Functional Solutions For Living

We live in a world of information… a lot of information… some would say too much information!

At this point, I am going so be so bold as to say that most of us are smart enough to know that we aren’t as smart as we think we are, that we don’t know as much as we think we know, and are not as in control of our behavior as we’d like to think.

We are pretty illogical and irrational much of the time.  We do things and then fabricate reasons after the fact.

We also believe certain things despite mountains of LOUD evidence indicating otherwise.

It can be a real pain in the ass for us and the world around us but it can also be a lot of fun if we see things for what they are and don’t take ourselves or others too seriously.

In the course of doing research for a book and an upcoming workshop, I came across some information, actually “facts” regarding the human brain and human behavior that I just did not agree with.

Some of these things completely defied my own personal experience and others just insulted my common sense and intelligence.  I became very curious. I wondered what mass delusions I was buying into, where some of this information was coming from and what it was based on.

So I decided to do a little investigating…

I got out my magical shovel and when I started digging deeper, it didn’t take long to find that some of my intuitions were right.

I found that much of the popular and generally agreed upon information regarding the brain, learning, psychology and human behavior was inaccurate, outdated and completely unfounded.

Most of this misinformation is perpetuated by the media, self-help people and plain old superstition.

I had already known for years about the myth that a full moon affects human behavior. I had read two very thorough studies indicating otherwise.

I also knew about the myth that we only use ten percent of our brains.

Apparently, I was not the only one who was curious…

In my journey I ended up finding a great book that delves deeply into this topic and I’d like to share and excerpt.

The book is called, 50 Great Myths of  Popular Pychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior by Scott O. Lilienfeld

Top Ten Myths of Popular Psychology

Virtually every day, the news media, television shows, films, and Internet bombard us with claims regarding a host of psychological topics: psychics, out of body experiences, recovered memories, and lie detection, to name a few.

Even a casual stroll through our neighborhood bookstore reveals dozens of self-help, relationship, recovery, and addiction books that serve up generous portions of advice for steering our paths along life’s rocky road. Yet many popular psychology sources are rife with misconceptions.

Indeed, in today’s fast-paced world of information overload, misinformation about psychology is at least as widespread as accurate information. Self-help gurus, television talk show hosts, and self-proclaimed mental health experts routinely dispense psychological advice that is a bewildering mix of truths, half-truths, and outright falsehoods.

Without a dependable tour guide for sorting out psychological myth from reality, we’re at risk for becoming lost in a jungle of “psychomythology.”

In our new book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Nature, we examine in depth 50 widespread myths in popular psychology (along with approximately 250 other myths and “mini-myths”), present research evidence demonstrating that these beliefs are fictional, explore their ramifications in popular culture and everyday life, and trace their psychological and sociological origins.

Here, pace David Letterman, we present (in no particular order) our own candidates for the top 10 myths of popular psychology.

Myth #1: We Only Use 10% of our Brains

Whenever those of us who study the brain venture outside the Ivory Tower to give public lectures, one of the questions we’re most likely to encounter is, “Is it true that we only use 10% of our brains?” The look of disappointment that usually follows when we respond, “Sorry, I’m afraid not,” suggests that the 10% myth is one of those hopeful truisms that refuses to die because it would be so nice if it were true.

In one study, when asked “About what percentage of their potential brain power do you think most people use?,” a third of psychology majors answered 10%.1 Remarkably, one survey revealed that even 6% of neuroscientists agreed with this claim!2

The pop psychology industry has played a big role in keeping this myth alive. For example, in his book, How to be Twice as Smart, Scott Witt wrote that “If you’re like most people, you’re using only ten percent of your brainpower.”3

There are several reasons to doubt that 90% of our brains lie silent. At a mere 2–3% of our body weight, our brain consumes over 20% of the oxygen we breathe. It’s implausible that evolution would have permitted the squandering of resources on a scale necessary to build and maintain such a massively underutilized organ.

Moreover, losing far less than 90% of the brain to accident or disease almost always has catastrophic consequences.4 Likewise, electrical stimulation of sites in the brain during neurosurgery has failed to uncover any “silent areas.”

How did the 10% myth get started? One clue leads back about a century to psychologist William James, who once wrote that he doubted that average persons achieve more than about 10% of their intellectual potential. Although James talked in terms of underdeveloped potential, a slew of positive thinking gurus transformed “10% of our capacity” into “10% of our brain.”5

In addition, in calling a huge percentage of the human brain “silent cortex,” early investigators may have fostered the mistaken impression that what scientists now call “association cortex” — which is vitally important for language and abstract thinking — had no function.

In a similar vein, early researchers’ admissions that they didn’t know what 90% of the brain did probably fueled the myth that it does nothing. Finally, although one frequently hears claims that Albert Einstein once explained his own brilliance by reference to 10% myth, there’s no evidence that he ever uttered such a statement.

Myth #2: It’s Better to Express Anger Than to Hold it in

If you’re like most people, you believe that releasing anger is healthier than bottling it up. In one survey, 66% of undergraduates agreed that expressing pent-up anger — sometimes called “catharsis” — is an effective means of reducing one’s risk for aggression.6

A host of films stoke the idea that we can tame our anger by “letting off steam” or “getting things off our chest.” In the 2003 film  Anger Management, after the meek hero (Adam Sandler) is falsely accused of “air rage” on a flight, a judge orders him to attend an anger management group run by Dr. Buddy Rydell (Jack Nicholson). At Rydell’s suggestion, Sandler’s character plays dodgeball with schoolchildren and throws golf clubs.

Dr. Rydell’s advice echoes the counsel of many self-help authors. John Lee suggested that rather than “holding in poisonous anger,” it’s better to “Punch a pillow or a punching bag.”7 Some psychotherapies encourage clients to scream or throw balls against walls when they become angry.8 Proponents of “primal scream therapy” believe that psychologically troubled adults must release the emotional pain produced by infant trauma by discharging it, often by yelling at the top of their lungs.9

Yet more than 40 years of research reveals that expressing anger directly toward another person or indirectly toward an object actually turns up the heat on aggression.10 In an early study, people who pounded nails after someone insulted them were more critical of that person.11

Moreover, playing aggressive sports like football results in increases in aggression,12 and playing violent videogames like Manhunt, in which participants rate bloody assassinations on a 5-point scale, is associated with heightened aggression.13 Research suggests that expressing anger is helpful only when it’s accompanied by constructive problem-solving designed to address the source of the anger.14

Why is this myth so popular? In all likelihood, people often mistakenly attribute the fact that they feel better after they express anger to catharsis, rather than to the fact that anger usually subsides on its own after awhile.15

Myth #3: Low Self-Esteem is a Major Cause of Psychological Problems

Many popular psychologists have long maintained that low self-esteem is a prime culprit in generating unhealthy behaviors, including violence, depression, anxiety, and alcoholism. From Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952, The Power of Positive Thinking, onward, self-help books proclaiming the virtues of self-esteem have become regular fixtures in bookstores.

In his best-seller, The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, Nathaniel Branden insisted that one “cannot think of a single psychological problem — from anxiety and depression, to fear of intimacy or of success, to spouse battery or child molestation — that is not traceable to the problem of low self esteem.

The self-esteem movement has found its way into mainstream educational practices. Some athletic leagues award trophies to all schoolchildren to avoid making losing competitors feel inferior.17 One elementary school in California prohibited children from playing tag because the “children weren’t feeling good about it.”18

Moreover, the Internet is chock full of educational products intended to boost children’s self-esteem. One book, Self Esteem Games contains 300 activities to help children feel good about themselves, such as repeating positive affirmations emphasizing their uniqueness.19

But there’s a fly in the ointment: Research shows that low self esteem isn’t strongly associated with poor mental health. In a comprehensive review, Roy Baumeister and his colleagues canvassed over 15,000 studies linking self-esteem to just about every conceivable psychological variable.

They found that self-esteem is minimally related to interpersonal success, and not consistently related to alcohol or drug abuse. Moreover, they discovered that although self-esteem is positively associated with school performance, better school performance appears to contribute to high self-esteem rather than the other way around. Perhaps most surprising of all, they found that “low self-esteem is neither necessary nor sufficient for depression.”20

Myth #4: Human Memory Works like a Video Camera

Despite the sometimes all-too-obvious failings of everyday memory, surveys show that many people believe that their memories operate very much like videotape recorders. About 36% of us believe that our brains preserve perfect records of everything we’ve experienced.21 In one survey of undergraduates, 27% agreed that memory operates like a tape recorder.22 Even most psychotherapists agree that memories are fixed more or less permanently in the mind.23

It’s true that we often recall extremely emotional events, sometimes called flashbulb memories because they seem to have a photographic quality.24 Nevertheless, research shows that even these memories wither over time and are prone to distortions.25 Consider an example from Ulric Neisser and Nicole Harsch’s study of memories regarding the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger.26 A student at Emory University provided the first description 24 hours after the disaster, and the second account two and a half years later.

Description 1. “I was in my religion class and some people walked in and started talking about [it]. I didn’t know any details except that it had exploded and the schoolteacher’s students had all been watching which I thought was so sad. Then after class I went to my room and watched the TV program talking about it and I got all the details from that.”

Description 2. “When I first heard about the explosion I was sitting in my freshman dorm room with my roommate and we were watching TV. It came on a news flash and we were both totally shocked. I was really upset and I went upstairs to talk to a friend of mine and then I called my parents.”

Clearly, there are striking discrepancies between the two memories. Neisser and Harsch found that about one-third of students’ reports contained large differences across the two time points. Similarly, Heike Schmolck and colleagues compared participants’ ability to recall the 1995 acquittal of former football star O. J. Simpson 3 days after the verdict, and after many months.27 After 32 months, 40% of the memory reports contained “major distortions.”

Today, there’s broad consensus among psychologists that memory isn’t reproductive — it doesn’t duplicate precisely what we’ve experienced — but reconstructive.

What we recall is often a blurry mixture of accurate and inaccurate recollections, along with what jells with our beliefs and hunches. Indeed, researchers have created memories of events that never happened.

In the “shopping mall study,” Elizabeth Loftus created a false memory in Chris, a 14-year-old boy. Loftus instructed Chris’s older brother to present Chris with a false story of being lost in a shopping mall at age 5, and she instructed Chris to write down everything he remembered.

Initially, Chris reported very little about the false event, but over a two week period, he constructed a detailed memory of it.28 A flood of similar studies followed, showing that in 18-37% of participants, researchers can implant false memories of such events as serious animal attacks, knocking over a punchbowl at a wedding, getting one’s fingers caught in a mousetrap as a child, witnessing a demonic possession, and riding in a hot air balloon with one’s family.29

Myth #5: Hypnosis is a Unique “Trance” State Differing
in Kind from Wakefulness

Popular movies and books portray the hypnotic trance state as so powerful that otherwise normal people will commit an assassination (The Manchurian Candidate); commit suicide (The Garden Murders); perceive only a person’s internal beauty (Shallow Hal); and (our favorite) fall victim to brainwashing by alien preachers who use messages embedded in sermons (Invasion of the Space Preachers).

Survey data show that public opinion resonates with these media portrayals: 77% of college students endorsed the statement that “hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness, quite different from normal waking consciousness,” and 44% agreed that “A deeply hypnotized person is robot-like and goes along automatically with whatever the hypnotist suggests.”30

But research shows that hypnotized people can resist and even oppose hypnotic suggestions, and won’t do things that are out of character, like harming people they dislike.31 In addition, hypnosis bears no more than a superficial resemblance to sleep: Brain wave studies reveal that hypnotized people are wide awake.

What’s more, individuals can be just as responsive to suggestions administered while they’re exercising on a stationary bicycle as they are following suggestions for sleep and relaxation.32

In the laboratory, we can reproduce all of the phenomena that laypersons associate with hypnosis (such as hallucinations and insensitivity to pain) using suggestions alone, with no mention of hypnosis. Evidence of a distinct trance unique to hypnosis would require physiological markers of subjects’ responses to suggestions to enter a trance. Yet no consistent evidence of this sort has emerged.33

Hypnosis appears to be only one procedure among many for increasing people’s responses to suggestions.

Myth #6: The Polygraph Test is an Accurate Means
of Detecting Lies

Have you ever told a lie? If you answered “no,” you’re lying. College students admit to lying in about one in every three social interactions and people in the community about one in every five interactions.34 Not surprisingly, investigators have long sought out foolproof means of detecting falsehoods.

In the 1920s, psychologist William Moulton Marston invented the first polygraph or so-called “lie detector” test, which measured systolic blood pressure to detect deception. He later created one of the first female cartoon superheroes, Wonder Woman, who could compel villains to tell the truth by ensnaring them in a magic lasso. For Marston, the polygraph was the equivalent of Wonder Woman’s lasso: an infallible detector of the truth.35

A polygraph machine plots physiological activity — such as skin conductance, blood pressure, and respiration — on a continuously running chart. Contrary to the impression conveyed in such movies as, Meet the Parents, the machine isn’t a quick fix for telling whether someone is lying, although the public’s desire for such a fix almost surely contributes to the polygraph’s popularity.

In one survey of introductory psychology students, 45% believed that the polygraph “can accurately identify attempts to deceive.”36 Yet interpreting a polygraph chart is notoriously difficult.

For starters, there are large differences among people in their levels of physiological activity. An honest examinee who tends to sweat a lot might mistakenly appear deceptive, whereas a deceptive examinee who tends to sweat very little might mistakenly appear truthful.

Moreover, as David Lykken noted, there’s no evidence for a Pinocchio response,37 such as an emotional or physiological reaction uniquely indicative of deception.38 If a polygraph chart shows more physiological activity when the examinee responds to questions about a crime than to irrelevant questions, at most this difference tells us that the examinee was more nervous at those moments.

Yet this difference could be due to actual guilt, indignation or shock at being unjustly accused, or the realization that one’s responses to questions about the crime could lead to being fired, fined, or imprisoned.39

Thus, polygraph tests suffer from a high rate of “false positives” — innocent people whom the test deems guilty.40 As a consequence, the “lie detector” test is misnamed: It’s really an arousal detector.41 Conversely, some individuals who are guilty may not experience anxiety when telling lies.

For example, psychopaths are notoriously immune to fear and may be able to “beat” the test in high pressure situations, although the research evidence for this possibility is mixed.42

Were he still alive, William Moulton Marston might be disappointed to learn that researchers have yet to develop the psychological equivalent of Wonder Woman’s magic lasso. For at least the foreseeable future, the promise of a perfect lie detector remains the stuff of comic book fantasy.

Myth #7: Opposites Attract

The notion that “opposites attract” is a standard part of our cultural landscape. Films, novels, and TV sitcoms overflow with stories of diametrical opposites falling passionately in love. The 2007 smash hit comedy, Knocked Up, is perhaps Hollywood’s latest installment in it’s seemingly never-ending parade of wildly mismatched romantic pairings.

Most of us are convinced that people who are opposite from each other in their personalities, beliefs, and looks tend to be attracted to each other. Lynn McCutcheon found that 77% of undergraduates agreed that opposites attract in relationships.43

This belief is also widespread in pockets of the Internet dating community. On one site called “Soulmatch,” Harville Hendrix, Ph.D. (described as a “relationships expert”) states that “It’s been my experience that only opposites attract because that’s the nature of reality. The great myth in our culture is that compatibility is the grounds for a relationship — actually, compatibility is grounds for boredom.”

On the contrary, research suggests that Hendrix has gotten his myths precisely backward. When it comes to interpersonal relationships, opposites don’t attract.

Dozens of studies demonstrate that people with similar personality traits are more likely to be attracted to and hang out with each other than people with dissimilar personality traits.

For example, people with a Type A personality style, who are hard-driving, competitive, and time-conscious, prefer dating partners who have a Type A personality.44

Similarity in personality traits predicts not only initial attraction, but marital stability and happiness.45

Similarity on the personality trait of conscientiousness seems to be especially important for marital satisfaction.46 So if you’re a hopelessly messy person, you’re best off finding someone who isn’t a total neat freak.

The “like attracts like” conclusion also extends to our attitudes and values. The more similar someone’s attitudes (for example, political views) are to ours, the more we tend to like that person.47

Myth #8: People with Schizophrenia Have Multiple Personalities

A prevalent misconception is that schizophrenia is the same thing as “split personality” or “multiple personality disorder.” A popular bumper sticker, for example, reads: “I was schizophrenic once, but we’re better now.”

The schizophrenia-multiple personality misconception is widespread. In one survey, 77% of introductory psychology students agreed that “a schizophrenic is someone with a split personality.”48

The 2000 comedy film, Me, Myself, and Irene, starring Jim Carrey, features a man supposedly suffering from schizophrenia. Yet he actually suffers from a split personality, with one personality who’s mellow and another who’s aggressive.

In fact, Schizophrenia differs sharply from the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (DID), once called multiple personality disorder. Unlike people with schizophrenia, people with DID supposedly harbor two or more distinct “alters” — personalities or personality states — within them at the same time.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, is probably the best known illustration of multiple personality in popular literature.

Nevertheless, many psychologists find the assertion that DID patients possess distinct and fully formed personalities to be doubtful.49 It’s far more likely that these patients are displaying different, but exaggerated, aspects of a single personality.

The schizophrenia-DID myth probably stems in part from confusion in terminology. Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coined the term “schizophrenia,” meaning “split mind,” in the early 20th century, and many writers soon misinterpreted Bleuler’s definition.

By schizophrenia, Bleuler meant that people suffer from a “splitting” within and between their psychological functions, especially emotion and thinking.50 For most of us, what we feel and think at one moment corresponds to what we feel and think at the next.

Yet in the severe psychotic disorder of schizophrenia, these linkages are ruptured. As Bleuler observed, people with schizophrenia don’t harbor more than one co-existing personality; they possess a single personality that’s been shattered.51

Regrettably, many people in the general public don’t appreciate the fact that schizophrenia is often a profoundly disabling condition associated with a heightened risk for suicide, clinical depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, unemployment, and homelessness.

As Irving Gottesman noted, “everyday misuse of the terms schizophrenia or schizophrenic to refer to the foreign policy of the United States, the stock market, or any other disconfirmation of one’s expectations does an injustice to the enormity of the public health problems and profound suffering associated with this most puzzling disorder of the human mind.”52

Myth #9: Full Moons Cause Crimes and Craziness

Once every 29.53 days on average, an event of rather trivial astronomical significance occurs. But according to some writers, it’s an event of enormous psychological significance. What is it? A full moon.

Over the decades, authors have linked the full moon to a host of phenomena: strange behaviors, psychiatric hospital admissions, suicides, traffic accidents, crimes, heavy drinking, dog bites, births, crisis calls to emergency rooms, violence by hockey players…the list goes on and on.53

The word “lunatic” derives from the Latin term luna, or moon. Legends of werewolves and vampires, terrifying creatures that supposedly often emerged during full moons, date back at least to the ancient Greeks, and were popular in Europe during much of the Middle Ages.54

In 19th-century England, some lawyers used a “not guilty by reason of the full moon” defense to acquit clients of crimes committed during full moons.

Even today, the notion that the full moon is tied to strange occurrences — the “Lunar Effect” or “Transylvania Effect” — is deeply embedded in popular culture.

One study revealed that up to 81% of mental health professionals believe in the lunar effect,55 and a study of nurses demonstrated that 69% believe that full moons are associated with increase in patient admissions.56 In 2007, Brighton, England instituted a policy to place more police officers on the beat during full moon nights.57

Psychiatrist Arnold Lieber popularized the idea of a correlation between the full moon and behavior.58 For Lieber, the lunar effect stems mostly from the fact that the human body is four-fifths water.

Because the moon affects the tides of the earth, it’s plausible that the moon would also affect the brain, which is, after all, part of the body. Yet as astronomer George Abell noted, a mosquito sitting on your arm would exert a more powerful gravitational force on your body than would the moon.59

Furthermore, the moon’s tides are influenced not by its phase — that is, by how much of it’s visible on earth — but by its distance from earth.60 Indeed, during a “new moon,” the phase at which the moon is invisible to us on earth, it exerts just as much gravitational influence as it does during a full moon.

In 1985, two psychologists reviewed all available research evidence on the lunar effect, and found no evidence that the full moon is related to much of anything — crimes, suicides, psychiatric problems, psychiatric hospital admissions, or calls to crisis centers.61

Later investigators examined whether the full moon is linked to suicides,62 psychiatric hospital admissions,63 dog bites,64 or emergency room visits,65 and came up empty-handed.

What psychologists term the “fallacy of positive” instances may help to explain the persisting popularity of belief in the lunar effect. When an event confirms our hunches, we tend to take special note of it and recall it.66

In contrast, when an event disconfirms our hunches, we tend to ignore or reinterpret it. So, when there’s a full moon and something out of the ordinary, say, a surge of admissions to our local psychiatric hospital, happens, we’re likely to remember it and tell others about it.

In contrast, when there’s a full moon and nothing unusual happens, we typically overlook or discount it.

In one study, psychiatric hospital nurses who believed in the lunar effect wrote more notes about patients’ strange behavior during a full moon than did nurses who didn’t believe in the lunar effect.67

The nurses attended more to events that confirmed their hunches, which in turn probably bolstered these hunches.

Myth #10: A Large Proportion of Criminals Successfully
Use the Insanity Defense

After giving a speech on the morning of March 30th, 1981, President Ronald Reagan emerged from the Washington Hilton hotel. Seconds later, six shots rang out. One hit a secret service agent, one hit a police officer, another hit the President’s press secretary James Brady, and another hit the President himself.

The would-be assassin was a delusional 26 year-old man named John Hinckley, who had fallen in love from a distance with actress Jodie Foster and become convinced that by killing the President he could make Foster reciprocate his feelings for her.

In 1982, following a trial featuring dueling psychiatric experts, the jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity. The jury’s decision triggered an enormous public outcry; an ABC News poll revealed that 76% of Americans objected to the verdict.

Surveys show that most Americans believe that criminals often use the insanity defense as a loophole to escape punishment. One study revealed that the average layperson believes that the insanity defense is used in 37% of felony cases, and that this defense is successful 44% of the time.

This survey also demonstrated that the average layperson believes that 26% of insanity acquittees are set free, and that these acquittees spend only about 22 months in a mental hospital following their trials.68 Many politicians share these perceptions.

One study revealed that politicians in Wyoming believed that 21% of accused felons had used the insanity defense, and that they were successful 40% of the time.69 In 1973, President Richard Nixon made the abolition of the insanity defense the centerpiece of his effort to fight crime.

Yet these perceptions of the insanity defense are wildly inaccurate. Data indicate that this defense is raised in less than 1% of criminal trials and that it’s successful only about 25% of the time.70 For example, in the state of Wyoming between 1970 and 1972, a grand total of 1 (!) accused felon successfully pled insanity.

Members of the general public also overestimate how many insanity acquittees are set free; the true proportion is only about 15%. Moreover, the average insanity acquittee spends between 32 and 33 months in a psychiatric hospital, considerably longer than the public estimates.

In fact, criminals acquitted on the basis of an insanity verdict typically spend at least as long in an institution (such as a psychiatric hospital) as criminals who are convicted.71

How did these misperceptions of the insanity defense arise? We Americans live increasingly in a “courtroom culture.” Between Court TV, CSI, Law and Order, and CNN’s Nancy Grace, we’re continually inundated with information about the legal system.

Nevertheless, this information can be deceptive, because the media devotes considerably more coverage to legal cases in which the insanity defense is successful, like Hinckley’s, than to those in which it isn’t.72

As is so often the case, the best antidote to public misperception is accurate knowledge. Lynn and Lauren McCutcheon found that a brief fact-based report on the insanity defense, compared with a news program on crime featuring this defense, produced a significant decrease in undergraduates’ misconceptions concerning this defense.73 These findings give us cause for hope, as they suggest that it may take only a small bit of information to overcome misinformation.

We can all be fooled by psychomythology, largely because so many popular misconceptions dovetail with our intuitive hunches. As a consequence, we must turn to scientific reasoning, which is a set of safeguards against the tendency to confirm our initial beliefs, to evaluate whether the claims of the pop psychology industry pass muster.74

The good news is that by continually scrutinizng and questioning popular psychology claims with scientific thinking and scientific evidence, we can come to a better understanding of our mental worlds and make better everyday life decisions.

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If you are like most people with a weight problem, you already know the answer. (Consuming more calories than you burn).

And you probably know exactly what you have to do in order to lose it.

Am I right?  You have probably read multiple books or are familiar with multiple diets that all work.

Then why aren’t you doing it?

Most people will tell you that all you need is more, “will power”.

I am here to tell you that they couldn’t be more wrong!

Here is why…

According to the latest scientific research, “will power” is a limited resource.

I’m not a scientist, but based on my own personal experience in regards to growth and change and my observations of friends, family and clients over the years, I wholeheartedly agree.

When you “will” yourself to stay away from bad foods (or anything else for that matter), it takes away your ability to concentrate on even the simplest of day to day activities.

For example, when subjects were told not to eat chocolate chip cookies, their persistence in puzzle solving deteriorated. And when they were told to suppress an emotional reaction to a movie, they had problems solving a simple anagram.

In short, any act of suppression is virtually unsustainable…

This is why once you start having to think about other stuff, it becomes almost impossible for you to stay away from the cookies, the burgers, the tacos, the beer, the chips, and the soda.

Even worse, whatever habits you have developed around eating lie deep in your unconscious mind. This dictates your “default” eating choices, and any changes to this using “will power” are met with massive resistance.

And this is a battle you don’t want to fight, because the unconscious mind always wins.

So if you want to get trim, you have to change your unconscious “default” eating choices. It is the only real way to get results that stick – and it is a whole lot easier…

How do you work with the unconscious mind, you ask?

Sometimes repetition works, and establishing rituals (even rituals require much willpower for the first 30 days or so) can help…

But the only method that is validated by current science and mainstream organizations like The American Medical Association is called medical hypnosis.

Hypnosis is basically the study of creating unconscious changes. Over 80 years of clinical research have demonstrated that with the aid of hypnosis, people are able to have control where they had none before.

Get this: at the University of Iowa they are doing MRI studies where you actually see the brain shutting off feelings of pain in the brain. . . all under hypnosis.

If hypnosis can teach you to block pain, it certainly can help you change your eating habits.

But make sure you get the real thing. You don’t want help from a ”stage hypnotist” – you want to find someone with a proven clinical track record.  And finding somebody in person with a proven track record for weight loss is extremely difficult.

This is why it is sometimes better to find a home-use program. And the program with the best track record in the industry was created by Dr. Roberta Temes (author of a hypnosis textbook used in medical schools).

I have helped many people lose weight over the years but unfortunately, I have also seen the many of them gain it back within a few months to a few years due to underlying fears and unconscious issues.

That is why when I (and many doctors and other health professionals) now work with clients who desire to lose weight and/or fat, I recommend Dr. Temes program.

It goes in deep to address the roots of the problem, which by the way is not food!

Simply put, it works and it works well…

Over 50,000 people have now used this program, and the satisfaction rate is 92%.

This means that over 9 out of 10 people are able to change their eating behaviors and get the slim body they deserve
using her hypnosis sessions.

This program is like no other in that it works with any eating plan or “diet”.

The publisher provides you with a year to try the program, and they even let you sample it for 28 days by just paying shipping. So if you struggle with, “will power” – then this program is truly a, “no brainer”.

Click the link below to find out more…

http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/hypnosis/ewl/special?hn=2182

Kind Regards,

Anthony

P.S. Here are some stories from some users of this program:

“I am now down 20 pounds and still have not had any problems with stress eating (my lifetime habit is to overeat). I am into a size 16 from a 20/22 and people are finally beginning to notice. I personally thank you for your program even though I don’t understand how it works. I amstarting to like who I see in the mirror.”

Syndi Ellison
Advertising & Finance Manager
Washington State Magazine

“I had an addiction to sugar and my weight problems were so severe I was thinking of bypass surgery. I tried hypnosis programs in the past. Some programs made me tense and uncomfortable; the power of others seemed

to fade away. Within the first week I was getting obvious results. Since I started the program I’ve lost 30 pounds and I keep dropping them. My addiction to sugar is pretty much gone and decisions to turn down foods
are easy.”

Cynthia Roderick
Photographer
South Deerfield, Massachusetts

http://www.hypnosisnetwork.com/hypnosis/ewl/special?hn=2182

You have issues!

Me?

Yes, you!

Well, don’t we all have issues?  I mean everyone does.  Right?

Yes, but how about for now we just focus on ourselves and leave everyone else out of the equation.

Most of us don’t realize it, but when we say things like, “Don’t we all?” or some other all inclusive type statement, we are minimizing, rationalizing and stepping away from true ownership of and responsibility for our “stuff” and the work we could be doing to awaken and move to the next level of our development.  It’s a very clever and subtle cop out!

Today, I’d like to share a quick exercise meant to pull up and identify some of these issues.

It’s an exercise meant to show us how we project our strengths and weaknesses onto others.

You will need a piece of paper and something to write with.

I’ll wait right here.

Your back.  Good!

Okay, let’s get right into it…

1.  Make a list of the people you dislike or who give you the most difficulty in life.

2.  Make a list of the traits or the things about them that you dislike the most.

3.  Now make a list of all the people you look up to or admire in some way.

4.  Make a list of the traits about these people that you like the most.

5.  Now take the list of the characteristics you hate and take a good look at it.

6.  Take the list of the characteristics you love and look at it.

Do you realize that you are essentially looking into a mirror?

That all people are essentially mirrors that are reflecting ourselves back to us?

The traits you dislike the most about another person or people are likely the ones you dislike the most about yourself.

You may not be able to see it because we often disown these things, deeming them bad or unacceptable.  Truth is, they are part of us and when we try to deny them, they go underground become unrecognizable and cause us problems.

Likewise, the traits or characteristics that you admire about others have also been disowned and you are not allowing yourself to be your best by getting in touch with and cultivating these great qualities.

I used the phrase, “disowned” but another way we could say it is that we are “out of touch” with these traits in ourselves and seeing them in others.

As an example, I know a woman who is very paranoid, angry and controlling who is constantly at odds with all the “mean and angry control freaks” who are always trying to get over on her that she just seems to runs into all the time.

They’re everywhere!  The clerk at the store.  The waiter, waitress or bartender.  The vet.  You get the point!

I have seen her in action.  I have seen her create enemy after enemy out of some very caring, open and honest people.

She is also a good example of the converse.  She meets certain people, quickly sings their praises and puts them on a pedestal before ever getting to know them.

I have seen her idealize some pretty silly people who were very underdeveloped.

So what is the point of all of this?  What is the moral of the story?

The point is this:  Wake up!  Stop projecting these things about yourself onto others and take responsibility for them and yourself.

It is never about them…good or bad.

It is about you!

There is much power in really seeing that and integrating it into yourself.  It will help you see things more accurately and it gives you more of a choice about the quality of “you” that you create and share with world.

It will help you step up your game, so to speak.

And that to me is good news!

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

A

Greetings everyone!

Todays post is going to be a short and quick one…

The sun is smiling, the ocean is calling and after the two challenging days I’ve just had, I need to practice some self-care and hit the beach for some much needed rejuvenation.

So let’s get down to it…

Although it is much more involved and complex than “just doing it”, we really only need to do two simple things to achieve optimal health.

When I refer to health, I include the mental, physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of ourselves and our lives.

These dimensions cannot be separated and encompass the totality of who we are and ultimately determine the quality of our experience on this planet.

Imbalance in one will, sooner or later, subvert the whole system.

For example, you could eat right, exercise, sleep well and have a clean bill of health from your doctor (physical) but be disconnected from your values and any kind of purpose in your life (spiritual), have no real relationships of depth or conflict with your wife, lover, kids (emotional) and be a very unhappy, unsatisfied or lonely person.

Or…

You could have an amazing spouse or lover in your life, lots of friends, a great job, but be completely out of shape or physically unhealthy and unable to fully enjoy these hard earned blessings.

Or…

Have a deep and rich spiritual life with a clear and powerful sense of purpose and mission but not have the energy to effectively share your gifts with the world.

It’s about balance…

So it is important to attend to the emotional and spiritual as well as the mental and physical.

So what are these two things?

Drum roll please…

1. Out with the bad – remove or improve the bad things in your life.
2. In with the good – add good things to your life.

“What!”  ”That’s it?”  ”I want my money back chump!”

Yep, that’s it!

Would you like me to be a little more specific?

Removing or improving the Bad

When I say bad, I am referring to anything that causes any kind of burden on the four categories of your health. These can include but are not limited to:

• Unnecessary stress
• A nutrient deficient, processed diet
• Allergens
• Toxins in your body, home or at work
• Infections
• Unresolved conflicts with others that are ongoing
• No sense of direction of purpose
• No clear idea of what is TRULY important to you
• Unhealthy relationships

This list can obviously go on and on but it is important to identify and eventually remove or improve everything.

We just can’t take out a thing or two but most of us can’t do it all at once either.

Take on too much too soon and you will likely fail.

Adding the good

The next thing to do is to put in the good things.

These include:

• High quality, whole foods
• Good, clean, PH balanced water
• Exercise and movement
• Love
• Healthy relationships
• A sense of purpose and direction
• Relaxation
• Meditation
• Good stress (things that challenge us and help us grow by testing us, pushing our unseen buttons, exposing our blind spots and raising the bar of what we can handle)

Obviously, this list could go on and on as well but when we add these good things our bodies and Life itself will take over and do the rest.

That is it!

This seems like common sense and is so simple but we often don’t do so good with simple.  Note that I didn’t say easy?

Change is not what we are trying for, change is something that is continually happening and does not need our help.

What we are ultimately moving towards is transformation and that is an ongoing process.

It bears repeating over and over that there are many things that are good for all of us, but we must also remember that each person has a unique biology and biography and therefore their own particular triggers and needs.

What harms me drastically or holds me back from being my best may not harm you at all.  In fact it may help you!

Again, this is an intentionally short post and there is so much more to this.

In the coming weeks, I am going to go into more detail and do a post on each of the four aspects of health – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual and how we can understand how they specifically support and feedback on one another.

That way we can learn to leverage them in the service of living a happy and authentic life.

Until next time…

Kind regards,

Anthony

Welcome back everyone.  I hope you all made it a great weekend.  I definitely did!

Again, please forgive the mess.  The site is under construction and not looking it’s best, but when the new format is unleashed, look out!

Okay, so let’s get right into it…

As many of you know, there can be many different causes for one “disease.”

In the past, I used the example of depression, which could be caused by one’s thyroid, a deficiency in folic acid, blood sugar disturbances, hidden infections, deficiency of omega-3 fats, low testosterone and so on.

Today,  I’d like to flip the coin and turn to gluten in order to illustrate how one thing can be the cause of many problems and so called “diseases.”

Of course, this is if one is sensitive to gluten…which more of you are than you may think.

I was doing some research for a client awhile back and found a review in the New England Journal of Medicine that listed over 50 diseases that can be caused by eating gluten.

That was not a typo!

Many of the diseases are neurological and psychiatric.  Among them are depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, migraines, neuropathy, anxiety, dementia, and autism.

I know this first hand.

Before I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease and food allergies, I had seizures and was actually diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, depression, peripheral neuropathy and ADD (I’m still a bit of space cadet!).

There were times when I definitely didn’t feel or act like I was right in the head but when I identified the food allergies and removed them along with the gluten the seizures stopped, the depression lifted and I slowly but surely became me again and then some.

Back then, we didn’t know what we know now, so it was no easy task and took many years.

It often takes a very long time – up to 10 years for a person in the U.S to get diagnosed with Celiac disesase as opposed to the three years it takes in Europe and Japan – to get an accurate diagnosis.

It can be a tough one to pinpoint if we or our doctors are uninformed and in that time, much damage…physical, mental, emotional and financial can and usually does occur.

That is why I have such a passion for helping others in the same boat.  I know what it is like to feel like you are losing control of your body, mind and as a consequence, your life.

I know what it is like to go to doctor after doctor getting misdiagnosed or put on unnecessary medications that only make things more complicated and confusing.

I know what it is like to be completely misunderstood and viewed as a little weird or crazy by friends, family and uninformed health care providers only later to have them apologize or say that they knew it all along!

I also know what it is like to take matters into my own hands, do the research, figure it out and reclaim my health and life.

Many others share a similar story…

What is gluten?

Gluten is a protein found in wheat and other grains such as oats, rye, spelt, kamut, barely, triticale.

Why is gluten so bad for so many of us?

There are numerous reasons.  For starters, we have not genetically adapted to the  grasses, mainly gluten, that were introduced to our diets in the Middle Ages.

Thirty percent of people of European descent carry the gene for celiacs disease.  This greatly increases their likelihood of having health problems from eating gluten.

In what ways can gluten negatively affect the brain?

First, gluten can inflame the brain by causing an autoimmune response.  Autoimmunity is an abnormal response to the body’s own tissues.

In other words, something comes into the body and the body goes on alert but somehow mistakes its own tissues as a foreign invader and declares war mistakenly upon itself.

Allergies are a prime example.  In this case, antibodies meant to fight gluten also attack your body.

Secondly, during the digestion process, gluten can be broken down into into strange proteins that are a lot like psychedelic drugs.  These are opium-like proteins called gluteomorophins.

As you can probably imagine, these can drastically change brain function and behavior.  When is the last time someone dropped acid and smoked some opium and maintained their mental homeostasis?

So does this mean gluten can make music sound better and colors more vivid?

Hell yeah man!

I love eating bread, putting on some music, turning on my strobe light and tripping out on my old Jimmy Hendrix and Pink Floyd posters!

All bad jokes aside, I don’t think that is the type of psychedelic experience anyone is looking for.

I don’t foresee a high (pun intended) gluten bread coming out bearing the Grateful Dead’s logo anytime soon.  Cherry Garcia was pushing it!

But I digress…

The third way gluten can affect the brain is due to its high content of glutamate (think MSG), a molecule that accelerates, activates, irritates and damages brain cells through a special “docking station” called the NMDA receptor.

Excessive activity in this receptor due to glutamate has been linked to many psychiatric disorders.  Glutamate is an excitotoxin (a substance that agitates and kills or damages brain cells).

So to summarize, these are the three ways gluten can harm the brain:

• Through inflammation
• As psychedelic, opiate-like proteins
• As an excitotoxin

Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg with gluten.

It can also cause arthritis and other autoimmune and inflammatory diseases/conditions.

However, I just wanted to stick mainly with the brain stuff for todays post.

I’d love to hear what you have to say so please feel free to leave a comment below.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,

Anthony

Greetings everyone!

Please excuse the mess.  I am in the process of remodeling the entire site but still wanted to respond to an important question I received via email the other day.

A reader was a bit upset about the price of organic food in her area and was wondering exactly which foods were the the dirtiest and therefore an absolute must to eat organic and which ones were safe to buy in their commercial, less expensive form.

I can completely relate!  I just had this conversation with my girlfriend at Wholefoods yesterday while briefly holding and then setting down a small bunch of organic asparagus that cost about seven dollars!

Obviously, growing your own is ideal, but many of us cannot or do not for various reasons.

So, for those of us who cannot or do not grow our our own, here is a list of the dirtiest commercial foods that should only be eaten in their organic forms when possible.

The dirtiest foods that should always be purchased organic:

• Strawberries – At 302 lbs of pesticide per acre, they are the worst fruit.
• Peaches
• Dates
• Pears
• Cherries
• Cabbage
• Lemons
• Apples
• Cucumbers
• Cantaloupe
• Celery
• Spinach
• Peppers of all kinds
• Root vegetables of all kinds
• All meat -Beef should be grass-fed; chicken and eggs should be organic and free-range; fish should be wild-caught; pork and lunch meat should be completely avoided.
• Dairy – Those of you who know me, know I am not down with dairy.  If you want to know why then click  here.  If you are going to consume dairy, make sure it is raw, unpasteurized and comes from grass-fed cows that are not treated with hormones and antibiotics.  Finding raw cheese from grass-fed cows is not difficult but finding the milk may be somewhat of a challenge depending on where you live.

For some of us, going organic seems hard to fit into the budget and I completely understand.  However, I would also say that our health should be our most important investment.

Without our health we have nothing!

That being said, there is surely some way to adjust the budget in order to add more clean and healthy foods to our diet and increase the quality of our lives.

Seriously… many of us don’t think twice about spending money on frivolous things or on things that are not necessary, useful or important.

Think cable TV, eating out, expensive vacations when we have all these amazing state parks, driving your car when you can walk or take public transportation.

We also just flat out waste our money.  Think leaving lights or other appliances on while not at home or in the room (MLO would bust me on that!) or blasting heat when we can put on an extra layer of clothing or the air conditioning when a fan will do or windows can be opened.

I’d even take things a step further and venture to say that many of us spend our money on things that are flat out harmful.  Think fast food, junk food, cola, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, tanning beds…

Hell, I’m currently in South Florida and see people every day who spend thousands on plastic surgery to look better but turn around and party, eat garbage food and get fake tans!

It’s really a matter of examining and getting back in touch with our deeper values and adjusting our priorities…

Do you consider your health to be the largest piece of your wealth?

I’d love your feedback on this one so please leave a comment!

Be on the lookout in the next couple of days for a list of the foods that are the cleanest and okay to eat in their non-organic, commercial form.

Until then…

Kind Regards,

A

Greetings everyone! Today might be my shortest post ever!

A moment ago I received an email regarding my last Facebook post. In it a young woman asked if I meant to say what I said in the last sentence of said post or if it was an accidental tongue twister.

I meant it…

Here is the exact post, cut and pasted:

Awareness is the ultimate remedy.

Actually, I should say Awareness in action.

It dissolves our illusions in the same way that the radiance of the sun dissolves the clouds in the sky.

That’s why a daily practice such as meditation is so important.

Not as a means to achieve or become anything but to remember to remember whatever it is we need to remember without trying to remember, so that eventually we don’t forget!

Yes I meant that last sentence and I’ll say it again.

Meditation should not be used as a means to achieve or become anything but as vehicle to remember to remember whatever it is we need to remember without trying to remember, so that eventually we don’t forget!

Remember what and why?

Remember what, not who (that’s dualistic ego stuff) you really are because from there you operate unobstructed by your fears, beliefs, conditioning and general effedupness.

All effort must be dropped, everything must be dropped if Awareness or Being or Spirit or your authentic self or whatever you call it is to arise and hang around.

In Japanese Zen they use the word Shikantaza, which literally means just sitting, to describe meditation.

That sounds simple enough and it is but it is not so EASY with our crazy minds and jumpy bodies.

That’s why they call it a practice!

Well, that’s all I got today. Not in the mood to wax deep or poetic.

Until next time…

Kind regards,
Anthony

Greetings everyone! Today I would like to briefly discus the proper storage of supplements. Specifically, I would like to discuss where not to store supplements.

Generally, the rule of thumb is to follow the instructions on the container.

If you look, many supplements instruct you to store them in a cool, dry place. I agree and would add to that, out of direct light. This is for a good reason.

Another thing to consider, one that many of us overlook, is the fact that much of what we are now calling supplements are actually food. That is great news but that being the case, we need to be mindful of how, where and for how long we store them.

This is especially important for items that require refrigeration to avoid spoiling or going rancid. These include but are not limited to: superjuices, certain nuts and seeds, seed and nut powders and butters, and certain oils such as flax or fish oil.

Another reason for refrigeration is to avoid loss of potency. Many probiotics and all superjuices would fall into this category.

Okay, now I want to discuss where you should never store your supplements.

Anyone care to take a guess?

If you said the bathroom, you are correct!

I don’t like to use the word never, so I will back down a bit and say you should really avoid storing your supplements in the bathroom.

I travel quite a bit and have noticed from staying in the homes of friends, family and others that it is a common practice for many people to keep their vitamins and other supplements in the bathroom, usually the medicine cabinet if they have one.

Bad idea!

According to Lisa Mauer, a food scientist at Purdue University, we should never store our vitamins in the bathroom. She warns that the strong humidity can eliminate their benefits by chemically changing their composition…even if the lids are on tight.

“Opening and closing a package will change the atmosphere in it. If you open and close a package in a bathroom, you add a little bit of humidity and moisture each time.”

Mauer said crystalline substances — including vitamin C, some forms of vitamin B and other dietary supplements — may undergo deliquescence, a process in which humidity causes the water-soluble solid to dissolve similar to how sugar cakes in the summer.

According to Maur, once humidity or temperature is brought back down, the product will solidify, but the damage has been done. Depending on how long a person takes a shower, the humidity of the bathroom can go as high as 98 percent.

Mauer’s findings were published in the online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Like I stated, it is best to follow the directions on the container. If it is unlabeled such as the case with many bulk items or you are uncertain, look it up.

Let’s face it, investing in our health is investing in our happiness. Everything in life depends on it. Without it we have nothing.

That being the case, we invest in it but we invest in it wisely. That especially includes our time and money.

Storing our supplements and foods in ways that preserve their integrity and effectiveness is investing wisely.

Storing our supplements and foods in ways that cause them to lose their potency and therefore their effectiveness or in ways that cause them to go bad and have to be thrown into the trash or the compost is not!

It’s your time, your money and most importantly, your health…

Invest wisely!

Until next time…

Kind Regards,
A

Greetings everyone! I’m still in sunny South Florida and loving it. It is amazing how relocating to a different climate for even a short period of time can have a dramatic effect on one’s health and moment to moment outlook.

Although I love the snow and have no problem with the cold at all, the dirty indoor air and lack of sunlight gets to me after a while. For better and for worse, I just have one of those sensitive systems.

At some point around January, it becomes somewhat of an effort to maintain my usual physical, mental and emotional equanimity. My immune system gets overburdened and my brain gets a little out of whack.

I can usually remedy that with copious amount of cardiovascular exercise, antioxidants and 5,000 IU’s of vitamin D/day starting in September and ending in May.

However, I much prefer to just eat as much raw, delicious, clean and nutrient rich superfoods as I can, swim a few times a week and take short barefoot runs or long walks on the beach with my lovely other. I’m a big fan of simplicity!

So many people up North get seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or the winter blues and become intolerant and intolerable!

I hate seeing people in that condition and I really hate seeing them go on meds when some vigorous exercise, fresh clean air in their homes and some vitamin D, starting around September and ending in May, would do the trick.

Moving on…

Today I’d like to talk a bit about understanding.

Most people think that we understand things with our minds…

If you really get down to it, you will see that we actually do not.

In reality, the mind is only capable of grasping objects (physical objects and thought objects), mental activity and concepts.

It is ephemeral and like everything in life, is in constant motion and incapable of holding onto any real understanding.

To seek Truth with the thinking, discriminating mind is a huge mistake.

In those moments when the mind thinks it has understood something, the ego does its little dance and wedges it way in. It says, “Ah, I get it. I understand!”

It likes that sense of power, accomplishment and safety it gets from figuring things out. Of course it wants to hold the winning hand, so it then freezes the insight du jour, adds it to the others and tries to make it the truth.

This can and does get us into trouble!

We are sick with our so-called knowledge, beliefs and opinions.

That is why in Zen it is said, “Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.”

Note that it is NOT advised to abandon your opinions; that is going to the other extreme. We are merely being advised to stop CHERISHING them. There is nothing wrong with knowledge, beliefs and opinions. They come in handy.

I know what I know and like what I like, so when I am at the grocery store or shopping for a high ticket item, my preferences and (hopefully informed) opinions are useful for me to get in and get out.

I also know from many years of living and meditating, that my opinions, my beliefs, my thoughts aren’t real or true in any absolute or enduring sense. My brain uses them, based on my past experiences “good” and “bad”, to get me through life successfully. Maybe not with perfect skill, compassion or integrity but they get me by.

The ego is just the ego. It has a job to do. It thinks it is us and is always trying to please and protect us. If you have a mature, well developed ego, and the real-time awareness that it is merely a tool that must be picked up and put down like any other tool, this can be very useful.

Whenever any kind of real understanding occurs, at the ACTUAL moment of understanding, the ego is sound asleep. It is not occupying that space.

If we really get down to it, we can never really know anything with absolute certainty. We can just be certain to a greater or lesser degree. That is okay. In fact, there is much freedom in that!

Any TRUE knowledge of anything arises apart from the mind. It dwells in consciousness, in awareness. It resides in the heart.

This can be said of all forms of understanding, including the kind of understanding we might use to bake bread, learn a new language or for us heterosexual men, to figure out a seemingly impossible puzzle like the emotional weather patterns of the woman we love.

Just kidding ladies. We all know there is no hope for us men to ever figure that one out. But we thank you for your patience and the feminine wisdom that makes a space for us men to think we are clever. I learned a long time ago that women are smarter!

****** That last line, my friends, is a perfect example of a useful belief!!! ******

But I digress…

True awareness, true understanding authenticates itself. It is not achieved, nor can it be captured, frozen or experienced through words or thoughts.

We can tell another all about how being in love feels or how avocados taste but until you EXPERIENCE these things for yourself, you will never understand.

When Truth, Awareness, Consciousness, Understanding, Spirit or whatever term you choose to use arises, it just happens. Kind of like slipping on the ice and falling on your ass.

It has always been and always will be present. In fact it is what we really are.

Please don’t take my word for any of this, I’m just some guy who is pointing at something you already know and are by writing a blog.

But I urge you to really look, really inquire WITHOUT using your mind.

Go silently to your heart, awaken to the Truth and make it your life by sharing the gift of who you really are with the world.

Until next time…

Kind Regards,
Anthony

Greetings from South Florida everyone! Today I received an email from Mark Hyman MD, asking me to share some very important information with all of you regarding some VERY BAD legislation in Congress right now that could harm our access to supplements.

For those of you who are not familiar with Dr. Hyman, he is a pioneer in the field of functional medicine, the star of a recent PBS special, the editor-in-chief of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, the medical editor of Alternative Medicine, and the author of best selling books such as The Ultramind Solution.

Dr. Hyman’s work has played a key role in my recovery from illness and the work I now do with my clients.

Here’s the deal:

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have cosponsored a new bill misleadingly called The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA). DSSA would repeal key sections of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), signed into law by then-President Clinton.

This legislation would change current regulation for dietary supplements. It could make many prescription only, limit what is on the market, offer patents to drug companies and in many other ways severely limit access to dietary supplements.

A wide variety of organizations, working together with ANH-USA, have swung into action to stop John McCain’s new bill that threatens dietary supplements. Already thousands of messages are on their way to Capitol Hill in protest. Please be sure that your message is among them.

I encourage you to act now to send a message to your Senator or Congressman. If you have not already done so, please take action now:

http://www.anh-usa.org/new_site/?p=2326

DSHEA protects supplements 1) if they are food products that have been in the food supply and not chemically altered or 2) if they were sold as supplements prior to 1994, the year that DSHEA was passed. If a supplement fits one of these two descriptions, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot arbitrarily ban it or reclassify it as a drug. DSHEA provides the framework for effective regulation of dietary supplements by the FDA.

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA) would eliminate the supplement protections contained in DSHEA and allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) arbitrary authority to draw up a list of what supplements can be sold and at what potency levels. Europe is currently limiting both supplements and potencies to ridiculous levels. If DSSA passes, the FDA, beholden as it is to drug interests, would move to do the same in the US.

For those of us who manage our own health issues with the help of intelligently used, quality supplements and/or help others do the same, this legislation could have tragic consequences.

I personally know more than a few people, including myself, that could become seriously ill if cut off from certain supplements.

What was once an affordable and empowering way to achieve radiant health and/or manage certain diseases/conditions could become obsolete, ridiculously expensive, completely out of reach or in the greedy hands of big pharma.

Please act now and write to your Senator and Congressman to oppose this legislation.

Please tell everyone you know! Again, here is the link: http://www.anh-usa.org/new_site/?p=2326

Until next time…

Kind Regards,
Anthony