Life'll Kill Ya

It figures—the day after I wrote this, I found a book I’ve had for years that will be a great help in getting my body more toned in fairly short order.

That’s what I’ve been sorely tempted to tell a lot of people lately. But, despite my wishes otherwise, it simply isn’t true.

Those of you who’ve seen me recently, or seen some recent pictures of me, almost certainly know what’s coming. While I have recognized the truth for some time, it’s been harder to talk about it publicly, for a variety of reasons—and yes, pride is among them. I’m talking about it, finally, in hopes of getting some good ideas from individuals in similar situations, and to help others avoid falling into it. In all honesty, I never thought I’d be here, but like so many others, my inattention and lack of self-control caught up with me.

Is this something that’s part of the parental territory? Or part of the “wisdom” that’s supposed to come with aging? Or am I just losing my mind?

That’s essentially the message—delivered through Medicratese and Newspeak, of course—from the American College of Physicians in recent testimony to Congress [PDF]. I spotted the press release at EurekAlert.

I've recently started sharing another kind of energy therapy with my friends and clients. There are many, many different ways to healing with energy therapies, and EFT is one of the easiest to learn, but some people find it even more effective or easier to do Zpoint.

ZPoint is a simple, easy to learn way of truly becoming your authentic self. There are no complicated instructions. There is no equipment to buy. Its as simple as reading a 5 line healing program and repeating a special cue word whenever you are feeling stressed or upset or wish to release a harmful self destructive life pattern.

I had tried the Zpoint method a month or so ago, just reading it off the web page, but hadn't seen any particular benefit in it, though several clients have reported good results.

Even though the Zpoint people insist that there is "nothing to buy," they sell their DVDs and CDs rather aggressively. I saw no need to buy any of them, in great part because I didn't see any need for another therapy, but my sister sent me two of the CDs recently.

So, last night I sat down to listen to the first CD, and decided to do some EFT tapping while I went through the Zpoint procedure.

WOW! Many shifts, changes and insights that were new.

I've been struggling with a cataract (right eye) for the last year, sometimes making progress and sometimes seeing marked deterioration. I finally broke down last week and made an appointment with an eye doctor for the end of this month, but am determined not to give up trying to heal this myself.

This morning my vision is so much better that I'm typing this without my glasses...

I'll continue with the Zpoint, and the EFT... and let you know what happens.

Try it on everything, even if you think there is no way in the world it can make any difference. This is amazing!

I've always had a problem remembering some things, mostly the small details such as adding things to shopping lists, making personal phone calls, and finding items I'd "put away."

After the life changing events that brought me to become an EFT practitioner, I was still plagued by these minor lapses of memory and resolved to find the answer. The admonition to try EFT on "everything" finally led me to begin tapping for those small things, and a whole new vista of life opened up.

Mr. Endervidual has been hitting ’em out of the park with his reviews lately, and this week’s collection is no exception. Many items well worth checking out there, but I’m going to point to just one article he featured, along with a related one I found on my own. In that order, then:

The Science of Lasting Happiness by Marina Krakovsky
The Midlife Happiness Crisis by Joel Waldfogel

Good essays to review when the temptation to play solitaire with one’s pearl-handled deck rises.

Yesterday I took a trip to the Big City nearby to do some errands, and to have dinner with some dear friends. It was a very enjoyable outing, even if much of our talk focused on the sad state of Amerikan life. But before I get to that ...

I drove a Ford Focus part of the way -- it's a friend's car and is being stored here while he's off adventuring. It is an aggravating piece of shit car. The first time I attempted to drive it, I ended up aborting the effort because I couldn't determine how to put the damn thing into reverse. Turns out one must pull up on the boot that covers the gear-shift stick, but there's no obvious sign that that's the magic key. [Yes, I know that Ford has been using tricksy maneuvers for reverse access in its cars for years -- I used to own a Mustang. Even that knowledge didn't help me figure out what to do.] Yah, maybe I should've read the manual before hopping into it, but a car that requires one to do that before being able to use fundamentally important stuff has been poorly designed. To get the front seats to fold forward in order to access the rear seat area, one must find and pull two levers, one of which is annoyingly close to the door panel. And, worst, there's a stupid upshift indicator arrow that lights whenever the car decides the driver ought to shift. Damn thing comes on even when one's downshifting. I easily solved that problem, though -- I moved the seat until the top of the steering wheel obscures the arrow. The gear shift is sloppy to the point of requiring active attention to ensure one's shifting into the proper gear. The car's peppy enough for an economy car, and it is fun to be driving a stick again, but the engineers who did its interior would benefit greatly from a refresher on ergonomics and good design.

***

Much of the drive to the Big City is on a road that's under construction -- from a two-lane road to a divided, four-lane road. Much of the fun is also being sucked out of the road -- curves and/or hills are scaled back or eliminated completely as the road sometimes moves quite a distance from its original path. The project has been a controversial one for years 'round here, and folks whose land was stolen to enable it are still voicing displeasure. One barn has this graffito:

If taxes were income we'd all be rich.

At first blush, I took that fairly literally (in terms of the redistributive aspects of taxation) and almost dismissed it. But then I thought about it again ... and there's truth in those words. Instead of thinking in terms of receiving money, but rather of lifting the burden of paying all the taxes Amerikans labor under, many of us (especially the less wealthy) would be much better off.

***

We met up with our friends at our usual place for dinner; all of us seemed to have a grand time discussing issues and ideas fairly freely [as freely as anarchists dare in public establishments these days]. The talk turned to health care ... not mine, but our friends', as they both have a condition that can be tricky to diagnose and bring under control. She's just now going through that process, and her story was quite telling, particularly for the amount of control her [allegedly good] insurance has over the care she's offered. After a short course (under two weeks!) of one oral med that wasn't working, it was recommended that she move to a much more serious, and invasive, treatment -- even though many other oral meds, with varying mechanisms of action, remain as viable options. She fortunately knew about a test that could show if the suggested course would help her, and insisted upon getting it before considering the invasive treatment option. The results revealed that it would be disastrous for her -- yet her MD is still pushing that course. My friend wants to try a different medication, having researched it online, but despite her willingness to pay for it all out of pocket, the MD is reluctant to prescribe it. It appears that's the case in part because the MD isn't very knowledgeable about this med. Why not? It isn't in the formulary (a book of the drugs available through the pharmacy provider and covered by insurance).

Of course, my friend is free to choose another insurance option -- during the one month of the year when such changes are allowed. In looking over the "choices", she discovered that all the plans use the same pharmacy provider, so switching wouldn't help her.

It's bad enough in my opinion when insurance -- which was originally intended to help an individual or family cover unforeseen medical expenses -- becomes a gatekeeper to basic diagnostic and treatment options. It's unconscionable that insurance policies have apparently helped breed lazy physicians who don't care enough about their patients to stay up to date on new options, irrespective of whether they're covered or not.

One could argue that this physician is one of the worst ones in that regard, and that others are better. But even in my insurance-free forays into the world of medicine recently, I've seen signs that the decline into McMedicine is broad. I remember when the patient was the customer, and even though the doctor held much of the power in the relationship, he knew that and took it seriously, trying to do the best possible for his customer. Those physicians seem to be in extremely short supply these days, at least in mainstream medicine. SimpleCare seems to be an exception, but isn't too widespread. But overall, insurance seems to be just another means of wresting control from individuals -- and to some nontrivial degree, without the knowledge of many, as they still trust that their healthcare providers are making recommendations based on what's best for them rather than what the policy will allow. A sobering cautionary tale for anyone who relies on the mainstream medical system ...

***

Okay, enough from the curmudgeon within. It's shaping up to be a nice day here, and I intend to spend much of it away from the computer (a welcome change!) and enjoying myself. I'll be tinkering around on various projects about the place -- including some glass work, I hope -- and lounging on the trampoline, reading. What, you've never stretched out on a sun-soaked trampoline? One of the best possible places for a snake to bask ...

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." I don't know if I've got that exactly right, but put that way it fits my thinking about the medical profession these days. A few weeks back, I went to a specialist regarding my breathing problems. She recommended surgery. This despite the fact that my online research showed that other, noninvasive treatment options could be pursued first. Would it surprise anyone here to reveal that her specialty is a surgical one, that she probably thought she'd be doing the surgery on me?

Internists (a general name for MDs who aren't surgeons) follow the same general pattern: they try any number of medications -- typically available only by prescription, thereby ensuring repeat business as one must make appointments at regular intervals to get the valued permission slip again. In some cases, if the nostrums don't work, the person gets passed along to a surgeon to see if cutting will solve the problem. But cutting also creates problems, as I discovered after I had a tonsillectomy.

I've a friend who's an MD, but who's strayed from the allopathic model to focus on nutrition. He isn't opposed to using prescription meds where necessary, but he's highly skeptical of the medico-pharmaceutical system that dominates American medicine. Do you know how Premarin (one of the first estrogen drugs many women took for menopausal symptoms) got its name? The estrogens come from mares' urine. (Which do you think would work better in a woman's body -- horse-derived hormones or human ones? Or ones that are "bio-identical" -- meaning they come from plant sources, but are the same molecules as in our bodies?) That's just one example of how monopolistically-protected medicine is created, but they all have to be given some unique twist -- a special procurement process, or something extra added to the natural substance, like a hydroxyl molecule tacked on somewhere -- so they can be patented. Those extra ions or molecules may seem like a small thing, but who knows how much havoc they can wreak in a body that has never experienced that configuration before?

That's not to say that all things natural are healthful to every indivdual. My hyperactive immune system is proof that isn't true, as it complains about many natural substances when they enter my body. But it makes sense to me to keep things as simple as possible; and it also makes sense to me that industrial processing of foods -- even if they're "fortified" with vitamins and minerals in that processing -- messes with the chemistry of the food, and possibly diminishes its nutritive value to us. A recent article at Lew Rockwell reminded me of the Weston A Price Foundation, which I'd discovered some time ago. As far as I've read, it's pretty persuasive to me. It largely fits into my preference to make foods from scratch ... but I'm increasingly wondering how nutritious my meals are, when they rely on processed pastas, canned or frozen vegetables, and highly processed milk. John Mackey's comments on industrialized farming in my interview with him also set me to wondering about possible nutritional differences in vegetables ... the taste difference between a supermarket-bought tomato and one grown in one's garden surely arises from more than just picking the former before it's fully ripe.

Yet I hear from other medical professionals whom I know that those like my aforementioned friend are, at best, a step above oldtime snake oil salesmen. The major charge against them seems to be that they "push" their own formulations. Anybody else see the catch-22 here? We can't have the state meddling into medicine, but we can't have all these people creating and hawking their own wares ...

It's very confusing, even for a scientifically literate, smart snake like myself. Despite my enjoyment of gardening, I've little desire to return to an entirely pre-industrial mode of food-gathering and preparation; I've too many other interesting things I want to do. Yet there's got to be a better balance than I have now. I do know that the state's interference is much more harmful than beneficial -- for a somewhat-related take on this, see this interesting article on the meth-epidemic-that-really-isn't from the good folks at Stop the Drug War. Or the evidence that the anti-steroids hype is simply that. It's crystal clear that the state's interest is control, not my or my family's health. I intend to stay as far away from that as I can.

I don't know to what extent nutrition is the basis of poor health and disease; but it makes sense to me that it's an ongoing contributing factor. And if I can fairly safely stave off some of the undesirable effects of aging, I'm willing to give that a try, too. I'm not looking to get my twenty-something body back ... just to forestall the frailty and disease that often accompanies aging. So I've decided to give my nontraditional MD friend's approach a go. He may be another variant of the hammer-nail situation I described at the outset, but I've not given his hammer a thorough try yet.

My trust in him is based on three years of knowing him, hearing him speak on his approach and methods, and one personal datum: when I told him that I'm currently controlling my asthma fairly successfully with vitamin C, he smiled and said that's what he'd've recommended to me. He didn't try to sell me his vitamin C product(s), or his newsletter; we spoke of general nutritional issues and new medical research that might offer help for me. (Not that I'm opposed to his selling his products; it is, after all, how he earns his living.) His combined focus meshes well with what I want in a medical professional, so I'm going to place my trust in him and see what happens. I bet I won't have to worry about my medical records from his clinic being assimilated by the medicrats, either. Heh.

Ian asks, Have you ever thought about dying?. Yah, I have ... probably too much. His long post is well worth reading and considering in totality; I'm going to pull out just a bit of it:

Have you ever really thought about dying? Or being killed by someone else?

I recommend the experience for everyone actually. Puts a whole different perspective on things, when you are faced with it, and it’s not just a fear.. but it’s there, baby. It’s there. Inches away. Inches away from oblivion.

Yeah, I’d recommend the experience to a lot of people. Might change their perspective a bit. Jean Charles de Menezes was just some dude. But you know what? You’re just some dude or dudess too.

I've seen enough people die to know the truth of "inches away from oblivion". I honestly don't know if I'd prefer for my death to be unexpected and fast, or a slow grope that gives me time to prepare, at least attempt some closure on important things.

But, more important than my mental blatherings on my upcoming date with mortality, Ian pegs what I find so loathesome about every aspect of the state: its workings make so many individuals forget that each of us is just some dude or dudette. Each of us has our own hopes, dreams, preferences, quirks, sillinesses, pettinesses, loves, fears, goals ... and its monopoly of force tramps through 'em all, the gun wielded by some other dude who thinks that because of that gun, or because of some vote or rule, he has the authority to steal from others' lives. It sickens me -- not just because of the theft from my life, but because I know that thefts from others' lives hurts them too. And it could hurt all of us in ways we never know -- the promising biologist who doesn't get in to grad school because of "affirmative action" ... the gifted artist who never even discovers the wonders held by her hand and brain, because taxes steal so much of her pay she can barely make ends meet ... and on and on it goes. The greatness of humanity springs from individual thought and action, from voluntary effort; and much of it is chained -- or worse, aborted before it's viable.

Yeah, I think of dying ... I used to think it'd be awful -- there's so much I'll miss out on after I'm gone. Most of the time these days, that regret is more than offset by knowing that, at last, I won't care any more about all this crap that, rightfully, shouldn't steal any dude or dudette's life.

Mama Liberty, from The Price of Liberty, forwarded me an entire article from the von Mises Institute, asking if I'd seen it. I don't generally visit that site (not because their material isn't good -- they often cover areas I'm less interested in, and tend to do so rather academically ... and there are only so many hours in each day), so I missed How Medical Boards Nationalized Health Care. It is an excellent piece that clearly explains the development of the complex fascism inherent in the AMA and state medical boards. A choice quote:

Attaining an MD degree represents a great deal of work and a considerable monetary investment. License revocation means not only loss of the doctor's livelihood, but a devastating blow both socially and professionally. Few physicians will go anywhere near that possibility. The ability of state medical boards to intimidate doctors into complying with their wishes is legendary. .... Accordingly, no outcry should be expected from within the profession. Health care in the United States has been nationalized—not by the government, but by a trade association.

The entire thing is well worth a read (although I don't agree with all the author's assertions). Although not a main focus, it also hints at the often too-subtle difference between corporatism and capitalism, which Freeman LC touched on a few days back. That's a distinction that's becoming increasingly important, and I hope to address it more formally sometime soon. [Snake waits for hysterical laughter to die down ...]

Tangentially related, I see in the news headlines this morning that the judge in the Terry Schiavo case has cleared the way for her feeding tube to be released. I haven't followed the case closely, not because of lack of interest, but because it brings back too many painful memories for me.

My quest to learn more about my ongoing health concerns continues -- and, at this point I guess those concerns ought to be disclosed if any readers want to follow along and actually understand anything. I have asthma, and allergies, and have developed chronic sinus problems; the latter seems to be a common course of both of the former conditions. Now, if you're picturing a frail, delicate hothouse snake, you got the wrong picture. Despite these problems I'm probably healthier than most individuals: normally my breathing is good, my asthma fairly easily controlled with a minimum of prescription meds (but still more than I'd like), and I can enjoy camping, hiking, and many outside activities without any difficulties.

My primary challenge right now is that I've almost totally lost my senses of smell and taste, from the sinus problems. Both senses are very important to me (because of my love of cooking, plus other reasons), and I've been trying to find non-allopathic treatments (no prescriptions, no surgery) that will help reduce those problems. Recent web research suggests that chronic sinusitis may not be caused by bacteria, as has been widely thought; rather, it's a complicated cascade of problems brought on by fungal infection. One doctor's approach to handling the problem set me to laughing -- both in amusement and wry dismay ...

I mentioned yesterday that there's more to the story than I was able to include in my recent essay The FDA is Going to Kill Me. Here's some of it.

Since Tom covered his turf already, I'll just chime in to say that Cat's article there is quite good. Our resident feline has been prolific of late, as I see that she teamed up with Bob Wallace to write a terrific satire at The Price of Liberty. Its title is Home Cooking Outlawed for Child Safety. That would give me one more way to become a felon every day! ;)

Moving along, in addition to making some delicious crackers yesterday (with more to come today) and finishing up the fruit leather project, I also completed an essay, which Mama Liberty has also published at TPoL. It is The FDA is Going to Kill Me. I had much more I wanted to say in that essay, as the subject of health freedom is complex ... maybe I'll get some time to provide some backstory here later today.