Back in 2007, after the death of former model Hila Elmalich who was 34 and weighed less than sixty pounds, he told me the following for Women’s Wear Daily:

“The problem is with society, and the low self-esteem of these girls,” says Barkan. “We need to put this out there, to make it a societal norm in Israel and the rest of the world. People need to see these anorexic bodies and move their butts and do something about this.”

Israel21c interviewed Barkan several times about the issue, and posted the following video:

In March, his perseverance paid off, as the Knesset passed what is being called the Photoshop law, for the aspect of the law that regulates the use of Photoshop to make women appear perfect in advertisements. That’s a huge accomplishment. The bulk — no pun intended — of the law focuses on banning underweight models based on their BMI, or Body Mass Index.

The law is making waves in Israel, and around the world. Can Israel set the precedent for changing the way the fashion industry views and uses models’ bodies?

Interestingly enough, it was on Israel’s new fashion channel, Fashion.net., that a panel of fashion professionals, including clothing designer Yosef and a local fashion magazine editor, agreed that despite the new law and its groundbreaking potential, the fashion world will still view impossibly thin model bodies as the ultimate in goal.

“No one wants to see a curvy, zaftig model,” said Naama Chaisin, who is the second generation in the Tovale designer line of clothing. “And I say that as someone who is curvy and has fought to lose weight my whole life.”

Here’s to hoping she’s wrong.

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Photo from Israel21c

Haaretz recently published an article about an Israeli website they dubbed “Dr. Google.” The site is called Treato; its goal is to aggregate health and medical information, in particular on drug side effects, in a single place rather than forcing sufferers to wade through thousands of hits on Google, many of which are either irrelevant, unverified, or thinly veiled ads for the drug manufacturers themselves.

I had a chance to speak with the Treato guys last November for an article on Israel21c and their aim, as Elvis Costello might croon, is indeed true. The site, which is backed by the former CEO of Israeli powerhouse Commtouch and some $9 million in venture capital, covers some 13,000 conditions and 11,000 medications. There are 800 million patient discussions indexed, coming from 23 million patients. Treato then analyzes and prioritizes all that data, so you don’t have to.

When I was writing the article, I decided to give Treato the personal touch. I’ve suffered from insomnia most of my life. People who don’t sleep have a lot of extra time on their hands, which often translates into trolling discussion boards in the wee hours of the night. Everyone has their own treatment successes or failures, and they’re all ready to share, push and proselytize as if their solution is just on the cusp of curing the rest of us.

There are the magnet hucksters, the CBT wonks, the magnesium machers, the anti-chocolate crowd, the acupuncture/homeopathy/chiropractor/melatonin/meditation groupies and, of course, an unending stream of recommendations for this or that sleeping pill or anti-depressant.

I’m not putting any of these true believers down – on the contrary, I’ve tried the gamut of proposals and some have actually provided some relief. It’s just that Google is an unforgiving intermediary. She doesn’t tell you what ranks higher and what the potential side effects might be. Treato does.

You still have to work it. A search on Treato for “insomnia + not sleeping” resulted in 33,000 comments, from both expected sites (anxietyzone.com, askapatient.com, healthboards.com) and some surprises (breastcancer.org, autismweb,com, schizophrenia.com). But at least I don’t have to open each site one at a time; Treato puts it all in one place.

Treato launched in 2011, is aiming for revenues of $10 million this year, and hopes to break even in 2013. It’s not a play likely to be picked up by Mark Zuckerberg or other social media moguls. “People don’t like to talk about anti-depressants on Facebook,” Gideon Mantel, the company’s CEO says.

In the meantime, I’ll keep using Treato. Who knows, maybe someday I’ll discover that pickles and ice cream are the perfect cure for insomnia. Either that or I’m pregnant.

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It’s getting to be that time of year again – where the national holidays come fast and furious. Holocaust Remembrance Day just passed and this week we have Memorial Day and Independence Day right on top of each other as Israel prepares to celebrate its 64th birthday.

While there’s no shortage of subjects to be worried, fearful, skeptical or angry about, I would say that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. But if the Iranian threat, the political situation, the social welfare crisis and the glut of TV reality shows are getting you down, take a couple minutes and check out this clip that ISRAEL21c’s Nicky Blackburn and Viva Sara Press have put together.

In addition to providing some surprising information about just what Israel has achieved in the past 63 years, it will undoubtedly raise your morale and have you whistling a happy tune going into the coming eventful week. Happy Independence Day Israel! We’re proud of you.

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Oren Zarif with a happy patient

For several years the local “In Jerusalem” supplement to Friday’s Jerusalem Post ran series a full-page ads for a “miracle worker” named Oren Zarif who claimed to heal people through his psychokinetic powers. His ads featured rows of elated  patients with brief quotes about how Zarif had “saved me from painful back surgery,” or “made the pain in my neck go away” (the latter presumably had nothing to do with ridding the patient of an ex-husband or wife).

Zarif never explains how he does it, but the ads featured graphics of some squiggly lines going from Zarif’s head to the now-cured-ones.

Frankly, I always found the ads kind of pathetic. I mean, who would feel the need to pay good money to have some unknown guy with long stringy hair send squiggly lines across the ether.

Apparently, Zarif thinks that Shaul Mofaz should. In a letter to Mofaz, the new head of Kadima who displaced Tzippi Livni in the party’s primaries last week, Zarif has apparently demanded that Mofaz make him his number two man in Kadima. This comes from this morning’s online edition of The Times of Israel.

Zarif has always had a big ego – the copy in his ads leave no room for modesty – but this latest play goes over the top. Zarif claims that it was only because of his supernatural powers that Mofaz won and that “the political system can’t operate without the aid of [his] alternative powers.” It’s also not the first time that Zarif says he has intervened in the past on behalf of other politicians, though he wouldn’t provide specifics.

Zarif operates four treatment clinics in Israel where he “transfers energies to the subconscious of the patient, awakening a process of self-healing,” according to his website. This, however, appears to be his first foray into politics.

It comes with an explicit threat. If Mofaz doesn’t heed his demands, Zarif says, he will send those squiggly lines towards Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, ensuring his future success in the next election.

Perhaps Mofaz should give in to Zarif’s psychic blackmail. Zarif promises that “if I am number two on [Kadima’s] list, I will retire from my business.” That might not be good for Mofaz, but it sure could help the rest of us. And isn’t that what politics is all about – helping the voters.

Squiggly lines coming your way, Shaul.

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The exhibition celebrates the work of those researchers whose initiatives have led to commercial products on the market today.

These creative initiatives came about as the result of intensive and wide-ranging scientific research, followed by patent registration, commercialization and finally marketing by Israeli and international companies.

None of this would have been possible without Yissum – the Technology Transfer Company of the Hebrew University. Yissum is solely responsible for the commercialization of innovations and technologies originating at the university. The company was among the first of its kind in the world when it was established in 1964, and is today ranked among the world’s 15 leading companies in this field.

To date, Yissum has registered more than 7,000 patents on more than 2,000 inventions, and has established 72 spin-off companies.

The scientists and innovations documented in the new exhibition include:

Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch (right) and Prof. Nachum Kedar established the foundations for the introduction of genes for extended fruit shelf-life into standard tomato cultivars, turned cherry tomatoes into a global commodity, and developed the cluster tomatoes. (The original research was conducted jointly with Prof. Yosef Mizrahi of Ben Gurion University and Dr. Ehud Kopeliovitch. The seeds are produced and manufactured by Vilmorin (France), Monsanto (USA), Syngenta (Switzerland) and Bayer (Germany).

Prof. Marta Weinstock-Rosin who developed Exelon, a medicine prescribed for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Exelon can slow the progression of the disease in a significant proportion of patients and improve cognitive function in some subjects. Exelon is manufactured by Novartis (Switzerland).

Professor of Chemistry David Avnir, developer of Sol-Gel Technology for the formation of new materials which combine the properties of glasses or ceramics with the properties of organic and biological compounds. Applications of Sol-Gel Technology have been developed in the fields of optics, catalysis, sensing, polymers, biochemistry and pharmacy. Many researchers at the Hebrew University have participated in the various developments. Sol-Gel Technologies, Inc. (Israel) was established to commercialize products based on these newly invented materials, and is active especially in the fields of dermatology and agriculture.

Prof. Alexander Vainstein, the Wolfson Family Professor of Floriculture, who developed the MemoGenetechnology which enables the creation of new traits in plants and the enhancement of agricultural crops through genetic modification. MemoGene is a groundbreaking process for targeted and site-specific plant genetic modification, using highly innovative novel tools for genomic modification. The technology, which was patented jointly by Yissum and Danziger Innovations (Israel), is applicable to all plants.

Prof. Shmuel Peleg has developed technologies upon which two Israeli startups were founded. One technology creates panoramic stereo images from photographs taken by an ordinary camera, which has been commercialized by HumanEyes Technologies (Israel). The second is a technique for video synopsis, which enables hours of video surveillance footage to be viewed in minutes, and which has been commercialized by BriefCam. [Full disclosure: I work for BriefCam and know Prof. Peleg personally. I also thought the photo really captured his spirit.]

The exhibition’s photographer, Nati Shohat, is the founder of Flash 90, a photographic agency that supplies images to newspapers, magazines and other customers in Israel and abroad. Shohat’s news photography and artistic and portrait work have been exhibited in many venues and in publications such as Stern Magazine, Paris Match, Le Monde, Time and others.

Hebrew University has about 1,000 senior faculty members and a student body of approximately 23,000. To date, it has conferred over 120,000 degress. The University has some100 research centers and more than 4,000 research projects. Faculty members and alumni have been awarded 8 Nobel Prizes, 1 Fields Medal, 269 Israel Prizes, 12 Wolf Prizes, 18 EMET Prizes and 41 Rothschild Prizes. Founders include Chaim Weizmann, Albert Einstein, Martin Buber, Chaim Nachman Bialik.

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Jerusalemites Miriam Goldstein and Michael Feigenson are now app developers, having created two apps that will appeal to the new parent set, all part of Parents2ParentsApps, their “mom and pop, family business that creates mobile applications for parents. We build apps that answer our own needs as parents, and strive to make them useful to others and as user-friendly as possible,” writes Michael on their website.

Perfect Timing was their first app, using FAM, the Fertility Awareness Method, to help learn about and identify and chart natural family planning. They found the method helped them get pregnant easily, and the app is an easy way to keep all the information in one place.

Once their son was born, they came up with Sound Sleeper, a white noise app that can identify when a baby wakes and play a selected white noise — ocean, rain, car ride, even the sounds of Jerusalem’s Mahane Yehuda market — to lull the baby back to sleep.

As I always say, whatever works. And now I know why they always seem so happy and rested. Smart.

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Cafe Agnon has plenty of enticing looking breakfast snacks, including borekas, croissants, strudel-y things, but, sigh, I know better than to go there and eat one of those, as they’re just fattening and not all that filling. So instead, I chose a carob energy bar from a selection of homemade bars, smiling ruefully at the woman who was next in line and had also ordered a coffee and chosen the healthy bar option.

I commented to her, “Ein ta’am.” Meaning, there’s no point in eating one of the more fattening choices, because it’s just a slippery slope to eating more than one and losing the diet battle. We both laughed and said, together, “Yesh ta’am.” Meaning, well, of course those pastries have taste, utilizing the other translation of ta’am, which is taste.

I walked away, smiling, having had one of those good Hebrew moments, which is so gratifying. And then, I read great news from Tel Aviv University, about eating fattening foods for breakfast:

Seems that dessert, “as part of a balanced 600-calorie breakfast that also includes proteins and carbohydrates,” can help dieters lose more weight.

The key is to indulge in the morning, when the body’s metabolism is at its most active and we are better able to work off the extra calories throughout the day, say Prof. Daniela Jakubowicz, Dr. Julio Wainstein and Dr. Mona Boaz of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine and the Diabetes Unit at Wolfson Medical Center, and Prof. Oren Froy of Hebrew University Jerusalem.

Attempting to avoid sweets entirely can create a psychological addiction to these same foods in the long-term, explains Prof. Jakubowicz. Adding dessert items to breakfast can control cravings throughout the rest of the day. Over the course of a 32 week-long study, detailed in the journal Steroids, participants who added dessert to their breakfast — cookies, cake, or chocolate — lost an average of 40 lbs. more than a group that avoided such foods. What’s more, they kept off the pounds longer.

Like that, right? I’ll be nibbling on some delectable ma’afe (pastry) with my next coffee. Feel free to join me.

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The mobile MRI truck in Beer Sheva

Following the unexpected clean bill of health I received from my “shocking” EMG test a few weeks ago, the search for the cause (and cure) of my sciatica continued last week as I underwent an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) test. My doctor’s suspicion is that I have a problem on the L5 disc of my spine (whatever that means) and only an MRI can determine conclusively the next course of action.

Of course, scheduling an MRI through an Israeli HMO at any time in, say, the same calendar year is a task that even a young David would defer to Goliath. Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem would be glad to book me an appointment, they told me…for April 17 at 4:00 AM.

My crafty wife, however, has learned – through unfortunate experience (securing a doctor to look at our daughter’s knee) – how to work the system and found an innovative solution: I would do my MRI in Beer Sheva at the “mobile MRI.”

Apparently, there is a trailer truck outfitted with an MRI machine that travels around the southern part of the country, parking itself for a week at a time in Beer Sheva, Dimona and Eilat. They had an opening – just one week away from the day we called – at an entirely reasonable time (1:00 PM) rather than in the middle of the night. We booked it and I psyched myself up for a pleasant drive into the metropolis of the desert.

To be sure, the MRI-on-wheels is a fully functioning piece of equipment. I can’t say as much for the nurse who needled my arm to open the infusion port that would pump radioactive “contrast” dye into my veins during the procedure. I had a feeling she wasn’t the most experienced nurse in the Negev as she repeatedly tapped my veins searching for the best one.

When I got to the MRI machine and lay down on the table, the doctor quietly scolded the nurse before turning to me to say that they’d have to open a new vein in my other arm (“just to be sure,” he assured me).

As for the MRI itself, if you’ve never had one, it’s an entirely alien experience. You place your head into a secure brace, don noise-canceling headphones and then lie perfectly still on your back for, in my case, about 25 minutes. Nothing spins on the MRI (unlike a CT scan) but there are a variety of noises – whirs and clicks and clunks – as the machine uses large magnets to look inside the nuclei of my atoms.

I passed the time by trying to match the sounds with intros to songs. One rhythmic beat sounded deceptively like the Beatles’ “Getting Better All the Time”; another clearly had the low-tech industrial warble of a Brian Eno solo composition; a third reminded me of the Steve Reich piece “Different Trains,” which played in Jerusalem last year.

I was in and out in just over an hour – perhaps because this was a “single task” facility, the mobile MRI staff were highly efficient. I was back in Jerusalem in time for a late lunch.

Now that the MRI was taken care of, I called up my HMO to schedule a follow up appointment with the back specialist. Yes, they would be glad to reserve me a slot with the doc. He has time on May 28. At least it was in the same calendar year.

Maybe I should see a back specialist in Beer Sheva too.

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The new guy

And, like Fischer, Levin also speaks Hebrew, not however, as well as Fischer; not yet, that is.

What Teva is known for...

Of course, it’s a fairly major deal to become the chief executive of Teva, which has become one of the world’s largest drugmakers. But nice to know they also require their chief to be a local.

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NCV shock therapy

I’m not sure what was worse – the over-sized needles stuck into my leg or the electric shocks.

Some background: about six months ago, I developed pain and numbness in my right leg. At first I tried to ignore it, imagining it just some strange runner’s pain, but when it didn’t go away, I stopped my exercise routine and went to my family doctor. He referred me to physical therapy which, when after three months of treatment, nothing helped, referred me to an orthopedist, who in turn referred me to a test called an EMG.

EMG stands for an “electromyogram”; it’s designed to detect abnormal muscle electrical activity. The orthopedist didn’t want to go forward on something major – surgery, cortisone injections – until he ruled out some sort of nerve damage.

An EMG is either a very popular test or they don’t conduct it very often; I had to wait a painful three months for the test which I finally did this morning.

How do they detect that abnormal muscle electrical activity? By sticking needles in the affected area and asking you to push against the doctor’s hand or the table as hard as you can. A machine next to the table translates your efforts into the noise of some alternative universe ultrasound (is my leg having a baby?) The pushing itself isn’t so bad but, dang, that needle felt bigger than the ones they use in acupuncture or to take blood.

For good measure, the orthopedist had also recommended another test call an NCV, for nerve conduction velocity. For this one, they attach metal conductors to your leg and feet and pump a jolt of electricity into the nerve. The first ones were OK; it felt like a strong static electricity shock, not much worse than rubbing a balloon on your head. But the electricity got progressively stronger. My leg jumped and I cried out.

The nurse told me to clench my fist as tight as I could. “Is this part of the test,” I asked. “No,” she replied. “It will take your attention away from the pain.” Super.

“Just three more,” the unsmiling, entirely uncommunicative doctor said.

And then it was over. There appeared to be blood spots on my leg, although on closer inspection, they turned out to be dots of magic marker ink.

“Wait outside while I write up the results,” the doctor barked, in what to him was probably his gentlest voice.

The whole process took less than a half an hour. As I walked out of the hospital and towards the light rail to head home, I opened the envelope with the conclusions that might make or break my case. Everything was entirely fine, the paper said; they’d found nothing.

While that’s normally the kind of answer you’d like to hear, for me it means more tests, more prodding and poking on the way to finding a treatment. My orthopedist said I will be able to run again. I just didn’t realize what he meant was running from doctor to doctor. Shocking, but true, so to speak.

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