You have to admire a guy who has demonstrated virtually bulletproof health, strength, and athletic accomplishment made possible by simply changing his diet to whole food plant based, while continuing his ongoing focus on increasing his performance.
You also have to admire his grace under pressure. This was his reaction to a heckler at the ongoing Australian Open:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ver9cx6heQk
Let me start this blog by mentioning a fact that may not be well understood, and that is all of us developed world citizens, but particularly us US citizens, over the age of 20, already have early stage heart disease. It takes decades to develop, and by the time we are middle age we are ripe candidates for being felled by heart failure.
However! Prevention and even reversal are possible with certain diet and lifestyle modifications. Here is one lifestyle mod I find particularly intriguing for the simple reason it is quite easy to do LOGISTICALLY. Which means it takes only minutes of your time, and it is constantly at your fingertips. All it requires is to become comfortable with being moderately physically stressed for brief periods in your average day.
And let me also say, repeating again, that it is my personal opinion based on reams of data, borne out by my own personal reversal of heart disease (I would have very likely been dead 2 decades ago), that a fresh whole food diet based on high in fiber whole ripe plants, will accelerate the disease prevention/reversal process. Together, the increased function of both, is an exponential.
Start where you are, and enjoy the good feeling of getting better and stronger:
https://youtu.be/q1C2u7ldIxM?si=Ct75Qa84jZwmVupL
The health of financial markets and the economy is a bit different than my usual focus in this blog on physical and emotional health.
Robert Prechter is virtually unique in the world of financial market analysts because he flips the usual paradigm that markets are driven by news and fundamentals, and are instead driven by swings in social mood that are structured as fractal forms that are larger and smaller, and thus also of longer and shorter duration. He bases this on the idea we humans are "herding animals" to an extent we are not consciously aware of, and this would go a long way toward explaining periods of exuberance and pessimism in financial markets.
Bob is an interesting fellow in other respects as well, for one he has been obsessed with figuring out which individual was actually responsible for the literary output of William Shakespeare. If you find that interesting you can read more about it here:
https://oxfordsvoices.com/letter/
and here:
https://oxfordsvoices.com/prologue/
and at the home for Oxford Voices:
And now that we've established Bob Prechter as an intellect to be reckoned with, let's proceed to a recent presentation on financial markets, which, if you're like me, you will find fascinating.
Why is it that so many people get better on a juice diet?
What’s actually happening?
What's actually happening is that nobody juices a turkey sandwich or ham on rye.
Nobody's juicing bread.
Nobody's juicing spare ribs.
Nobody's juicing the foods that were making them ill in the first place.
Typically, when people go on a juice diet of any kind, they're juicing either only vegetables or only fruits, or both fruits and vegetables.
When on a juice diet, you STOP eating the very foods that were the worst health offenders!
Therefore, the quality of what they've eaten has improved dramatically, because they're choosing to consume fruits and vegetables over all those other things that were making them ill.
Wouldn't you feel better if you stopped eating meat and bread?
If you start eating all the right things, whether you juice it or not, you're going to feel better.
In that sense, I don't buy into the idea that juices are better for us than whole foods.
I don’t believe that juices are magical in any way.
But I’m not anti-juicing, either.
I enjoy having fresh orange juice before dinner many days of the year.
If you enjoy vegetable or fruit juice, fine. Have fun making things for you and your family.
But let's not mislead anybody by telling them that juices are better for us than whole foods.
That's a myth.
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The above is written by Dr. Doug Graham. His message puts many people off because he seems so far out, so opposite what we grew up doing and believing that it couldn't possibly be true. Here's what I can tell you - Listening to Doug's message and learning how to implement it in my daily life has transformed my health by 180 degrees. And I've personally met and spent time with hundreds of others who had the same experience. Many of these people are also athletes who went from being mid-pack performers to front of pack performers by following Doug's suggestions.
Doug himself is a lifelong athlete who began seeking better performance at a young age by asking this question: since every other mammalian creature consumes only fresh (not cooked) foods, would we be also better (healthier) performers by consuming fresh foods?
And let me ask you this also (dear reader), how hard is it really to make an entire meal of fresh fruits, or fresh lettuces and soft vegetables? Actually, not cooking is easier. Yes, it will be more fruits and vegetables than we are accustomed to eating, but it is not difficult, and in fact it can become quite enjoyable.
And the additional benefits are we become more energetic, clear, and we simply feel better. And health problems improve or disappear completely. As a result our "longevity" can and typically does increase substantially.
It is also suggested to discontinue the use of the common flavor enhancers sugar, salt, and strong spices in a process that "recalibrates" taste buds to the more subtle and numerous flavors in fresh foods.
It is also suggested to discontinue the use of oils which are primarily used for convenience in cooking. Actually all substances that are refined, primarily the sugars, salts, oils, and flours, are thus devoid of the naturally integrated vitamins, minerals, and thousands of other micronutrient "phytochemicals", and are refined down to only calories.
Part of the "trick" to gaining health is to discontinue the use of any of the "empty calorie" substances used in common food production these days.
Over time you begin to prefer fresh foods, and it does not take long to begin to feel better and more energetic. Your body and health will thank you for it.
Try it, do what you can. It's not an overnight phenomena for most people, it's a process. Feel free to get in touch to discuss if you like.
Feel free also to view Doug's video at the link below for the whole story, from his perspective.
Well enough noise is being made in British Parliament (and other European governing bodies) about the excess deaths above historical averages to be of concern. And now it comes to light this is occurring in children as well.
Unfortunately this was predicted by many of the most respected epidemiologists early in the pandemic, but their voices were not given "air time". Well that is being polite, they were threatened with losing their positions if they did not shut up and sit down. And many of those that refused to shut up did lose positions and livelihood.
Real science welcomes and encourages lively debate, and "settled science" takes time. We all know that don't we? Why did so many accept and follow "rushed" science when real conversations were going on between real experts online? Too much pharma owned "commercial media" perhaps?
And we cannot say water under the bridge, the fallout is still occurring in more than one way, the breadth and depth of which is still not "in the news" on, you guessed it, pharma owned commercial TV.
Here is a short clip of a female British MP (member of parliament), a senior pediatrician speaking to the parliament of her concerns.
https://youtu.be/UO_d9rAFpx0?si=QgEvVHSKbcjjpYss
I typically discuss the causes of and impediments to physical health in this blog, as I learn more about them as I go, and as best as I understand them.
But emotional health and physical health are related and overlapping to various degrees, and in rare cases the emotional health of a single individual can change history, start wars, and be the cause of genocides. And I would also say emotional health should not be conflated with politics, but usually is. And I am also not very interested in politics, but I am concerned, as many are, that Trump is a clear and present danger to the US and the world. Is that political? No, I think it transcends politics.
So today I'm going to make an exception and discuss what constitutes "personality disorder", and the book 27 mental health professionals have collaborated on, the title of which you see above, and can be bought on Amazon (or perhaps checked out at your local library):
There are 10 of the so-called personality disorders, a good overview of them can be found here:
It's important to note at his point that the perfect human with none of the traits of personality disorder has never existed, we all have some of these traits, and we might say they exemplify what we commonly call neurotic traits. Has there ever been a perfect human with zero neurosis? Not likely, but the lucky are close enough that these conditions never rise to the level of significant dysfunction.
Every one of the personality disorders are identified as having certain personality "traits", and is thought of as a disorder when an individual demonstrates the majority of these traits consistently. And when enough of these personality traits have accumulated in one individual they are said to be "pathological", or dangerous to others.
Many mental health professionals (probably fair to say the majority of them, numbering in the thousands) identify in Trump narcissistic personality disorder, which is described at this link:
But to cut to the chase I have reproduced the list of narcissistic traits here:
(click for bigger)
The list of traits may be in no particular order, but the first, grandiosity, is probably the most significant. With grandiosity comes intolerance of any view but theirs, or we might say a dictatorial trait, with overt and pronounced hostility towards others who may disagree.
In my opinion it's quite easy to recognize Trump in this list of character traits.
So then we come to the question how and why is this a dangerous condition for a world leader to have? With grandiosity and a lack of empathy comes a ready capacity for genocide. It might be said in fact every genocide in history has been committed by a grandiose pathological narcissist.
And if we can agree Trump has the unfortunate condition of pathological narcissistic personality disorder, another question is raised: is it even marginally OK for the commander of the most powerful military in the world to be pathologically disordered?
Psychology may not yet be a mature enough discipline for the majority to be aware of these questions. So while one requirement for election to high office is a medical exam, a psychological exam, arguably more important, is not yet "a thing".
Shouldn't it be? If it were a thing there might be less confusion about the resolution of this kind of issue.
And if Trump were "our dictator", "dissidents" who write posts on blogs like this one might be incarcerated, or worse.
And yet we still cherish that most basic democratic right, freedom of speech, don't we?
