I’ve not posted much this past month because I’ve been learning. I borrowed some money from my parents and bought a Macbook Pro, a Flip HD digital camera, and Final Cut Express software to edit videos. I’ve never owned a Mac before, so I had to learn how to maneuver around the desktop. I’ve also never used editing software. I joined Lynda.com and their course on Final Cut Express gave me enough information to produce the two videos I’ve uploaded this month.

I’m going to be starting a new blog devoted to health and nutrition that will launch November 11. Why November 11? Let me tell you an interesting story.

A few years ago while I was living in my motor home, I contacted a psychic who had been recommended to me by a book customer. It was an incredible experience. She knew things that she shouldn’t have known, which built trust in me, but then she lost the trust when she said things that were vague or just not true. (I believe half the time she was truly psychic and the other half she was just stroking my ego.) We ended on a sour note, sadly, with my expressing doubt and her ripping me a new you know what. But for a short while I had been lifted to a new vibration, a new awareness, that was incredibly empowering.

It’s amazing how high one can rise in thought and spirit when they are affirmed as valuable and powerful. These aren’t typical messages we receive from our parents, our educators, our peers or our society. These forces seem instead to be intent on bringing us down and taking our personal power away. I envy those children whose parents believed in them and encouraged them to live their dreams. My mother believed in me, to a point, but she was kind of a nut job. My dad’s constant message was that I wasn’t good enough.

I think we all doubt ourselves, think too little of ourselves and each other. We keep track of our failures and judge ourselves, subconsciously compare ourselves to others. There’s that constant voice when we dream big that says, “You can’t do it.”

Anyhoo, during my high vibrational state, I was surfing through real estate listings because I was looking to buy a house. I came across this beautiful property and when I wrote the six-digit MSL number down I said to myself, “That equals 11.” That meant nothing to me, and I had no idea why I said it. I never added numbers up before (I suck at math).

But I added up the numbers and, you guessed it, they equaled 11. I told the psychic, thinking that it might be “a sign” that this was the house for me (a holdover from my years as a Christian seeking signs of God’s direction). She replied, “No, that’s not what it means. It means you’re a master number 11.” Apparently in numerology there are master numbers: 11, 22, and 33.

The following are some typical characteristics of the master number 11:

The 11 is also known as the psychics number, it’s the most intuitive of all numbers and it represents illumination and deep insight. The 11 is also very sensitive, charismatic and inspirational.

It acts as a channel for information between the higher and the lower. In order to find fulfillment and happiness, 11’s have to focus on a bigger goal beyond themselves.

11’s seem to develop slowly, but they simply need more time to mature and prepare themselves for the bigger goals and challenges they need to face. At times, 11’s might get intimidated by the vastness of their goals and they might even loose confidence in themselves.

One of the major challenges of 11’s is to develop confidence in their abilities and that’s also the key to unlock their enormous potential.

Here are some of the ideal career choices and vocations of 11’s:

Inventor, artist, teacher, healer, spiritual leader and mystic. –Spiritual Numerology

Now I don’t know anything about numerology, and I won’t discount it outright without investigation. But I don’t need to understand or believe in it to grab hold of the idea offered to me. What I do believe in is that thought creates reality. We become what we believe.

Better the illusions that exalt us than ten thousand truths. –Alexander Pushkin

Since then I’ve been drawn to the number 11. My birthday this year was February 18, 2009. Now, added together it comes to 22, which is another master number. But February 19 equals 11 and so does 2009. So I decided this would be my year to find my purpose. And I think I found it!

November 11, 2009, adds up to 6, but I choose to see it as 11/11/11. So on November 11 I will be publishing my new blog. I’ll provide you with the URL on that day. I’m very excited about it, and I hope to offer really helpful, educational content to encourage others eat well, get well, and stay well.

Thank you for sharing my journey with me.

The day my friend Geoff was leaving for California, he dropped by with his friend Jim who has been having health problems. Jim generously shared his experiences with his spiritual life and how it has affected his health.

We are more than just the body with a thinking brain, and when our spirits or souls are suffering, our bodies can suffer as well, and vice versa. I hope you enjoy this impromptu discussion.

I decided it was time to get my hair colored and cut. In this video you’ll meet my stylist, Autumn, and hear about what can go wrong when you stop eating animals but still eat typical American foods.

Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing the video. This is my first video shot with an HD camera and edited in Final Express 4.

Why Everything You’ve Been Told About Cholesterol, Diet and Heart Disease is Wrong! by Anthony Colpo

If you have a heart, you should read this book

Our whole understanding of nutrition has been moulded by the paradigm that high cholesterol and fat cause heart disease–known as the lipid theory–and that foods containing these should be avoided or minimally consumed. Instead of eggs for breakfast, we should have cereal or fruit. We should eat poultry and fish as opposed to red meats and cut away all the fat and skin. We also need to avoid butter and use vegetable oils for their polyunsaturated fatty acids.

I accepted this paradigm without question, which led me to embrace a raw, vegan diet as the “optimum” diet, a diet I was never able to adhere to for longer than five days and which kept me obsessing about food. I stumbled upon the paleolithic diet community, and they were all saying the science behind the “lipid theory” was flawed.

The lipid theory says because there is cholesterol in atherosclerotic plaque, it must be the cause of the plaque. Upon this assumption, the entire heart disease industry focuses its efforts on lowering cholesterol by any means possible. But what if this paradigm is wrong? It would be like blaming a Band-aid for the cut it covers and trying to remove them from your medicine cabinet. Cholesterol is a necessary component of health, and it turns out low cholesterol is implicated in many diseases, including cancer.

Please support this site. I earn a small commission for every Amazon purchase through my site. However, if you came here from Amazon and then click back to Amazon, it doesn’t count. The best way is to close all browsers, come back here, and then click through to Amazon. Every little bit helps. Thank you!

The Great Cholesterol Con can help you understand how the lipid theory was formulated and gained acceptance, the flaws in interpretation of scientific studies as well as the manipulation of data, the studies we don’t hear about showing high cholesterol does not damage the heart, the dangers of low cholesterol, how the low-fat mantra has impacted the health of industrialized nations, the dangers of vegetable oils, and habits that will promote heart health.

This book is comprehensive, covering much more than what I’ve mentioned and citing hundreds of scientific studies, and so it is a bit tedious at times. It took me over a month to get through it. But it was worth the effort.

Let’s ask ourselves, have we seen a decrease in heart disease since embracing the lipid theory in the 1980s? Hardly. In fact, we’ve seen a huge increase in obesity and diabetes on the low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet recommended to us. I’ve heard that some doctors want to put everybody on statins and that they’re even beginning to market them to children. This is unconscionable and we must educate ourselves to prevent this.

Please, if you have a heart, read this book before you start experiencing health issues. If you are taking statins, invest in this book and open your mind to the possibility that you have been lied to by bad science. If the lipid theory base of the pyramid is wrong, then every stone built upon the pyramid is equally faulty.

Now, I’m going to go cook some eggs from happy, free-roaming, pasture-raised chickens.

Buy The Great Cholesterol Con.

The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter

An entertaining adventure in raising livestock in the inner city

This book tells two stories: Novella Carpenter’s education in urban farming and what it’s like living in an Oakland ghetto. However, the focus is on livestock, not gardening.

Carpenter and her boyfriend Bill move from Seattle to California and rent an apartment in the Oakland inner city amongst the homeless, the eccentric, the drug addicts, the poor. They choose their location because it is next to an abandoned lot they intend to turn into an urban garden.

The story opens with the arrival of some baby chickens, geese and ducks and ends with Carpenter receiving expert instruction by a local chef on the making of salumi from a pig she raised. On this journey Carpenter writes about acquiring bees, harvesting honey, caring for rabbits, turkey temperament, and killing these animals for dinner. We share the sadness over the senseless loss of lifestock from marauding dogs, the threatened loss of her garden to development, and the ultimate betrayal by a lousy butcher.

Please support this site. I earn a small commission for every Amazon purchase through my site. However, if you came here from Amazon and then click back to Amazon, it doesn’t count. The best way is to close all browsers, come back here, and then click through to Amazon. Every little bit helps. Thank you!

The characters that inhabit her neighborhood are fascinating and varied, and we come to enjoy the ghetto culture that sometimes threatens but demands compassion and courage from her as she ventures into this milieu in search of food for her charges.

Carpenter’s passion for more escalates to her acquisition of two pigs. She and her boyfriend find themselves exhausted after nightly raids of restaurant and grocery store dumpsters, and her neighbors aren’t too keen on the stench. But the payoff is exceptionally rewarding as she and her friends celebrate in feast the exquisite taste of the lives that were in her care.

This is a great book for all those frustrated city dwellers (like me) who dream of making their own salumi, eating fresh eggs or having fresh turkey raised with compassion for Thanksgiving. It is also eye opening on how much work and dedication it takes to be an urban farmer of livestock.

Buy Farm City.

I gave a friend a massage the other day, and I was thinking…

If I give my friend a massage, even if I paddle his heiny or ravish him, the government doesn’t care. Makes no matter to them what I do behind closed doors (at least for now).

If my friend takes me out to dinner and spends $20 on me, the government doesn’t care about that either.

But if I massage my friend and he then gives me $20, that’s when the government starts to care. The government feels it’s entitled to a cut of that money. Because it’s now called “income.”

And they need that income to pay the national debt to the Federal Reserve Bank (a private bank), which is pretty stupid considering our government has a constitutional right to mint its own money.

And then there’s the issue of licensing. Gosh, if I rub my friend’s body, who cares? Surely not the government. But if my friend gives me money for it, then I’m liable to licensing authorities.

I need to go to school for the appropriate hours of training and get certified. Then I need to be licensed. If I operate from my home, I need government permission and my neighbors must approve. My home must be inspected by health authorities.

All this to protect the consumer. What part should the consumer play in finding out the level of competency of their potential masseuse? You’d think the consumer would know better than to go a second time to someone who sucked at giving massages or whose workplace was dirty. Maybe without the government getting so involved we would rely more on word of mouth.

But all these poor consumers raised a ruckus at some point and said, “Uncle Sam, we want you to protect us.” Or maybe it was the American Medical Association that didn’t like the competition. So Uncle Sam has been out and about inspecting everybody’s neighbor for regulatory compliance.

Additional Reading:

The Real Reason for Inflation and Deflation
Oppose HR 2749 Allowing Increased Government Control over Small Farms

I’ve often wondered how scientists know the number of galaxies in the universe. Then I saw the video below. I cried when I watched this because I was so overwhelmed with the enormity–and beauty–of our universe.

Our lives are small and fleeting in the scheme of things, and yet we get caught up in our events, seeing them as eternal and overwhelming. If we could only step back and see the bigger picture.

We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers. –Carl Sagan

We forget our place, both in how insignificant we are and in how special we are. Let this video give you some perspective. I hope you enjoy it as much as I.

Does the medical model work? Is it helpful going to the doctor? Can the doctor’s advice improve your health? Here are recent experiences I had where I was invited to join the popular paradigm but declined the invitation.

Gynecologist Recommends Hormone Replacement Therapy

Two years ago I menstruated heavily for a month after not menstruating for two months. I went to see a gynecologist. She performed a pap smear and had my blood tested for vitamin D and anemia. I was deficient in D and anemic. She prescribed 50,000 iU D2, which I took because I didn’t know any better (vitamin D3 is better), and I also sunbathed every day. I ate iron-rich food. I’m very grateful to her for checking my vitamin D, because supplementing made a world of difference, and I do appreciate diagnostic tests.

However, she also suggested I go on hormone replacement therapy to regulate my menstrual cycle. I declined. I believe the hormonal system is a highly regulated, sensitive and precise dance, and if I introduce one hormone I throw off the dance. If I am deficient in any hormone, I must first address it nutritionally and emotionally. If that fails, then I will consider resorting to hormone replacement.

I also trust my body. If it bled for a month, then it needed to bleed for a month. Prior to and during this menstrual cycle I was getting surges of blood in my face, neck and chest along with heat. My whole face would turn beet red. This has not recurred after I shed the blood and improved my nutritional status.

I’m glad I didn’t follow my gynecologist’s advice and take hormones, because from what I’ve read they’ve caused a lot of problems for women. (My menstrual cycle has normalized since supplementing and increasing my protein intake.)

Life in a New Balance © courtesy of Duquesa Mercedes

Doctor Suggests Drug for Benign Positional Vertigo

A few months ago I went to the hospital because I was having several dizzy spells that became quite frightening. The doctor ordered a CAT scan and a blood panel. No tumors, no abnormalities in the blood. The doctor said I had benign positional vertigo (fancy name, eh?), something about a condition where calcium deposits in the inner ear break free and cause imbalance. He said he was going to prescribe a drug for me that I could take every day that would minimize the dizzy spells.

More U.S. adults are taking prescription drugs than ever before, fueling $12 billion in additional spending during 2006 alone. The number of people with at least one prescription increased from 67% to 74% between 2000 and 2006, according to a new Geographic Variation in Prescription Utilization study by pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts. The number of prescriptions per person rose to 14.3 from 10.8 in 2000–a 32 percent jump. — Reuters, February 13, 2008

Drugs mask symptoms. They don’t cure. And I didn’t want to mask my symptoms or “find relief” or take a poison every day. I wanted a cure. There was something wrong with my body, and I needed to do something about it.

This doctor basically ruled out various disorders from his cornucopia of potential diseases and guessed what was wrong with me, expecting me to trust him and take a drug based on that guess for the rest of my life. (And they say people like me giving out free “unqualified” advice are dangerous!)

Well, it turns out that the mochas I was drinking at Starbucks were causing the vertigo. When I cut back, the dizzy spells stopped. If I’d been like most people, I’d still be drinking too many mochas and popping pills every day to avoid dizzy spells.

Nearly 2.7 billion retail prescriptions were dispensed in 1999, amounting to $110 billion in sales.
In 1997, 44 percent of the prescriptions dispensed were refills.
Almost two-thirds of Americans currently use medicines: 49 percent use prescription drugs and 30 percent use nonprescription medications.
Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) may be the fourth-to-sixth leading cause of death. Serious ADRs occur in 6.7 percent of hospitalized patients.
32 million Americans are taking three or more medications daily.
Almost 29 percent of Americans stop taking their medicine before it runs out.
22 percent of Americans take less of the medication than is prescribed on the label.
12 percent of Americans don’t fill their prescription at all.
12 percent of Americans don’t take medication at all after they buy the prescription.
The No.1 problem in treating illness today is patients’ failure to take prescription medications correctly, regardless of patient age.
10 percent of all hospital admissions are the result of patients failing to take prescription medications correctly.
23 percent of all nursing home admissions are due to patients failing to take prescription medications accurately.
At any given time, regardless of age group, up to 59 percent of those on five or more medications are taking them improperly.
The average length of stay in hospitals due to medication noncompliance is 4.2 days.
More than half of all Americans with chronic diseases don’t follow their physician’s medication and lifestyle guidance.
Two-thirds of all Americans fail to take any or all of their prescription medicines. –Statistics You Need to Know, AHA

Doctor Wants to Put Me on Statins

A couple months ago I went to have blood work done so I could check my vitamin D levels and track my cholesterol and triglycerides to compare later after being on a paleolithic diet for several months. My vitamin D was lower than I like, so I have increased my daily intake to 5,000 iU.

My cholesterol came in high at around 260. Despite my telling the hospital that I wanted to deal with my health nutritionally, they wanted to put me on statins to lower my cholesterol. I declined. I’ve been reading about the science behind the lipid hypothesis and find it wanting.

It seems cholesterol isn’t the big problem the doctors say it is. But statins are definitely a problem. I was just looking yesterday at some side effects of statins. No thanks! I’ve also learned that triglycerides are what you need to watch for. As for LDL, there are two types, only one of which is harmful, but the hospitals don’t differentiate between the two or test to determine their composition.

Muscle pain and muscle weakness are two of the main side effects of statin drugs. While muscle pain and muscle weakness sound ordinary enough, due to the manner in which statin side effects can act in the body they are potentially dangerous side effects of statin use. Another is memory loss. Anyone who is taking statin drugs for any reason should be aware of these side effects and their symptoms. The medical establishment recommends that anyone who suspects they are experiencing any of the possible statin side effects consult with their medical professional. –Major Side Effects of Statins

The Wide Path to Destruction

In the past two years I’ve been given the opportunity to take hormone replacements, a drug for vertigo, and statins. If I followed the advice of my doctors, I would now be taking three drugs a day–forever!

These drugs would have allowed me to continue harmful habits without consequences. But I would have been reducing my vitality and creating a host of negative side effects.

Oh, and if I’d been like most people I would have gone to the doctor last year for the pain in my right hip. The doctor would have diagnosed arthritis and prescribed an anti-inflammatory for me. That would total FOUR PRESCRIPTIONS.

And, if the doctors knew of the stress and depression I was struggling under as I lost my business and home, I’m sure an antidepressant would have been in order as well for a total of FIVE PRESCRIPTIONS.

Then there’s the time I slipped on my porch and landed on my back. OUCH! That would have been good for a prescription of muscle relaxers and an anti-inflammatory. I healed just fine on my own, thanks.

Wait, how about my injured Achilles heel that has bothered me for six months but is almost healed. Just a little twinge. I would have gotten a drug for that, no doubt.

All this would have made the pharmaceutical companies very happy and me very sick. I would have been counted among the “typical middle-aged Americans” on multiple pharmaceuticals.

I have not taken a drug in over five years. Not even aspirin. The only thing that concerns me right now is my thyroid. I am taking an iodine supplement and intend to take a thyroid blood panel when I recheck my cholesterol. If I cannot improve my thyroid with nutrition, then I will consider taking a thyroid hormone. But only as a last resort.

None of what I write is to imply that I am immune from disease. I could drop dead of a heart attack tomorrow. I abused my body for years with cigarettes, coffee, alcohol and bad food. But I believe that I will live longer and healthier by managing my own health.

Cutting the Cost of Health Care

If more people were proactive about their health, if they were more knowledgeable about nutrition and addressing cause, if they understood the rudiments of natural hygiene, they would have more confidence in their own ability to manage their health instead of handing it over to the care of a physician or drugging away their discomforts.

Marketing and drug education by pharmaceutical companies drives medical diagnostics. Treatment is typically aimed at symptom suppression via pharmaceutical intervention while the underlying disease process progresses. We are all guinea pigs unless we take charge of our bodies. I can’t stress this enough.

Additional reading:

How Your Paradigms Determine Your Beliefs
The Power of the Mind for Illness and Health
What’s Wrong with Pharmaceuticals

Book recommendations:

Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws by Herbert Shelton
The Great Cholesterol Con by Anthony Colpo
Reclaiming Our Health by John Robbins

We’re long past due for a spelling tip post, so here it is. A common mistake I see is people using advise when they should be using advice. Try to remember the difference this way:

Giving advice is a vice that many people have.

Advisors like to advise others on proper procedure.

I would advise you to seek advice from someone you respect and trust.

Inside America’s Underground Food Movements by Sandor Ellix Katz

A great book looking for a better title

Sandor Katz writes about the many avenues available for procurement of food, such as buying locally at farmers’ markets, joining underground co-ops, growing our own, foraging for wild plants, reclaiming vacant city lots to garden in, saving seeds, and dumpster diving. He discusses many ways small-scale producers get around the burdensome laws that hamper them from dealing directly with consumers. Each chapter also includes a list of related books, videos and organizations.

But this book is even more about the regulatory state of affairs, corporate dominance and government abuse than what we consumers are doing. I just wanted to learn about where I can get good, healthy food, and found myself feeling helpless against government coups and land grabs and the enormous loss of farm land to urbanization.

Please support this site. I earn a small commission for every Amazon purchase through my site. However, if you came here from Amazon and then click back to Amazon, it doesn’t count. The best way is to close all browsers, come back here, and then click through to Amazon. Every little bit helps. Thank you!

I began to lose interest in the book three-quarters of the way through as I came across recipes for cannabis butter and sassafras root beer, vegetarian ethics and roadkill worth scavenging. How do I wrest control of food production from government and corporate dominance by learning about water rights, eating of insects and recycling of vegetable oils?

Katz seems to be someone who has traveled a long and rich road on his life’s journey, a clear benefit to his wonderful writing which avoids dogmatism and absolutism. He is both candid and circumspect, and I am impressed with the depth of his knowledge regarding the world’s foodways and their history.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of our current food options, politics and the government’s excessive control. It loses some focus as the author tries covers every conceivable topic related to food. I recommend it to anyone interested in the history of food politics.

Buy The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved.