To everything there is a season, and this is my season of rut. Or rather, being in a rut

My usual routine is to get up in the morning, make a cup of green tea with a squirt of lemon, and read my emails and blogs to which I subscribe. I’ve recently joined several Yahoo mail groups, and I find myself spending far too much time on email. I love the many things I’m learning, but I am being pulled in too many directions and not getting anything purposeful accomplished.

Sometimes I want to write something here. But the last time I had substantive content was several weeks ago. So there’s this pressure to produce something BIG, and since I’m in a rut, nothing BIG is being produced. And so I don’t post, even though I have something I’d like to write about. I suppose I’m going to have to get over that.

Update on Diet

I’ve continued with a relatively low-carb diet high in meat and fat with the occasional fruit and vegetable. I’ve cheated a lot since November when I intended to give up sugar. I still indulge, but nowhere near as often. I’ve had three Starbucks mochas since then, and have eaten even more portions of ice cream. But most days I have very little sugar, and it’s in fruit if I have it.

For a time I was eating two pomegranates every night after dinner, and now I’m completely finished with pomegranate season. I had my last one last night.

Since November I’ve lost ten pounds. Almost enough to get into the smaller pants that have been waiting for me for over a year. Almost. I’ve dropped two sizes since moving here, and in a few weeks I’ll probably drop another.

But with the weight loss has come a realization of the damage I did to my skin from such high sugar consumption and years of stress. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get a handle on stress. It’ll wreck your body like nothing else.

I went out to dinner with a few friends over the weekend and ate some wheat bread. The next few days brought back and rib pain, a reminder that wheat just doesn’t work for me anymore.

My body is becoming more sensitive to food with quicker responses following violations. Sometimes I’ll eat something and my heart will start beating really hard and fast. Coffee causes an almost immediate heat and flushing to my face.

Most aches and pains I’ve had over the years are gone, but now for some reason my left shoulder is hurting. I’ve read that some people are sensitive to arachidonic acid, an amino acid found mostly in red meat (but also produced by the body), and the reaction is usually inflammation. I’m hoping that is not the case, considering my stockpile of meat. But I’ve got to get the bottom of this shoulder thing. Maybe it’s from lying on my left side watching TV. I used to lie on my right side, and that’s when my right hip started hurting.

As for memory, I’m not as prone to asking myself, “Why am I here?” in the sense of standing with my head in the fridge and wondering what I wanted. I don’t forget as often why I went to a particular room. And if I do forget, I remember quicker.

My body is also warmer than last year. The heater is set at a slightly lower temperature and my hands are usually warm, which is significant improvement. However, my feet are usually always cold.

I haven’t exercised in years, and I’m now realizing how weak I’ve become. Any sort of exertion and my heart begins pounding like mad. It’s kind of scary. Is something wrong with my heart or am I just out of shape? I’ve started exercising with a kettle bell. A little at a time.

I’m also easily out of breath. I have really done some damage to my body, and it will take time to heal it all. The best step I took was giving up gluten grains. Once my gut is healed from the damage inflicted by inflammatory responses to gluten, it’ll begin absorbing nutrients better and keeping out foreign proteins.

I always wondered why I lost the outer half of my eyebrows. Turns out that’s a sign of low thyroid. I quit using iodized table salt in preference to sea salt. Then I found out that sea salt has no iodine in it. The thyroid needs iodine, and mine wasn’t getting any. Couple that with a few years of emotional stress and voila! Low thyroid. This is simplistic, I realize, but a good starting point. I’m supplementing with iodine, and my eyebrows are slowing growing back.

My eyesight hasn’t improved at all but seems to be getting worse.

Benefits of a Sugar-free Diet

The greatest benefit to going off sugar is the lack of swings in hunger and appetite. When I used to eat predominantly plants, I would obsess about food and eat quite a bit at each sitting. I would eat often. Consuming mostly meat and fat is very satiating and my appetite is much more controllable. I can often go from dinner to dinner without any discomfort.

I’ve also noted that my moods are much more even. Less up and down. It takes more to irritate me. In fact, I’m usually in a very good mood despite being unemployed and in a rut.

Some Simple Things I Learned Last Year

I learned why some cutting boards have a shallow moat around the edge. I learned that the first time I put a roast on a board to rest and the juices dribbled onto the floor for the cats. I also learned why meat must rest: to allow the juices, which have been migrating toward the outside of the meat, to settle back into the meat.

I learned how to cut up and consume a pomegranate with the least mess and most gratifying oral pleasure. I’m not only anal but oral. Maybe from being bottle fed.

I learned how to deglaze a pan.

I learned how to make stew and chicken broth and brined beef tongue.

I learned how to skin, disembowel, and cut up a rabbit.

I learned what chateau briand is. It’s the big, thick part of a beef tenderloin.

I learned that saturated fat is good, vegetable oils are bad, cholesterol doesn’t cause heart disease, and sugar spikes insulin which causes fat deposition.

I learned how to play Texas Holdem.

The Social Scene

Oddly enough, I have developed quite a social life since moving to Erie, and I met most of the people I’ve befriended at Starbucks, a mere five blocks from my home. As is usual, most of my friends are men. I have one female friend and several male friends. But no romantic interests.

My friend Neal introduced me to Texas Holdem. A few taverns host the games. You pay $2 for a drink (water for me) and you can play a tournament. Several tables play at a time, and as players lose their chips, they leave the table. The player with a short stack of chips at a table with many players gets moved to a table with fewer players. Eventually you end up with one table. The winner gets $40 and second place gets $20.

The last time I played about 40 people showed up. I made it to the final table. This is my third time at a particular tavern where I survived until the final table. I lost my chips at third, sixth, and seventh places. Not bad for a beginner. It’s a lot of fun but completely nonproductive, which means it fits in well with my season of rut.

It’s an interesting crowd. Lots of smoking, cussing, fondling and slamming of chips, and the occasional emotional outburst when someone loses or wins. Most players are men. Many nights I have to shove something in my ears because it’s so loud.

My Furry Family

My life is enriched by the relationship I have with my cats. They are annoying and messy. But just engaging a cat for a few minutes makes me smile and fills my body with love.

Pinegar has taken (the late) George’s place at night. He usually starts off at the foot of the bed, but by morning he’s curled up in my arms under the covers. Some time during the night Lyla sneaks under the covers too. She likes to crawl down deep.

Every night Lyla and Pinegar sleep with me, and sometimes I let Arthur and Puddy in as well. But around three in the morning I’m awakened by Puddy mounting and biting someone in the neck. Then he gets kicked out.

Chester Longtail Wobblehouse will visit in the wee hours and scratch the bottom edge of the door. I don’t let her in until morning, and she heads straight for the bed. She’ll scratch the sheets until I lift up the comforter. Then she slides in, I slide in, and we have our little love session. This is the ONLY time she is affectionate with me. The rest of the time she runs away from me. Little freak.

Toby is sick again. She was sick several months ago. Didn’t eat much, vomited, urinated a lot and drank a lot of water. She’s been drinking more water than usual since then. The other day I fed her her normal ration, and because she was still hungry I let her have a bunch more food. Her belly filled up like a ball, and I heard the splat of her vomit in the early morning.

The next day she was hunkered over a box of books I was going to sell on Amazon. I took her off and made a mental note to cover the box because I thought she might throw up in it. I forgot to cover the box. She threw up in it, all over a $130 book and some other expensive books. Intuition worked for me but I didn’t follow up and paid the price.

So What To Do About the Rut?

What’s odd is I hear people say how bored they are. I remember the days when I used to be bored. But these days I’m never bored. I’m happy reading all day just about, and a few days a week going to Starbucks to talk with friends. The occasional poker game. I’m watching Stargate SG-1 again, which was a great show. And I have a ton of books to read.

I’m in a rut. I’m unproductive. There’s a temptation to DO SOMETHING. But sometimes it’s best to just relax and see where it takes me. The trees have all dropped their leaves and they too are in a rut. But they don’t fight it. They just wait until spring when they can begin their new growth.

To everything there is a season. And seasons of rest are followed by great growth.

I watched Avatar today at the theater in 3D. What a show! This is a movie that no fan of sci-fi or fantasy should miss.

Humans are hoping to mine a rare and extremely valuable ore from the moon Pandora, which is inhabited by a species called Na’vi who are 12 feet tall, blue skinned, and who can interface with nature using tentacles growing from their braided hair.

The humans failed to create a relationship with the Na’vi despite creating schools and teaching them English. So the scientists grew cloned Na’vi bodies–avatars–using Na’vi and human DNA from a few highly trained scientists. These scientists can then enter a closed chamber and connect their minds to the avatar and “live” in their bodies. Perhaps the Na’vi will listen to humans when they look like Na’vi.

But one of the scientists died before his time came to connect with the avatar, so his brother Jake was given the opportunity. This is exhilarating for Jake, a marine who lost the use of his legs. Jake’s assignment was to learn the secrets of the Na’vi so the military could oust the natives from their settlement on a rich area of ore. But Jake falls in love with the people and their moon.

It’s the same story of the Europeans destroying the habitat of the Native Americans and plundering its wealth. And that part is predictable but still infuriating. It’s basically Dances with Wolves with a little Last Samurai and McCaffrey’s Pern thrown in.

But I’ll tell you, this moon and its inhabitants that James Cameron created are absolutely breathtaking. The colors delight the eyes, the flora and fauna are rich and diverse, and the Na’vi are frankly beautiful and sexy. And they are above all things deeply spiritual and attuned to their moon which, as it turns out, is a living entity where all things are connected.

My two friends and I (and I imagine the entire audience) sat spellbound watching this feast of entertainment. Don’t miss this. Don’t wait for the DVD. Go see it. I’m going to go see it again.

On a Personal Note

I cried several times during this movie (which is pretty usual for me, being a softy and all), and when I left the movie I felt like my life was completely meaningless.

Here were these beautiful creatures completely connected to their land, their world. They were all slim and fit and belonged to a community that included not only their own kind but the creatures around them. They respected their world and cared for it like a mother cares for her children.

And what do we have? We have people living in boxes who hardly speak to their neighbors. Most of us couldn’t live off the land if we had to. I won’t even bother fishing in Lake Erie because the water’s so polluted there’s a limit to how many fish you can eat per month.

Me, I’ve got a body wrecked from years of poor diet, lack of movement, and stress, and I’m just trying to figure out what food is. I’m trying to heal my body and my mind and my soul. And I’ve got 20 pounds of fat that still needs to go.

We went to dinner afterwards. I had an overcooked beef filet made from feedlot beef, mashed potatoes, and tasteless, rubbery broccoli. These three foods would never exist in the natural world.

I look at the people around me, and they’re sick and fat and mostly unhappy. What happened to sitting around the campfire laughing and loving and beating drums and dancing? Do neighbors even borrow sugar or eggs from each other anymore? Why are we all holed up in our locked fortresses?

What happened to reaching for our dreams? Why am I not acting or collaborating on creative projects? Why am I writing a friggin’ blog? What happened to the life I imagined when I was 12 years old? And the wonder and joy and energy to pull it off?

Why have we all SETTLED?

I read about farmers getting arrested for selling raw milk while the pharmaceutical companies legally continue to crank out drugs that kill people. I read about Monsanto gobbling up the seed market and the USDA trying to regulate small farms out of business. I read about the Bilderberg group and their quest for domination of the planet. I read the fraud that is H1N1 and the corrupt WHO and the CDC. I watch my civil liberties picked off one at a time by the rich and powerful.

There’s so much corruption and our nation’s citizens can’t even join together to overcome it. Did we run out of energy in 1776?

Our world is facing a mass die off of many species because of loss of habitat and poaching and global warming. And people still wear furs and still bulldoze rain forests and still buy too much crap that they don’t need.

We breed too often and create children who are weak and sick. The most natural of events–breastfeeding–is an inconvenience, and sometimes it’s just harmful to infants because of the toxins passed in the milk. Then the children enter an educational system that doesn’t believe in critical thinking. Then they get a job working for someone else while the dream they had when they were 12 slowly dies inside them.

We are a sick species, and unfortunately we’re the dominant species on our world. And we keep taking.

If only I were an optimist.

Sorry this post is such a bummer.

The Long Drive to Warwick

I went to Warwick, New York, to spend Thanksgiving with my niece, Reagan, and her family. I haven’t seen her in 11 years. She was 21 when I last saw her, and now she’s a grown woman with a husband and two young girls.

The drive took about 6-1/2 hours. Much of the highway in Pennsylvania was in such poor condition that it was patched all over. The constant hammering of bumps began to give me a headache. I took a cup of coffee for the trip, and passed the first rest stop; next rest stop 19 miles. I can wait. Next rest stop: No facilities. (Maybe they should have mentioned that back at the last rest stop.) So park, trot and squat in the bushes.

When I crossed the border into New York, the signs said, “State Speed Limit 55 Miles per hour.” At least I think it was New York. I was on a four lane highway with a fenced median (two lanes on either side). The car ahead of me continued to speed along at 75 miles per hour, and I slowed somewhat. As I crested a hill at about 67 mph, there in the median was a highway patrol SUV. After I passed I looked in my rearview mirror and saw red and blue lights flashing. Busted!

Damn! No! No! No ticket! My adrenals seem to be in working order, because my entire body was flooded with adrenaline. I could feel it in my skin, my chest, my legs. The lights receded as traffic prevented the SUV from entering the lane. I cast about for an exit, some way to escape this monster bearing down on me. Then the lights were gone. Maybe I was safe.

The lights reappeared in the mirror. Damn! I can’t believe I’m going to get a ticket. But the radar god was gracious that day. The SUV pulled someone else over. Now, what to do with all this adrenaline?

New York is really anal about their seatbelt laws. Solar-powered signs littered the highway with “Click It or Ticket. It’s the Law.” Why is this so important that you need all this hardware every 30 miles? Fines double in work zones. Two tickets for work zone violation result in suspension of license. Cell phones verboten.

A Trip Down Musical Memory Lane

My back was hurting and I was tired as I got close to Warwick. (I was listening to Eckhart Tolle on CD, which is probably not wise on a long trip. I switched to the radio.) I saw a sign saying, “Welcome to Florida.” My reptilian brain panicked! How could I have gotten to Florida??? Then my evolved brain intervened and read the sign again, “Village of Florida.”

This reminded me of a trip I took to Italy, intending to go to Rome. Instead of driving south through Austria and down the west coast of Italy, I took a wrong turn and drove east through Austria. When my boyfriend Dennis woke up, he discovered my error. Whoops. We ended up in Lido di Jesolo and pitched a tent. We went sidewalk shopping and kept seeing T-Shirts and posters with the word Venezia on them. What is Venezia? Oooooh, it’s Venice! the place of $6 cokes and dirty waterways. Not a bad outcome after all.

I was listening to Seventies on Seven and John Denver was singing Rocky Mountain High. An avalanche of memories fell on me. From when I bought John Denver albums as a teen. A girlfriend who was in love with John. Memories of my grandfather’s house in Chico, California, and hearing the feather bed song, hunting the creek for crawdads. I began to cry, deeply touched by the beauty of the John’s voice. For a lost childhood, a lost innocence, a whole life ahead of me. A time when mortality was never considered.

The next song was by KC and the Sunshine Band. Now I was back at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, in the summer for Army basic training and AIT. Time off was celebrated in hot, stifling bars dancing to 70s disco, and getting ripped on cheap beer, dripping with sweat, meeting lots of boys, falling in love with a drill sergeant (or two).

Then Mr. Bojangles played. My memory of this song was painfully jumbled with memories of other depressing songs of loss that my mother played after my father left us for another woman, a woman we all knew because our family was friends with her family, and she worked for my father. But then her husband died, and my dad took his place. Sammy Davis Jr.’s version of Bojangles was my mother’s favorite.

Bette Midler singing Breaking Up Somebody’s Home and Skylark. Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, Neil Diamond, a rotating playlist about broken love to intensify the effects of her drinking and pain. My favorite heartbreak song was John Denver’s Please, Daddy, Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas.

I finally arrived at my niece’s. Here, another piece of my past, held in my arms. The only family I’ve seen in a couple years. Perhaps the only family I care to see.

The last time I saw her was when I visited my sister (her mother) right after her husband left for another woman. It was a visit to hell punctuated by the crying and screaming of yet another drunk woman suffering another crushing loss. And my niece, a young woman, trapped in the same home.

I chose not to have children. Didn’t want to pass on this legacy, and didn’t feel strong enough to overcome it. Will my niece embrace the tradition if her husband leaves her, and pass the legacy to her girls? I hope it never comes to that.

I am pissed off! I applied for heating assistance (LIHEAP) through Erie’s Department of Public Welfare (DPW). I was asked to submit paperwork explaining how I’ve been paying my expenses this year since I’m not employed. Makes sense.

So I wrote that I had unemployment for a short while, had a job for an even shorter while, and I submitted documentation. I’ve also been selling my DVDs and books. I didn’t want to sell my Star Trek Next Generation, West Wing or Deep Space Nine series. Buffy went, as did Superman, Lost and the Complete X-Files. I didn’t want to sell my DVDs, especially not at a significant loss. But I needed money to pay my utilities and eat.

Deep Space Nine sold the same day I was fretting about how I would pay my $240 fuel bill last spring. My heating costs around $1,450 per year. This doesn’t include electricity, which is an additional $50 per month. I haven’t bought any clothes other than the boots and coat I bought when I first got here a year ago. I helped a vendor at a craft faire sell clothing for a day, and he gave me a couple dresses and blouses.

I’ve made about $200 to $300 a month selling books from my private library. But the zippers in my jacket weren’t getting fixed nor were my shoes being repaired. I have to pay the IRS every month for back payroll taxes and I have to feed my cats. And my friend loans me his car a few days a week, so I need gas money. I can’t afford my own car.

I borrowed money from a friend to buy freezers for meat, and I borrowed money from my parents to buy the meat to put in the freezers and pay my back rent. I also asked for a business loan from them. It was extremely difficult asking them since I hadn’t even told them where I moved.

So I bought a laptop, a couple Flip video cameras, cheap lighting equipment, tripods and editing software so I can do videos. I registered a Website and paid for a year of Web hosting. I’m getting ready to pay $200 for transcription software. I’m hoping I can get work doing transcription for Website owners.

And I bought half a cow and a pig so my food supply was assured for the next year. When you’re broke and a health nut, food takes precedence over every other concern, and having a well-stocked freezer reduces stress considerably.

No, I’m not going to eat crappy, sick, tortured chickens for $1.89 a pound. Nor do I want to eat grain-, candy-, and chicken-crap-fed, antibiotic-injected cows standing in their own manure for months. How do I eat healthy meat on a food stamp budget?

THERE’S NO WORK HERE. Erie county unemployment for September is 9.2%. There are few jobs, especially for pushing-50 women whose only skill is typing. And I can’t get a full-time typing job because I damaged my fingers in 1993 and have had tendonitis since. I have to pace myself when typing.

You know what they pay office help here? $7.50 to $8 an hour. I’m not ruining my hands for that. Then there’s the issue of clothing and transportation. My only hope is another entrepreneurial endeavor.

So why am I so pissed this morning? The intake worker wants a letter from my parents explaining how much money they loaned me and what it’s for. I’m not about to ask them to write a letter to the Erie DPW explaining how I am spending the money they loaned me. They want supporting documentation for my measly “income” selling off my books and DVDs.

Since when is a loan or selling one’s personal possessions considered income??? I asked Ms. Desanto, “So if I sell my futon and my bed and my dresser and everything I own to sleep, eat and heat, this is considered income?” The answer was yes. “Since when is money I have to pay back considered income?” She informed me that all money coming in is income.

So if my parents loaned me, say, $6,000 in October, I would not qualify for LIHEAP because I’m ROLLING IN CASH! Never mind that it’s almost all gone and what’s left has to last me until I figure out how to make money with a new business.

The banking industry got $23+ TRILLION dollars to help them with their little financial crisis–a crisis they created–paid for by our taxes.

$23,000,000,000,000

But I can’t get a lousy $300 to help keep me warm this winter. LIHEAP is a Federal program paid for by the taxes I paid the past 35 years of employment and business ownership.

I could go out and get a shitty job at McDonalds making $7.50 an hour. That would earn me about $1,200 a month. The income cap on a one-person household is $16,245, so I would still qualify for LIHEAP with a full-time job!

Or I could throw everything I have into a new business where I might have a chance to earn a living down the road and save for retirement doing something more constructive than serving tortured meat and HFCS to sick people until I die of boredom and disgust.

Hmmm, that’s a hard one.

I was on a discussion board where the question “Is Health Care a Right?” was asked, and someone responded with

Is it a “Right” for our children to have a K/12 education??

Is it a “Right” for the fireman to come when your house is burning down??

Is is a “Right” to have police protection??

Well, I felt a rant coming on, so I thought I’d share it with you. Now, I haven’t been following the news or Obama’s plan or anything. Why bother? I know it will ultimately provide yet more taxation and funnel this money to pharmaceutical companies and corporate interests. That is the function of entrenched government paid for by those interests.

The entire medical model is so deeply flawed and corrupt that nothing can fix it. It must be thrown out and rebuilt, and that’s never going to happen. So you have to take charge of your own health and disconnect from this flawed system.

K/12 education is not a right but a requirement by law. The responsibility for educating our children has been taken away from the parents and given to the state. Breaking free of this system requires a lot of work to comply with the state’s requirements. Most parents, I believe, are just too harried to homeschool their children. A stay-at-home mom can’t be taxed, so women were encouraged to join the workforce.

Corporations ensure children are indoctrinated into our system of compliance, conformity and consumerism. It is no education if at the end you do not know how to balance a checkbook, start a business, negotiate a deal, plant and harvest a food item, or know what constitutes food or how helpful a fever is. If you want a good education, you have to pay for it out of your own pocket.

Otherwise, your taxes pay to create nonthinking drones for the system, hopped up on food additives and high-fructose corn syrup, their cognitive development damaged by excessive media multitasking.

People who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time, a group of Stanford researchers has found. –Science Daily

Most children will go on to work for someone else, filling their employers’ pockets while they go into debt buying fancy toys to distract them from their emptiness because the song that sings inside them is silenced. Would-be artists settle.

Firemen only protect houses that are accessible and clear of fire debris. They will let houses burn that do not meet minimum requirements. Homeowners are responsible for caring for their property to ensure minimal risk of fire and making sure it is accessible to fire trucks. You don’t care for the property, you lose the home.

Police protect those who obey the laws. Again, there is an agreement that you abide by laws in exchange for their protection paid for by your tax dollars. If you flaunt the law, if you break it and are caught, you are fined or jailed. This money helps pay for the protection of those who obey the laws.

Same should hold true for people’s bodies. People abuse their bodies with poor diet, lack of exercise and sunshine, and too much stress, among other things. They buy cheap food and expensive TVs. They can spend hours in front of the TV but can’t be bothered to read a book on nutrition. Any little discomfort and they run for a drug to suppress it. They consistently work against the body and then expect doctors to fix them all up when the body finally breaks down.

Supersizeme © photo courtesy of Xhanatos

I pay a premium for meat direct from the farmer, but my taxes pay for the grain subsidies so others can eat their cheap meat from the grocery store. I buy organic produce when I can, but my taxes are given as incentives to farmers to grow conventional grain crops that I don’t even eat.

I educate myself on health matters and make changes to address cause instead of merely suppressing symptoms, but my taxes go into a system of Medicare that I don’t use and hope to never use. (I don’t mind helping others; I just don’t want to be taxed into poverty.)

I could go to the VA hospital for statins to lower my cholesterol, but I don’t believe the cholesterol theory of heart disease and choose to purchase my own supplements and eat healthy food to care for my heart. And I try to find and express the song inside me.

I am being taxed to death for services I don’t use and then paying a premium for items I do use.

The whole system is corrupt and designed to benefit the banking industry and corporate interests. Corporations control the government and enact laws to their benefit.

The dietary advice given by those we trust is deeply flawed. Nay, it is deadly and designed to produce customers for the medical and pharmaceutical industries. And most people are just too tired and confused to give a shit.

The low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet that’s been pushed on us since the 1980s isn’t working! Avoiding the sun is folly. Spending half an hour on a treadmill is deadly to the psyche. How boring can enjoying the body be? We’re fatter than ever. Half of us are depressed and on pharmaceuticals.

But we don’t have to be. You have power to change your health and your life and live the dream you desire. It just takes a bit of common sense. You don’t need to read scientific studies to understand the simplicity involved. My next post will discuss some of the things you can do to improve your health.

Additional reading:

The War on Terror Is a Fraud
Shopping Local Farms for Pasture-raised Lamb, Pork, Beef, Poultry and Eggs
Symptom Suppression Does Not Equal Healing or Cure

A little over 200 years ago this nation was fighting for its independence from an oppressive government. The preamble to our Declaration of Indepence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Whenever Any Form of Government Becomes Destructive

This past week I wrote a couple posts about the federal goverment’s intention to increase control over our food supply, dictating what we can and cannot eat by controlling the distribution and sale of food.

Have a seat, kids

Which led me to the story of a police raid to a raw milk co-op where the owner was so overwhelmed that he had to be treated for post tramautic stress disorder, at great financial cost.

As it stands now, in Ohio, I cannot even serve a glass of my milk to a neighbor having dinner with us. Nor give them a bite of my cheese or pass him my butter. All jail-able offenses in my state. –Cow owner on Keeping a Family Cow

While it is illegal in some states to sell raw milk, it is not illegal to consume the raw milk from your own animals. Thus the co-op was born. Each member owns a share of the animals in a co-op, so they are legally entitled to consume the animals or their milk. The government has no jurisdiction in this case, but that’s certainly not stopping them from gestapo actions against the co-ops, especially when milk crosses state lines.

Careful! That stuff is responsible for killing millions of calves

A large co-op in California became the focus of the Health Department because of raw goat milk. They were told they needed to buy over $50,000 worth of equipment and a dairy permit to comply with state laws regarding the production of raw milk–from three goats!!! This was not a commercial endeavor. These are privately owned goats. And it was all started by one asshole with a grudge.

“They’re treating raw milk like heroin or crack,” says David Cox, a Columbus lawyer with the firm Lane, Alton & Horst who specializes in cases involving agriculture regulations. He now has six Ohio cases at various stages, and one common element in all, he says, is a sense of “vindictiveness” by the state’s Agriculture Dept. (ODA). “I think there’s competition among the directors of agriculture to see who can put raw milk out of business.” –Businessweek, Nov 2006

Our Health Department is also concerning itself with a private raw juice co-op. How about the health-conscious people arrested for narcotics when they brought their raw chocolate from Canada into New York and it tested falsely as hash?

If the NAIS and HR 2749 pass, these will give our federal government the legal right to storm private homes (now they just do it illegally), confiscate records and livestock, and arrest without warrant or cause (an action, if I’m not mistaken, that the Patriot Act condones).

If you care about your health, then you should care about the food you eat. Please sign the petition against HR 2749 or pretty soon they’ll be coming after you for giving your neighbor some radishes you grew in your backyard.

SWAT team poised to arrest illegal radish grower

I paid a visit to the Erie Veterans Hospital yesterday because I’ve been getting dizzy. I’ve been getting dizzy since 1991 or so, but it usually occurred only three or four times a year. A couple days ago I got dizzy four times in 24 hours. Cause for alarm.

The type of dizziness I get can happen any time, and nothing in particular seems to provoke it. Sometimes I hear a little pop, then my head tingles, and the room starts spinning. If I’m standing up, I sometimes start falling over. If I keep my head stationary, it’s not too bad, but if I move my head everything gets whacky.

In discussing this with a friend, he told me of an uncle who had the same thing, and his symptoms were diagnosed as ministrokes. Oh great. Now I’m imagining blood clots stopping the flow of blood in my brain capillaries, the capillaries breaking and my brain dissolving. There goes my intellect, my greatest endowment. How do I care for myself if I can’t work?

If I go to the hospital and I am having ministrokes or transient ischemic attacks, will they hospitalize me against my will? Who will feed my cats? Will they force drugs into me? Should I take the drugs or take my chances and continue with my new diet? I’m thoroughly bummed at this time, and I notice every little ache, pain or tingle.

But wait. Maybe it’s really a brain tumor. Maybe I’m dying. I envision finding homes for my cats, selling all my stuff, hopping in a car and going on a roadtrip to experience the United States as I’ve always wanted to. One last adventure. Then finding a place to blow my brains out before I lose dominion over my own body, both physically and legally.

And knowing the power of the mind, I’m well aware of the potential damage of these imaginative scenarios. You can make yourself really sick by just thinking you’re sick. So I go to the hospital.

The nurse takes my vitals, asks me if I know where I am, what my birthdate is, what the day and year are. I stick out my tongue, smile, perform physical feats on demand. My blood pressure is higher than normal at 147/90 but not alarming to the nurse. I’m put in a cold room to wait for a doctor.

A doctor comes in, listens to my symptoms, and schedules a CAT scan. The scanner is just down the hall so I’m taken there, lie down, and get an average of 1.5 mSv of radiation (Hiroshima was 40 mSv). The doctor never explains the risks of the CAT scan, doesn’t discuss it with me at all. Just takes charge of my body. I suppose he wants to make sure he doesn’t overlook anything. Do I have a choice?

I later learn that an MRI is much less damaging and is the preferred way to view brain tissue. But it’s more expensive. Maybe they don’t have an MRI machine at the VA. I’m relieved to report that my brain is normal. That nagging fear that I might have a tumor has been completely dispelled, so on the whole, I consider it a win trading negative psychic energy for a dose of radiation. Too bad I couldn’t get a tan at the same time.

The new shift brings a new doctor. Okay, so I’m diagnosed with vertigo. It could be a dislodged calcification? which is normally reabsorbed within five days. That can’t be it. Bacterial infection? The doctor wants to give me antibiotics. But I’m not suffering any other symptom of bacterial infection. After further discussion the antibiotic suggestion dies its welcome death.

Now the doctor wants to give me a particular antihistamine that calms the symptoms like dramamine calms motion sickness on airplanes or boats. I’d rather put up with dizziness than take a drug, and now that I know it won’t kill me, I can ride it out without fear. I have removed grains, legumes and dairy from my (paleolithic) diet. I’ve long suspected food allergies, so we’ll see if my new diet has any affect.

I keep redirecting him to cause, and he keeps steering me back to drugs. “Are you sure you don’t want it? Just in case? It’s just an antihistamine like Dramamine.” I reply, “But it’s not a cure. I have to keep taking it. It doesn’t address the cause. Now again, is the problem an inflammatory issue in the inner ear?” I’m looking for the physiological mechanism, and he’s explaining the symptoms. I want to say, “Yo, dude, I already know what the symptoms are. Enough with the drugs!” He talks too fast. I think he’s gone over his allotted ten minutes with me, and he moves on to the next patient.

A nurse takes my blood and I get an ECG. The bloodwork comes back positive, and my heart is fine. Breathe a big sigh of relief. I’m not dying. Why do we humans imagine the worst? Our imagination is a gift, and we abuse it in this fashion. Why not imagine the best and help your immune system along with happy thoughts?

I tried 80/10/10 and realize this diet will just not work for me. A mainstay of the diet is bananas–as much as 10 to 12 at a meal–in order to get enough calories for the day. I’m just not a fan of bananas. The most I could eat was five.

The amount of fruit required to get 2000 calories is enormous. I was obsessing all day about eating. Because I had to eat anywhere from three to four times the volume I was used to. Sure I could get used to it, but I don’t want to get used to it. To me, it’s unreasonable to stuff so much food in my mouth.

After four days my gums were bleeding when I brushed my teeth. My gums hardly ever bleed. I gave up on the diet after five days.

I visited a forum of 80/10/10 fans and posted for a while. Seemed like a lot of good information was being shared. Then someone asked what people would do if they got cancer. I said I would eat a lot of greens, then fast until hunger, followed by greens and fruit and some wild game or grass-fed meat. Shame on me!

Someone asked me why meat. I replied: “Because a little bit won’t harm me and might actually provide additional nutritional elements. My species has been eating meat for millenia. And I don’t care to be a food fanatic or purist.”

I got thrashed by these wonderful, health-minded people. They just kinda ganged up on me. Serious meat phobia.

One woman objected to the implication that those who didn’t eat meat are fanatics. But that’s not what I said. I said that I didn’t want to be a fanatic. A fanatic is not someone who says, “I don’t eat meat.” That’s just a vegetarian or vegan. A fanatic is someone who says, “I don’t eat meat and neither should you. It’s wrong.” I guess according to that definition, most of the people on this forum are fanatics because they sure didn’t want me to choose my own diet. I was no longer welcome on their forum.

She also wrote “Joanne, just because people have been doing things for ‘millenia’ doesn’t make it right. They’ve been killing each other too.”

My comment was along biological lines. To this woman it was an ethical issue. Apples and oranges. My species has been consuming meat for millenia and is biologically adapted to it. It’s fine with me if you, for ethical reasons, choose not to eat meat. Why would I care? What does concern me is your belief that eating meat is unhealthy (a biological issue) because you find it morally objectionable (an ethical issue). But then again, I felt that way years ago when I was younger and full of self-righteous idealism. It felt good to have a moral platform. I had just come out of Christianity, so I still had the mindset that there’s only ONE way.

The final blow was by a young man who prides himself on his sportsmanship in bike riding. He wrote: “this site is for crew that dont buy or bite into animal torture. the notion that we must continue the bloodshed cos we have been doing so for so long is beyond comphrehension.”

Afternoon snack chomps down on Arthur's nose

Maybe beyond his comprehension. He should watch my cats with a rodent for a while to see how inhumane nature is. Is it bloodshed when my cats drag in a rabbit and tear it apart? Why is it the animal kingdom can all eat each other but I as a human can’t eat an animal? Again, apples and oranges.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve seen my own fanaticism and extremism, and I’m just tired of it. I’m tired of it in myself and I especially don’t want to immerse myself in such a culture. The most irritating people I come across in the diet arena are vegans. Self-righteous, morally superior, egotistical, hostile, militant, and absolutely closed-minded. They insist that because veganism works for them that it works for all and is a moral imperative, which just isn’t the case. They just can’t seem to leave others be.

But, like Christians, it’s only the annoying ones you notice. It’s the ones who mind their own business and live according to their own conscience that you never know about, so a blanket judgment is out of order. But I haven’t met a vegan yet who wasn’t also a condescending jerk. They’re hard to love.

Let’s all let others live according to their own conscience. If someone wants to be vegan, good for them. If someone wants to eat meat, good for them too. Everyone is finding their own path.

Additional reading:
Thoughts on Raw Vegan, 80/10/10 and Paleolithic Diets

(I’m warnin’ ya. This is a long one.)

I’ve been interested in what makes for health for a long time. And I’ve been so blessed to have found and studied the tenets of natural hygiene. Natural hygienists have been studying health for almost 200 years while allopaths have been studying disease. If you’re a fan of Mercola, Fuhrman, Diamond, MacDougall, or anyone promoting fasting or food combining or addressing cause, then you’re a fan of natural hygiene.

I believe diet is important as is exercise, sunshine, rest, warmth, clean air and water, and love, hope, and community. And most important is purpose. Where are we as the apex of evolution without purpose? Probably in front of the television having our life sucked out of us.

People used to criticize me when I’d talk about health principles because I smoked. Just because I liked reading about health doesn’t mean I was able to give up addictions. And after I quite smoking, they criticized me because I drank coffee. After I quit coffee they found something else. It seems I wasn’t allowed to discuss health issues without being perfect (though they could without knowing anything and being on half a dozen drugs), but perfection had to match someone else’s idea. Am I perfect if I eat meat? Am I perfect if I eat grains? Am I perfect at 50 percent raw? How about 80 percent? Am I perfect if I use a toilet instead of squatting over a hole? These are the same sort of people who expect their preacher to be perfect but don’t mind talking trash about their friends on their way out the church parking lot.

A long time ago when I first started learning about health I had dinner at a friend’s house with three other women. At one point they were talking about the health benefits of garlic. The women were showing off their knowledge of how garlic is good for blood pressure and an antiparasitic, nodding their heads in smug agreement. I had the nerve to contradict the ladies and tell them why garlic did not promote health. After the meal I got up to go outside for a cigarette, and one of the ladies said in a self-righteous tone, “I’d rather eat garlic than smoke.” What does my smoking have to do with whether or not garlic is a healthy food? I can’t express my opinion without insult from you? You’re stuffing your fat, arthritic ass with more food than it can handle and you’re pointing the finger at me for smoking?

I got into a discussion with a woman about opiates in grains and how grains weren’t a human food. She disagreed with me and said that grains were a healthy food. So I asked, “Is this your opinion or do you have factual data to back it up?” After presenting lame argument after lame argument (lots of studies show it’s good. Name one. We’ve been eating it forever. No, just 10,000 years), she fell back on, “Why should I listen to you? You just ate a dinner roll.” Basically I had no right to challenge her unfounded assertion because I had eaten a dinner roll with my Caesar salad! (I guess I was the only person on the planet who ever did something she knew wasn’t good for her.) What does my eating a roll have to do with whether or not you can substantiate your claim? (But that’s what happens when you back someone into a corner. It’s even more unhealthy arguing with such people than eating a dinner roll.)

Nobody inquires or cares that I have given up alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, coffee (I’m back on that, actually, but only until the new year), soft drinks, most canned and boxed and frozen foods, my weekly pizza, hamburgers and hot dogs, salad dressings, the list goes on. And now I’m giving up negativity. I ate a dinner roll! I am unworthy.

I once told a waitress who often served me that another name for fluoride was “rat poison.” She turned her head and scoffed. She told me she was giving her toddler fluoride drops at the direction of her dentist. I told her to look into it, ask around. I was emphatic that fluoride is a poison and that this could be verified by her. I said, “Read the warning on the back of the tube of toothpaste.”

What did she do? She asked her dentist! And he assured her fluoride was good for her toddler. That’s it? You stopped there? What do you think he’s going to tell you? “Yes, in fact, I am advising you to poison your toddler. Do you need more?” And then she got pregnant again! Oh great! A dumb woman reproducing her genetic code and daily dumbing her offspring down by a deadly neurotoxin.

When I asked her about the toothpaste warning, she said, “Well, anything in excess can be dangerous.” The excess mentioned on the toothpaste tube was anything above what you use to brush your teeth! (You there, reading this. Go read the warning on your toothpaste.) So the amount needed to brush your teeth almost poisons you. Just an itty-bitty bit more and you need to call the poison control center. Does it take a rocket scientist to understand this warning? 

I suppose the idea of her poisoning her new baby was just too much. It was easier to believe the dentist. Another woman told me she heard a dentist advising his patient to swallow the toothpaste after brushing to get the benefits of the fluoride. (Go ahead and look up fluoride + neurotoxin on the Internet or YouTube.)

When I first moved to Oregon I stayed at a woman’s house for a short while. She saw my “natural” toothpaste in the bathroom and poked fun at me. A few months later she went to the doctor because of a strange rash on her face. Turns out the new toothpaste she was using had a chemical to which her skin was sensitive. It was tearing holes in her face!!! I guess I got the last laugh on that one.

I used to love debating health topics. I learned a lot about health from debating people, and I learned a lot about people from debating health. I’ve also learned to be a much better debater. But I’m choosing happiness now. And I guess I’m waking up from my own stupidity. I mean, how stupid is it to debate someone who doesn’t care, who doesn’t want to change? To try to educate someone against their will? Yes, the intellectual stimulation was invigorating, but more often irritating because the “intelligence” was missing, and people turn debates into arguments and then take them personally.

Discussing health and diet with others is like debating religion. Everyone has their mind made up on what they believe and their belief alone is correct. They read one book on the Mediterranean diet or metabolic typing or paleolithic diet, and they know all there is to know about diet. Natural hygienists have been studying diet for a couple centuries and they’re still arguing over it. Nobody really knows. So why do you, after reading a few books, think you know? I’ve read more than a few books and thought I knew, but I didn’t. I still don’t.

The more I learn about diet, the more I realize that there is no one answer for everyone. And the same answer that’s right today may not be right tomorrow. And the answer also may depend upon where you live and your level of technology. I’d like to be certain, too. But I’ve found a comfortable acceptance and peace with just not knowing.

A vegan insisted to me that a person could live in health without meat or supplementation, and that B12 could be acquired from young coconut. I asked him if he were dropped into the hills of Virginia in the winter how he would survive without killing animals. He said, “God will provide.” Maybe that’s true and God will rain down kiwis on you, but that completely ignores the issue of geography in diet.

It’s all well and good to extol the virtues of veganism with a Whole Foods in your neighborhood and an Internet connection, but what’s an Eskimo to do or a Montana rancher? (Or a broke person in Pennsylvania in winter?) It wasn’t until weeks later that he said, “You probably can’t get young coconut where you live.” Why didn’t you tell me that back when you insisted I didn’t have to supplement a vegan diet and could get B12 from young coconut?

I believe a raw, whole-foods diet is the optimum diet for most. Add a little meat and you’ve got the rest covered. But I also believe that our species never would have gotten as far as we have on that diet. I believe we have traded our tropical paradise and diet for dominion of the planet and further evolution, but we have also lost part of our humanity–and our health–by exploiting our mother and distancing ourselves from her bounty.

It is a credit to man’s intelligence and physiology that he can live anywhere on this planet with a trucking line and a refrigerator on the food straight from the earth without the help of Monsanto or Betty Crocker. But it’s a shame that most people need a grocery store to survive and wouldn’t know a wild edible in their own lawns.

Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. –Jesus of Nazareth

I think the man’s got a good point. People get sick a lot quicker from negativity and fear and hatred than from anything they eat. Stress will kill you before spaghetti will.

We weren’t dropping likes flies prior to the advent of shopping malls and pharmacies. Sure we had a hard time in the cities with infectious diseases, but that was before sanitation, transportation and refrigeration. The pro-vaccination crowd likes to take credit for improving the score, but I’ve never met someone from this self-righteous group who ever read a book on the arguments against vaccinations. (Most don’t even know Jenner bought his medical license.)

The worse offenders in my view of dietary self-righteousness are the histrionic, supersensitive vegans (if the shoe doesn’t fit, don’t throw it at me. Give it to charity.) who have turned animal eating into an abomination against all that is right and proper and holy. Some go so far as to try and turns their cats–obligate carnivores–into vegans. I am thrilled every time my cat brings home a mouse, and I beamed with pride the two times they brought in a rabbit, because I know that is its optimum food. Forcing nature to conform to ideology is twisted.

Years ago when I was on a vegetarian kick I got into my dad’s new Ford Explorer, I think it was, and exclaimed, “Did so many cows have to die??!!!” I did choose cloth in the last car I bought, but did I have to condemn my dad because he didn’t believe the way I do? So, my vegan friend, go ahead and eat your lettuce and hate me. I’ll eat my grass-fed meat and love you.

Nowadays you can’t amicably discuss health with anyone with having a pocketful of scientific studies to prove your point. But it doesn’t really matter if you do have them, because “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”I once presented over 20 scientific references at someone’s request to back up a claim I made, and he said, “I don’t recognize those publications.” Excuse me? Really? Since when have you been subscribing to health journals? He had read The Mediterranean Diet, believed everything in the book, and was an instant expert on the human dietary.

I posted on a discussion board that raw food contains living enzymes for their digestion so the pancreas doesn’t have to make them, thus relieving the pancreas of work. Someone came along with a snide, condescending comment about how anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of physiology would know that enzymes in food aren’t digestive enzymes so the pancreas must still produce them.

So I posted a study showing that there was a feedback mechanism between enzymes ingested (exogenousproteases) and the pancreas resulting in lowered pancreatic (endogenous) enzyme production. This means that the body sensed the enzyme protease (a digestive enzyme) had been ingested with the meal, told the pancreas, and the pancreas reduced production of that enzyme. So it’s logical to assume there’s a feedback mechanism for all enzymes.

Then the person claimed that enzymes don’t survive the stomach because they are proteins, after all, and proteins are broken down in the stomach. In response I posted a study showing that “enzymes do survive the digestive process.” In fact, Europe has been using enzyme therapy for quite some time now. His response? “That doesn’t prove they survive intact.” Excuse me? What part of the word “survive” confuses you? How does a functioning human brain contort information so easily just to hold on to a viewpoint? How long did it take to admit the world was round?

Anyone who’s been around knows that studies are only valid if they agree with your point of view! Plus they’re so industry-biased that you have to spend considerable time figuring out who paid for them, and you can’t really make any informed decision without reading the entire study. The abstract is just marketing. And I guarantee you can find a study to support any point of view. So what’s the point when we’re all blessed with common sense and intuition and a great big planet that loves us?

A woman asked, “Is soy good for you? There are so many conflicting studies.” I suggested, “Use the common sense god gave ya. Put a bowl of apples, a bowl of cherries, a bowl of bananas and a bowl of soybeans on a table. Would you eat the soybeans?” She responded, “Put chocolate on the table and it’ll win every time.” One of these is not like the other. You can use raw cacao beans, but chocolate is heavily processed, just like soy, and we’ve left the planet of common sense. Would you eat a bowl of raw cacao beans in preference to the other foods (if a raw food guru hadn’t first convinced you to)?

Then there’s the whole issue of people who love their diseases. Everyone will tell you they don’t want to be sick, but many of them are lying and don’t know it. There are huge benefits to being sick. Granted, most of this is subconcious, but the more invested they are in their illness, the more outraged they will be if you suggest they can reverse it. Some reasons people are ill:

1. They have another thing to complain about.
2. They can become an expert at something.
3. They get sympathy and attention from family, friends and strangers.
4. They aren’t held accountable because they are, after all, very sick. They can express their inner nastiness without reprisal.
5. Disability payments are pretty cool. Money for nothing.
6. They take away some of the control from people they depend upon, such as a spouse. “Don’t dominate me. I’m fragile.”
7. They are punishing themselves.
8. They become sick because their body has had to force them to slow down.
9. They get to continue being a victim, their preferred role.
10. They are just sad or tired and want to leave the planet or they want to go be with a loved one who has passed.

If you’re offended by this list, then I suggest you and your subconscious get together over a cup of coffee and talk it over.

People say, “My arthritis,” or “My diabetes,” or “My high blood pressure.” Your what? Why do you take possession of the naming of a diseased state? It’s like saying, “My purse.” Is it a thing, a form of matter in time and space? Why not say instead, “My immune function is compromised and confused by ingested milk proteins and is attacking my own tissues”? Or, “My years of consumption of refined grains and sugar have overworked and damaged my pancreas.”

A ton of books have been written on how to reverse most diseases, but most people are reading books on how to manage their diseases or find relief from the symptoms. And if I suggest that fasting might reverse their disease, do they buy a book on fasting? No, they tell me the disease is irreversible. Why is that?

People spend their whole life treating the effects of breaking the laws of nature. So few are willing to address cause. “Just make the pain go away. I love my soda.” When you got your first headache (or when your head first ached), did you try to figure out what caused it and stop doing that? Or did you just take an aspirin and forget about it? When the acid in your stomach first backed up into your mouth, did you try to figure out what combination of foods or moods made it do that? Or did you just take an antacid and repeat your folly over and over for years?

A neighbor of mine years ago was diagnosed with cancer. I’d see her outside drinking a Coke and think, What would a sick body need with a Coke? (For that matter, what would a healthy body need with it?) She’s dead now. When I first moved here and was staying with my friend Tom I rediscovered Cream Soda in his refrigerator. Tom bought a really nice brand of it, and within a week I had drunk six of them! I’d love to drink them everyday, but my body has no use for high fructose corn syrup. I like to pick my poisons, so coffee it is until I get off it again.

In my twenties I suffered from arthritis in my knees. My doctors told me I’d eventually be in a wheelchair. My knees were always swollen and I was in constant pain for seven years. I couldn’t walk around a block or stand for over 10 minutes. I took a vitamin/mineral supplement from a well-known herbal direct marketing company to lose weight and my knees healed themselves in one month. When I suggested my dad, who had arthritis, try it, he refused. He left an article outside my door on how direct market herbal companies were making people sick. Excuse me? Seven years of debility gone? You’re just going to ignore that? (One of many messages from my father that I wasn’t worth listening to.)

Decades later after my dad had had both knees replaced I gave him a book that guaranteed that the diet outlined therein would reduce or eliminate his arthritic pain in two weeks. My dad chose to live with the arthritis instead of follow the diet in the book. Maybe he just didn’t believe the book. But a two-week test was all it would have taken. I suspect it’s because he’d have to cut back on his red wine.

I read a book by Herbert Shelton wherein he said pain killers for headaches perpetuate headaches. I used to have horrible, debilitating headaches just about every week. So I thought I’d test his statement and quit taking aspirin, fiorinal, whatever I could get my hands on. Shelton was right. I don’t suffer from weekly headaches anymore. I hardly ever get them and when I do I know exactly what caused them. And I quit buying painkillers seven years ago. I won’t take any drugs and I’m appalled at how many people take them every day for just about anything. What happens when you throw chemicals into a biochemical, bioelectrical organism? You whack it out! If drugs make healthy people sick, what do they do to sick people?

People are lazy, and it’s a fact that they are motivated more by pain than pleasure. They hate change, and as long as the pain isn’t too bad, they will tolerate it. That’s not living. That’s just existing.

In my experience, the worst people to discuss health with are the experts at disease. Don’t tell a self-taught expert with diabetes they may be able to get off insulin with a proper diet, because they know all about the pancreas, insulin resistance, yaddy yaddy. They’ll give you all the reasons why they can’t get healthy.

People who study their diseases are heavily invested in them. What happens if they’ve spent years studying diabetes and have become the expert on their block only to find out they could have nipped it in the bud ten years ago by giving up their refined flours and sugars and switching to whole foods? They’ve just wasted ten years and they’re no longer a self-taught expert; they’re an idiot! That’s a hard pill to swallow.

I’ve told many people about the benefits of fasting in reversing just about every disease imaginable. Go without food? Are you kidding? Nope. Can’t be done. It’s a lie. Read a book on fasting? No, why waste my time. What? Statistics on diseases reversed through fasting? No, fasting is not healthy. I won’t do it. I love my steak and potatoes and Ben & Jerry’s.

And don’t ever dare to tell someone they are responsible for their illness. Tell someone their negative attitude, controlling personality, and packrat mentality based on fear are responsible for their heart disease and you’ve made yourself an enemy. You could be handing them the keys to the kingdom, but they’ll just find offense. They are, after all, victims. What do victims see? They see attackers.

Our medical system is happy to make victims of the ill. They collect millions of nonprofit, tax-free dollars to give to research scientists to war against these diseases but every patient pays for treatment. (Why would you want to war against your own body? Cut! Slash! Poison! Burn!!! Wouldn’t you rather love it into health?)

But when people do say, “Give me all the options,” the doctors say, “People don’t change. They don’t want to change. They want drugs.” And for many people it’s true. But look at how many are leaving allopathy and seeking out alternative medicine. Some people do want to change. Why assume automatically that they don’t?

But those enterprising people have to slog through marketing message after marketing message of pills, potions, and products to treat their symptoms. Greed and superstition stand between them and freedom. Do you know how long it took me to find natural hygiene? First I had to take bentonite and other intestinal cleanses, herbs for inflammation, tinctures, colonics, hundreds of dollars of Grade A, therapeutic essential oils. Thousands of dollars that didn’t get me anywhere.

And once they’ve settled on this therapy or that essential oil or that herb, don’t you dare suggest they’re focusing on the symptom and they need to address the cause. Because they just bought $150 in essential oils. And they’ve got their echinacea and St. John’s wort and stinging nettles. They’ve made up their minds. The portcullis has closed. Yep. Keep eatin’ those pizzas and hot dogs and drinking that beer and cola, but take your echinacea and lysine! And then when you get sick say, “It’s genetics. It’s god. It’s a germ.”

Trying to teach people natural hygiene is a huge undertaking, because in order to begin teaching the basics, you have to tear down the existing foundation of belief: why Pasteur was a lousy scientist who stole from Bechamp; the real reason for the decline in infectious diseases; disease as remedial action; there is no cure; the poisoning effects of herbs; the benefits of daily sunshine. And on and on. Swimming against a strong current full of cripples on rafts paid for by drug companies mesmerized by trashy sitcoms, a continuous barrage of pharmaceutical commercials ,and seasonal cold and flu reminders?

The worst part is keeping up with what’s going on in the “health care” industry. I subscribe to several sites that send me emails about the latest doings of the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, the AMA, the hospitals and doctors, the graft, corruption, greed. Like I want a constant barrage of that negativity and human debasement in my inbox so I can keep informed so I can quote the latest scientific study to somebody who really doesn’t care! I know these agencies are corrupt. So do I have to take a hammer to my head every day in the form of email reminders?

And now I’m really going off the deep end. Because I’ve come to believe that illness, poverty, unhappiness, and all those negative states are just effects of a more insidious cause: FAULTY THINKING.

If you think you’re sick and can’t get well, then you’re right. You can’t and never will. If you think you can get well from your illness, yep, you’re right. You can get well.

Today I choose to be happy instead of right.

Additional Reading:
I Guess I Lied about Changing My Blog Focus

This post is in response to a question I received from Sarah in a comment. She asked:

I dont understand why you let yourself slide into this position. Why? bankruptcy.losing your house,credit,credibility,and business and reduced to the kindness of strangers and all that. kinda like all those harvard grads in the banking industry whom have just pushed the US into a depression. they have taxpayers to bail them out, but you don’t.

I’ve blogged a lot about how I got into my current financial situation. You can read about it if you click on the topic of Business and Finance > Finance. It was a combination of business mistakes I made and a failing economy. Books aren’t in high demand when people can’t afford fuel or food.

The economy has been tanking for over two years. Our government is bankrupt. Financial institutions are failing. People all over are losing their jobs and homes. But I didn’t lose my house. I gave it back to the bank. Just like I’m giving back my car. I’m giving it all back and starting over, which is my legal right.

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it rains.—Robert Frost

Don’t think it was the Harvard grads that pushed us into a depression. They were just doing what they were taught to do and what people wanted them to do. Everything they did was perfectly legal. Just like my bankruptcy is legal.

Our problems started when we allowed fractional reserve banking and were compounded by the creation of the IRS and the Federal Reserve.

This cycle repeats. People get into debt, can’t pay it, and the banks take possession of houses and property, property on which they have often already received huge sums of money through finance charges. If they risk too much and lose, the government bails them out by printing money, and our currency is further devalued. Businesses are bought for a fraction of their value. Stocks are devalued and snatched up by the wealthy who sell them when they recover.

If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.—J. Paul Getty

It’s like this: I am a banker. I have the ability to create fake money but my customer base is tapped out. So I dream up a new scheme that allows a new customer base–poor people with no credit–to own homes. So I teach Harvard grads how they can get rich with this new system, and they go out and sell it to the public. I’m so very clever.

I know I can get the poor people to pay me 30% interest for a while before they default, if they default. But when they default, my government covers my loss. Meanwhile, I’ve pocketed the interest and lived high on the hog. I risked nothing.

You see, I paid to put the politicians in place who would establish laws that allowed me to get away with usury and that cover me in case of default. I own all the media, which is constantly drumming into your head that you need silly things that cost a lot of money. I own stock in all the major corporations that produce garbage for you to buy. And I own stock in the pharmaceutical companies that make the antidepressants and drugs that treat the diseases that your stress produces, stress further compounded by the nightly terror known as “TV news.” And when I really want to speed things up, I start a war, finance both sides and then buy up the countries when they are bankrupt.

The rich become richer and the poor become poorer.

Then the cycle turns and our economy booms, we all bet on a happy future by buying houses and cars and TVs and boats (all financed, of course), we’re happy for a season and it starts all over again.

OUR MONEY IS BEING HARVESTED.

And we’re offered a million entertainments, drugs, and pharmaceuticals to dumb us down and keep us from revolting. Well, I’m not on drugs, pharmaceuticals or benumbed by entertainments. On the contrary. This situation has compelled me to learn about how I got here, how the banking system works, how money was created. I have educated myself into clarity. And I’m checking out of the system.

I haven’t been reduced to the kindness of strangers (not sure where you got that from), nor have I lost credibility. I have lost my high credit score, which simply means that I will no longer be able to borrow imaginary money from banks (strangers) and pay exhorbitant finance charges that not long ago were illegal in this country.

I made a choice that was in my best interest. I decided I was not going to work for the banks for the next twenty years. I choose freedom.

If you really want to help the economy, get out of the credit game, no matter the cost. Pay off the debt or get out via bankruptcy. It’s only when we stop relying on the banks and begin working together as a community that we’ll be able to avoid the ups and downs manipulated by bankers.

The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight-of-hand that was ever invented. Banking was conceived in inequity and born in sin… But if you want to continue to be slaves of the bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let the bankers continue to create money and control credit. –Josiah Charles Stamp

I leave you with this humorous tale.

An American INVESTMENT BANKER was at the pier of a small coastal Greek village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna.

The American complimented the Greek on the quality of his fish and asked, “How long does it take to catch them?” The Greek replied: “Only a little while”.

The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Greek said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The Greek fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play cards with my friends, I have a full and busy life.”

The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Athens, then London and eventually New York where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The Greek fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-25 years.” “But what then?” The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions … Then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play cards with your friends.”