in public places, and the red flags to watch out for. Whether it's avoiding sharing personal information too soon or steering clear of bars, Marcy has you covered. We also explore alternative ways to meet people, like engaging with community groups for safer, more genuine connections. Shifting focus to mental health, we offer practical self-care strategies to help you manage stress and set goals for the coming months. Discover the benefits of pre-booking therapy sessions and leveraging online platforms like BetterHelp. We wrap up with a heartfelt message about the unique challenges faced by teens and the resilience of the Wyoming spirit. Join us for an episode filled with valuable advice and inspiring stories.
Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming. I'm Mark Hamilton, your host Today. We'll be taking a look at our weather here in Wyoming hot and windy. We'll talk about the Wyoming Cowboys. Of course, we're going to talk about a little bit of food and also today we have Marcy on, as we'll talk about safety and dating and mental health going into winter. Thanks for joining us and hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:Taking a look at Wyoming weather here on the 25th day of September. We're getting close to October 1st. Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner, and so is our cold weather. Today it's hot and windy yes, hot and windy. It's been dry, dry, dry, and it has been cooling off at night. That is one thing, that's a saving grace. But this morning I'm out, usually about 6, 30 to 7 o'clock walking the dogs, and this morning that wind was blowing and there was a little bit of cool in it and then by the time we got headed back, it was warming up. And then it suddenly warmed up and this is bad news for our fire danger around the area. These high winds and these hot temperatures are just drying the grass out even more. So we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1:We have right now in the forecast it looks like it's going to be warm through the weekend. So through the weekend we have an event that I'm involved with up at Circle J, a camp up in the Bighorns just outside of Tensley Point. I'm going to have our annual Apple Fest and our weather is always unpredictable. One year we had rain and snow and we have these hot days and it'll be really hot up there and we're in the canyon and it does get pretty warm. So we have our Apple Fest taking place up at Tensleep at Circle J this weekend. So I guess the weather is cooperating there. But fire danger is unbelievable right now with these dry conditions. We've had a lot of fires, but right now here in Wyoming we are definitely warm and windy and it looks like that's the way we're going to stay until October. We'll see when it starts to turn.
Speaker 1:In other news around we've talked about the Wyoming Cowboys got to the point where it's like a broken record. The Cowboys are 0-4. Yes, 0-4. Lost another game to North Texas, the Mean Green and Denton, texas over the weekend. Cowboys just can't find an identity. Just can't find an identity on who they're going to be and what's going to happen Doesn't get any easier. This weekend they take on Saturday. They're back here in Laramie at War Memorial to take on the Air Force Academy and that's always a big rivalry game Been some unbelievable games. That game last year at the Academy was a heartbreaker for the Cowboys. Now this year the Air Force hasn't been as strong as they've had been in the past. We'll know what they're going to do. They're going to run their option. They will pound the ball at us and we'll see how our defense is on assignment football. It's going to be a test, I should say. I hope that the Cowboys can find a way to win. They just need to win that first game to get that monkey off their back. Maybe something will happen, but right now it looks pretty bleak for the Cowboys. Fans will still, as I said before, will still support them, but they are 0-4. Air Force Academy is coming up this weekend and we'll see what happens and of course that is a night game.
Speaker 1:In other news, around the area I've been following I don't know how many people have, but I've started to follow different people and hear a couple different podcasts talking about our diets and it's amazing to me. I think back on our food and what's happened with our food and you start to look at all the issues we have in our country that a lot of them are related to our food. And there's been a doctor, casey Means she was on Tucker Carlson, her and her brother and I heard that podcast and she just recently was in Congress. They had some hearings on the health issue and some problems and she gets into a lot of detail on what's happening here in the country. Jillian Michaels, well-known celebrity trainer. She talks about the issues with our foods and if you start looking at it, with our processed foods there's a lot of chemicals, stuff that just isn't good. We have issues with obesity in our country, childhood obesity.
Speaker 1:All the medical issues that have suddenly popped up is related. I saw the one couple that were there and they were showing fruit loops and they showed a box of fruit loops from canada and they opened up that box and it was this light colored and she opened up there. They opened up, I should say, the box of fruit loops here from the us and they were all brightly colored. Well, there's been a lot of information that's been released on food dyes how bad they are, how toxic they are, and in Canada they can't use them. In Europe they can't use them, but amazingly here in the United States we're still using them. And the other one that I know that is a total issue is sugar. Our sugar is just out of hand in everything we have and they go into pesticides and other issues we have. But to me, if we could cut sugar out of our diets, a lot of our health issues, I would say, would disappear within weeks.
Speaker 1:Our problems with obesity and diabetes and other health issues are through the roof. And get rid of that, and also with the school lunch meals the school lunch meals when I was a kid we had. Ladies came in and they brought the food in and they made our lunches. Now it's all processed here in Hot Springs County. Our food comes from a central processing facility in Casper, wyoming, and is trucked to schools around the basin.
Speaker 1:More or less we're just getting another processed meal and we're pumping those to our kids and we wonder why our kids have behavioral issues. And when we start having behavioral issues, then we suddenly want to start giving them some type of drug or medication, which even causes more problems, instead of looking at what the core, root problem is. It's the crappy food that we're feeding kids, and it's the same for adults. We are continuing on that. We're a fast food society that wants to eat nothing but fast food and that fast food is so bad for us. And then, of course, we're going to wash it down with a couple of Mountain Dews and all these other sugary drinks that are discontinuing with our problems. And if we have health issues, we go to a doctor and a doctor tells us here, take these pills, you'll feel better. And all we're doing is compounding that. So I'm going to play I should say I'm going to read a transcript from Dr Means that she shared with this hearing and you make your own decision. Start taking a look at what's going on with our food and you'd be surprised, when you start cutting some of this stuff out of your diet, how much better you'll feel. I consume sugar and I've just more or less eliminated all my sugar the best I can. I will not have sweets, other things like that. If I do have something now, I notice that I get a headache right away. I just can't take it. So listen to what Casey had to say and you make your own decision. This is from Dr Casey Means in her report to Congress.
Speaker 1:I learned virtually nothing at Stanford Medical School about the tens of thousands of scientific papers that permeate the root causes of why American health is plummeting. I did not learn that for each individual serving of altered processed food we eat, early mortality increases by 18%. This now makes up 67% of the foods our kids are eating. I took zero nutrition courses in medical school. I didn't learn that 82% of independently funded studies show harm from processed food, while 93% of industry Sponsored studies reflect no harm. I didn't learn that 95% of the people who created the recent USDA's food guidelines for America have significant conflicts of interest with the food industry.
Speaker 1:I did not learn that 1 billion pounds of synthetic pesticides are being sprayed on our food every single year. 99% of the farmland in the United States is sprayed with synthetic pesticides, many from China and Germany, and these invisible, tasteless chemicals are strongly linked to autism, adhd, sex hormone disruption, thyroid disease, sperm dysfunction, alzheimer's, dementia, birth defects, cancer, obesity, liver dysfunctions, female infertility and more. I did not learn that the 8 billion tons of plastic that have been produced just in the last 100 years are being broken down into microplastics that are now filling our food, our water and we are now inhaling them in our air, and that's very recent research. It also tells us that about 0.5% or half of a percent of our brains, by weight, are plastic. I didn't learn that there are more than 80,000 toxins that have entered our food, water, air and homes by industry, many of which are banned in Europe, and they are known to alter our gene expression, alter our microbiome composition and the lining of our gut and disrupt our hormones.
Speaker 1:I didn't learn that heavy metals like aluminum and lead are present in our food, our baby formula, personal care products, our soil and many of the mandated medications like vaccines. That these metals are neurotoxic and inflammatory. I didn't learn that the average American walks a paltry 3,500 steps per day, even though we know, based on science and top journals, they simply walking 7,000 steps a day slashes by 40 to 60 percent our risk of Alzheimer's, dementia, type 2 diabetics, cancer and obesity. I certainly did not learn that medical error and medications are the third leading cause of death in the US. I didn't learn that just five nights of sleep deprivation can induce full-blown prediabetes. I learned nothing about sleep and we're getting about 20% less sleep on average than we were 100 years ago.
Speaker 1:I didn't learn that American children are getting less time outdoors now than a maximum security prisoner, are getting less time outdoors now than a maximum security prisoner and, on average, adults spend 93% of their time indoors, even though we know from the science that separation from sunlight destroys our whole life, destroys our circadian biology and circadian biology dictates our cellular biology.
Speaker 1:I didn't learn that professional organization that we get our practice guidelines from, like the American Diabetes Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, have taken tens of millions of dollars from Coke, cadbury, processed food companies and vaccine manufacturers like Moderna. I didn't learn that if you address these root causes that all lead to metabolic dysfunction and help patients change their food and lifestyle patterns, we could reverse the chronic disease crisis in America, save millions of lives and trillions of dollars in health care costs per year. This is a spiritual crisis. We are choosing death over life. We are choosing darkness over light. We need a return to courage. Again, we need a return to courage. We need a return to common sense and intuition. We need a return to awe for the sure miraculousness of our lives. We need all hands on deck and of course, this came from the Ron Johnson Roundtable on American Health and Nutrition. A Second Opinion.
Speaker 2:And I again.
Speaker 1:As I said earlier, take the time, open up and start reading some of these articles. Listen to some of these people and you know it's true. And what amazes me, the food products that they won't allow in Europe and Canada. It's A-OK for us here in the US. What's going on, people? Something to definitely keep you up at night wondering. We'd like to welcome back to the show Marcy Marcy. How's everything been going? It's been a while since we've talked.
Speaker 2:It's been good, Mark. I'm excited to talk to you today.
Speaker 1:Before we get started on everything else, let's talk about the Wyoming Cowboys. Being a University of Wyoming alumni member both of us what's your opinion of the Cowboys? You know?
Speaker 2:Mark, I'm a Cowboy fan through the wins and the losses, but I really would love to see some more. You know, movement and coaching and perhaps even administration at the university. I think we offer a great program and I would just love to see maybe some adjustments to make sure the kids are able to perform and and maybe get some wins this season not gone too well so far 0-4 for the cowboys, with a tough one this weekend against the air force academy.
Speaker 1:But of course it's at home. That's, I guess, one of the positives. And again, one of these games the cowboys, I think, will break through with a win. I don't see them going winless this year. We'll see how it goes and everybody, everybody will be watching again Saturday night at the war. So, marcy, what do you have for us today that you want to talk about?
Speaker 2:You know, mark, in this day and age and no matter where you live, I'm sure you're aware of someone that's maybe met a partner or married someone they met online. And I just want to kind of cover a little bit of some safety concerns I've seen and I think it's really important for us to be aware of when we engage with people online and especially on dating apps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a good point. Be safe, I should say, every time we're on the Internet and everything we use, and that's a good point. And dating is definitely a must no-transcript. Okay, so what's some of the stuff that we should make sure that we do if we are dating online?
Speaker 2:So, mark, there's some very well-known dating apps out there. I won't name them here, but I think it's very important when we are online dating that we let people in our life know what we're doing. We have a few trusted friends that we can connect with and touch base with. Let's say that you're going to go meet someone for coffee. They're aware of the person, they're aware of your location and time. Just need to be safe, that people know what you're doing, just in case something ever pops up.
Speaker 2:I think it's important, when you do have your dating profile, you're honest in your profile and we don't use pictures of our children. We don't use pictures that misrepresent us. Also, I think it's important to know that people often will be looking for single mothers or people maybe that are recently widowed. So to be very aware that someone that maybe has very vague pictures they don't look like the city you live in they're asking a lot of really personal questions very quickly. That's a big red flag mark. Also, if someone is not from the US, they say that maybe they work in oil and gas in Africa, they're in the military, they have a large amount of money that they can't access, but they want to use your bank account. You know these are kind of the scams that I've used in the past, but a lot of these people, they're going to be very nice to you, they're not going to seem creepy, they're going to seem like your neighbor, your friend. So I think it's important that we also just kind of you know, we take this with a grain of salt Would you say that to someone that you're standing in line with at the coffee shop? No, so just being aware and then often checking with family or friends to make sure the stories are, you know, making sense. So let's say you do match with someone.
Speaker 2:Mark, I think it's very important that we meet in public places to have dates. You know I've had a lot of friends that were offered to get picked up for the date and you know, back about 30 years ago that was probably standard. But with safety concerns, never get a ride. Make sure you have your own ride. If you have to Uber, always be able to give yourself to and from a place.
Speaker 2:And I think it's important to pick a coffee shop or a very public place. I don't suggest bars or places where people are going to consume substances, because we need to keep our wits about us. Yeah, and you know sometimes people, you might do things you don't even you know, you might not plan or you might not have a very good dinner and so you don't know how you're going to react. If you're on medications you often even just consuming like a different kind of supplement or thing. You want to just be very clear-headed, and if someone doesn't want to meet you for coffee or in a public setting, they're probably not very interested in actual romance or a long-term relationship.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is a whole issue with everything going on, but also we need to be aware of Marcy.
Speaker 2:Well, I think it's also important, mark, that we need to realize that there's people on these apps that are married. There's people on these apps that maybe have criminal backgrounds or sex offenders. I suggest becoming a member of a background check app or service, because there's been many people that come to find out after a few days that their, their love interest, is actually recently released from prison, has a felony background, is a very dangerous person, so you know it. It sounds kind of like a lot of um safety concerns, but you just really need to be aware of the people you're interacting with.
Speaker 1:Boy, that is an issue. You read about it and hear about it a lot out there, the stuff that goes on.
Speaker 2:Yes, mark, and I think too we also deal with people. With these. You know they could just be trying to con people, but just maybe not a mentally healthy person. You should only be going on one date a week with someone in public settings. It should take time. They shouldn't be messaging you all day. They shouldn't be telling you they love you at the first date. They shouldn't be suggesting a long weekend away when you barely know someone. There's just been so many cases of people going hiking or on trips with people and terrible things happen and it could have been avoided.
Speaker 1:Boy. That is definitely a red flag and a warning for people out there to be on top of what's going on.
Speaker 2:Yes, mark, and I think we all are desperate nowadays, after COVID, for social interaction. I also suggest getting off the dating apps and joining an outdoor group, joining a church group. I mean, you still have to be safe and cautious of people you meet out in public, but often slowly building up relationships over time can lead to romantic relationships as well.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, that's some good advice. Anything else on the dating side, marcy?
Speaker 2:You know, I just think we need to realize that if you wouldn't engage in those kind of behaviors or risk-taking with someone you meet at Starbucks, I wouldn't do that with someone I meet on a dating app just because it's a romantic setting, just really. You know, let's be cautious because our safety and our family's safety are often at risk here. So if someone pressures you or makes you feel uncomfortable, we need to go with our gut instincts, because those are in place for a reason.
Speaker 1:That is true, and it's an unsafe world out there.
Speaker 2:unfortunately, it's gotten like that yeah, mark, and you know there's. There's a lot of people out there that, due to economic hardships, they're trying to get money. They might ask you to pay for their car repair or they can't cover dinner. So just being aware, like going into into something, a very, a coffee or an iced tea, I see, in the morning or midday, like when there's a lot of people around, just something to get a sense of a person, because we shouldn't be out. There's a lot of people that will go to these really expensive dinners and the person leaves halfway through the dinner. So it's like just being very aware and there's a lot of content, of content online, of course but just making sure that we're being safe and keeping our boundaries in place okay, we're coming out of our summer and now we are getting into fall and, of course, winter's right behind.
Speaker 1:How about changing the subject? Just a little bit on mental health, going into after a summer and looking ahead, and you know, now your summer, more or less, is coming to a close, and for a lot of people it is at a close. What are some of the things that we need to do as far as for our mental health?
Speaker 2:Yeah, mark, I think we need to realize the holidays are coming up, we have an election year, there's a lot of stressful things going on, so I think we need to get ahead of that by booking the therapy appointment now, not waiting till we're in crisis. Let's say you've been kind of neglecting your health. Maybe getting some supports in place now. Start that healthy eating, start saving some money for the holiday season.
Speaker 2:Getting those goals for the last months of the year is very important because with the winter months, it gets shorter days, it's dark, you know dark. Sooner the temperatures drop in some places in the country. So we really need to get clear on what we want to do with the rest of our year places in the country. So we really need to get clear on what we want to do with the rest of our year and if you're feeling upset or you need support, reach out to someone your pastor, a therapist, a trusted adult. We just really need to be aware that sometimes things can hit us quicker than we realize, and so it's really a good time to speak to someone and get a plan in place for the rest of the year.
Speaker 1:How about BetterHelp?
Speaker 2:Yeah, Mark, I've worked on the platform for about almost 11 years now. I think it's a great resource because, let's say, you can only afford a limited amount of sessions. Your therapist could refer you to maybe some community placements or EAP providers. But just talking to a professional I think is important, and I also think we need to if you have had a bad experience in the past. That service allows you to try some different providers until you find someone that's helpful to you and it allows you to kind of just get an experience in the comfort of your home okay, that was my next question.
Speaker 1:So what are the options for communicating with a, a counselor from better help?
Speaker 2:well, mark, you can do chat, video or phone and I've actually found a lot of people really like the the phone calls, because you don't have to be, you know, video ready and you can kind of just focus on the conversation. But you know, some like the video, some like the chat, and then there's messaging and they offer classes, groups and journals and a lot of really helpful content. So I suggest, if you're curious and maybe you don't have insurance or maybe you just want to give it a try and go through the hoops of different in-person providers, but also you know, there are community mental health centers that have sliding scale fees, but BetterHelp does allow financial aid depending on your situation. So I say, you know, whatever service feels best for you, give it a try, because the worst thing. You know. Whatever service feels best for you, give it a try because the worst thing you could maybe just have some release or a conversation with someone who is trained to support you.
Speaker 1:Yep, Sometimes a person just needs a little bit of somebody to talk to and it can make a lot of difference in people's lives, especially going into these months ahead, where it seems like that mental health is always a big issue going into winter time yeah, and they offer couples counseling, christian counseling, lgbtq counseling and even teen counseling.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of different varieties on the platform yeah, that I didn't realize they did teen and I think that's a big one right now that there's so many things happening in the teens and with social media and everything else, and so that is a good point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something for everyone.
Speaker 1:Marcy, again, we appreciate you coming on board. Thank you for the tips on safety as far as for dating, also mental health-wise, and we hope that those cowboys can go out and get one. So go WYO. Thanks for joining us today and we hope you enjoy our podcast. As per the code of the West, we ride for the brand and we ride for Wyoming. We'll be right back, I'm.
