6 Life Lessons From the Founder of Burt’s Bees

 

You may not know his full name, but you surely know his face: Burt Shavitz, the co-founder of Burt’s Bees, and “The Bee Man,” as he was known, passed away on Sunday at the age of 80. You’ve seen him—his wild beard, white hair, and classic conductor cap—adorn the school bus yellow packaging of some of the brand’s cult favorite products.

A passionate beekeeper, wisecracker, and lover of nature, he was an unlikely face of a cosmetics company. He started by simply doing what he loved—making honey from beehives. Eventually, the leftover beeswax was turned into candles, and later on, lip balm, as Burt’s Bees, the company that’s now synonymous with natural beauty, grew and blossomed.

“Burt never set out to change the world, but he was a pioneer who found himself always on the precipice of progress,” the company said in a statement. He was a “complex man who sought a simple life” and always stayed true to who he was. There is much to be learned from the way Burt lived his life, and his commitment to nature and the environment. Here, six life lessons we can all take away from the kind, passionate, free-spirited man who will live on forever in our hearts—and our Hand Salve.

RELATED: 5 Habits to Steal from Powerful People

Remember the simple things can be the most magical

 

Be refreshingly honest

RELATED: A Guide to Natural Beauty Products

 

Live life your way

 

Let nature ground you

 

Follow your own curiosities and passion, and be rewarded

RELATED: 7 Times Celebrities Embraced Their Natural Beauty

Live your life one day at a time

Photos: Getty; Quotes provided by Burt’s Bees

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CVS Health Leaving U.S. Chamber of Commerce Over Smoking Spat

Photo: Getty Images

The pharmacy is quitting the Chamber over the trade group’s efforts to target anti-smoking laws abroad, saying it runs counter to its efforts to promote better health.

CVS Health is quitting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because of the trade group’s purported efforts to lobby against anti-smoking laws in countries around the globe.

The drugstore and pharmacy benefits manager, which last year stopped selling cigarettes and other tobacco products at its stores in a quest to become more of a healthcare destination, said the chamber’s lobbying efforts were not compatible with CVS’s mission to promote and facilitate better health.

“We were surprised to read recent press reports concerning the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s position on tobacco products outside the United States,” David Palombi, a senior vice president at CVS, said in a statement on Tuesday to several media outlets. “CVS Health’s purpose is to help people on their path to better health, and we fundamentally believe tobacco use is in direct conflict with this purpose.”

CVS has 7,800 drugstores across the United States, with more retail spots to come shortly when it takes over Target’s pharmacy business. Last year, the company decided to stop selling tobacco products, which generated $2 billion a year in sales and a lot of shopper traffic, betting it could more than make up for the lost business by selling healthier foods, expanding its walk-in clinics business, and winning more pharmacy business. Last month, CVS Health gave Fortune a close-up look at its new post-tobacco retail strategy.

“Given the leadership position we took last year in removing tobacco products from our stores … we have decided to withdraw our membership in the chamber,” Palombi said.

Last week, the New York Times reported that the chamber and its foreign affiliates have been taking aim at restrictions abroad on smoking in public spaces, bans on menthol, advertising restrictions, and graphic warning labels. Cigarette sales have been in free fall in many developed countries, including the United States, for years, but have been strong in many developing countries.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce responded to the New York Times story by saying it had made it clear to foreign governments that it supported their anti-smoking efforts.

“It’s disappointing that the New York Times gathered a number of letters the Chamber sent to governments around the world for its recent articles but then doesn’t seem to have bothered to read them. Our communications to governments concerning tobacco have explicitly made clear that we support their efforts to address public health concerns,” the Chamber said.

The Chamber on Tuesday said it nonetheless supports “protecting the intellectual property and trademarks of all legal products in all industries and oppose[s] singling out certain industries for discriminatory treatment.”

Its efforts earned it brickbats from the World Health Organization.

“By lobbying against well-established, widely accepted and evidence-based tobacco control public health policies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce undermines its own credibility on other issues,” Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO, said in a statement on Tuesday to the Times. “So long as tobacco companies continue to be influential members of the chamber, legitimate businesses will be tarred with the same brush.”

The Chamber on Tuesday said it nonetheless supports “protecting the intellectual property and trademarks of all legal products in all industries and oppose[s] singling out certain industries for discriminatory treatment.”

Its efforts earned it brickbats from the World Health Organization.

“By lobbying against well-established, widely accepted and evidence-based tobacco control public health policies, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce undermines its own credibility on other issues,” Margaret Chan, director general of the WHO, said in a statement on Tuesday to the Times. “So long as tobacco companies continue to be influential members of the chamber, legitimate businesses will be tarred with the same brush.”

This article originally appeared on Fortune.com.

More from Fortune:

Target selling its pharmacies to CVS Health for $1.9 billion

Why employers are offering more generous benefit packages

McDonald’s Quarter Pounders are about to get supersized

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The Empowering Story Behind This Old Navy Shopper’s Now-Viral Selfie

Babies’ Hilarious, Oh-So-Satisfied Pooping Faces Captured in Slow-Mo Video

Of all the hilariously cute things a baby does, the poop face has got to be one of my favorites. It’s hard to miss: the furrowed brow, flushed cheeks, and glassy eyes that indicate every ounce of her focus is suddenly…elsewhere. There may be a moment of surprise, pursed lips, and a grimace or two. But the, um, episode always wraps up with a look of relief, and sometimes even a smile.

RELATED: 15 Foods That Help You Poop

Pampers‘s new ad captures this familiar sequence of expressions in nine different infants. The slow-motion footage, set to Strauss’s iconic fanfare “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” shows their little faces as they morph from concerned to shocked to determined to completely satisfied with the delivery in their diapers.

The Pampers ad ends with encouraging advice to parents: “Don’t fear the mess!” But I beg to differ. Parents should be afraid, sometimes very afraid: There are occasional BMs that no diaper can contain—we’re talking poop all the way up to the back of the neck—and those blowouts strike when you least expect them. (It’s a good thing the pooface is so stinking cute!) My advice to new moms and dads who haven’t yet experienced them? Always carry a change of clothes. Or two.

RELATED: Here’s What Happens When Little Kids Try Coffee

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Muscle Strength Fades After Just Two Weeks of Inactivity

WEDNESDAY, July 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — It takes just two weeks of physical inactivity for those who are physically fit to lose a significant amount of their muscle strength, new research indicates.

In that relatively short period of time, young people lose about 30 percent of their muscle strength, leaving them as strong as someone decades older. Meanwhile, active older people who become sedentary for a couple weeks lose about 25 percent of their strength.

The more muscle a person has, the more they will lose if they are sidelined by an injury, illness or vacation, the Danish study found.

“Our experiments reveal that inactivity affects the muscular strength in young and older men equally. Having had one leg immobilized for two weeks, young people lose up to a third of their muscular strength, while older people lose approximately one-fourth. A young man who is immobilized for two weeks loses muscular strength in his leg equivalent to aging by 40 or 50 years,” researcher Andreas Vigelsoe, from the Center for Healthy Aging and the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, said in a university news release.

Total muscle mass normally declines with age. Young men have about two pounds more muscle mass in each leg than older men do. But, after two weeks of not moving at all the young men involved in the study lost 17 ounces of muscle, on average.

Older men, on the other hand, lost about nine ounces. However, all of the men lost physical fitness while their leg was immobilized, the study published recently in the Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine found.

“The more muscle mass you have, the more you’ll lose. Which means that if you’re fit and become injured, you’ll most likely lose more muscle mass than someone who is unfit, over the same period of time,” said Martin Gram, another researcher at the center, said in the news release.

“But even though older people lose less muscle mass and their level of fitness is reduced slightly less than in young people, the loss of muscle mass is presumably more critical for older people, because it is likely to have a greater impact on their general health and quality of life,” Gram said.

After being immobilized for two weeks, the men who participated in the study trained on a bike. They worked out three to four times a week for six weeks. Although this exercise helped the men regain physical fitness, the researchers found their muscle strength didn’t fully recover in that period of time.

“Unfortunately, bicycle-training is not enough for the participants to regain their original muscular strength,” said Vigelsoe. “Cycling is, however, sufficient to help people regain lost muscle mass and reach their former fitness level. If you want to regain your muscular strength following a period of inactivity; you need to include weight training.”

Gram said it was interesting how much muscle was lost due to inactivity, and pointed out that it takes about three times the amount of time you were inactive to get your muscle mass back.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides more information on the benefits of physical activity.

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Severe Burns May Trigger Dangerous Shifts in Gut Germs

WEDNESDAY, July 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — People who suffer severe burns may experience potentially dangerous changes in the 100 trillion bacteria inside their gastrointestinal (GI) tract, a small study suggests.

At issue is the breakdown of good and bad bacteria typically found inside a healthy person’s GI tract.

Researchers from the health sciences division of Loyola University Chicago in Maywood, Ill., observed that after a severe burn, four patients experienced a big increase in the number of potentially harmful bacteria and a corresponding drop in relatively beneficial bacteria.

The potentially harmful bacteria are part of a family that includes E. coli and salmonella.

Such an imbalance, known as “dysbiosis,” has been linked to many conditions, including inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes, study lead author Dr. Mashkoor Choudhry, a professor of surgical research, microbiology and immunology, said in a Loyola news release. He added that the imbalances might lead to complications responsible for most deaths in severe burn patients.

The findings, published in the July 8 issue of PLOS ONE, suggest that treating patients with live beneficial bacteria known as probiotics may help restore their microbiotic health. The findings might also apply to other trauma patients, including those with traumatic brain injuries, Choudhry said.

The risk for dysbiosis was discovered after Choudhry’s team analyzed fecal samples from the four patients with severe burns. The samples, taken five to 17 days after the patients were injured, were compared with samples from eight patients recovering from relatively minor burns.

The result: Bad bacteria made up an average of nearly 32 percent of the bacteria in the gut of the severely burned patients, compared with 0.5 percent among patients with lesser burns.

The study had several limitations. It was small, with only four participants with severe burns. And it only uncovered an association between severe burns and an impact on gut bacteria; it didn’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

More information

Learn more about gut microbes at
U.S. National Center for BiotechnologyInformation.

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Less Education May Mean Shorter Lifespan, Study Suggests

WEDNESDAY, July 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A low level of education may be hazardous to your long-term well-being, a new study suggests.

Based on analysis of more than 1 million Americans, the study investigators estimated that more than 145,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2010 if adults who hadn’t graduated from high school had earned a GED or high school degree.

The researchers also estimated that about 110,000 deaths could have been prevented in 2010 if adults who had some college education had completed their bachelor’s degree.

It’s important to note that this study didn’t prove that a lack of education caused more deaths, only that there was an association between education levels and risk of death.

However, the researchers suggested that lack of education could play a role in the risk of death in a number of ways. Factors associated with more education include a higher income and social status, healthier behaviors, along with better social and psychological well-being, the researchers said.

Findings from the study were published July 8 in the journal PLoS One.

The study included information collected between 1986 and 2006. People included in the study were born in 1925, 1935 and 1945.

The researchers also found that the more education someone has, the lower the risk of death during the study period. For example, there was a slight decrease in death rates among those with high school degrees, but a much larger decrease among those with college degrees.

Heart disease was a greater factor than cancer in the increased risk of death among those with lower levels of education, the study found.

“In public health policy, we often focus on changing health behaviors such as diet, smoking and drinking,” said study author Virginia Chang. She is an associate professor of public health at New York University’s School of Culture, Education and Human Development and College of Global Public Health, and an associate professor of population health at NYU School of Medicine.

But, she added in a university news release, “Education — which is a more fundamental, upstream driver of health behaviors and disparities — should also be a key element of U.S. health policy.”

More than 10 percent of American adults between the ages of 25 and 34 don’t have a high school degree, the researchers said. More than 25 percent have some college education but no bachelor’s degree, they added.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers tips and tools for healthy living.

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Colon Cancer Deaths Falling, But 3 U.S. Regions Lag Behind

WEDNESDAY, July 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — There’s reason to celebrate declines in deaths from colon cancer in the United States — unless you live in three areas that are still lagging behind, a new report finds.

People living in 94 counties spread across the lower Mississippi Delta region, in 107 counties in west-central Appalachia, and in 37 counties in eastern Virginia/North Carolina, haven’t seen as much change in lives lost to colon cancer as elsewhere in the country, the study found.

Better education about, and access to, regular colon cancer screening could improve matters, experts said.

“These three ‘hot spots’ for colorectal cancer in the U.S. demonstrate what can happen in the event that effective screening is not in place or not available,” said Dr. Raymond DuBois, executive director of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University in Tempe.

“It illustrates some of the problems overall with the U.S. health care system, in which there is such highly variable care delivered in different regions of the country,” said DuBois, who is also scientific advisor to the Stand Up To Cancer initiative.

The study, published July 8 in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, was led by Rebecca Siegel, director of surveillance information at the American Cancer Society.

Her team used special “geospatial” mapping software to separate out regions in the United States that had very high rates of colon cancer deaths from 1970 through 2011.

The researchers found that between 2009-2011, colon cancer death rates in the lower Mississippi Delta were still 40 percent higher than in non-“hot spot” regions, while rates were 18 percent higher in west central Appalachia and 9 percent higher in eastern Virginia/North Carolina.

Certain demographics seemed to play a role, as well. Between 1970 and 1990, the colon cancer death rate rose by 3.5 percent a year among black men in the lower Mississippi Delta and has since remained unchanged, the researchers noted.

All of this means that while the U.S. colon cancer death rate has declined by half over the past few decades, there are still large differences between states.

So those three hot spots “are low-hanging fruit for colorectal cancer screening interventions,” Siegel said in a journal news release.

“Although we’ve made great strides against colorectal cancer in a fairly short time period, there are a lot of vulnerable populations that aren’t benefiting,” she added. “Now that these groups have been identified, there is a moral obligation to do something about it.

“Targeted interventions, like using people within the community to talk to their neighbors about screening, are likely to be effective,” Siegel said. “We know interventions work because we have an example in Delaware, where they implemented statewide colorectal cancer screening and effectively eliminated disparities in less than a decade.”

Dr. Arun Swaminath directs the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. He agreed with DuBois that the new study “speaks to the importance of access to affordable health care, not just to reduce colon cancer mortality, but for any number of afflictions which we have the power to mitigate as a society.”

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about colon cancer.

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Asbestos Found in Kids’ Crayons, Toy Kits: Report

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — Asbestos fibers have been found in crayons and other toys sold in the United States, according to a new report from an environmental health advocacy group.

The fibers were found in four brands of crayons and two children’s crime-scene toy fingerprint kits, according to the EWG (Environmental Working Group) Action Fund report released Wednesday.

“We were surprised,” said report co-author Sonya Lunder, a senior analyst with the Washington, D.C.-based group. “Crayons and crime-scene toys were found to have asbestos in years gone by, and the manufacturers of both had already promised to deal with the problem,” she explained.

“All the products that tested positive were manufactured in China,” said Lunder. “This makes it harder to follow the supply chain and enact and enforce pledges to have asbestos-free products.”

Lunder said that contamination with asbestos, a known carcinogen, had been spotted in several types of crayons as far back as 2000 and in certain crime-scene toy kits in 2007.

Health experts and retailers expressed concern over the findings.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) notes that asbestos, which is composed of long, thin mineral fibers, once was common in insulation material.

Though tiny and invisible to the naked eye, airborne asbestos fibers are easily inhaled. With time, scarring, inflammation and breathing impairment can occur, as can lung cancer and mesothelioma, a rare cancer of the lining of the lungs and abdomen, according to the NIH.

Asbestos is no longer widely used in manufacturing in the United States. It is banned in nearly all other developed nations, the research group said.

EWG said it purchased the crayons between February and May of this year at two national chains — Party City and Dollar Tree — in a suburban county near San Francisco. The group said it ordered the two crime scene toys through Amazon.com and Toys”R”Us.com.

EWG hired an independent company, Scientific Analytical Institute from Greensboro, N.C., to conduct so-called transmission electron microscopy tests to look for asbestos. This is said to be the most sensitive and accurate method of testing available.

In all, 28 crayon brands and 21 toy fingerprint kits were tested.

The contaminated crayons included Nickelodeon’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crayons, Disney’s Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Jumbo Crayons and Saban’s Power Rangers Super Megaforce Jumbo Crayons and ones by Amscan, according to the new report.

Asbestos was also found in two crime lab toys: EduScience’s Deluxe Forensics Lab Kit, and Inside Intelligence’s Secret Spy Kit, the report said.

All positive results were reconfirmed by a second independent lab, EWG said.

Testing revealed higher concentrations of asbestos in the crime-scene kits than in the crayons, the group said.

Lunder said that up to one million microscopic fibers of asbestos were found in just a single crayon or sample of crime-scene powder.

“Just a couple of fibers can lodge in your lungs and be there forever,” Lunder said. “And there’s very clear evidence that asbestos leads to two forms of cancer, and thousands and thousands of Americans have been killed by fiber exposure.”

Former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General Richard Lemen welcomed the report.

“These are important findings, because asbestos is being placed in children’s products,” said Lemen, now an adjunct professor with Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health in Atlanta.

“Even if the absolute risk is relatively low, children are more vulnerable to toxic material and carcinogens,” he said. “And because they are so young they have a longer latency in which to develop these diseases, which are known to be diseases that develop over time.”

Another expert, Christopher Weis, agreed. “This is definitely not a frivolous or trivial concern,” said Weis, a senior toxicologist and senior advisor with the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md.

“It’s the policy of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Health and Human Services that there is no safe level of exposure to asbestos,” he added. “There are cases of individuals exposed to asbestos for very short periods of time who then went on to develop disease. And for kids that risk is almost certainly greater.”

A spokeswoman for Toys “R” Us, which distributes the EduScience Deluxe Forensics Lab Kit, responded to the report, saying customer safety is the company’s highest priority.

“We require that every product we carry meets or exceeds all applicable state and federal laws, industry standards, codes and requirements. At this time, we are reviewing the referenced report, along with supplier test reports, to ensure full compliance to our strict safety standards,” Kathleen Waugh, vice president of corporate communications, said in a statement.

More information

There’s more on asbestos at the American Cancer Society.

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Genetic Test May Help Spot Male Fertility Problems

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, July 8, 2015 (HealthDay News) — A new genetic test for sperm could help determine whether a couple should resort to in vitro fertilization to conceive a child, researchers say.

Men whose sperm lack critical RNA elements tend to have lower chances of naturally conceiving a child, according to study findings published July 8 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

An RNA analysis of a potential father’s sperm can tell fertility doctors whether a couple should skip less-invasive treatments and go straight to assisted reproductive technology (ART), in which eggs are combined with sperm in the laboratory to achieve fertilization, the study’s authors said.

“The absence of one or more of these RNA elements was indicative of those who would be successful by ART, which is a more invasive technique, versus those who would be successful by timed intercourse or intrauterine insemination, which is less invasive,” said study lead author Stephen Krawetz. He is a professor of fetal therapy and diagnosis and associate director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit.

About 13 percent of couples face problems with infertility, the study authors said in background notes. There are a wide battery of diagnostic tests available to women who are struggling to conceive. But, fertility testing for men currently is limited to a physical examination of their sperm’s movement, volume and concentration, Krawetz said.

“If you think about it, it’s how good do the sperm look. That really doesn’t tell you much about the quality,” Krawetz said. “A sperm may look fantastic, but yet could not be up to the job of fertilization.”

To study sperm quality in more depth, Krawetz and his team first studied couples who had been able to naturally conceive by having sex on days when the woman was most fertile.

Genetic analysis of the men’s sperm revealed a set of 648 RNA elements that are vital to male fertility. Many of these elements correspond to genes involved in sperm development, the ability to move, energy production, fertilization and embryo formation, the researchers said.

RNA, or ribonucleic acid, is a molecule used by the body to help code, decode and produce genetic information. Recent research has shown that sperm cells harbor a surprisingly rich amount of RNA, which appears to play a distinct role in fertilization and early development of the embryo, the study authors said.

The researchers then turned to 96 couples who seemed completely healthy but had been unable to conceive. The investigators performed an RNA analysis of the men’s sperm, and then provided a series of increasingly invasive fertility treatments for the couple.

Most infertile men did not carry a complete set of sperm RNA elements, the researchers found, and lacking some RNA elements reduced the success rate of natural pregnancy from 73 percent to 27 percent. The greater the number of RNA elements missing from the sperm cell, the lower the likelihood of conception, the researchers said.

However, that didn’t mean these couples could not conceive, Krawetz said — just that they would need more medical assistance.

“When we took those same individuals and went to assisted reproductive technologies, their rate of fertilization and live birth approached that of the group that was successful by the relatively non-invasive techniques,” he said.

Dr. Rebecca Sokol, president of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, praised the researchers’ efforts to figure out a man’s contribution to conception.

“As a specialist in male reproduction, I think I can say the field of male infertility is in desperate need of a biomarker like this,” said Sokol, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. “As far as the field of infertility is concerned, not enough focus is put on the male.”

But the results of this preliminary research need to be reproduced, Sokol said. The trial was small, involved a select group of patients, and did not include a truly random control group, she said.

“It’s not perfect,” she said. “Nothing’s perfect. But it’s a good first step.”

Krawetz hopes that RNA analysis ultimately will prove a useful early test in fertility treatment. Sokol noted that such analysis is time-consuming and potentially expensive, but she could not put a price tag on the procedure.

“For this to be truly used as a screening test, it will have to be made more facile and less expensive,” she said.

A similar genetic test for women likely is not possible, Krawetz said, and it’s all down to numbers. A single male ejaculation contains sperm in the hundreds of millions, providing a great deal of genetic material for analysis, while a woman carries just one egg, which gives doctors much less material with which to work, he explained.

More information

To learn more about assisted reproductive technology, visit the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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